It's just a place yknow

TITTY TOAD

✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖

✨ Artists and titles will be revealed with the full song after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update!

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Closest match: Bombyx mori BmN4 cell DNA, chromosome 24, sequence Common name: Domestic Silk Moth

The thing is, I don’t like talking to people in person. Voices on the line are… different. They can’t see me. I can’t see them. It doesn’t make me anxious the way face-to-face does. So I’ve been working the midnight regret-line for years, and rarely interact with anyone outside it, which makes me happy. People sometimes call just to get things off their chest, and it helps them if I listen. Most of them, though, want advice on how to handle their regret.

The secret to giving good advice is pretty simple, and I worked it out early on. There are three keys to it. I have two staple pieces of advice, which I re-dress in language appropriate to each situation. The first one is ‘the only actions you can control are your own’. Whether I’m explaining that you can’t stop someone from divorcing you, why your kid hates you now, or why you can’t love someone into getting over an addiction, it all comes down to the same thing. You can’t control other people. Your responsibility is for your own actions and choices.

The second one is for problem solving. Apply the scientific method, basically – that’s the best way I know to solve problems, anyway. Most people don’t know it, so I explain it in terms they can understand, and coach them through a couple of applications.

The third thing is to just listen. Really listen. People want to be heard, and I’m good at that. It’s why I’m good at weeding out the fakes, and why people usually end the call feeling better.

Some nights are quiet, and I play music, or talk. I tell them, often, that anyone can call. It’s okay if it’s not something big, or if it is. If it’s criminal, the recording will be passed on to the relevant authorities, but we won’t do more than that. Sometimes kids call, or old people. Most people don’t listen to them, but I do. I like to think I make them feel safe.

This one night started like any other. I talked an old woman through rebuilding her relationship with her daughter, and a young man through a bad breakup. Then nobody called for a while, so I played some Vivaldi. Then…

Then the voice came on the line. A deep and very beautiful voice… it was like talking to Idris Elba or Christopher Lee, but with a hint of melodious accent that I couldn’t place. “I suppose,” it said, and it sounded so sad my throat tightened in sympathy, “that my greatest regret is the breach with my father. I was… disowned. Cast out. I never meant for it to go that far. I didn’t want to never see him again.”

It wasn’t the end of the world. Maybe if this place was my livelihood I’d start panicking or packing up, but it’s not. I’m a vet, I own my own home, and I’m not hurting if my vegetables get looted. The garden’s a hobby at best, and yeah, maybe it was Grandma’s pride and joy, but I warned her I killed my mom’s geraniums when she told me she was leaving me the house, so it’s not like she has room for disappointment.

If anything, the rabbits are lucky they picked my land to figure out civilization on, because I’m pretty sure my neighbor Carl would be dropping dynamite down the burrows in my shoes.

I won’t lie, I came close. Monster Truck got out while I wasn’t looking, and when he came hobbling home with a goddamn spearhead embedded in his leg, I was about ready to rain my own personal Iliad down on the little bastards. Lucky for them, treating arrow wounds on my cat gave me enough time to calm down and think. I figure it was self defense. I don’t like letting my cats outside off-harness anyway, and I would’ve been plenty upset if he’d come home with a dead bunny in his mouth.

I need this in my life

I am a music historian with a PhD and the point of this poll is that the vast majority of people don’t actually know much music from pre-1500s or so, and most music that people think is ancient or medieval is actually far more recent.

There are no options before the first millennium CE because the Epitaph of Seikilos is the oldest complete work of music found anywhere in the world, and it's around 2000 years old. If you think you know something older than that, either only the text was written down (e.g. Biblical, Vedic and Greco-Roman hymns) or it only exists in fragments (e.g. the Hurrian hymns and Orestes stasimon). Which is to say, it does not count for this.

Never applied for a grant before and phew, brutal. Took me 7 hours to fill out the application (granted I finished up a piece of concept art and photographed my tester pages within this timeframe)

I got an update e-mail last month. Apparently there were 223 applicants and they’ll be rewarding 90 of them. So the odds are actually pretty good

But all I can think of is

Apparently in a few years they're going to be the only option.

🧶 Jogless join in the round

When knitting in the round, you get a slight jog at the beginning of the round. By casting on an extra stitch and passing it over the first stitch of the round, you can eliminate the jog.