Latest Posts by princess-of-lions - Page 4

I’ve gotten in trouble at almost every Thanksgiving family gathering starting from the time I reached about thirteen because I kept calling out my uncles for being racist, homophobic, or sexist. 

(And then everyone got mad at me for starting arguments. Um??? I??? Never?? started it?? I just refused to let it go when they said horrible things.) 

One time I flat-out told one of my uncles he was a bigot and he got super super offended. Insisted that he was not a bigot, and that I must never call him that again. I was fourteen at the time and I was cowed enough to apologize for saying that and to agree to not do it again. Still regret how I folded, sometimes, but at least I made it clear I still believed he was wrong.

Several times it’s been me debating against four or five of my uncles at once. Four adult men, one teenage girl. Everyone else always refuses to get involved, standing around with these uncomfortable looks on their faces. One of my aunts thinks it’s disgraceful, how much I’ll argue with ‘the men of the family’. It doesn’t feel like I ever accomplish much of anything by doing this, but I can’t just do nothing.

It’s hard because I’m close to my extended family, particularly some of my cousins who are my age, and I know that they all love me. But I cannot stand the things that they (my uncles and a couple of my aunts especially) believe. My mom agrees with me that they’re wrong, but always gets angry with me when I argue with them about it. ‘You don’t talk about politics with family,’ she says. ‘Family’s what will be there for you when everyone else leaves you, don’t alienate them.’ ‘Let it go, you’re never going to change their minds.’ ‘You’re embarrassing me.’ I’m always the one in the wrong for daring to speak up. 

I don’t think my mom really understands that I cannot be silent about these things. If I am silent, I am complicit. If I say nothing, then it’s as good as agreeing. I can’t do that. I just can’t, even if she thinks I’m starting drama without good reason and punishes me for it.

Sometimes I think that I should cut contact with my extended family entirely, for some of the horrible things they believe - if any of them openly advocated for violence, I would. But they don’t go that far, and I love them too much to erase them from my life right now. (Also, my mom thinks I’m insane for even contemplating that maybe I should. Cut contact, that is. Because in our family, where our parents and grandparents were refugees and immigrants when they arrived here and had only each other to rely on, family is everything. To her, family matters more than politics, every time. I don’t quite agree with her on that.) But if I am to continue keeping them in my life, the very least I can do is to speak up when I know something is wrong, and to refuse to be silent, no matter how many people get angry with me for it. 

I’m always glad to see people saying that yes, it’s right to call your family out when they do something racist/homophobic etc., because everyone in my immediate life says that I’m childish and immature for doing it, and that there’s no point in doing it. I hope though that maybe some of the things I say will get through to my uncles’ children, at least, if not my uncles themselves.

This is very cool and I’d love to take a look at that movie but does anyone know where I can find it with English subtitles? Or if not, I saw something about it being produced with French subtitles - couldn’t find that one either - but that would work too

Anahit: The Queen Who Made the King Get a Job (Armenian Folk Tale)

Full entry (with footnotes) here. Book here. Patreon here. Art notes and whatnot after the cut - but real quick:

Yes, she already has her own animated princess movie. It’s not in English. It was posted in full by the animation studio here, so I hope it’s okay to embed it:

This version seemingly takes some liberties. Her uncle is in league with some shadow demon, there’s a talking dog, and her horse turns into this fiery magic flying creature…? I don’t know.

Keep reading

this is cool and I’m definitely going to look into it more

Cool Tip

If you are like me and always need to be working on something to keep your anxiety under control, during this quarentine why not helping scientists by looking at pictures of some neat penguins? or even galaxies?  There’s this site call Zooniverse, where you can help on scientific projects by analyzing pictures and data!  Right now my favorite project has returned, called Penguin Watch (where yeah, you get to watch penguins, it’s amazing)

you basically have to analyse photos looking for penguins, their chicks, eggs or even predators and human interaction But there are lots of interesting projects you can help in areas such as biology, physics, history or even art: 

Oh and the best part, some institutions even accept it as volunteering/service hour requirements for graduation and scholarships!! It’s helping me a lot during this time, so I thought it was worth sharing 

reblogging to keep this for reference because I’ve been getting into embroidery lately

Sophia Drescher on Instagram

My little sister sometimes picks the most inconvenient moments to have a crisis. Like when I’m in the shower, or about to get in the shower.

