Effie

Murderbot: the 87.6% increase in people doing stupid shit when I have everything handled. >.<

Everyone else: then give your survival a higher weight in your calculations!

"The beast screamed inside Vimes. It screamed that no one would blame him for doing the hangman out of ten dollars and a free breakfast. Yeah, and you could say a swift stab now was the merciful solution, because every hangman knew you could go the easy way or the hard way and there wasn't one in the country that'd let something like Carcer go the easy way. The gods knew the man deserved it…

…but young Sam was watching him, across thirty years.

When we break down, it all breaks down. That's just how it works. You can bend it, and if you make it hot enough you can bend it in a circle, but you can't break it. When you break it, it all breaks down until there's nothing unbroken. It starts here and now.

He lowered the sword."

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

this is genius!!!!

performer: @abby_seim 

The Ending.

This is hard for me to remember on a minute-by-minute basis, but when I visit insta/threads/twitter/tiktok/googlenews/etc, I am seeing a feed of information that does not reflect a complicated and multivalent reality but instead was created by an algorithm designed to maximize the amount of time that I spend on social media sites.

These algorithms do not give a shit what is true or useful or humane; they want me in bed spending as much time on those feeds as they can possibly get me to spend.

For example, if your information feed fails to remind you that global literacy rates have never been higher, that fewer children are stunted due to malnutrition, and that the rate of child mortality is the lowest it has been in human history ... there is something inadequate about your information feed.

But of course the fact that the world used to suck more doesn't negate the fact that the world still sucks (and in important ways sucks more than it did ten or thirty years ago). Injustice permeates every facet of human-built systems and social orders. This should dishearten us. It should anger us. But the proper response to this anger, imo, is not idle despair but engagement.

Progress happens (and it does happen) when hundreds of millions or billions of people work together to make it happen. We reduced the likelihood of a child dying by 65% over the last 30 years not because it was inevitable or ordinary but because hundreds of millions of people refused to accept so much needless suffering and built more inclusive systems to expand access to healthcare, clean water, and adequate nutrition.

From the OP: "If you sit at a desk or stare at your phone all day, this is for you. Here's how to undo the damage: - Banded Chin Tucks - Strengthen your neck flexors and fight forward head posture - Banded Pull-Aparts - Target your rotator cuff and improve shoulder stability - Banded Abduction - Activate the midline of your scapula for better posture - Lateral Deltoid Raises - Build shoulder stability and control - Banded Up-and-Overs – Boost scapular mobility and range of motion These simple banded drills will help you stand taller, move better, and feel stronger - even after hours at a desk."

Now, a skill you tend to perfect at the job is a quick skim. You don't want to invade people's privacy, but you also need to make sure you are printing the right document. Otherwise you're out the paper and ink because you are the one who pressed print.

So yeah, quick skim. Yup. Looks like a contract. But my eyes get caught on some...check boxes? I stare for a moment. Start over from the top, just enough to confirm I am not imagining things.

And, well, let's just say it was NOT, in fact, a contract for leveraging assets against freedom. Oh no no. Mr. Clever had labeled his bdsm kink agreement a nice, discreet file name. Contract.

So I'm staring at this, going through the possibilities at lightspeed. Was this intentional? Was this somehow a cover for her printing a spicy contract? She isn't giving off a vibe of getting away with something, she just seems like a distraught mom who really doesn't need this on top of everything else. So. How to get this cleared up?

I have just about figured out what to say, when she speaks: "He says he sent the wrong contract, he's sent the right one now and to print that instead. Delete the other one."

"Ok, sure! I can do that." Phew. I fight to keep a straight face as I print the new contract and delete the other email. Bet he's feeling super relieved he caught that in time. Tbh, I was glad too.

How I Learned To Stop Doomscrolling And Touch Grass: An Origin Story

Proof of life comic I've been meaning to draw for awhile.

Below the jump are some of the resources I used to go back in time. Enjoy.

*Please scroll down instead of flipping pages.

Three and humans:

If you want a direct alternative there's Revolt, which is a free, open source discord clone.

This means unlike most popular chat apps, including and especially Discord, Element doesn't sell your conversations or tracking data to advertisers, because the company literally doesn't have access to that data in the first place.