overhauled

‘No problem’, however, is used because younger people feel not only that helping or assisting someone is a given and expected, but also that it should be stressed that you’re need for help was no burden to them (even if it was).

When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I kept getting involved with people who would say, “Oh, I’m a bad person” any time I brought up ANYTHING that was the least bit of a disagreement. 

Like, “Please don’t leave my X on the floor” would get, “Oh, I’m a horrible person!”

HERE’S WHY THIS IS A HUGELY PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIOR, and if you think I”m calling you out and you think you’re about to shut down, take a breath, remember that this is about learning, and keep reading.

What is important is what happened after. My boyfriend might say, “Oh, I’m just an awful boyfriend” and instead of him acknowledging the BEHAVIOR and working on fixing it, he’d get me trying to buck him up for the next half hour, telling him he was a good person. The behavior that started it all would not change.

Well, things led to things and I went back home to live for a while, and found that the same exact thing was happening… with my mother.

And then I learned about pattern arguments. Pattern arguments are the ones where you keep having the same nonproductive argument over and over again. They don’t all follow this pattern, but this is a really common one.

The trick?

BREAK THE PATTERN

First you have to know what the pattern is. In this case: 1. Grievance 2. Self deprecation 3. Ego stroking So, with my mother, we started in on one of these, and she said, “I guess I’m just a terrible mother.” And instead of reassuring her, instead of derailing the issue and letting it go… I said, “When you say that, it makes me wonder how terrible a daughter I could be that you would think you were a bad mother. We have this conversation this way over and over, and the problem that I have always gets pushed aside in favor of trying to make you feel better. When you’re willing to have a real conversation about this, I’m happy to talk to you, but I’m bored with this argument, so I’ll see you later if you want to really talk.” And I left the room. Now, my mom is a reasonably self-aware person, and does a lot of hard emotional work, and so she got it, very quickly. 10 minutes later she came out and found me, and we had a real conversation about whatever the hell the issue really was, and we have literally NEVER had that particular pattern argument again in 23 years.  Boyfriend came to visit. I was upset about something, he started in on the “I’m just a shitty boyfriend” thing… and my response? “Yep. You are.” His jaw dropped. He blinked. And I said, “Look, that’s what you do. You say shit like that and it means you don’t have to change your behavior, and I’m tired of the pattern we have where I tell you something isn’t working for me, you tell me you’re terrible, and I spend half an hour making you feel better. I’m tired of it and I”m not doing it anymore. If you’re willing to have an actual conversation about this, and not just the same old argument, I’m game. But this thing we do where you talk yourself down and I butter you up? Is boring. And I’m over it.” We also did not have that argument again. (The relationship finally ended for real a while after, but it ended in a grown-up way, and not with a ridiculous meaningless fight.) When you knock yourself down, the gut instinct for the people around you is to pick you up. But that means you’re not pulling your weight in the relationship. You’re making them do the work and you’re not actually hearing them. So that brings us to another point:

How to deal with criticism

Okay, so if you’re not going to knock yourself down when someone says something negative about you, what DO you do? We don’t actually train people to take criticism well. But it is an art and a skill and NECESSARY to finding emotional stability in the face of a critical world.

I see it as a flow chart, but since the flow chart I made for it ended up in a book that I don’t own the copyright to (not a big deal) I’ll write out the decision tree here instead: 1. Someone offers criticism (constructive or not!)

2. Listen and think about it without immediately trying to defend yourself. You can say, “Okay, I need a moment to take that in and think about it because I want to understand it.” Or something else appropriate to the situation. It is okay to ask for time to think in most circumstances. Most people will appreciate that you are thinking about their words instead of immediately getting defensive or counterattacking. Think about whether what they are saying is valid, might be valid or is not valid. 

3A. If it is valid, then you have a choice. You can try to fix the behavior or you can acknowledge that it is a valid criticism but decide you aren’t likely to fix it. Start by acknowledging the validity of the criticism, and then say what you’re going to do to fix it, or say that it’s valid but it isn’t something you’re willing (or possibly able) to change, or say that it’s a valid criticism and you’ll need to think about possible solutions. They may have a suggestion. Taking it or not is also a choice. 

3B. If you’re not sure it’s valid, but it might be, tell them, “I really need to give this some more thought.” or “Can you tell me more about this? I’m not sure I understand the issue well.”  Or “If you can point me at some reading material or search terms, I’d like to study this before I decide what I’m going to do.” 

3C. If you know it is not a valid criticism, STOP a moment, and look at WHY they are making it. This is where Active Listening can be very helpful. “I hear you saying that X is a problem. I don’t see it that way right now but I’d like to understand better why you do.” Or if you think they don’t have enough information, “I hear you saying X, but my understanding of the issue is Y. Here’s what I know about it if you’re ready to listen.” If they’re just looking for a fight, tell them you’re not interested in fighting, and disentangle yourself. 

4. If the criticism is something you are going to listen to and take action on, tell them what kind of action you’re going to take. If it’s something you’re hearing and thinking about, tell them that. If it’s not something you’re going to do anything about or it’s just wrong, thank them for their input and move on.