Do you know how difficult it is to figure out how to solve the problem/get rid of the bugs/prevent the tears when sans clothes and sopping wet? Like obviously I’m going to drop everything to go help her but you gotta give me a minute because damn it I need some clothes 

I am so beyond impressed because I find rollerblades so clumsy and difficult to use compared to ice skates and I had no idea this was even possible

This girl is amazing

AND NOW THE U.S. HAS IT THANK YOU

OKAY so last week I saw Avatar the Last Airbender was on Netflix! And I was so excited, I was like finally!! I supposed they finally put it on Netflix as like promotion or something because of the new live action Avatar that Netflix is planning?

But then

I tried to continue watching it yesterday

And

it wasn’t available

?????

Then I realized.

I was in Canada for spring break last week.

ATLA isn’t on Netflix in the States!! Canada has it. We don’t and I feel so cheated just so you know

I just saw a post where someone replied “that’s rough buddy” in reference to a character’s love problems and I think it’s hilarious that we all know exactly what’s being referenced here

Omg I recognized this right away and then sat here thinking, but no, it can’t be, how likely is it that I would encounter a random picture from this particular museum? But it IS.

I used to work there! There’s an upper floor to the right of the whale skeleton and I would walk by it on my way to one of the labs in the morning!

The setting is: Below the Whale Skeleton

Soft and Chewy Lemon Cookies - Averie Cooks

These soft and chewy lemon cookies are packed with big, bold lemon flavor for all you lemon lovers! They're soft, chewy and not at all cakey!

So I tried this recipe for lemon cookies today, because I love lemons and it seemed like a fun thing to do for the beginning of summer. It was really good! As advertised, they are very soft and chewy (and delicious).

It takes a little while, particularly if you don’t have any lemon zest on hand, but they’re cookies worth making if you have some time to spare.

(Actually, though, the recipe calls for two whole tablespoons of lemon zest! I didn’t have enough lemons for that, so after I’d taken all the zest from four lemons I stopped and just used what I had. So my cookies are probably not quite as lemony as the original, but they’re still good.)

I had them with my family with a dusting of sugar on top and some chilled blueberry-lavender tea! 

hahaha

hm, this sounds like Dutch?

Unmute !

“less than twelve parsecs!”

I’m a day late for May the Fourth, but I’m gonna share this anyway!

At this point, most of us are fully aware that parsecs are a unit of distance, not time. Star Wars even went ahead and used Solo to retcon Star Wars: A New Hope to reflect that fact. If you’ve watched Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts on Netflix, you might also know that 1 parsec is equivalent to 3.262 light-years. But what actually is a parsec?

Parsec stands for parallax per arcsecond. 

Astronomers use the observed parallax of celestial objects to determine how far away they are. Parallax refers to how an object in space seems to shift against its background when observed from different points. If you hold your finger out in front of your face and then tilt your head left and then right, you can observe this for yourself.

The angle where the sight line from each point of observation meets the observed object is called the angle of parallax. With that angle, astronomers can use trigonometry to find the distance to the object - usually a star. It’s only really useful if the objects are within a distance of 200 parsecs from Earth, because for objects farther out than that, there’s not really an observable parallactic shift.

I’m pretty sure that this next bit gets taught in grade school at some point, so some of you may recall what an arcsecond is. An arcsecond is 1/60th of an arcminute, and an arcminute is 1/60th of a one-degree angle. So, 1° = 3600 arcseconds.

So, back to that parallax per arcsecond definition. What it means is that:

One parsec is equal to the distance of an object from Earth when the angle of parallax between them is equal to one arcsecond.

And there you have it! That’s what a parsec is! May the Fourth be with you.

I just had a guy spend ten minutes explaining the Hubble telescope to me and why it was so groundbreaking, without letting me get a word in edgewise.

I’m an astrophysics major.

This person gets it

Where’s ‘memorizes page numbers’???

Via @WritersHQ at Twitter.

(Neutral good / true neutral here.)

I just saw a post where someone replied “that’s rough buddy” in reference to a character’s love problems and I think it’s hilarious that we all know exactly what’s being referenced here

Solarpunk by Rita Fei

“No. You seek glory for yourself. And you would win it off the backs of my people!”

- Princess Jasmine

I love this moment in Aladdin. The way she says ‘my people!’ so intensely and passionately is perfection.

Does anyone else have a grandmother who does that thing where she keeps plastic bags in the dishwasher??? Like, the dishwasher never gets used because it’s a storage space packed full with plastic bags?

