something i’ve also come to understand after seeing the proshot is that persephone was not only scared for eurydice, but scared for herself. there were so many times she almost reached for eurydice or orpheus but stopped herself out of fear. so many times you could see her almost say something but stop herself before she could. and in the end, when she finally did stand up for her beliefs and for orpheus and eurydice, it didn’t fix things. it fell apart again. and she will do this again and again because they will sing it again and again.

This is a given.

If the last digit is divisible by 2 (a.k.a. even), then so is the whole number.

If the sum of the digits is divisible by 3, then so is the whole number. The recursivity of this means that if the sum has multiple digits, you can add them up again until you get a single digit and see if it's 3, 6, or 9.

Like the rule for 2, but check if the last two digits are divisible by 4.

If it ends in 5 or 0.

If the rules for both 2 and 3 apply.

No shortcut. Alas.

Like the rules for 2 and 4, but check if the last three digits are divisible by 8. (Yes, this pattern keeps going for 16, 32, etc.)

Like the rule for 3, but the sum of the digits (or the sum of the sum of the digits, etc.) must be 9.

For example, 294

29 4

4×2=8

29-8=21

21 is divisible by 7

Second example, 1946

194 6

6×2=12

194-12=182

182 is still large, so let do it again

18 2

2×2=4

18-4=14

I don't know why the authors of PoliLingua act as if Trump's verbal misogyny and racism wasn't very much part of his "original intent".

It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldn’t be legalized nation-wide until 2015.

It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldn’t hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)

As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. That’s only ~19% of countries.

but the funniest part of this is not that they were debating the exile of a man who has been dead for over 500 years.

Northern Cardinal, 4/10

I'm sometimes worried the male is sexually harassing the female but I'm pretty sure they're just doing some elaborate public pickup roleplay. The rest of us didn't agree to participate in your kink, guys.

American Robin, 1/10

Literally just some dude hanging out. Never bothered anyone but worms. Big fan of the way you just stand there in the middle of the grass like you forgot what you were supposed to be doing.

House Sparrow, 10/10

You're a gang. You're participating in gang violence. There's ten billion of you living in a single wood pile and it's been civil war for three years now. When will the bloodshed end?

Tufted Titmouse, 1/10

A shy baby. A pretty little guy. I saw you on the neighbor's garage roof and time stopped. There were anime sparkles around you. Come back.

European Starling, 9/10

Why is it always you? Listen, I know, I KNOW the sparrows are the problem, and YET. When the fighting starts, it's always you in the middle of it, provoking them and then screaming like you're an innocent bystander defending yourself. I'm onto you.

Carolina Wren, 3/10

This rating is not for physical violence, which you don't engage in, but for your role as an incurable narc. A tattle tale. I know they're fighting again, okay? I see it. Our yard has been a warzone for years, you don't have to make a big announcement every time someone misbehaves.

Eastern Wood-Peewee, 0/10

If this were "birds who think they're better than everyone else," you'd get 10/10.

Red-bellied Woodpecker, 6/10

It's a utility pole. It's not a tree. You're surrounded by trees that are full of bugs. But there you are, on the utility pole. Committing vandalism.

American Crow, unrated

For who am I to cast judgment on the actions of La Famiglia? I assume you are doing what is best for the neighborhood. If I could, though, without criticism, make a single observation. That when large numbers of you gather in the ominous dead cottonwood - no? No, you're right. None of my business.

Great Crested Flycatcher, 5/10

Frankly, I think you could be doing more. I think your name implies a great potential. I think you should massacre the insects. I think your beak should drip with viscera.

Common Grackle, 7/10

La Famiglia does not suffer you to stop in our neighborhood long, and I trust their judgement in this manner. You have the look of a guilty bird.

Tennessee Warbler, 2/10

You keep to yourselves, and I respect that. I get the sense that you could defend yourselves if it came to it, though.

Brown-Headed Cowbird, 3/10

You're not a crow, and eventually they ARE going to figure it out, kiddo.