Literally never is it going to be helpful to say, “Oh, I’m just a terrible person.” That’s very much like a nonapology-apology in terms of how unhelpful it is to any conversation. It’s kind of worse because it actually expects emotional labor from someone who is already having to bring up something unpleasant with you. Think about what they say Decide whether you’re going to do something about it Do the thing, or tell them you’re not going to do the thing.  Don’t demand emotional labor from other people when you were the one who messed up. 

He’s still a sweetie but with more attitude and will fuck up your shit if he’s grumpy or if you’re wearing shoes with shoelaces. He doesn’t like that. He watches Netflix with me a lot and cries anytime theres explosions or gunshots in a show. He has so many chicken lady friends who he adores and he has fathered 4 chicks. I tried to train him to walk on a leash but he protested by laying down and refusing to move, so we gave that up after a while. He likes to guard me from cars and squirrels, and even plastic bags (which are his worst fear)

I need to let you in on a little secret, guys: all that free art and fic and video and songs and gifs and all else? If you aren’t paying for it in money, you need to pay for it in support. 

Newsflash: you stop supporting artists? Artists stop producing. And if you keep up this whole ‘Make art even if you get no recognition!!! uwu!’ thing instead of ‘Support artists so they’re inspired to keep making art!!!’, we’re just gonna keep falling in this same hole of artists being completely ignored. STOP THINKING IT’S VIRTUOUS FOR US TO KEEP WORKING SO HARD WITH NO PAYBACK ON IT. 

You think fanfic, fanart, paintings, songs, gif sets, cosplay, etc is so wonderful? You think it looks cool or it makes you feel so many things and you want more of it? THEN SUPPORT THE CREATORS. It doesn’t have to be monetary! If people are sharing things on this website for free, the only fee is that if you enjoy it? YOU SHARE IT. You let us KNOW. Because if you don’t, we will STOP and we have every right to stop and then you’ll whine because suddenly the internet is infinitely more empty and uninteresting without creators cranking out their very hard work for nothing, not even your acknowledgment. And if you wanna whine about that or you think that ‘Keep making art even if you get no recognition’ is somehow more helpful than ‘SUPPORT ARTISTS SO THEY GET RECOGNITION AND KEEP MAKING ART’ (or is helpful at ALL, really? no one works for NOTHING at all, even if it’s FREE) then, seriously: stop. 

You’re being a shitty consumer. Especially in fandom, where the whole point is give and take: you like having novel-length fanfics that you can read on a whim without paying money? Guess what, buddy? You gotta pay us in comments or kudos or reblogs. Because if we’re churning out and you’re just picking it up to throw it off to the side after you enjoy it and got something out of it? That’s not FAIR and you’re being a jerk. You like fanart that makes your heart do funny things in your chest? Reblog it, WITH tags!!! We get CRUMBS of encouragement and people act like that’s so much.

ENCOURAGE CREATORS.

William was fascinated by science. One day, he opened a textbook and saw a picture of a windmill, and his life changed forever.

“I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water. I thought: ‘That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself’.”

Neighbors found it very strange that he was spending so much time sifting through garbage. “Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy. They had never seen a windmill before.”

“People thought I was smoking marijuana. So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].’ Then they said: ‘Ah, I see.’”

He built a 16-ft-tall turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade, and an old shock absorber, and made blades out of plastic pipes- amazing the entire village when he climbed to the top and plugged in a light bulb that slowly flickered to life.

A book titled ‘The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind’ was written about his story, as well as a documentary called ‘William and the Windmill.’

Magenta isn’t found anywhere on the visible color spectrum. 

It doesn’t even have a wavelength.

I’m serious.

I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s time to stop lying to yourself.

In particular, because your “green cones” are in the middle, in terms of sensitivity to wavelength, any possible light that activates them also activates your “red cones” and/or your “blue cones”. This means that there is a green that you are, theoretically, capable of perceiving, should you induce “green cones” to fire without firing “red” or “blue cones”, but it’s literally impossible for any real object to ever look that green.

So magenta isn’t real, and there’s a real green you can never see.

Also, unrelated to Roach’s question, the way magenta is explained is sorta misleading? You get magenta from mixing red light and blue light without hitting the green cones at all, but it’s not any faker than any other color. Your brain doesn’t see color directly, all color is pure invention based on what cones are being activated. Magenta’s just pinging red and blue cones in a way that your brain decides means ‘magenta,’ in the same way that a red/green ping is going to mean ‘yellow’ - only difference is that one wavelength of light is pinging the red and green cones, while two separate wavelengths are combining for magenta. The statement about green is correct: there’s no wavelength of light that will ping a green cone that does not also ping a red or a blue cone.

if you like looking at cats that appear to have a round shape then consider long hair or semi-long hair cat breeds which are basically 90% fur with a healthy cat underneath

Honestly fuck off. Shakespeare was one of us. His plays were written for the masses. He was an ordinary man who captured the voice of the people and the depths of their emotions. We credit Shakespeare with making up words and phrases, but who’s to say he wasn’t writing down what he heard on the streets? "But something as complex as Hamlet could never have been written by Shakespeare! It must have been the work of a nobleman!” Well guess what, not only did he write it, but he wrote it because that’s what his audience liked. The hordes of ordinary people consumed his deeply philosophical play about a young man musing over life and death and sin and they LOVED it. 

