Drew a monster inspired by Mushussu. I just added grays in procreate bc I can’t decide on colors for this. This pal is the only thing I remember from art history I think. cool Babylonian giraffe-dragon, yes!?

The Ehattesaht First Nation says a killer whale calf that had been trapped in a remote Vancouver Island lagoon for more than a month is now free after it swam out on its own early Friday morning. The nation said kʷiisaḥiʔis, or Brave Little Hunter, swam over the sandbar and out into open water during high tide around 2:30 a.m. PT. After a long night of feeding kʷiisaḥiʔis and watching the calf play in the lagoon, the nation said, a small group "stood as witnesses to watch her swim under the bridge and down the inlet." "Today the community of Zeballos and people everywhere are waking up to some incredible news and what can only be described as pride for the strength this little orca has shown," said Chief Simon John in a release.

Hurray!

not sure if i have a singular favorite, but unearthly lovely, holy terror, and howler from arcana are all great. i think there might be one called woke up like this as well

ex tenebris lux from sixteen ninety two is still great, but last i checked they really sucked to buy from, with really long delays or some not shipped orders

woodcut from olympic orchids

i haven't bought new perfume in a long time since i still have tons laying around

okay everyone reblog and tell me your favorite perfume. but if your favorite is glossier you… don’t bother

🌿 Little plant creature 🌿

HEY GUYS!

Just loaded ALL my leftover dice from the season up onto my Ko-Fi! Wanna give people a chance to buy stuff cheaper there before I list them on Etsy and start the Summer convention season! I've got Single d20s Jumbo d20s Mini Dice Sets Full Dice Sets

You can find them all here!

Flower Pottin Psyduck

In February 2023, a few months after I departed from my field site in Singapore, the Deputy Prime Minister announced significant changes to Singapore’s housing policies. In his eagerly anticipated budget speech for 2023, Lawrence Wong reaffirmed Singapore’s commitment to nurturing familial aspirations among Singaporeans and proceeded to outline measures aimed at reducing the uncertainties faced by (heterosexual) couples in their housing journeys. Chief among these measures was the granting of extra balloting chances to families with children and young married couples aged 40 and below (Ong, 2023). 1 Previously, both engaged and married couples received two ballot chances each, whereas now legally married couples and married couples with children would receive three balloting chances.

This announcement and its implications must be understood within context. Approximately 80% of Singaporeans reside in public housing flats (Lin, 2022), 2 representing some of the highest flat ownership rates in Asia and underscoring the success of Singapore’s public housing model—a model that Singaporeans and its leaders rightly take pride in. However, this success comes with a caveat. In Singapore, flat ownership is contingent upon adhering to and staying on a particular life path.

In brief, there are several pathways to acquiring a public flat. Among them, the Build-to-Order (BTO) housing program, known locally as “BTO,” is the most affordable and accessible route for Singaporean citizens to own a public flat. Eligibility to apply for a BTO before the age of 35 hinges on the formation of—or in the case of engaged couples, the intention to form—a conventional family nucleus. 3 (Singles may participate after 35.) 4 Eligible couples or families submit an online application, which is then entered into a computer-generated ballot. This ballot, occurring four times a year, can induce significant anxiety, as couples may succeed on their first attempt or as late as their 13th try. 5

It is this anxiety and uncertainty that the Deputy Prime Minister sought to alleviate by offering married couples more balloting chances. Returning to the formalities of the BTO process, couples must then wait 3 to 6 years for the flat to be built, and they risk losing their down payment (an amount that can be as high as 20,000 Singapore dollars) 6 if they separate or divorce during this period. Subsequently, after moving into the flat, they must fulfil what is termed a Minimum Occupation Period. For those who balloted as a married or engaged couples this typically entails remaining married and residing in the flat for a period of five to ten years, depending on the location of the flat. In other words, access to a subsidized flat in Singapore before the age of 35 is heavily contingent upon coupling and maintaining that union.

During my PhD fieldwork, I began to realize that what I was studying was not merely housing policy, but rather people’s endeavours to live together, and the various modes of romantic labour they engage in to synchronize their relational lives with grant, balloting, and flat building cycles. Particularly, I observed my interlocutors, many of whom were still in university, attempting to pre-empt uncertainties in balloting and long wait times by committing to serious relationships early. The idea was that finding a partner early would enable them to wait out multiple balloting attempts and access optimal grant opportunities. Often, they disclosed to me that their BTO partner was also their first romantic partner.

