CommunardeEnjolras

Picture this:

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

William Chan as Zhang Qishan

Jeremy Xu as Er Yuehong

Li Naiwen as Ban Jieli

Hu Yunhao as Chen Pi A Si

Joseph Zeng as Wu Laogou

Ashton Chen as Hei Bei Laoliu

Sebrina Chen as Huo Xiangu

Hanson Ying as Qi Tiezui

Ji Xiaobing as Xie Jiuye

The Mystic Nine against the Coming Storm

↳ Leaders of the nine families

I dont care if 9/10 of the people who use the wheelchair ramp arent actually in wheelchairs. As long as the 1 person who needs it has access to it.

I dont care if 9/10 people who use the automatic push button on the library door can actually push the door open themselves. As long as the 1 person who the door is too heavy for gets to use it.

I dont care if 9/10 people who buy the can tab opener, or the little guitar clamp that holds the chords for you, or the hand grip that helps you hold chop sticks, don't need any of it and just get it to "be lazy". As long as the one disabled person who needs it gets access to it.

I do not care. Oh my GOD I do not care. As long as there's a disabled person on this planet who the accessibility device will benefit, the accessibility device is necessary.

We have got to stop using it to imply "malingering".

And yeah, the curb cut effect is great.

wow, like a wolf specifically? hmm.

Basically the overall plot of DMBJ is:

ASSORTED PREDECESSORS: Right, that’s all of our decades-long plans laid in place around the mysteries of the Ultimate and the quest for immortality.  The only thing left to make sure of is that the Wu heir at a certain point in time is a nice, biddable boy.

WU XIE:

First, Pangzi calls him out on his habit of finding zombies

Second, he’s hallucinated so many times he’s declared himself ruler of the Hallucination Victims club

For a few bucks a month you could become a Triple-A member and yeah, roadside assistance was one of the perks. BUT ALSO you could pick up the phone, call their 1-800 number, and tell the human operator who answered that you were planning a road trip.

They'd get your starting and destination address. Ask a few questions: what kinds of hotels you liked, preferred gas stations, any interest in touristy things?

Then in 7 to 10 days you'd get a thick package in the mail of carefully customized maps. Each map was the size of a paperback book cover, perfect for holding in the passenger's or driver's lap. Each was enumerated starting at #1 and ending at #whatever number of minimaps the trip required, with a hand-drawn highlighter path drawn on the map marking the route from one edge to another; entrance & exit points for that section of the route.

Motels, gas stations, and (if requested) tourist traps were indicated in color coded ink -- again, by hand. Sometimes detours were drawn in red marker, overriding the printed map because AAA kept up to date on road closures & regional disasters.

These maps were customized for your particular trip, and were invaluable since GPS did not exist. Unless you were familiar with the local region, the alternative was buying a map at the next gas station and guessing.

I was told by a taxi driver that in the old days they had to basically memorise the Refidex to pass the Taxi Licence test, since they weren't allowed to use it during the test.

BUT searching for a picture of the 2023 Refidex led me to this!

Brisbane and environs in 1951! Fully digitised with machine readable text and high quality images! I can buy it for 19.50 - nay, I'm GONNA buy it for 19.50! (Although I wish it was $19.51).

Holy cow, they've also got 1926.

London cabbies who hold The Knowledge experience changes to their brains that are explained in every Neurobiology for Babies course. It’s a wickedly difficult skill: rather than the pizza delivery people in the OP, starting in one defined zone (pizza place) and radiating out from there, a cabbie starts a route in any position and has to navigate across a partially-medieval city with no grid pattern, deranged place names, and not many bridges across a very large river. It would be useless to refer to a paper map, so cabbies were required to have all the Knowledge memorized. This means that the paths and optimized routes would have to be at the top of one’s brain, ready for instant access. As a result, the cabbies develop materially different brain regions as they study and use the Knowledge. They have detectable, measurable changes in their hippocampi, with an increase in grey matter forming in those who pass the Knowledge test and use it.

When asked to navigate a route between two points, they describe the mental process as instantaneous and explosive visuals: it sounds as if the map generates itself behind their eyes. (One potential tradeoff, though, is the decrease in associated brain matter in areas associated with other forms of memory.) After retiring, the brains of London cabbies would appear to return to “normal” - when not exercised, the brain region dedicated to holding the Knowledge seemingly rewires itself - which is exciting because it indicates that brains are still capable of rewiring and adaptation even in later life.

That’s all very interesting for neuroscientists, which is why it’s in all the textbooks and underpins a lot of our understanding of brain plasticity (adaptability) especially in old age. After all, it’s only ever adults who go through this process: babies rarely do a PhD in becoming a human Google Maps.

Some science-fiction series, like Dune, have explored the idea of no-longer-human navigators. still, it’s under-explored. Today, researchers are interested in seeing how London cabbie brains could help with Alzheimer’s research, or other progressive brain conditions that deteriorate the hippocampus.

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

Some selections from the article:

"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:

ActionAid India

SEEDS India

GlobalGiving

I have them all

Edit: NOW I have them all