told my cabbie for the 3am airport trip that I was feeling a bit nauseous and he immediately took my bag away from me and said "Trip to the airport is 12 dollars. I'll drive slow." and then he did-- no fast corners, very gentle stops at the lights. and I was willing to pay the extra few dollars for it, but when the meter hit $12 he clicked stop and let me ride the rest of the way free. and it might just be the insanity of waking up at 2:30 after 4 hours of sleep but I was really emotional about it. Like ok Mr Sandeep, the world is still good actually.

This. Is one of the pics in my phone that I will never delete when I'm cleaning up my phone storage. It's just one of those very important images I will always have

This is maybe a silly question, but how does a dance card work? I hear about them but I don't really know what they are or do.

Basically, during the 19th-mid 20th centuries, women might have one at a ball with a little pencil (usually given as party favors). Thus:

Dance card from a ball on January 11, 1887.

Before dancing started, men would approach women and ask for this or that dance with them. Women could refuse, but would then have to sit that dance out entirely so as not to appear rude- rejecting one man and then accepting another was seen as impolite. The general rule was to accept your first offer, in part because dancing didn't always imply romance. It was a social activity, and you were supposed to be a good sport and spread yourself around, so to speak. Men weren't exempt from this, either- asking ladies for as many of the dances as possible was considered good manners, for the same reason.

once one had a partner committed for a given dance, one would write his name on one's dance card. this was as much to create a memento as to jog one's memory later, it seems to me. you could also be asked to dance immediately before a dance started and write the name of your partner in afterwards; see above re: memento creation

and that's basically it

(men usually just had to remember with whom they had claimed each dance. womp womp.)

raise a glass to the posts you love that end up deleted. to the fanart and fanfics you lose track of and can’t locate. to the blogs you used to look through that ended up unexpectedly disappearing. to the things you didn’t archive because you always assumed they’d be there.

New Coraline design drop

Tree roots following the pattern of concrete footpaths

rick riordan off the shits

Oh yeah, she deserved that Oscar bad

I don't wanna @ anyone because I understand how fast things seem to move in today's landscape of streaming shows dropping entire seasons in one day, and networks pumping out new series constantly to try to attract more subscribers with no intent to actually maintain those shows over time but I just saw someone self-deprecatingly lament that they are still thinking about a show that ended almost a year ago, making fan art and playlists for it, and I want to be very clear:

you can still create fanworks when it comes to old media!! PLEASE do!! there are always going to be new fans who will appreciate it, and veteran fans who are dying for new content and new perspectives. also, less than a year is NOTHING. the original Star Trek series was on TV six decades ago and there are still people losing their minds over it, writing stories and reblogging gifsets daily, and that's only one example.

a fandom lasts as long as there are people who love a thing, even if it's only a handful of people. love what you love and write and draw and make gifs and playlists about it!

Researchers found that some artificial intelligence (AI) systems are more likely to recommend the death penalty to a fictional defendant presenting a statement written in African American English (AAE) — a dialect spoken by millions of people in the United States that is associated with the descendants of enslaved African Americans — compared with one written in Standardized American English (SAE). The chatbots were also more likely to match AAE speakers with less-prestigious jobs.

unsurprising but still worth talking about

I have ADHD so I’m immune to podcast

Ive said this before but swear the biggest skill to learn as an adult is how to resist high-pressure sales tactics. You do NOT have to answer questions with anything other than "Sorry I'm not interested." No matter how nice they are or no matter how many follow up questions they ask or even how agitated they get when you stand your ground. Just keep saying I'm not interested. Don't answer their questions. Don't give them an opening to try to push back on your reasons. Be a fucking brick wall of I'm not interested.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 3x05 | “Homecoming” 

One of the best writing advice I have gotten in all the months I have been writing is "if you can't go anywhere from a sentence, the problem isn't in you, it's in the last sentence." and I'm mad because it works so well and barely anyone talks about it. If you're stuck at a line, go back. Backspace those last two lines and write it from another angle or take it to some other route. You're stuck because you thought up to that exact sentence and nothing after that. Well, delete that sentence, make your brain think because the dead end is gone. It has worked wonders for me for so long it's unreal

Astronomy I-