To facilitate this accelerated romantic trajectory, my interlocutors often adopted a decidedly pragmatic attitude toward romance. They sought not necessarily passion or love, but rather what Adely (2016) 7 termed compatibility when writing about marriage in Jordan. Compatibility, for Adely and for my interlocutors as well, referred to “more practical issues of financial security, the ability of a couple’s families to get along, as well as shared expectations of married life” (103). When one girl realized that her then-partner was not aligned with her romantic schedule, she reached out to her friends to ask if she should “leave now and cut my losses”. In a departure from conventional romantic timelines, I observed my interlocutors transitioning courtship to the period after they had already made a down payment for a flat but before the flat was ready. In essence, they committed to purchasing a flat together (and indirectly, to marriage), and then sought to determine or mold each other into the right marital or cohabiting partner. The implication seemed to be that, as one interlocutor expressed, a “person can be made right”. Another stated that the interim wait for the flat was a “rehearsal” for marriage. Yet, despite their best efforts, I also witnessed relationships fail. Ironically, they failed not despite, but often because of, attempting to fit their romantic lives onto a narrow path.

When one of my primary interlocutors, a 23-year-old Chinese-Singaporean woman named Grace, broke up with her boyfriend of a few years in the middle of my fieldwork, it came as a shock to both of us. They had already selected a unit and made their first down payment for the flat. She had diligently assessed their compatibility and conducted due diligence with extreme care. In fact, when they first got together, she asked him a list of questions about how he would handle familial conflict, his approach to finances, and his views on children. Satisfied that he was a stable partner who could be trusted for the long term, they agreed to ballot together. The irony was that when they broke up, the reasons she pointed to had nothing to do with their life goals or finances. Instead, she said she felt that he was almost too stable for her – “attraction mounts for him the more stable our relationship is, but I realize that it doesn’t work for me this way.” She had simply fallen out of love, and consequently lost her down payment. She was not alone. While some of my interlocutors managed to devise ingenious kinship solutions to circumvent flat restrictions, many realized that the romantic arrangements they sought in their schooling years or early twenties were not what worked best for them. In other words, paradoxically, the pursuit of the stability incentivized by the BTO generated more modes of romantic and financial uncertainties.

This is why I was uncertain about how to interpret the announcement regarding married couples receiving more balloting chances. A starting point could be to bemoan the continued lack of attention paid to the needs of those whose life trajectories differ from statist reproductive visions—such as single mothers, queer couples, and others. However, even among the group explicitly prioritized by the BTO, there appears to be a romantic hierarchy in effect. The recent change evidently favors married couples over engaged couples. In a Today article (Ong, 2023), 8 an interviewee is quoted as saying that the change would offer “some safety net so that if the timeline does not fit and we get married, after we get married, we’ll at least have some advantage.” In theory, I understand how this change could potentially alleviate some of the pressure to enter into relationships early. Couples could initially ballot multiple times as an engaged couple, and when they are ready to commit, they could then marry and ballot for a flat together. With increased balloting chances, they are now more likely to secure a flat. This, theoretically, should reduce the uncertainty that couples feel about obtaining a flat, a factor that supposedly drives young couples to rush into the ballot. However, I remain cautious. If housing supplies do not increase significantly, 9 this would imply that it would become more difficult for engaged couples to secure flats, while marginally easier for married couples. In other words, it would extend an already exclusionary criterion – between singles and normatively coupled individuals – to the differentiation between engaged and legally married couples.

While couples enter the BTO with the expectation and hope of eventual marriage, they also understand the inherent risks involved. For my interlocutors, expediting marriage closer to key collection was a strategy to limit potential entanglements in the event of a relationship breakdown. This remains a relevant concern considering the need to meet grant deadlines and the wait for a flat, which means the need to start finding a partner young might not change significantly. I worry that what has changed now is that some couples might feel that instead of using the waiting time as a “rehearsal,” a prelude to marriage, they might now feel incentivized to simply get married. This timeline, at least in the iteration that I found in the field, leaves little room for young people to evolve, to experiment, and to figure out who they are and what they want in a romantic relationship and marriage. We talk a lot about aspirations in Singapore – aspirations for a flat, for children, for marriage – that we seem to forget that desire, and the different but often messy paths through which people discover themselves and their needs, are also part of the calculus of life. Forgetting this ironically produces more, not less, romantic and, if one were to count the potential loss of a down payment, financial instability.

