i think what bothers me about a lot of "girl power" narratives is that they function on the implicit idea on the idea that women can become worthy of respect. and i happen to think that really caring about women means believing they already are worthy of respect. that historical seamstresses and soccer moms and forgotten sisters and sweet polite little girls and someone's weird grandma matter just as much as the warriors and politicians, even if they, personally, never accomplish anything "cool."

Jeanne Villepreux-Power, the inventor of the clear glass fish tank was a dressmaker before she married and had the free time and energy to devote to her passion for marine biology. But not just any dressmaker – a really good dressmaker. Being a dressmaker was different from being a seamstress; it was like the difference between owning a couture house and being a stitcher for one. You had to start out as a seamstress, but by the time you hit dressmaker, you had reached the top of the occupational ladder 

She literally designed a wedding dress for a princess at one point

And yet articles about her always phrase it like "from being JUST a MERE SEAMSTRESS she ascended to the REAL WORK OF SCIENCE!!!"

what if the teenage mutant ninja turtles exist in the mcu but they’re just really good at staying under the radar and criminals are too embarrassed to admit they got beat up by some guys in “turtle costumes” so they blame daredevil. peter parker worked as a pizza delivery boy for a while and brought like eight pizzas to a man hole cover but thought nothing of it bc nyc

peter parker: i once was one minute late delivering pizza and the dude was like “forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza” 

clint barton: oh cool u met one of the tmnt 

literally everyone: who 

clint: am i the only one in this goddamn city who knows about the crimefighting turtles that live in the sewers 

(they all think clint is playing an elaborate prank on them, especially when he shows them a photo of four guys wearing what are ‘very obviously halloween costumes’)

fun fact: it’s TMNT canon that the chemical container that hit Matt Murdock across the face and gave him his Daredevil abilities is the same canister that landed on the baby turtles and mutated them, so…..y’all aren’t far off

i’m sorry it’s WHAT

LOL

It is not enough to get into a comfy sleeping position- one must go through several and spin like a rotisserie chicken to arrive at the position you started with.

the ant people are the only ones on inaturalist that consistently use the "favorites" button. unfortunately the rest of us don't know their secrets so there will be like, dozens of faves on a picture of an ant and i am like why is the ant so special. teach us to see the beauty of the ant.

Having a really long-term hyperfixation that has since faded is terrifying yes but it's also so embarrassing. Hi I used to think about Scrimblo Splungus 25/7. Yeah, for 2 years straight. Nah, I don't think about them anymore except for with a vague sense of melancholy as I recall how they used to make me feel. Anyways this new one, Blimpkins McGee? I'm gonna think about them forever and the cycle will NOT repeat in 2 years. Trust me guys.

some of my current favorite responses to weird/confusing sentences:

String identified: ctatt/cgtc: “acca” “/attt” “t,” “aaagt” “tattt’ttgtagtact” “caat”

Closest match: Dircenna loreta genome assembly, chromosome: 1

(image source)

look. look at this beautiful sword meme. i’m going to cry

@petermorwood

I saw and reblogged this one a while back, but it’s always worth repeating, and this time I’m adding a bit of background info comparing common fantasy sword features to the Real Thing (with pictures, of course.)

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

i could not ask for a better addition to my meme post than blade education thank you so much

It’s not fantasy anatomy, but knowing stuff about the objects you put in your fantasy world is also very important

“The old magic persists thanks to it’s unfathomable power.”

No, the old magic persists because the new magic can’t run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I don’t want or need onto my orb.

Look, if the new magic didn't have a personality construct that kept trying to tell me which spells to use, maybe I wouldn't still be using the old magic.

Yes it had a deep blood cost, but at least it was a one time sacrifice and not this monthly bloodletting nonsense new age magic has

The old magic is robust enough to survive a decade of use and it's compatible with every wand, staff, scroll, and charm in our collection.

The new magic stops working after three days and every spell uses proprietary runes.

Our preferences, as an archiving institution, should be pretty clear.

You try to get guidance for the new magic and the king's sorcerers maybe will answer you in a few days with an unhelpful suggestion to buy the newest orb.

You need guidance for the old magic and a dozen retired middle-aged wizards will pop up to explain it to you rune by rune if necessary.

UC or ER?

HONESTLY THOUGH

THIS IS BOTH ACCURATE AND EFFECTIVE

Urgent Care is for your "Oh no!" accidents.

Emergency Care is for your "Oh fuck!" accidents.

yeah okay ill reblog that!

my mum just called "scrolling on Tumblr" "scrumbling"

we should consider that your mum is correct

there's been a couple of people who agreed that it should catch on and become a word, so maybe you're right 🤔

just scrumbled past this

Been scrumbling for a while. Glad I saw this.

the reblog to like ratio is actually quite impressive on this one. I've never seen one quite this even on a post with this many notes TT

not to oversimplify an extremely complex discipline but if i had to pick one tip to give people on how to have more productive interactions with children, especially in an instructive sense, its that teaching a kid well is a lot more like improv than it is like error correction and you should always work on minimizing the amount of ‘no, wrong’ and maximizing the amount of ‘yes, and?’ for example: we have a species of fish at the aquarium that looks a lot like a tiny pufferfish. children are constantly either asking us if that’s what they are, or confidently telling us that’s what they are. if you rush to correct them, you risk completely severing their interest in the situation, because 1. kids don’t like to engage with adults who make them feel bad and 2. they were excited because pufferfish are interesting, and you have not given them any reason to be invested in non-pufferfish. Instead, if you say something like “It looks a LOT like a tiny pufferfish, you’re right. But these guys are even funnier. Wanna know what they’re called?” you have primed them perfectly for the delightful truth of the Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker

I was in martial arts for years, and in particular I kinda specialized in working with the younger kids.

The two Big Rules when instructing younger students was- 1. Compliment before Critique 2. Don’t say ‘but’, say ‘now’

Praise kids on what they get right first, especially if they are struggling. Like OP said, kids don’t like to engage with people who make them feel bad. They need encouragement when learning new things.

Number two boils down to this. If you tell a kid a compliment, then say “but you need to fix this”, that ‘but’ completely negates your compliment. It’s gone. It was canceled out like adding a negative to a positive. Using “hey, that punch is looking great, now let’s focus on your stance” doesn’t verbally cancel out the progress they’ve made. It’s like they’ve checked off something on their list of stuff to work on.

Wording can absolutely make or break a child’s motivation and interest.

Rebloggling as it’s relevant in a Medical Education context

Honestly I use all of these to teach vet students too. I think people in general respond better to positivity in teaching. Not coddling, but acknowledging when a student got part way to the right answer, or had a good thought process, is something I’ve found keeps students engaged and builds confidence, which encourages them to keep going instead of shutting down and just “getting through” a lab or a rotation

years and years of language and communication just so I can fully comprehend the post someone made saying "goncharov is on poob"