Gray Catbird, 5/10

Would you. Respectfully. Would you shut the FUCK UP.

Eurasian Collared-Dove, 0/10

You're doing great, sweetie, everyone loves you.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch, 4/10

A comedian. A little jester of a bird. You're so silly. Sure sometimes you incite violence in others but, really, is that your fault? If it is, we forgive you.

Blue Jay, 12/10

If you could learn any human behavior you wanted, it would be how to build a bomb.

Honorable mention:

Turkey Vulture, 5/10

And like there was no permanent cast, all these celebrities seem to have gotten a scene or part of a scene to do (i’m not sure exactly, I did not ever watch Quibi and thus haven’t seen this yet), and then they just… recreated it as best they could. At home. Under quarantine.

So like, you had Jennifer Garner in a blanket cape playing Princess Buttercup AND the Booing Old Woman with a crowd comprised entirely of stuffed animals:

Or Taika Waititi paying Westley off a badly-drawn Inigo on a piece of cardboard held in front of someone’s face:

And it’s all just delightful.

But my absolute favorite part of this thing that I’ve sadly never seen but assume is probably absolutely hilarious and a treasure and I want to find it some day and watch the whole thing… is that Carey Elwes is in it.

As Prince Fucking Humperdink.

Here ya go

***Not sewing in a smooth, intentional line*** For some projects this is not a big deal. For projects where it is a big deal, with most fabrics you can always remove the stitches with a seam ripper and try again as many times as it takes until you're happy. (The fabrics that don't tolerate this are ones with a coating, like pleather or leather, where if you poke a hole then it stays forever. Some really delicate fabrics like satins and fine silks (and sometimes knit fabrics as well) also don't like to be sewn multiple times, but you can usually rub the surface gently or dip it in water and flatten it to dry to get the holes to ALMOST close up. Beginner Reassurance: Woven cotton loves you and forgives you and wants you to succeed. Cotton is friend. Friend cotton. Smooch it. Beginner advice: Trust me, you don't want to sew on that tricky shit anyway. Satin is for masochists who don't take their own advice. Love yourself, stick to woven cottons until you feel confident. Also! Pins will help you sew in a straight line because they'll hold the fabric neatly together. Also, you can use a washable fabric marker to draw the seam lines on with a ruler. If you're VERY VERY VERY new to sewing, I would suggest getting a piece of trash fabric (if you can find a ratty old bedsheet at a thrift store, that's a GREAT thing to practice on), cutting a piece about a foot square, drawing a loooong wobbly meandering line on it with marker or pencil, lots of curves and sharp corners. Then sew along that line with your machine, aiming to get the needle perfectly through the line. This will help you practice manipulating the fabric around curves and corners. Further Advice: Keep your hands flat on top of your fabric on the "table" part of the sewing machine, rather than picking up your fabric with your fingers and moving it around. Just shift it gently with your palms. ***Fabric shifted while sewing and left a gap where the needle didn't go through both layers of fabric*** Hey! What did I tell you about using satin! Put it down and walk away! It is too treacherous for you, traveller! Friend cotton generally doesn't do this to you. Beginner advice: Use pins or fabric clips and this won't happen Beginner reassurance: You can always seam-rip the fucked up bit and try again. <3

