shipsdreamsandmakebelieve

[shipsdreamsandmakebelieve]

YOU THINK I’M JOKING BUT I’M DEAD SERIOUS

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i could not date harry styles because i would have too much fun psychologically torturing his fans that care too much 

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I’m really into internet discourse but only pointless and stupid internet discourse like how many holes there are in a straw (it’s 2)

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Wait but tell me more, what kind of math does our godforsaken measuring system make sense for? I'm horribly curious!

oh dear oh boy okay, I've tried to explain this to people and had them just get more annoyed, so I'll give it a shot, but no promises that it will make any sense. Disclaimer also that I don't really know what I'm talking about, I've just done a lot of baking, and ages ago I read something by Plato explaining why the musical scale is how it is, and I'm extrapolating from the two

(wow this turned out way longer than I meant it to because IT'S MIDNIGHT)

the metric system is a base 10 system, like most modern human math, so it is easy to use in the way people tend to do math these days - ie, by sitting down with either a piece of paper or a calculator and doing sums. It's a good system for a lot of things, especially scientific applications where you need to be VERY precise and don't want to waste time converting units, and need to do shit like calculus. It's a highly rational way of doing it...if you are literate.

if you aren't literate, or are less literate, it's not a sensible way to construct a measuring system at all. If you measure something and come up with 367.45 cm, that's nothing. You're going to forget it, and you can't easily divide it by anything, there's no way to go from here

But consider the English Foot. We've all been working with a base 12 system without realizing it, and without really utilizing it for what it's best for, which is easy mental division. This is where people get mad at me, they say math all gets terrible and ugly when you do it in feet, you end up trying to figure out how many sixteenths of an inch 0.135 is, or you end up with repeating decimals, and it all sucks super bad. To this I say yes, it does, because you're thinking like a modern algebra student, and not like a medieval bricklayer.

The base 12 system of the traditional English foot is fantastic for mental math, because 12 is a highly divisible number. It's easily divisible into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths by most people in their heads. The inch is then typically divided into 1/16ths, which *super* suck to deal with on a calculator, but are really quite friendly if you just keep them as fractions like God and the Magna Carta intended. This is the kind of math most artisans need to do. You want supports placed evenly along a wall, to divide a piece of fabric in half, or to double a recipe. Nobody 1.7x's a recipe. Metric would be great for that, but why would you do that? It wouldn't be worth the math involved.

And listen, I also use a lot of metric baking recipes. Everything is in grams, you can measure everything the same way, and it's super accurate. They're great if you have a digital scale, but before the age of digital scales? Unfathomable. You (a medieval peasant) have a cup you've decided is The Cup, and sometimes you put in a half or a third or a quarter of that cup. THAT makes sense. Also, it's a lot easier to double something that calls for 1 cup of flour than it is when it calls for 136 grams of flour, and this is for me, a person who learned math in the typical modern way and always has a calculator in their pocket. I would have the sourdough recipe I make every week memorized if it wasn't in fucking grams. I DO have my pie crust recipe memorized. For every cup of flour you put in a third of a cup shortening, one tablespoon of butter, and start with 3 tablespoons of water (and a dash of salt). A double crust pie takes about 3 cups of flour, so that's one cup shortening. Easy! A third of a cup of shortening in grams is 68.3333333. That's nothing! That's garbage!

"Wouldn't it be more accurate to measure 68.3333333 grams, though?" Sure, but the amount of wet indigence you need to put in any baked thing changes with the fucking weather! That's why this recipe says "start with 3 tbs water." There's no need to be more accurate, and in fact it would make things more difficult.

Okay that turned into a tangent about how to make pie crust, a thing I think everyone should learn because pie crust is delicious, but i hope you get the idea. TLDR sometimes you just want to divide things in thirds and have it not suck ass. The eldritch sigil of measurement conversions is a little less threatening if you realize every step up or down is a factor of thirds or fourths

fuck oh no another half remembered piece of pop science coming at you - the largest number a typical human can hold in their head *without language* is 3. You don't need numbers to count to three, you don't need to count to be aware of three, you can just see three things and say "that's three." Don't believe me? That's the whole basis of Roman numerals. The numbers 1-3 are representational, after that they get more symbolic, and you never end up with more than three of the same symbol in a row. After III comes IV, not IIII, and it's just that III is much easier on the brain. For the same reason, a lot of English conversions are in factors of 4. There are 4 cups in a quart, and 4 quarts in a gallon, so you're only dealing with measurements that are easy to hold in your head without counting. You never have to count out 4 cups if you convert. You either need 3 cups or 1 quart. Does that make sense? Anyone who has done Big Cooking should know that if you have to count cups beyond 3 or 4 it becomes very easy to lose track.

