One Of The Things That Sucks About Being An Animation Nerd Is Having To Live With The Fact That, From

While I'm also fond of a lot of what G.K. Chesterton wrote, I'm a little surprised and disappointed by the fact that in your many mentions of and tributes to him you have not drawn attention to his frequently reactionary and frankly antisemitic views, nor the influence he had on his nephew A.K. Chesterton - who would grow up to be a member of the BUF and later co-found the National Front. I know many members of your family were murdered in the holocaust, and while I don't think his writing should be dismissed entirely by any means, I do find it odd that you've been such a champion of his without any caveat. Perhaps you expect readers to work out his views themselves, which is an understandable though optimistic view of people. I write this not as admonishment but out of genuine curiosity.

Also, when's the leather jacket coming back?

And I, for my part, am not actually surprised and disappointed that in your obviously extensive readings of what I've said and written about Chesterton you've somehow missed the bits where I talked and wrote about both his antisemitism and his racism, because the world is big and nobody can be expected to read everything or even Google to keep up. But I've talked and written about it -- for example, here on Tumblr in this very blog. Chesterton was a big person and he contained multitudes: that doesn't mean that he gets a Free Pass for the small-minded and disappointing and sometimes creepy bits of the writing, but it means that I'm more interested in the bits where he was better than that.

The leather jacket will come back when my hair is either white or mostly gone and when I look like an old guy who doesn't care what people think and is wearing his leather jacket because he loves it, and not like a gentleman in late middle age wearing a leather jacket because he misguidedly thinks it might make him look younger.

Neil Gaiman

The Inexplicably Enduring Appeal of Hilaire Belloc’s “Cautionary Tales”

Hi there! I have noticed something watching the lockdown video: under the pile of Chesterton's books we can see a Belloc's one as well. I kn

People who use the word “literally“ for something that can’t be literal is the reason I want man kind to be extinct.

Oh my god I hate Mattel so much.

They took the American Girl brand and gave it a lobotomy.

I was going to make a very very very very bad joke about one of the 90s girls getting an eating disorder after watching Britney Spears, BUT DECIDED AGAINST IT because eating disorders are something you don’t joke about, BUT. HERE’S THE THING.

Here’s the thing. Being a tween-to-teen-age girl in the late 90s early 2000s was BULLSHIT. You had 16-year-old Britney Spears singing “Hit me baby one more time” in her Lolita schoolgirl miniskirt and crop top showing off her perfectly flat abs, and then you went to school and had abstinence-only sex ed mandated by the evangelical right wing who gave out purity rings and told you that only sluts had sex before marriage. And then there was the issue of being a fat girl trying to find jeans that met her school’s dress code the days of low-rise jeans and belly button rings.

I ended up adoring Linkin Park because their music gave voice to the rage that I had inside of me because of all that. I wore men’s pants from Hot Topic not only because I thought they were cool, but they actually fucking fit and they covered my ass crack. I wore black because I didn’t fit in to the ultra-skinny, ultra cool kid Abercrombie aesthetic. And THAT is what growing up in the 90s and coming of age in the 2000s was like.

“Nicki Hoffman is a nine going on ten year old girl living in Seattle, Washington just before the year 2000 (the turn of the millennium). She is six minutes older than her fraternal twin sister, Isabel, but one inch shorter. Nicki prefers grunge, ska music, rock, alternative, and skating; she is the “grunge” to Isabel’s glitter. She does not like eating raw fish and sushi; her father teases that they can’s spell “finicky” without Nicki. She likes sour candy–the more sour, the better. She’s known to be shy, to the point Isabel points this out; she initially doesn’t have other friends than Isabel. She’s very anxious about the Y2K problem and the risks and worries that have been circulating, so Isabel and her create a list to take her mind off her worries of things to do before New Year’s.Her favorite color is purple, her favorite animal is a dog (she adopts her puppy, Blossom, as a Hanukkah gift), her favorite band is No Doubt, and her favorite show is The Powerpuff Girls (her favorite character being Blossom). She likes to snack on Wild Berry Pop tarts. She does not like her middle name, Pearl.The family is interfaith and celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas. “

It’s a sterilized and dumbed-down version of growing up in the 90s, one where they only real problem facing girls is the y2k bug. It’s about the aesthetic but not the experience. Honestly the girls of today deserve to see that their moms had it difficult, too, and that the pressure to grow up incredibly quickly and be beautiful and flawless and instantly become a woman is nothing new, now it’s just on TikTok instead of MTV.

It’s the trap of nostalgia. Just because you were younger and not as aware of the issues going on in the world doesn’t mean the world was better.

Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky

link to PDF

https://fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/sites/fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/files/ct-mmb-147.pdf

Time shifting

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I wanted this but the original poster is transphobic

you know how mathematicians have the journal of recreational mathematics, right? where they publish stuff like, ‘oh i found this cool property of this one seemingly boring number’, or, ‘this is literally nonsense but it sounds ~scientific~’ and it’s all great fun to read?

well

behold, the journal of recreational linguistics

with such delightful papers as ‘tennis puns’, ‘animals in different languages’, and ‘gifts from a homonymous benefactor’

excuse me while i go read all 50 volumes in one sitting

random book-related ask questions

what’s your favorite book you’ve read so far this year? does the answer differ whether it’s your favorite in terms of enjoyment, quality, or message?

what’s your least favorite book you’ve read so far this year?

what’s a book you were pleasantly surprised by?

what’s a book you were disappointed by?

have you dnf’d any books this year?

is there a new genre you’ve started getting into this year?

is there a genre you’ve given up on getting into/are reading less of/realized you don’t like?

what’s a book you want to read by the end of the year?

how is the reading year going in general?

do you annotate your books, and if so, do you annotate only specific books or all of them?

how do you annotate your book? (pencil, pen, tabs, highlighters, etc.; what do you write?)

have you read books in more than one language?

do you have any reading goals? if so, what are they?

what’s your favorite adaptation of a book?

what’s your favorite book that’s an adaptation of another form of media?

where do you get the books on your tbr/book recommendations in general?

do you keep up with new releases?

what format of book (paperback, hardback, ebook, audio) do you like best? does that differ from the one you read most often?

do you only buy books you’ve read? if not, how do you choose which books to buy?

how often do you use your local library?

who’s an author that’s become a favorite this year? if you don’t have one, do you have an author who you’ve read a lot from this year?

do you plan your reading? do you just pick up whatever book sounds nice at the moment? how do you go about choosing what books to read?

what’s your favorite book that’s been assigned for class?

what’s your least favorite book that’s been assigned for class?

what’s your favorite series you’ve read this year?

what’s your favorite standalone?

any “unpopular” book opinions?

Are fedoras really that bad?

YES YES THEY ARE

Hi Neil

Why did you stop making bagels?

What did the bagels ever do to you?

XD

I stopped because I went to New Zealand, and didn't bring my sourdough starter. There's frozen sourdough starter waiting in the freezer in my house in Scotland for me to return and start bageling once again.

Working with rye flour was fun, as it was closer to using clay than to using dough. They were not beautiful but they tasted amazing.

(Photos: before and after boiling, and after coming out of the oven.)