***Thread keeps fucking up and getting tangled and snarled on the back of the piece (machine-sewing edition)*** Don't panic, this is not a you problem. You haven't done anything wrong. This happens because every sewing machine has the devil in it. Super normal and happens to everyone. Beginner advice: Remove the thread from your machine and re-thread it, both the top thread and the bobbin. Test it on a bit of scrap fabric to see if that fixed it. If it didn't fix it, try re-threading again and pay close attention to make sure you're doing it right (don't put the bobbin into the bobbin holder backwards, for example). Test again. If that didn't fix it, twiddle the tension knob a bit. If that didn't fix it, open up the part of the machine where the bobbin goes and try blowing the dust and lint out. If THAT still didn't fix it, turn the machine off and go have a cup of tea or a nap. If that STIIIIIIIIILL didn't fix it, replace your needle, it is old and blunt. Beginner Reassurance: I'm holding your hands while I tell you that this is the exact process of troubleshooting you will be using for the rest of your sewing hobby no matter how good you get. Professionals also do this. ***Thread keeps fucking up and getting tangled and snarled (handsewing)*** Also not a you problem. The thread just has too much twist in it. Beginner advice: Just hold up your project and drop your needle so it hangs free on the thread. Run your fingers down the length of it to loosen the twist, the same thing you'd do with the cord of your hair dryer or the vacuum cleaner when it gets twisty. Some people use a little beeswax to coat the thread to help it behave. I've never used that, because just letting it hang and untwist in the air works fine for me. Beginner reassurance: This is normal, just one of those things. You're not bad at sewing.

***Sewed things together with wrong-sides together instead of right-sides together*** Happens to the best of us, especially if you are sewing while tired and bleary. Just undo the seam with a seam ripper and try again. Beginner advice: If you immediately make exactly the same mistake a second time, this is not your fault. This is just a sign from the gods that it's time for a break (all sewists know about this sign, it's a very normal omen). Go to bed, or go eat something. Further advice: If you're making this mistake while well-rested and well fed, maybe your pattern or your fabric is just weird. Try sewing it with a very wide basting stitch, check your work, then sew again with a proper seam. It will at least save you time on ripping it out if it didn't work right again. Beginner reassurance: You're working with friend cotton, right? Then you're fine, you have basically as many chances as you want. :)

***Seam looks bad when I'm looking at the piece inside-out*** Does it look okay from the outside when you turn it right-side-out? Then you have succeeded. Beginner advice: You don't even have to fix this unless you want to. If it's a functional seam, who cares what it looks like inside out? (If you really care, your next step will be to watch some youtube videos about SEAM FINISHING, which is one additional step to make the seams look nice and tidy even inside-out.) ALSO, ironing helps. Iron your seams flat with the right sides of the piece still together just the same way you sewed it, and then fold the two sides apart and iron the seam open, gently pulling the fabric apart as you go so it gets REALLY nice and flat. On curves this is going to take some practice. Just don't do things with curves for your first couple of projects. Make a pillowcase.) Beginner reassurance: It's ok to have an ugly seam, especially as a beginner. No one's going to check the inside unless they're a sewing nerd, whereupon you should bashfully tell them, "This is the first thing I ever made," and they will explode in adoration and praise. Sewing people are like this because we are all a little bit crazy. Every sewist i've ever met remembers VIVIDLY the mistakes they've made while they were learning and the radical self-forgiveness it took to continue learning. A very good sewist is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, because they have made Ten Thousand Mistakes, processed their upset, and kept persevering. They WILL praise your ugliest nastiest most fucked up cotton pillowcase, and they will tell you that you should be really proud of yourself. They will tell you some of the mistakes they've made. They will probably say, "No this is so good, this is way better than the first thing I made when I started!"

***I made a thing but it doesn't fit right.*** Too big? pinch it closed and sew another line. Too small? Rip the seam and add a panel. Beginner advice: Measure twice, cut once. Further advice: Oh, and before you do any cutting or sewing, be sure to pre-wash your fabric on HOT (if you're using cotton; you're using cotton, right? Other fabrics might need something else) so that it can do all the shrinking it's going to do. Beginner reassurance: There's ways to fix every problem, you're not bad at sewing because it doesn't fit right. If you only knew the number of times I made a thing and it didn't fit right.... Ho hum, try again! There are of course other ways to fuck up, but you have to be AMBITIOUS to hit those, and really those are more like... subcategories or more specific flavors of these general ones?

The world is oftentimes such an ugly place, but sometimes it can be so beautiful.

Like, when two choirs, one from Croatia and the other from Zimbabwe, met on the opposite sides of a Lisbon subway station and both sang to each other.

