That sounds like an excellent day, I hope you enjoyed it

Mildly hungover and reading Two Towers at my local cafe where they squint at my German but feed me well. Sun is out and the tables are too but I’m just inside the entrance, next to the newspaper rack watching people make selections and old men drink tea for hours and then yell to the waiter that they want a cheese omelette, and Gandalf is alive again in Fangorn forest.

If someone anonymously sends you something so rude and stupid it feels like your public duty to call it out, and it mentions a commercial product, even in vague terms, please consider the possibility that you are arguing with an advertising robot. Guest comments had to be turned off on AO3 recently because of spam comments advertising AI. It's entirely possible that the strategy is also AI-based, which would definitely result in comments designed to make people angry and thereby promote the product they are angry about.

anyone who acts like there's some kind of implicit understanding or sisterhood between all women is straight up lying

Let's Talk About Missing Persons

So, I've seen this post circulating last week, and a few others like it in the past year. I think this probably needs to be discussed every few years, and it feels like time.

First, a few caveats: there are reports on the post that Abby has been located and is fine, so no need to reblog and also that's great news, I'm very happy she is safe. Second, I did not especially doubt the veracity of the post, so I'm not impugning the people who made and posted it, but I also declined to reblog it for reasons I'll get into. Third, I know that especially in marginalized communities it can be dangerous to involve the police, and that Missing White Woman Syndrome means it can be difficult to get media coverage. I understand why Abby's community may have chosen to search for her in the way they did.

However, for everyone's safety, I do not link any missing persons post that requires you to contact an individual to report the missing person's whereabouts. If the poster doesn't ask you to contact the police or a known missing persons organization, I won't do it.

This is for the safety of the missing person.

When you see a post with someone's photo, name, and last known whereabouts, and you are asked to contact an individual -- a family member, partner, friend, etc -- what you are being asked to do is report on the whereabouts of one person you don't know to another person you don't know. You don't know that the person you're talking to isn't an abusive partner or parent, a stalker, or a person who means them material harm. One of the Insta accounts in the missing image doesn't appear to exist, and another has no bio and very little captioning on their images. I couldn't verify that Abby even knew these people.

Again: when I looked at the image, it looked sincere to me. I didn't doubt those people were earnestly searching for a friend they were worried about. But also, an abuser doesn't look like an abuser until they do. So I don't make exceptions, because a missing person is missing but a victim outed to their abuser has strong odds of being murdered. The most dangerous time in the life of an abused person is when they are leaving their abuser. Even if a victim simply logs on to say "Hey, I'm fine, these people mean me harm" the abuser has now flushed them out of hiding, and manipulated them into making a public statement.

If you can't verify positively that the person searching does not mean the missing person harm, you should not be circulating a post, full stop. At the very least, if the community doesn't wish for the help of the police (understandable) or can't get the help of an organization or community (frequent), the missing persons poster should advise you to speak to the missing person, not the searcher, and notify them they're being sought, as long as it's safe for both you and them to do so.

This isn't intuitive. We want to help, and search posters like that tug on the heartstrings. We know that when the police get involved even in something this innocuous, it can be perilous for everyone. But in situations where someone is so vulnerable, we have to concern ourselves first with harm reduction, which in this case means not spreading someone's photo with a stranger's contact information on it.

I'm glad Abby was found and is fine and that her searchers were in earnest. But that will not always be the case, and it's important to remember that.

Riderless white and black horses covered in blood gallop through government districts of London, injuring two taxis and a bus

This is the Ling Ling Workout for fanfic writers

There should be a fanfic writing game called the showrunners challenge where someone writes a story and partway through someone else can play things like "actor leaves after 4000 more words" or "topic now too politically sensitive due to unforeseen world events" or "lost rights to that reference"

The first person to discover a link between increased levels of CO2 and #globalwarming was a New Yorker named Eunice Newton Foote. Read her 1856 paper, and how she went unacknowledged for more than a century, here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/first-paper-to-link-co2-and-global-warming-by-eunice-foote-1856 #earthday #climatechange

You can skip dialogue IRL without eliciting offense

I already have this power

I just accidentally invented a new idiom, maybe?

“Licking a tree & hoping for maple syrup.” 

aka “A attempt at resolving/achieving something with less effort than is required for success, & a high probability of it proving merely futile & faintly unpleasant’

Huge fan of when my speech patterns rub off on people enjoy when thay happens

leitmotifs never get old to me like holy shit dude there’s this melody that corresponds to this one guy and if you hear the melody it means the guy is there. holy shit. and sometimes it refers to ideas too not just guys. has anyone heard about this

Ben Levin on a magnificent example of Jewish liturgical music. And it is BADASS.

Consider not listening immediately before going to bed because the last bit will give you not only goosebumps but also a terrible earworm.

I don't. Although there are some idiosyncratic subject-matter pools of the ones I use most often (crafts reference, programming language reference, music and scores), and there are some books too large to fit on most of the shelves so they are grouped by size, and that also results in a partial subject-matter grouping (music, art, exhibition catalogues and a textbook about economics), but only accidentally.

The catalogue in my brain is subject-matter and vibes-based, but it doesn't really treat those as two different things.

Incredible..

Relationships that have real king/lionheart energy, that whole “I have sworn myself wholly to you, I am your sword arm, I am your dog” to someone else’s “you are the one person in this world I can rely on, and I am both bolstered and burdened by your absolute faith in me” vibe, but it’s in circumstances that are like. so low stakes. Manager of a movie theater/the one usher who doesn’t smoke weed at work.

Omg

This is so freaking cool!!

i can't wait to be 30+ and still in fandom and i can't wait to be 40+ and still in fandom and i can't wait to be 50+ and still in fandom and i can't wait to be 60+ and still in fandom and i can't wait to be 70+ and still in fandom and i can't wait to be 80+ and still in fandom and i can't wait to be 90+ and still in fandom and i can't wait to look back on my life and know that i loved things deeply and passionately and was inspired to create and was part of communities with incredible people from all over the world brought together by the stories that touched us