Now i'm not saying it's all logical. It would be great if every step was a factor of 4, but they had to get fancy and throw pints in there. Pints aren't too bad, that's a factor of two, but I'll be the first to admit that it makes no sense for one tablespoon to equal three teaspoons instead of four. But because this is a system that evolved over time instead of being constructed intentionally, you have to cut it some slack. I'm sorry to anyone who decided to read this, I should be in bed, but I actually care a lot about this and I swear it's not just stockholm syndrome from Being American

#mind blowing #cooking #math

[shipsdreamsandmakebelieve]

do they think we're only allowed to eat kraft singles or

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"Every ball is moving in a straight line"

Source

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Sleepy lion roadblock. 

(via)

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oh MY G-D

#jumblr

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For only $20 you too can fuck Satan

TAKE A LOOK AT THIS CREAM. TAKE A GOOD LONG LOOK. 

MEMORIZE THE PACKAGING SO YOU MAKE SURE YOU NEVER BUY THIS CREAM FOR YOURSELF OR ANYONE YOU LOVE.

This post is about vaginas. My vagina in particular. I get yeast infections pretty regularly, and until recently I was able to afford to see a doctor who could prescribe me fluconazole.

Fluconazole, a drug also known by the brand name Diflucan, is a small pink pill. You take two pills a few days apart from each other to restore balance and harmony to your bountiful folds. I’ve never ever had a bad side effect from taking this pill.

Cut to November 2016. I’m a recent college grad without reliable health care coverage in the process of finding a job. And I’m dealing with a yeast infection. Before I moved out of state, my previous doctor told me about Miconazole. She said it was as effective as the pill and hallelujah, it’s over the counter! I decided to purchase the cream pictured above. This treatment only lasted 3 days, a convenient time frame for my schedule.

The application process was a little messy, and some of the cream came in contact with my vulva and labia. Within 5 minutes every piece of skin that had come in contact with the cream, excluding my hands, was on fire. I wanted to scream it was so painful. I began frantically searching for what I should do online. 

I found a whole forum of people on drugs.com who had experienced something similar. These comments saved me, and these were just on the first page. There were 33 pages total, the earliest dated July 2009.

I was writhing in pain at 2AM when I found this forum (which I found by searching “my vagina burn itch hurts after miconazole” on Google). As soon as I read these comments I threw the devil cream directly into the trash and jumped in the shower. I didn’t feel any actual relief until I reached in and scraped the cream out of me. I paid $17 plus tax on this bullshit, but I could have just as easily ripped up my money or paid someone to not hurt me. 

The moral of the story is that vaginal health care is is completely fucked up because we don’t have access to an over the counter cure for yeast infections that is safe for our bodies and also YOU SHOULD NEVER BUY THIS CREAM EVER.

Reblog to save a vagina.

[shipsdreamsandmakebelieve]

Who’s Alex?

Billboard demonstrating gender stereotypes as most people automatically assume that Alex is the boy.

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"But won't children be confused by all the LGBT-"

Yesterday I saw a mother with a baby carriage, being followed by a girl of about 4-6 years old on a bicycle. The kid started ringing her bike bell like RING RING RING RING RING RING RING, and the mother turned to look behind them to see whether they were being followed by a cyclist who desperately needs to pass them for the sake of everyone's safety.

And the little girl - who just rang the goddamn bell herself 5 seconds ago - also turned to look.

Kids are confused by everything at all times. They don't know jack shit. About anything.

[shipsdreamsandmakebelieve]

Simone Biles is a wonder, and I trust & support her to make the best decisions regarding her health. If that means stepping down from competition, then all the more power to her.

She is not a show horse, she is a person who deserves happiness, recovery, and privacy during this time. I am proud of her for putting herself first.

[shipsdreamsandmakebelieve]

Today I learned that Kronk from The Emperor's New Groove is canonically Jewish in the spinoff series.

Here's the link to the whole challah recipe, before anyone asks: https://twitter.com/disney/status/1411022232445464585

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Can Americans please not bring Irish Gaelic names into white names discourse?

Irish is the native language of Irish people. It’s an ancient language that is on the brink of extinction as a direct result of colonialism and cultural and physical genocide.

Names like Saoirse (freedom), Áine (radiant), Aoife (beautiful) etc are traditional Irish names. They’re spelt “funny” because Irish is a different language from English, and has some sounds that aren’t found in the English language.

It’s not the same thing as edgy white Americans naming their kid Kathylyn instead of Kathleen to try to be different

[shipsdreamsandmakebelieve]

What does the arab in your carrd mean? Is it like afab and amab?

.. i’m palestinian

[shipsdreamsandmakebelieve]

one day some of you will actually go outside and go to pride and you’re going to meet old black queens who refers to themselves as femme, you’ll meet people from small towns who still use the word transsexual, you’ll see that your local activist organization set up a stall about your local LGBT history that includes leather bar’s history, you’ll see lesbians in groups refer to themselves as “guys” and “boys”, you’ll see someone with breasts and pasties and little else have “he / him” painted on his chest, and you’ll be so caught up with your terminally online attitude that instead of appreciating the wide diversity of people who exist in the LGBT community who are brave enough to share themselves you’ll just be formulating posts and tweets in your head for when get home about how “problematic” it all was and it’s honestly tragic