I unfortunately do not know what the Zimbabwe children choir sang to them (although it was so beautiful), but the Croatian klapa Kastav sang 'Kuća puna naroda' (a house full of people).

And let my reward be a house full of people, my life, give me a voice, so I can embrace you with songs.

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.

If someone were, as a random example, say hospitalized for over two weeks with no explanation, I think that should automatically trigger a special election to replace them.

If you're still able to do your job, then prove it. And if you're not, then you're actively obstructing democracy by not stepping down.

Which is to say, that if a public official were to pass away or into a coma, and their handlers choose to obfuscate that fact, this should be seen as intentionally obstructing democracy.

Imagine if one day you were given a choice: Become immortal and indestructible for eternity, unable to be harmed by anything ever again, and get to live forever.

However, in order to achieve that you must give up whatever your purpose in life is. Whatever it is that you were always meant to do, what you were supposed to contribute to the overall scheme and future of the life of the universe, your purpose… the whole reason you were even created, even born in the first place. You must give that up. You don’t know what that is. You’ll never know; But, regardless, you say yes.

Perhaps you assume you wouldn’t have made any sort of significant difference anyway. That butterfly effect theory or whatever they call it? Nah, you call bullshit. It doesn’t matter - you don’t matter, at least not to anything outside of your immediate connections - and it’ll all be fine, and you’ll just live forever with minimal (or maybe even no) consequences.

So, yay! You’re now immortal. You’ll never die or get hurt ever again. Wee!

But then, centuries and centuries later (not to mention that by this point you’ve gone through horrible heartbreak and misery and despair because every loved one you ever had, every friend you ever made, ever person you barely got to know, has passed away, died as you lived on long without them, helpless to do anything for them as you watched them perish, unable to ever go with them or ever see them again. But I digress), now, you learn you actually were important in the grand scheme of things. You were supposed to be a key factor in the world’s survival, long ago; but, because of the choice you made (immortality over individual purpose), you were never given the knowledge or awareness or resources or ability to save the world that you were always supposed to obtain, before you unknowingly made the wrongest choice to ever wrong.

Needless to say, you’ve fucked up big time.

The entire universe as we know it is destroyed soon after this horrifying revelation. It implodes, collapses in on itself, essentially forming a massive black hole or something. Stars, nebulae, galaxies, solar systems and planets, worlds and worlds of living people and things, and light-years of time and space and life, all sucked up into absolute, indefinite nothingness.

But you remain.

Just you. Floating amongst, spiraling around, rocketing through, suspended in… nothing. With a feeling of such unbelievable loneliness that your feeble brain can hardly perceive, can’t possibly hope to comprehend. Not only are you the only living thing left, you don’t even have one inanimate object to keep you company. You have literally. Nothing. And you are literally nowhere. I mean, technically, you are now the universe - if it would bring you petty comfort to think about it that way. You. Only you. With nothing, no one, nowhere. Forever. And ever. And ever.

All because you thought you didn’t matter. That you had no real, meaningful purpose. That you could never possibly make a difference.

But you did. And now look what you’ve gotten yourself into, you silly nugget. You’re gonna be pretty bored and lonely for that eternity, huh?

Or maybe it was out of selfishness. Maybe this wasn’t because you felt useless, but because you simply only cared about prolonging your own life and nothing else. Hm.

The moral here? Be selfless, and always know and remember that you matter.

Or else, one day, you might destroy the universe. And be left to suffer, and be tortured horribly and endlessly by the void of nothingness that has consumed you. With no way to escape. Ever.

Other moral because I got sidetracked from my initial point - all things considered, would you choose longevity over purpose? Immortality over meaning? 

OR, IDK, MAYBE SOME IDIOT JUST LAMINATED A STUPID PIECE OF PAPER TOWEL FOR NO GOOD REASON

AND MAYBE I SHOULDNT BE LOOKING FOR THE ANSWERS TO THE MEANING OF OUR SHORT, FRAGILE LIVES IN

A LAMINATED

PAPER

T OW E L

IDK MAN,

and the pages of that book

were made out of

laminated