Joy Xin Yuan Wang Joy is a PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge, Department of Social Anthropology.

Notes:

Ong, Justin . 2023. “Additional BTO Ballot Chance for ‘Prioritised First-Timers’ a Fairer Move than Reserving More Flats for Them: Analysts.” TODAY. February 16, 2023. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/prioritised-first-timers-hdb-bto-flats-2109006#:~:text=the%20previous%20day ↩

Lin, Chen. 2022. “Singapore Sees the Rise of Million-Dollar Public Housing.” Reuters, August 31, 2022, sec. Asian Markets. https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/singapore-sees-rise-million-dollar-public-housing-2022-08-31/ ↩

In brief, an official family nucleus in Singapore is generally defined as

a) If you are married, you, your spouse, and your children (if any). b) If you are single: you and your parents. c) If you are widowed/divorced/separated: you and your children under your custody. d) Fiancé and fiancée e) Orphaned siblings

Marriage is central to the eligibility criteria because four out of the five officially endorsed pathways to forming a family nucleus flow from marriage. Note, for example, that option C does not account for mothers and fathers who have children out of wedlock. ↩

n August 2023, after this essay was written, the government announced greater changes to housing in Singapore. Two major changes included the recategorization of mature and non-mature estates into three categories- Standard, Plus, Prime. Prior to this change singles looking to purchase to BTO flats could only purchase 2-room flats in non-mature estates. While Singles continue to be limited in the size of BTO flat they can purchase (only 2-bedroom flats), they are now allowed to purchase flats from any location. (See this article for the details of the new changes https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/national-day-rally-2023-hdb-flats-singles-prime-bto-resale-3711471) ↩

In the field I met couples who only succeeded on the 11th time. This rice media article suggests that it is possible to fail 13 times at the ballot: https://www.ricemedia.co/bto-hdb-singapore/ ↩

Fong, Kenneth . 2021. “Planning to Break-up after You BTO-Ed? You Might Lose about $40,000!” Blog.seedly.sg. September 25, 2021. https://blog.seedly.sg/break-up-bto-hdb-application/ ↩

Adely, Fida. “A different kind of love: compatibility (Insijam) and marriage in Jordan” The Arab Studies Journal, Vol. 24, no. 2, 2016, pp. 102–27. ↩

Ong, Justin . 2023. “Additional BTO Ballot Chance for ‘Prioritised First-Timers’ a Fairer Move than Reserving More Flats for Them: Analysts.” TODAY. February 16, 2023. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/prioritised-first-timers-hdb-bto-flats-2109006#:~:text=the%20previous%20day ↩

The government has made promises and proposed measures to increase the supply of BTO flats. The most recent signs in February 2024 appear promising, with some flats promised to be delivered in a timeframe of within three years (https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/housing/19600-bto-flats-to-go-on-sale-in-2024-over-three-exercises-instead-of-four-desmond-lee). However, how this will play out and how the acceleration of flat delivery will affect romantic timelines and decisions is yet to be seen. ↩

Dragons, with jobs

Artist credit to Flamecraft!

Big Barda

Art by Flops Comics

officers of the hungry heart

demon king of salvation

Saw on reddit you can mash the Jinhao 9019 and the Parallel nib together!

(https://old.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/1ae2pvt/jinhao_9019_with_pilot_parallel_nib/)

I just got mine and you might significant grip strength, mine was way harder to shove into the nib and feed holder than it was to take out of the parallel. I wonder if this will make it hard to supply ink evenly? I filled it with iroshizuku just to test it with something that i'm used to using. laying it sideways to see how/if it leaks!

I got a couple of the jinhao lamy knockoffs, and so far, they are all too small to fit the Parallel nib : (. I hope I can find a feed for them that isn't the Lamy style one, so that I can use other nibs in it, because faceted grips are my one true pen love

fountain pen hack help wanted ad

have you messed around with a pilot parallel?

Do you despise it's incredibly long body?

Can you google better than me/have access to a lot of pen bodies?

