Cream Cheese!

Hey artists, C. Spike Trotman, founder of Iron Circus Comics, just posted an invaluable thread on depicting different types of black hair. I’d do the thing where you screencap the whole thread and post it but it’s just too long (which is great because it’s a whole lot of useful information!) Give her a follow while you’re there.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

Oh! Its so weird, the links stopped working! I’ll fix it later, thank you for noticing! Here are the links! ^^

https://suzusparkle.tumblr.com/post/170480669740/saerans-diary-part-2-part-1-part-3

https://suzusparkle.tumblr.com/post/170480839220/saerans-diary-part-3-part-1-part-2

It's the fourth Twst Merch Giveaway! 🥳

Within the next 24 hours please do the following: 1) Reblog this post! 2) Choose which item(s) you would like from the following google form! http://twstnote.com/tumblr-giveaway-round-one/

(no need to follow or like unless you want to :> multiple items is fine!)

Shipping: Free of charge to any country except where the post office says no: Yemen, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Chad, Bolivia, Liberia, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Libya, Russia, Ukraine.

Winners: will be contacted via email and not announced publicly (just in case someone is looking to get a gift for someone else), so please make sure that the email address you provide is accurate!

Details: There will be three rounds across three platforms: Twitter, Tumblr and Bluesky! All are welcome to join all giveaways, which will be hosted on three Saturdays: 10/5 (today), 10/12 and 10/19!

This is the fourth giveaway total but the first time attempting a Google forms format, I hope very much that it works 💦

See all available items available across all platforms, here! http://twstnote.com/twst-merch-giveaway/

Within it are letters from real 19th century sex workers, long discussions of male prostitution and lesbianism among French prostitutes, and the trafficking scandals at the time. You can read criticism of the morality police who both registered and arrested sex workers, see the author discuss the racist fear-mongering around “white slavery” which was later used to justify the criminalization of paying for sex or of prostitution entirely in other countries, and segments with talk about prostitution in ancient Greece and Rome.

You can support the translation from the original French and get yourself a copy here:

Please reblog and share with others!

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Cooking with flavor bootcamp (used what I learned in this a LOT this year)

Beekeeping 101

Learn Interior Design from the British Academy of Interior Design (free to audit course - just choose the free option when you register)

Video on learning to read music that actually helped me??

How to use and sew with a sewing machine

How to ride a bike (listen. some of us never learned, and that's okay.)

How to cornrow-braid hair (I have it on good authority that this video is a godsend for doing your baby niece's black hair)

Making mead at home (I actually did this last summer and it was SO good)

How to garden

Basics of snowboarding (proceed with caution)

How to draw for people who (think they) suck at art (I know this website looks like a 2003 monstrosity, but the tutorials are excellent)

Pixel art for beginners so you can make the next great indie game

Go (back) to school

Introduction to Astronomy (high school course - free textbook w/ practice problems)

Principals of Economics (high school course - free textbook w/ practice problems)

Introduction to philosophy (free college course)

Computer science basics (full-semester Harvard course free online)

Learn a language

Japanese for Dummies (link fix from 2022)

Ukrainian

Portuguese (Brazil)

American Sign Language (as somebody who works with Deaf people professionally, I also strongly advise you to read up on Deaf/HoH culture and history!)

Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified)

Beginner-oriented video on how to sail

This guy has so many videos on baking different types of bread. SO very many.

Coding in Python - one of the most flexible and adaptable high-level programming languages out there - explained through projects making video games

Learn to swim! (for adult learners. I don’t care if you live in Kansas or Mali or wherever. LEARN TO SWIM.)

Learn how quantum mechanics works. Then read some more about it

[Learn about quantum mechanics again, but in a more advanced engineering/mathematics class. Then read more about the math and physics of it]

Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver

Something I learned this year: how to sew a quilt (Here’s a very easy beginning pattern that looks amazing and can be done with pre-cut fabric!)

How to hit the ball in softball

Tutorial video on what is under the hood of most (gas) cars + weird engine sounds and what they mean

Full beginner mechanics technical training, if you want to go more in depth

Playlist on how car engine physics work if you want to go ultra in depth

Lecture series on architecture design through study of buildings

How (American income) taxes & tax law work (choose “audit course” at checkout for free class)

Pickleball for beginners (so you can finally join your neighbor/friend/distant cousin who is always insisting you join their team)

+ Para-Pickleball for beginners (for mobility aid users!)

School is so much more fun when there’s no tests:

American Law - Contracts

Shakespeare’s Life and Plays

Fairy Tales: Meanings, Messages, and Morals

Modern Poetry

World History [Part 1, Part 2]

Learn a language:

Arabic + Resource Guide compiled from Reddit (includes info on different dialects)

Chinese (Cantonese) (audio)

Urdu (frequently recommended course on Reddit) + Resource Guide

@disasterhimbo @tapirtrash

Haiku (as well as several other rigid forms based on them that I'm not gonna get into right now because no one is paying me money for it) are way more complex than just the 5/7/5 structure.

99% of all haiku written in English might at best be called a senryu. The problem is trifold:

First: The subtle but distinct difference between on and syllables. Haiku are made of 14 on, which are essentially the equivalent to Japanese syllabic structures, except the nature of how Japanese as a language is constructed versus English means that any given proper haiku could be translated in extremely and intensely different ways, each giving a subtle but distinctly different meaning. The best way I can explain what I mean is that in English a good poem can be defined as a shallow river, whereas a good haiku is a deeply-dug well.

Second: The presence of the kigu. There is a specific series of characters/words which are used to imply a season, and specifically a specific aspect of a season which the haiku revolves around. The creation of a haiku is often done as a meditative practice revolving around the kigu--you're essentially contemplating on this particular natural feature (nearly always the temporal aspect emphasizes either ephemerality or the opposite as well bc Buddhist ideas of enlightenment and beauty begin coming into play) and building an evocative and purposeful point that revolves around it like a hinge. It functions as both gro und and anchor.

Third: The presence of the kireji. As I said earlier, no one is paying me to explain haiku to y'all well, so I'm not even gonna bother trying to define kireji for y'all. Just know that it's a concept borderline absent from English because it's an intersection of linguistics and philosophy that doesn't really exist outside of the context of Japanese.

to wit, from Scattered Poems:

The "haiku" was invented and developed over hundreds of years in Japan to be a complete poem in seventeen syllables and to pack in a whole vision of life in three short lines. A "Western Haiku" need not concern itself with the seventeen syllables since Western languages cannot adapt themselves to the fluid syllabic Japanese. I propose that the "Western Haiku" simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella.

Missing a kick at the icebox door It closed anyway.

Useless! useless! —heavy rain driving Into the sea

Japanese, like a number of other languages, has particles -- helper words that are sort of like verbalized punctuation. The closest thing we have to this in English is stuff like "bro", "dude", or "girl" in English. In Japanese, the one I'm most familiar with is "ka", which marks an utterance as a question.

Kireji -- cutting words -- are a special set of particles that have taken on a traditional importance in Haiku. What makes them complicated is that a few of them have tenses. So, you may technically be able to translate one of them as "wow!", but how do you get across that it's specifically "wow! (Past perfect, i.e., referring to something that happened and is now over and done with".

The only one I can think of a translation for is "ya", and it would only work typographically, which would be to use an equal sign. As far as I can tell, it's much more emphatic and essentializing than "is", though I could be wrong.

It's a really fascinating topic, and I apologize for going on for so long, but untanslatability is interesting and often poorly understood.