More HOTD Reptiles AU yay! I was torn between a pool day and a beach day for my next drawing, but after reading @avonneslovelies wonderful and super funny drabble ( Through the Kaleidoscope, part 6) where Lucemond are at the beach I got in the mood for beach shenanigans uwu.  -Luke wants to make a video in the beach with Arrax, so Aemond makes sure he doesn’t lose the opportunitty to tag along, and also have a beach date mind you. -There’s a pet friendly beach near their neigboorhood, so they decide to go there and terrorize the whole beach so they would leave them alone in a 30 m radius (like 20 foot I think?). -Of course Aemond its a responsable owner and would never let Vhagar of leash (the seabirds wont survive if he does, even the poor crabs), but when you and your dog see a Vhagar you pack your things and run, the ones brave enough to try and take pictures get the Aemond stare of death TM  and back off before they can even ask.    -Vhagar its having the time of her life, she really likes the beach, she digs around, trying to dig eat the crabs, sunbathes and even gets to swim with her Aemond, Luke and Arrax. She also gets to give mean looks to the dogs that are too curious for their own good, she might have wanted to eat the tiny dragon before, but nothing would happen to him now if she has a say in the matter ok? -Luke may be a little bit more in secret love with Aemond and his damn lucious perfect pantene commercial hair, his not so subtle heart sunglasses are definitely perfect for the occasion.  I also had the pool idea in mind, one of my bffs lives in this hoa type of neighborhood and they have a public pool area that you can reserve for birthdays and stuff, so meh, let's throw some of that here. -I’ve seen that even if you ask for the place for a private matter there’s people that still decide to also use the pool, but when everyone hears that the weird goth dude and his fricking dinosaur are going to the pool they know it may as well be closed (Aemond and Luke have the Targaryen power and money, but prefer their privacy, so nobody knows their last names, the Targs make sure everyone respects that). -The pool rules say no pets allowed, but Aemond IDGAF Targaryen doesn’t care, the HOA will have to go through him before they ruin Luke’s day and his date. -Aemond going into his karen mode and making the HOA remember how much he pays and what terrible things might or might not happen if they decide to interfere with his use of the facilities lives rent free in my head. -Luke its very kind and a very nice kid, but you would not convince me he doesn’t take advantage of his rich kid privilege and his terrifying uncle almost boyfriend from time to time, he makes sure the pool its nice and tidy before they go back home, so meh, he’s still a very responsable member of the community. 

a comic about fix-it fanfics

can't believe we're all adults being forced into the club penguin level of censorship in 2024

maya angelou saying the funniest thing anyone has ever said about editing, which i can never let myself forget EVER AGAIN [x]

Disgust has absolutely no ethical weight. If you are basing your ethical positions on the emotion of disgust you should stop, it is entirely unjustified and leads to a huge amount of harm.

The Aristotle of our times

inspired by this post, in which Damian does not know what Vine is

So I'm leaving work and something darts in front of me, maybe 10ft away, too fast for me to see what it is. Peek around the tree blocking my path and I see this

Just like... a whole ass hawk. Dude's gotta be about 1.5ft tall. Massive fucking bird. And it's just staring me straight in my soul like this, even as I try to move ahead. It didn't budge. And there's only this path back to my car unless I want to walk on a busy highway. So I have the option of Death By Raptor or Death By Truck.

So I walk in the poison ivy filled patch off the sidewalk. Guy still isn't moving. Still staring me directly in the eyes. And I do this thing when animals are behaving strangely where I'll talk to them, so I'm just like, "Hey, man. I don't know you. You don't know me. This feels really threatening. I'm just trying to get to my car, dude. Can I get some space please? You're a big fucking bird. I see those claws. You could kill me right now, but I'd appreciate if you didn't, ok?"

It didn't move until I was about 2ft away. Again: I'm as far from it as I can be without walking into the street. It clearly wasn't going to budge. I walk past, thing flies up (silent, btw. Scary) and lands on a brick wall a little further ahead

Anyway. Weird guy. Nearly shit my pants when I noticed a bird big enough to carry off a fully grown cat was just... there, staring me in the face, unwilling to move away from me, a human, something it should see as a threat. I watched behind me the whole rest of the way to my car, just in case this bird decided to help me shed this mortal coil. 10/10 experience. Super cool guy.

I think I can trace my intense hatred for the whole "regulations are just corporate bullshit, building codes are just The Man's way of keeping you down, we should return to pre-industrial barter and trade systems" nonsense back to when I first started doing electrical work at one of the largest hospitals in the country.

I have had to learn so much about all the special conditions in the National Electric Code for healthcare systems. All the systems that keep hospitals running, all the redundancies and backups that make sure one disaster or outage won't take out the hospital's life support, all the rules about different spaces within the hospital and the different standards that apply to each of them. And a lot of it is ridiculously over-engineered and overly redundant, but all of it is in the service of saving even one life from being lost to some wacky series of coincidences that could have been prevented with that redundancy.

I've done significantly less work in food production plants and the like, but I know they have similar standards to make sure the plants aren't going to explode or to make sure a careless maintenance tech isn't accidentally dropping screws into jars of baby food or whatever. And research labs have them to make sure some idiot doesn't leave a wrench inside a transformer and wreck a multi-million dollar machine when they try to switch it on.

Living in the self-sufficient commune is all fun and games until someone needs a kidney transplant and suddenly wants a clean, reliable hospital with doctors that are subject to some kind of overseeing body, is my point.

everyone be quiet i'm manifesting

Suddenly, it's December by margaux paul

I do want to say re:food appropriation, for Palestinians it is a very very very sensitive issue. I don't know a single Palestinian who doesn't react vehemently to calling food "Israeli." One, because you have to recognize that this is within a larger pattern of completely erasing Palestinian identity, and two, because food is an essential core part of culture, where historical, familial instruction should be acknowledged.

I find it incredibly.... insulting to say "well food can be exchanged between cultures and people, so what's the big idea?" and neglect the fact that even within the Levant, there is a diverse array of cooking styles. To call certain dishes "Israeli" especially within the context of how the state of Israel was established, plays into the erasure of Palestinians.

It's often necessary to attribute the food we eat to specific cultures. For example, I, a Palestinian, would never claim ownership over Macarona Bil-Bashamil, or Yalenji, because they're "Arab." That's just not how food culture works. Different cultures, different climates, different environments all contribute to the food we eat and the clothes we wear. Food in itself is political because of how heavily it is tied to a location in which things are grown and raised.

Food is what builds community. Women, young and old, pass this knowledge throughout generations. And ESPECIALLY between peasant families that grow and raise the very flora and fauna we rely on in our dishes. This is a professional sort of knowledge that we celebrate and consider incredibly important. To strip our very food of our identity is not only insulting, but negates the centuries worth of food culture we've established in favor of homogenization. So yes, it IS possible to appropriate food, especially when you do not acknowledge the centuries worth of knowledge shared.

"People as things, that's where it starts."

Carpe Jugulum (Discworld #23) - Terry Pratchett

Going Postal (Discworld #32) - Terry Pratchett

out of the frying pan and into the fire and into another frying pan that's also on fire

[id in alt text]