I think the meanest thing i can say about obi-wan kenobi is that he’s deeply, truly, fundamentally British.

Yeah my Greek family always says ‘close the lights’ or ‘shut the lights’ instead of ‘turn off the lights’ and I’ve been hearing that since I was little so it honestly sounds perfectly normal to me lol.

In terms of my own blunders: 

for some reason my brain likes French articles (le, la, les) better than any others, so I have this weird thing where I keep trying to use French articles when speaking English or Greek. 

random everyday words that get used a lot, like hello and good morning and thank you, are very easy to mix up for some reason. Sometimes I say ‘merci!’ without even thinking about it in an English-speaking environment or I have to consciously stop myself from saying ‘γεια σασ!’ (hello) to some poor random friend who will have no idea what I’m saying...

English is my first and most fluent language, but there are random words that I learned in greek or french first, and it just sounds really weird to me to say them in English. The most egregious example of this is the word chamomile, like chamomile tea. Saying kam-oh-meel sounds so utterly weird to me that I actually have to pause before I say it out loud in english. The greek word for it is χαμομηλι, pronounced sort of like hah-moh-mee-lee (chamomili). It makes no sense if I try to use the greek pronunciation in the middle of an english sentence, but saying it in english sounds so odd that I sometimes just avoid the word. 

when I forget the french word for something so I switch to english to try and explain to someone who speaks french but knows a little english and we puzzle it out together

there was one time I was trying to ask someone how to say ‘please’ in italian except for some reason I forgot the word please and could only remember it in french and greek (s’il vous plait and παρακαλο, respectively) so I was standing there for a few moments like a nitwit while I tried to remember how to say please in English

On occasion, my Opa will be speaking Dutch to another of our Dutch-speaking family members, then turn to me and start jabbering to me in Dutch, conveniently forgetting that the extent of my Dutch knowledge is like, ten words. (It was particularly funny one time when he did this to my mother, who, being from the Greek side of the family, has absolutely no reason to know any Dutch.)

Also I am strongly reminded of this hilarious post which I originally encountered on @space-australians

im going to have a stroke

So,,, at work today I was chatting with this customer, a lady who had her two young daughters with her (8 months and 4 years), and partway into our conversation I realized she was talking to me like I was a fellow mom. Saying like, ‘you know how they are at that age when so and so’. She legit somehow assumed I was old enough to have children of my own, and seemed kind of surprised when it became clear that I did not, in fact, have kids.

I couldn’t figure out how to tell her that I am a Teenager.

Yes! Hobbies are so important. There are a lot of random things you can do that keep you engaged and just make you feel so much more satisfied and fulfilled in your life!

Reading is probably one of my favorite things to do ever, and if anyone is specifically interested in books that are by women and about women, this post that I made a little while ago has 51 book recs in that category! Also if anyone just wants to talk about books feel free to hit me up, I’ve always got tons more recs for other people and am always happy to receive them as well! I just started reading The Forgotten Queens of Islam by Fatima Mernissi and am loving it so far.

Also, here’s a couple of my more unusual hobbies:

I love making stained glass! I’m not a super artsy person, but I’ve found that making stained glass patterns is much easier for me than drawing or painting, and I love cutting and grinding the glass and putting the pieces together and being able to hold it in my hands after and put it up in windows! Having something physical that you made is a super satisfying thing. (my profile pic is a piece I made last summer)

Ice skating! I’ve figure skated on and off since I was young, and these days I make it a point to head to the rink about once a week to just glide around and rock out to whatever music they’re playing and attempt jumps without falling on my butt lol. It’s also a really fun way to stay fit!

There’s just so many different things you can do! Whether what you do is commonplace or unique, just find what works for you and have fun with it!

I think one thing me and other girls my age are missing out are good, creative hobbies that don't revolve around media consumption - do you have any advice on picking up a hobby? It can be specific to things you enjoy in particular or not.

Try it.

Just try it.

Then collect hobbies like anything else.

I saw a girl post a cross-stitch on insta, thought “I could learn that”, bought the stuff then learned it in a week. I churned out so many. Now, I go back to it maybe once a year.

I bought canvases and paints and just started copying other art I saw until it looked about the same. I paint when the urge strikes, every other month?

My friend asked if I wanted to join a rec league with him. I’ve never played the sport before. I said yes. I’m liking it, but not love. I probably won’t go back. I’ll probably try another.