Shakespeare was a crowd-pleaser and an entertainer, and reason his work is so beautiful and poetic and philosophical (as well as bloody and sexual!) is because he was responding to popular demand. Most people attending the theatre were illiterate; they consumed literature by listening, and this is one of the reasons why playwrights utilised iambic pentameter and rhyming schemes. Their dialogue is poetry, and it’s beautiful to listen to. The first time Romeo and Juliet meet, their shared dialogue creates a sonnet. Imagine a commoner sitting in the crowd listening to that, and it hits him like an arrow, wow, listen to the way these characters speak, this is love at first sight. 

Tyrus Wong, whose watercolors helped define the look of Bambi, died Friday, Dec. 30. He was 106.

Like most animation fans, I first heard of Tyrus Wong via his work on Bambi. Legend has it, that’s the first time Walt Disney heard of him, too!

Okay, so the story goes…

Walt was chomping at the bit to make Bambi, only he was having trouble finding the ‘look’ he wanted for the film. He’d tried ultra-realism, but nixed it. He switched to super cartoony, but again, nope. It was beginning to look like the film would get shelved until late one night, while wandering through his studio, Disney happened upon a small stack of unusual watercolors. They were by a fella named ‘Wong,’ and they were…well, different.

What do I mean by ‘different’? Well, for one thing, these watercolors were tiny. Most of them measured no more than 4″ x 5″. And where the rest of the studio’s painters tried to pack as much detail into each picture as possible, Wong’s paintings were sparse, vague — almost suggestions. Wong would later say, “I tried to keep the thing very, very simple and create the atmosphere, the feeling of the forest.”

It worked. Walt was so impressed with what he saw that the very next day he promoted Wong from his job as an in-betweener (kind of like an animation line cook) to concept artist (think: Michelin rated chef)! Not only that, but Wong’s watercolors came to define the look of Bambi‘s backgrounds, providing the film with its sensitive, poetic and often ethereal mood.

After working at Disney, Wong moved on to Warner Bros. There he provided production art for quite a few live-action classics, including Rebel Without A Cause, The Wild Bunch and Sands of Iwo Jima. He also did freelance commercial work, where his gorgeous watercolor and calligraphic art came to adorn everything from greeting cards to high end pottery.

After retiring, Wong began making kites. Not your typical, four-cornered diamond shaped kites, but HUGE, ornamental, multifaceted kites in the shape of dragons, centipedes, flocks of birds and swarms of butterflys.

Upon first discovering Wong’s work fifteen years ago, I wrote him a number of gushing — and probably pretty embarrassing — fan letters. Wong responded to each and every one of them graciously.

I still have the envelope from his first response, where he drew a small, singing bird in pastels, sitting atop my name. (See above.) Another time, I literally teared up when I opened my mailbox to find a Christmas card that Wong had designed decades earlier. It was a winter scene, featuring a mother deer and her young buck. Inside, Wong not only signed it with his English name, but also embossed it with a red stamp bearing the Chinese characters for his name! Needless to say, I treasure both of these items to this day.

   All of this rambling is really just my way of honoring a man whose work has meant so much to so many. I hope he knew how truly appreciated his wonderful work was.

R.I.P. Tyrus Wong  (Oct. 25, 1910  - Dec. 30, 2016)

still your gushing fan,

Is

It is super poisonous

There is a reason we do not use it in make up any more

That orange box is how many moles of dissolved Cu++ Scaife got from sticking malachite in some water that had 0.171 moles NaCl/L (body salinity is about 0.154 moles NaCl/L so this is slightly less salty than people) at 30°C. He’s got no acidity in there, and again the salinity and temperature are slightly lower than people. But this is probably the closest we’re going to get to data on how malachite behaves in vaginas anytime soon, folks. From this we can take away that if you leave malachite alone in a vagina you’ll get AT LEAST 9.12 x 10^-4 moles/L, or 5.8 ppm, of Cu++ at equilibrium.  • Recall from above that most “malachite” isn’t actually pure malachite, it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. The EPA document elaborates: “[T]raditional ‘eyeball’ identification of malachite by its blue-green color is extremely unreliable, because almost all cupric hydroxysulfates, hydroxycarbonates, hydroxychlorides, and even fresh cupric hydroxide can be some shade of blue-green. … Thus, the uncertainty in the computed copper concentration in equilibrium with malachite is at least about a factor of 2 … until further experimental data focusing on this problem is generated.” In other words, “do your math and then double how much Cu++ you think is going to be in the water, just in case.” So that gives us 11.6ppm Cu++, at equilibrium, with malachite in a (til now!) healthy vagina.  • Next step: do we have any idea what happens to bacteria in acid conditions with copper? OH MY GOD WE TOTALLY DO. Gyawali et al 2011 checked this out in the context of “so what if we rinsed tomatoes with a solution of lactic acid and copper, because that would be a safe & organic way to get rid of E. coli?” So now this post has officially ruined stalactites, vaginas, and tomatoes.