Is This Anything

rivals to lovers where the girl thinks they’re mortal enemies and the guy thinks they’re just flirting

a knife

cruel hands held you and shaped you in to what you have become. a razor-shape blade, both wound and knife. they butchered you and called it love. they taught you that only someone who is willing to rip you apart and swallow is someone to call home. maybe that is why you love pomegranates.

new quiz just dropped: what are you?

Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.

it’s not just the believer-nonbeliever dynamic that makes ghost files work. it’s the fact that the believer is a mostly normal guy and the nonbeliever has everything else wrong with him.

Percy Jackson and The Olympians episodes 1 and 2 + text posts

i needs the sleeps.

I’ve been patiently waiting for a nice second-hand wood dresser to appear on fb marketplace or at Goodwill for months. Finally, I grabbed this one yesterday for $50.

My inspiration for this project are some dressers I saw at Anthropology that have gorgeous carved details. But I want my dresser to cost $200 or less rather than $2,000.

Of course I can’t add actual hand-carved wood, but I’ve got clay and some silicon molds + epoxy and a potential overconfidence in my DIY abilities.

First up, I removed the existing hardware and sanded this pretty lady down. She is now looking MUCH better without all those terrible stains (and the drawer pulls weren’t doing it for her, tbh).

Up next, I’ll give her a paint wash or three and start trying my hand at faking some carvings!

freediver