I got bored of cooking, so I started following complex and detailed foreign recipes to make it engaging and fun. I’m learning something new every night.

I watch every new horror movie that comes out on netflix. I have a routine around it - face masks, snacks, lighting. It’s my own indulgence.

I buy a new book every time I fly somewhere. I’m collecting novels on a big shelf. I grab things on crazy topics, whatever I’m curious about. “We’re witches real healers?” Bought a book. “What does death look like in other cultures?” Bought a book.

Just do stuff. You don’t have to love everything. You don’t have to do it every day. Just try things, and say yes to experiences, and pursue every fleeting passion. Get hyper obsessed for one week, dive deep, and then abandon it for a year. Rinse, repeat. It keeps you busy, engaged, learning, and your mind active.

I love hobbies!

Someone: Thank you!

Me: Of course!

(Not ‘you’re welcome’, not ‘no problem’, nope, I say ‘of course’. I can’t figure out if it sounds weird to people or not....)

One of the purest moments I have on a semi-regular basis is seeing a complete and total stranger rocking out to a song they love by themselves in their car and I’m just sitting there in a different lane in my car with no clue who they are but smiling fondly at their enjoyment and silliness

So if anyone’s curious about how this ended up getting resolved, here’s what happened. 

He came back in multiple times looking for me, according to my coworkers. They and my boss had all been made aware of the situation. Thankfully, I was only there one of those times, and it was shortly before closing, so I was able to get rid of him without too much trouble. After that, my boss insisted on calling the police to ask for advice - and so that there would be a record of what was happening.

Then, while I was off-shift for a week or so for exams, he came back in a couple more times, and this time, he started harassing my boss. The second time he started bothering her, she called the cops. Apparently, while the security at our mall is basically nonexistent, there’s a police precinct across the street. They came. It was quickly discovered that we were not the only store in the mall that had had a problem with this man harassing female employees. 

Anyway, he’s banned from the mall now, and if he comes back, we can call the cops again and he would receive a citation for trespassing. I feel so much better now when I go to work since I no longer have to worry he’s going to pop up and start bothering me. I was so on edge for a while, worrying incessantly about what clothes I wore and whether I was going to be on shift alone. The fact that he’s gone is such a relief.

Thanks to @radicallyaligned and everyone else for your support and advice!

(1/3) So, the store I work at just moved to a new location where there's greater foot traffic. Today was my second day there, and my first shift manning the store alone. I’m 18, by the way. Towards the end of the day, this guy came in. Sweaty from a run. Seriously muscled, maybe mid-to-late-twenties. Anyway, he started talking, being kinda friendly and joking, and also I had the impression of flirtatious too.

(2/3) I was, you know, wearing my ‘customers’ face. Anyway we’re chatting, I’m telling him about our soaps, etc. Then, he kinda stops, looks me up and down, and says, “You know, you have a great body. Do you work out?” And I’m like, ugh, internally. I shrug and tell him I do ballet. I go back to talking about the products, kind of just, you know, moving away, but he kept moving closer to me, getting within about a foot of me.

(3/3) We talk for a little bit more about the products, then he looks down, says “Wow! Your feet are so small! They’re tiny!” and then he knelt down and he grabbed my foot around the heel and lifted it up to examine it. I was so startled I nearly kicked him, but I just ended up just jerking my foot away. He stuck around for the rest of my shift (half an hour), and said he’s planning to come back and see me again. Any advice, anyone?

Okay that is seriously creepy and I’m so sorry you experienced this. Touching you without permission is harassment. A couple thing to do if he comes back in, optional, of course:

1. Immediately alert your manager or another person on staff. Tell them he has come in before to bother you, touched you without your permission, and makes you uncomfortable. Allow them to handle him while you wait in a back room.

2. If you do not have another person working with you, be sure to keep your distance from him. Stay behind a counter. If he lingers, inform him your “boss” has a policy against loitering, and you’ll have to ask him to leave if he isn’t shopping. If he inquires further, say that the door “has a counting metric, to see who enters and leaves without a purchase, and it affects your formal review”. (A retail shop I worked at before had this, it’s real tech). This is to encourage him to leave.

3. If he strikes up casual conversation about yourself, or asks your number, work in that you “have a boyfriend”. Creepy men often respect the “authority” of a created man having “ownership” of you more than your own bodily autonomy. This can make you safer and deter him from returning.

4. If he touches you again, tell him you are going to have to ask him to leave. He will likely do a big show of “wow you’re making something out of nothing!!” Calmly ask him again to leave. If he seems aggressive, remind him of the “cameras”. It doesn’t matter if you actually have cameras.

5. If he continously shows up to bother you, make sure a manger is on shift with you to deal with him.

6. If he ever follows you home, or shows up anywhere else in your life, call the police.

I hope some of this helps!

Everything is covered in pollen. I’m done

@4humanexperiment4​ You have something of a point, sometimes bad social skills can be mistaken for harassment. Just last week, a much older man gave me a compliment in a weird context, and I and the girls around me weren’t sure what to think. I asked someone, and it turned out he was mentally disabled. So yes, that does happen. But let’s be real. That kind of thing is the exception, and it is extremely rare. The vast majority of the time, when an older guy is crossing a younger girl’s boundaries, it’s because he’s a creep. 

So let me be clear. This instance was not one of those rare exceptions. This man’s intentions were absolutely deliberate and sexual in nature. There was zero ambiguity in that regard. He was not awkward about anything, he didn’t look confused when I jerked my foot away from him. He knew what he was doing. 

With that said, I’m not necessarily accusing him of being a rapist or anything. I didn’t get the sense that he intended to hurt me or get violent. But I did feel very uncomfortable, confused, and self-conscious. It was not okay.

His actions were completely inappropriate, not least because: 1, he was a complete stranger who felt he had the right to make comments about my body and touch my foot (which was just flat-out weird) without any indication from me that that was okay; 2, he was significantly older than me; and 3, I was working.

So he may not be a rapist, but he is someone who would sexually harass a stranger, a teenage girl. Don’t excuse him.

(1/3) So, the store I work at just moved to a new location where there's greater foot traffic. Today was my second day there, and my first shift manning the store alone. I’m 18, by the way. Towards the end of the day, this guy came in. Sweaty from a run. Seriously muscled, maybe mid-to-late-twenties. Anyway, he started talking, being kinda friendly and joking, and also I had the impression of flirtatious too.

(2/3) I was, you know, wearing my ‘customers’ face. Anyway we’re chatting, I’m telling him about our soaps, etc. Then, he kinda stops, looks me up and down, and says, “You know, you have a great body. Do you work out?” And I’m like, ugh, internally. I shrug and tell him I do ballet. I go back to talking about the products, kind of just, you know, moving away, but he kept moving closer to me, getting within about a foot of me.

(3/3) We talk for a little bit more about the products, then he looks down, says “Wow! Your feet are so small! They’re tiny!” and then he knelt down and he grabbed my foot around the heel and lifted it up to examine it. I was so startled I nearly kicked him, but I just ended up just jerking my foot away. He stuck around for the rest of my shift (half an hour), and said he’s planning to come back and see me again. Any advice, anyone?

Okay that is seriously creepy and I’m so sorry you experienced this. Touching you without permission is harassment. A couple thing to do if he comes back in, optional, of course:

1. Immediately alert your manager or another person on staff. Tell them he has come in before to bother you, touched you without your permission, and makes you uncomfortable. Allow them to handle him while you wait in a back room.

2. If you do not have another person working with you, be sure to keep your distance from him. Stay behind a counter. If he lingers, inform him your “boss” has a policy against loitering, and you’ll have to ask him to leave if he isn’t shopping. If he inquires further, say that the door “has a counting metric, to see who enters and leaves without a purchase, and it affects your formal review”. (A retail shop I worked at before had this, it’s real tech). This is to encourage him to leave.

3. If he strikes up casual conversation about yourself, or asks your number, work in that you “have a boyfriend”. Creepy men often respect the “authority” of a created man having “ownership” of you more than your own bodily autonomy. This can make you safer and deter him from returning.

4. If he touches you again, tell him you are going to have to ask him to leave. He will likely do a big show of “wow you’re making something out of nothing!!” Calmly ask him again to leave. If he seems aggressive, remind him of the “cameras”. It doesn’t matter if you actually have cameras.

5. If he continously shows up to bother you, make sure a manger is on shift with you to deal with him.

6. If he ever follows you home, or shows up anywhere else in your life, call the police.

I hope some of this helps!

Can someone tell me how to help LGBTQ people in Brunei without just telling me to boycott luxury hotels I already don’t go to??

When I was four years old, I told my mom I wanted to be a flower scientist when I grew up, and she told me that was called a botanist, and then I went around telling everyone I wanted to be a botanist including all the neighbors and my preschool teachers