Help wanted! Please help me collect info on which pens the parallel can be swapped into! Because for some reason it's not just anything that can take a Jowo #6.

Pay: the feeling of unlimited power that comes from fucking with pilot's proprietary bullshit

Opus 88 #6 sized colora/omar/jazz and maybe others

Osprey Pens Madison

Pilot Spare Sign (not exact fit as noted in Mystery Arts' video)

not a pen but apparently Wing Sung converters can fit the original barrel?

Benu Parrot and Euphoria

Moonman/Majohn C3 (flow might need a hack to limit it, as reddit poster did)

Moonman/Majohn M2 (original/older style that only came in red) (needs flow limit)

Moonman/Majohn M2 (newer one that has color options)

Moonman/Majohn C1

links to nib swap posts below the cut

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/365326-opus-88pilot-parallel-hack/

https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/wjffyi/pilot_parallel_nibs_moonman_c3_bodies/

https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/jol8sx/opus_88_demo_colorful_tramol_with_pilot_parallel/

https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/s3cl08/moonman_c1_x_pilot_parallel_mod_description_in/

https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/1048yzc/frankenibs_moonman_m2_with_pilot_parallel_nibs/

https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/nrmguh/opus_88_jazz_pilot_parallel_nib/

you can horse if you want to. you can leave your horse behind. cos a horse is a horse of course of course. but its no horse of mine

Thinking of my uncle a lot today and the fact that about 14 hours before he died, he ate a Calippo

He'd stopped breathing once already by that point; we'd had The Call, the one that somehow makes the phone ring shrill and grating, and we'd scrambled into our coats, lurched into our shoes, ran to the car with our laces untied, prayed under our breath a thousand times not now, not now, don't let it be now, we're not ready, let it be never if it has to be anything at all, but please, don't let it be this, don't let it be now, don't let it be don't let it be don't let it

And then we got to the hospital, breathless and ragged and heads racing and not ready, not ready, not ready, and they told us don't worry, whatever had him in the grip of it has somehow let him go, it's passed, he's rallied, it won't be today after all, he was at the precipice but he didn't fall, you can see him if you like, he's not all there but that's to be expected, isn't it, he gave us all a fright, he wasn't breathing right for half the night and then he stopped, and we don't know how he started again but he did, he did, he did

And so we went upstairs to see him, expecting whatever we were expecting, some fragments of a man, some breathless half-corpse, some sort of limbo entity, wakeless and only living in the way that fear threads itself through a horror story and brings it to something like life in your heartbeat, some thing who looked mostly like him but was not him, but was tinged with death, but was dead in all the ways that mattered, and then we saw him

And he was sat in his chair, quietly eating a fucking Calippo

And so we all sat in mostly silence for half an hour and we stared at the bruises that ringed his ankles and his wrists and his eyes, and we made awkward small talk with his friends who'd also had The Call and had gathered all their love and courage and goodbyes and been similarly confronted with the Calippo, and then we stayed for a little longer after they'd left, and we asked him if he'd had time to read the messages we'd sent him earlier that day, which we hadn't called our eulogies but which we all knew were exactly that, and he shrugged and ate his Calippo and said he'd read them later, he'd had a look but he was too tired to read, it had been a bit of a day, after all, and then visiting hours ended, and we stacked up our chairs neatly and lined them up in rows of four high against the far wall, and we watched him finish the Calippo, and we threw the empty sleeve all sticky into the medical waste bin because we couldn't find a bin that wasn't for piss and shit and blood, and we hugged him briefly, loosely, and we said we'd see him tomorrow, see you tomorrow, and he didn't smile, and he said see you tomorrow, if I'm still here, and he wasn't.

Around 1,600 teaching assistants at McGill University announced that they would be on strike starting Monday, as the final sprint of the university year begins. Teaching assistants at the university voted 87.5 per cent in favour of an eight-week strike mandate last week. The main point in dispute remains salaries, said Fanny Teissandier, an anthropology teaching assistant since fall 2023. In an interview with The Canadian Press, she said that the negotiations aim to reduce the disparity between the average salaries offered at McGill University and those of other similar universities, which stand at $46.36/hour. "There is really a very, very big difference when we know that the salaries of teaching assistants (at McGill University) amount to $33.03," she said.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada