The Long Way Round

Lost Kitchen Scrolls

It has a huge variety of historical recipes from different regions, taken from manuscripts, transcribed and translated, and a whole section of notes about the context for the recipe. It's really fun and I AM going to try a couple of these recipes.

Look at how this lamb recipe is presented:

This is just such a fun way to learn more about historical foodways and discover traditional cuisine.

Look at all the filters you can use:

Maybe if I can forage some good blackberries this year, I can make a 300 year old recipe for blackberry wine!

OP: When I put on Hanfu, I suddenly realized that I'm a modern person.

This entire process selects for homework-doers, personal entrepreneurs, and individualistic bureaucrats. It's why, like I said, the oracular outsiders, the Pauls of the world, who can't conform to society's expectations to check boxes and become legible to the powers that be, aren't in these programs and aren't getting the opportunities that are downstream of them. It's why you end up with tons of fiction about "my white boyfriend" and "everyone online is mad at me" or "anxious strivers in NYC" or "my annoying polycule." These are the obstacles this class encounters. You can't spend time, like Cormac McCarthy did, living in an unheated cabin in the Smokies, or embedding with the Mujahideen like William T. Vollman, or working as a psychotherapist like Olga Tokarczuk. You must move from strength to strength, always turning in your homework on time, and certainly never suffering a psychotic break.

some background: the international code of signals is used as shorthand for communicating important information between vessels until this day. everyone carries a flag alphabet for this purpose and you can raise flags separately or together to indicate conditions and requests.

so when my crew mate informed me that the navy boat we were passing had two signal flags up i asked him to relay me the message because i was busy downstairs.

here is what he saw through the binoculars:

the flag on the left is Alpha (I have a diver down; keep well clear at slow speed) and the right one is Bravo (I am taking in or discharging or carrying dangerous goods.) the vessel most likely had clearance divers out to remove underwater explosives and wanted other's to steer clear.

however, my beloved crew mate only vaguely recalled that Alpha stands for divers and Bravo stands for dangerous. so imagine my surprise when they hesitantly relayed that

The Turn assignment for school, from start to finish.

Really challenging! Didn't use any 3d software in this either, just calculated it all by hand.

MORN: (speaking for first time ever) Sisko...you crazy son of a bitch. You're the only one who can stop the bad guys now...tell quark im sorry i couldn't close my tab. (Jumps into the lava wall to sort of push the lava back while our heroes slowly climb up a melting ladder that the wide angle didn't show you so you weren't initially sure why the lava was a problem)

But then you actually touch grass and talk to normal people. Not even that, you talk to people who self diagnose as hard core Tolkien fans. And. None of them have read the Silmarillion. The Silmarillion is famously a book that nobody reads.

And yet. On AO3 The Silmarillion and Other Histories of Middle Earth has more works than The Lord of the Rings. Think about that. That’s baffling. It’s ridiculous. Like I realize that LotR fandom is split a bit by the movie, but still. The Silmarillion has almost four times as many fics as the LotR movies. Everybody has watched the movies!

I need to know what percentage of people who actually read the Silmarillion went on to write fic or draw fanart about it. Because it must be insane, surely. Like, I’m pretty sure the Silmarillion wins some kind of record in this department.

Thinking about the fanfic bell curve where on one end you have “Perfect, needs no improvement or elaboration” (LotR sits here) and on the other you have “So bad it’s no fun to even think about” with the middle being the fanfic zone. But I think there may be a secret fourth Silmarillion option. Which is a book that is perfect* but simultaneously non existent. It’s not even a real story! The language is super pretty and deeply incomprehensible (especially to people who, unlike me, were not raised from early childhood on both the Bible and classic literature). And it’s more of an outline and an abstract painting of cultural and world building vibes (not cultural and world building facts and information) than an actual narrative. There are story hooks galore. There are vivid and fascinating characters, but their lives are glossed over and you only get one or two paragraphs of prose that will reorder your brain chemistry and haunt you forever. There are countless more characters who only exist as names, the implication of whose existence is fascinating. All of this is deeply frustrating, both to casual readers who just want a Normal Enjoyable Book, and super fans who want All the Lore. But it is catnip to anyone who engages in transformative work.

so a few days ago I accidentally spilled some hot chocolate on my copy of Durrant’s the cloudy mirror, (which critically evaluates the strengths and biases of the historian Sima Qian) and i was in the uni gym for 1 hour painstakingly drying the pages with a hairdryer

today: i thought it would be funny to officially make an offering of some hot chocy to the Grandaddy of East Asian History himself, Sima Qian.

I brought a bar of whittaker’s just for this lol. no expenses spared.

Sima Qian’s Special Hot Chocy has 3 squares of dark chocolate, 1 tsp of sesame paste, 1 tsp of decaf coffee, a pinch of cinnamon, 2 marshmallows, a wafer stick and 1 cup or hot milk. now, i cant be sure that i am the first person in history to offer Sima Qian a cup of hot chocy, but i can be sure that this cup is the most unique, delicious and decadent!

whittaker’s just for this lol.

no expenses spared.

Ghost Dad: WE LITERALLY CHANGED OUR VOWS BECAUSE WE DIDN'T LIKE "TILL DEATH DO US PART"

say you've got person A and person B. Person A mentions something offhandedly that they deal with on a regular basis, something that's routine that doesn't bother them. Person B finds themself agitated at the mention because why would person A bring this up? Don't they know people find that triggering?

if person B takes this emotional response and proceeds to then go off on person A about how no one wants to hear about [insert thing], however, that is trauma dumping. Person B is taking their trauma or discomfort with the topic and making it person A's problem, rather than recognizing that their reaction isn't matched to the emotional investment person A has. That isn't anyone's fault. But by blaming their reaction on person A and accusing them of trauma dumping, person B is discarding their responsibility to handle their own emotions and shoving them onto someone who did not consent to being their therapist. That's the definition of trauma dumping.

it's truly ironic, because I most frequently see the concept of trauma dumping used for harm - to silence marginalized voices by dumping a rant onto person A, blaming them for person B's reaction driven by trauma or bigotry (or sometimes, both). The people I see slinging around accusations of trauma dumping the most are the ones who start trauma dumping on the people they accuse. They use it like a weapon to shut down discussion of marginalized people's experiences, no matter how tame and non-traumatic.

The most common scenario I've encountered? Ableism. People telling disabled people to shut up about their disabilities because according to ableists, talking about disabilities at all is trauma dumping. And I'm sorry, but that just isn't acceptable. You cannot go around accusing disabled people of trauma dumping for mentioning the facts of their existence, the medical treatments they need, the mobility aids they use, the lifestyle changes required by their health, or the accommodations they need. These are all routine parts of day to day life. It is entirely too common for disabled people to be accused of trauma dumping for simply daring to exist while disabled, and I will not accept that.

It started with someone listing "places with uncanny energy," like gas stations on a road trip, empty movie theaters, etc.

Then someone reblogged it and said those are called "liminal spaces," defining liminal as in-between, neither one thing nor another.

Tomorrow (July 4th, 2026) is the 10 year anniversary of the-crepes-of-wrath's comment, which:

Predates the 2020 spike in interest by four years

Predates the original backrooms post, and the the creation of r/liminalspaces by three years

Predates the earliest mention that KnowYourMeme attributes to Twitter by two years

I'm pretty sure this is the moment the term "liminal spaces" was attached to this sort of imagery, and it's TEN YEARS OLD TOMORROW!

the-crepes-of-wrath did not invent the concept nor did they claim to! liminality was conceptualized by folklorists / anthropologists, initially to describe a three-part process of rites of passage. the wikipedia page goes into all kinds of contexts liminality has been applied in. unfortunately a lot of people do not know this & think "liminal" is just a word for "spooky or uncanny." a shame imo!

like it is supposed to feel jarring and insane. it is supposed to feel like lestat has been violently submerged in modern young people trends and culture and is now repeating all the new words he learned like a beautiful fresh baby. but because the book is from 1985, all I think is oh interesting huh I didn’t know that slang term even originated in the 80s how vintage how retro how lestat wow he’s so embarrassing aw aw so cute.