plotdesigner

[plotdesigner]

[video by soupygarbagejuice. original caption: stuie]

[plotdesigner]

really recommend getting a partner with a different religion than you and very little knowledge of your religion because the opportunities for explaining things to each other are just exquisite

[plotdesigner]

Today's Seal Is: Stylin' That Eyeliner

[plotdesigner]

Throwback thursday to when I was like 12 and I was putting out new writing DAILY...... Like entire Chapters of my then-current wips just, over an afternoon. What the fuck was I on

[plotdesigner]

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

[plotdesigner]

hot & vintage movie women round 4 masterpost

notes -polls that are especially close (defined as "46%-54% or closer as of whenever i last updated this") are denoted with a ✨ -the cutoff i used to determine what day a poll ends on is midnight eastern daylight time because it seemed as good as any other, but be aware that some of the polls end in the wee hours of the morning - i.e. the ones ending friday start ending on the cusp of late thursday night/early friday morning, so get your votes in early

ending friday 4/26

Judy Garland vs. Natalie Wood✨ Ava Gardner vs. Dorothy Dandridge✨ Suraiya vs. Yoshiko Yamaguchi✨ Sara Montiel vs. Marilyn Monroe Marpessa Dawn vs. Irene Papas Lupe Vélez vs. Greta Garbo Sophia Loren vs. Pola Negri Katharine Hepburn vs. Gene Tierney Barbara Stanwyck vs. Setsuko Hara Hedy Lamarr vs. Gina Lollobrigida Lena Horne vs. Jane Fonda Elizabeth Taylor vs. Nutan Audrey Hepburn vs. Jean Seberg

ending saturday 4/27

Kim Novak vs. Marlene Dietrich Gladys Cooper vs. Joan Crawford Tallulah Bankhead vs. Anna May Wong Madhubala vs. Linda Darnell María Félix vs. Julie Andrews✨ Lauren Bacall vs. Carmen Sevilla Vyjayanthimala vs. Gloria Swanson

ending sunday 4/28

Glynis Johns vs. Eartha Kitt Josephine Baker vs. Anne Baxter Rita Morena vs. Angela Lansbury Xia Meng vs. Anita Ekberg✨ Toshia Mori vs. Veronica Lake Deborah Kerr vs. Keiko Awaji vs. Hazel Scott✨ Chelo Alonso vs. Ingrid Bergman Cyd Charisse vs. Mbissine Thérèse Diop✨ Nancy Kwan vs. Rita Hayworth Devika Rani vs. Diahann Carroll Shima Iwashita vs. Grace Kelly Anouk Aimée vs. Pearl Bailey✨

[plotdesigner]

update on renly: she’s still weird

[plotdesigner]

online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.

[plotdesigner]

Eleanor update!

She's just...too beautiful...

[plotdesigner]

hello! do you know of a handy chart or reference for keeping track of which word for uncle/aunt a person would be depending on side of family they're from and relation to you?

Master Chart for Familial Relationships

I HAVE OPTED TO DO THIS INSTEAD OF SLEEP. 

I’m too tired to proofread so if you see a mistake please point them out. Click on them to see the clear pics. 

[Notes:] 

* these are typically northern Chinese terminologies. 

** They use of “a-” in front of  something like “a-die” like “A-Cheng” is regional. From what I understand this is typically a southern Chinese practice.

Bolded = modern & historical times

Highlighted = ONLY used in modern times aka 20th century and afterwards.

Use name = in conversation with someone one younger than you, don’t typically use the relationship term, just call them by their name. The addresses are really used for those older than you as a sign of respect. This is particularly true for modern times.

All uncles and aunts and cousins and brothers and sisters are typically paired with the # they are in the fam [da, er, san, si, wu] (1-5). 

Edit: y’all when i say “paternal” cousins I mean cousins that share your last name, if your cousin doesn’t share your last name, that’s a maternal cousin. 

ADDENDUM: 

OKAY FOR THE COUSINS

The chart was going to get too long, so I tried to short cut and ended up making it more confusing for people.

When I say “paternal” cousins, yes this means cousins on your dad side of the family. But your father’s sisters’ kids, who are technically your paternal cousins, do not share your last name, so don’t use “tang”, use “biao”.

[plotdesigner]

The zoo in my hometown posted this picture of one of their cheetah cubs and I'm obsessed

HIS NAME IS YAM ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDINF ME

[plotdesigner]

Happy World Penguin Day (tomorrow)! 🐧

Dive into the wonderfully-winged world of African penguins with the Aquarium’s own aviculturist, Kim! From rocky shores to sandy beaches, explore where these charismatic birds call home. 💙🪨🏠

[plotdesigner]

yes yes characters doomed by the narrative always slap BUT what about characters saved by the narrative? characters who have already given up hope and don't know they have a happy ending? characters who believe they are a lost cause, characters who feel irredeemable, characters who think there's nothing left for them, but the narrative does provide a way out? what about the characters who don't expect anything good, who don't even remember how to wish for it anymore, who get the things they need anyway? what about the characters who actively run from being saved getting saved in a way they can't stop or control. what about being saved by the narrative!!!

[plotdesigner]

I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.

You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.

But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.

So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".

But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).

Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.

Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.

"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.

So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?

The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).

In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.

And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)

This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.

The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).

This one is just confusing.

The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...

And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).

This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.

Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.

References

Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.

McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.

Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.

[plotdesigner]

So you know how lots of birds just find humans really sexy? Like how they're constantly trying to seduce humans, and if you have pet birds there's whole guides for how to not give your bird mixed signals and make them think you're their mate, and how they keep trying to drive off the partners of their owners/carers as rivals

And people who own or live near these types of birds just kind of have to live with this, like they just gotta accept that that's how birds are and work around it

I like to think that that's how gods feel about the tiresome human propensity to worship them at the drop of a hat

[plotdesigner]

If you're struggling with the cost of living right now (reasonable), this is your PSA to...

Google universities/colleges near you.

If you can't get out to more than one, look up which one has the highest tuition.

Look-up when the graduation date is

Drive neighborhoods near the university the week before graduation

So much stuff gets left out on the curb. Wealthy college students tend to prioritize convenience over money, so instead of carefully reselling their perfectly good stuff, they frequently give it away or put it out with the trash because that's easier than moving, reselling, or donating. Take advantage of this.

I furnished pretty much my entire apartment from college giveaways and yardsales.

What I got for free:

Mattress and box springs

2 10 ft area rugs

The massive 9-drawer chest (that has a label on the back that it was custom-made and shipped across the country) that my TV sits on.

Two 13 x 2 ft raised garden beds

My desk - just sanded it down and refinished it.

Three short stools

An organizer rack

Watering can

Tommy Bahama outdoor cooler (retails for $350)

Chairs

Shelves

What I got for cheap:

Two futons for $50

Custom coffee table with storage for $25

Three tall stools for $30

[plotdesigner]

This a a reminder to not fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. Just because you invested time and energy into something, does not mean you should indefinitely waste more time and energy on it, if you decide it’s not what you want anymore. This goes for anything, from books, to relationships, to jobs, to hobbies, etc.

If it’s not serving you anymore, move on.