The life and times of Actual Courier Six JessicaAnn Savage. Humanities Last Best Hope. Wasteland wolf. Icon by culdhira.tumblr.com Six Can't DrawSix WritesThis is Six
yeah? do you know that in the complex linguistic context of casual conversation in specific circles of the internet, things like capitalization and punctuation are used differently to express different tones, inflections, and meanings, and that traditional capitalization in all contexts says a lot about the author and who they intend their audience to be?
for example:
-’i am mad’- neutral conversation, can be funny depending on the context
-’I Am Mad’- author is making a specific point or exaggeration, often in a humorous, self-aware way
-’I am mad.’ - an inflection of formality usually interpreted as more standoffish and less approachable, slightly unfriendly if used in a casual millennial setting
in the context of this blog, i’m writing accessible science content to people my own age in the same social context of the internet, and i choose my inflection accordingly- just like i would talk to another person my age. this is indicated beforehand by the title of this blog being ‘botanyshitposts’, with ‘shitposting’ being a popular internet term to refer to memes, low-effort explanations, and easily accessible, modifiable, and approachable content.
remember that these inflections have reasons to arise! if you’re a millennial (like me) texting your friends over discord, then it becomes less efficient in a quickly moving group chat to use proper capitalization (one more button to hit, and every line?) and everyone has an understanding that that’s that and nobody else in the chat cares about formality….because you’re friends. this is a similar reason why other shorthand for common sayings and phrases have become common over the past two/three decades (beginning with stuff like ‘lol’ and developing more to include a lot of acronyms). all this has led to relaxed capitalization and shorthand being a sign of friendliness.
if you go to circles of the internet with people who might not have grown up talking frequently to others online, the context is much different, and is more inclined towards proper capitalization and such. similarly, when i- and others - write outside of online circles, we’re still educated human beings who write with proper capitalization, punctuation, and spelling, because we are fully aware of the complex societal nuances in different situations and are able to change how we speak to adhere to that. in fact, we are so acclimated to multiple online and offline cultures and relevancies that we actively choose how we talk!
in conclusion: this is actually a really interesting ask, because it shows that you’re coming from another part of the internet/a completely different context where, when looking at how i and other (educated, intelligent) people in my age group speak online, you completely miss the nuances and brush it off as something to be mocked, because in the circles you’re a part of varied capitalization is interpreted as a sign of incompetence. meanwhile, for much of the evolving internet, varied capitalization conveys meaning of tone and intent through a medium where verbal tone changes aren’t applicable! it has it’s own meaning, and it’s a very interesting thing to watch and study from a scientific perspective… that’s modern linguistics and anthropology, bay bee!!
Hells yeah! The English language relies heavily on stressing and intonation to give shades of meaning to out words, like I think all languages do that but English really just grabs the ball and runs with it. We all know the example of “I did not tell her that” where you stress I, did not, tell, her and that in turn and completely change the meaning of the sentence.
And written English has always struggled with that, not so much in formal settings but when engaging in casual conversation it has always been the problem of “text doesn’t do tone of voice”. But as @botanyshitposts says holy shit we’ve got a generation that has increasingly embraced short form text communication, not like lengthy letters of emails I mean instant messenger, and so we’ve Solved The Problem.
Remember, until very recently very few messaging services supported any sort of text formatting so you couldn’t even useitallics to convey stress, so different capitalisation took its place, as did asterisks (which, uh, everyone decided that *word* means bolded? really?). And when combined with forms of media where you can use both and all its gained further shades of meaning so while both “they’re just Like That” and “they’re just like that” are emphasised I read them differently in my head.
I am literally writing a book about how modern internet language works and one of the things I would dearly love is if it can help people understand exactly this point! (and provide a usefully authoritative-seeming tome to lob at people in your life who Just Don’t Get It when it comes to conveying tone of voice in writing)
might be my prudish catholic upbringing jumping out but imho makeup companies shouldn’t name their products after explicit sexual terms
just my opinion but if the makeup industry is going to market towards young girls who haven’t even hit puberty yet and insist that they have hundreds of dollars worth of high end makeup then they cannot name their products things like ‘climax’ and ‘super orgasm’ or even make puns like ‘glow job’ or claim in bold letters that the mascara is ‘sex proof’ when these young girls have no idea what any of these terms mean and frankly they shouldn’t understand the meaning behind an eyeshadow called ‘daddy’s girl’ or a blush called deep throat it’s all part of the hyper-sexualization of young girls and it’s just getting worse and worse in this new age of instagram/youtube mua’s where girls as young as 8 years old are being pressured into having a beat face that makes them look my age
We really have harmed a whole generation of trans and gnc children by failing to communicate how serious a decision binding actually is, how there’s no ACTUALLY safe way to bind, how it permeneantly damages the body, how it can make top surgery more difficult in the future. I don’t think we should be keeping trans kids from binding (we let kids do all sorts of things they’re really not old enough to understand the potential consequences of) but we owe them the ability to make informed decisions at LEAST
So this is definitely an important conversation to have, but can you point me at some reading about “permanent damage”? I might just be lucky, but I had zero lasting effects from binding. I’d like to at least read up on it so I can have this conversation and be more specific than “be careful.”
Of course! I can’t easily source right now but I am more than happy to provide further info when I am not at work and on mobile. Unfortunately, like a lot of trans healthcare, a lot of what we know about binding is anecdotal and word of mouth. BUT permeneant damage can include:
-Musculoskeletal damage. Binders are indiscriminate compression tools; they can’t flatten the chest without applying pressure every other anatomical structure underneath including the spine, ribs, lungs and heart. Many people who bind experience chronic back pain, shoulder pain, sharp stabbing chest pains, permeneantly decreased lung capacity, literal spine deformation, etc etc.
-A continuation of the above but the ribs are actually jointed bones. Their ability to flex is absolutely vital to their ability to withstand trauma and protect your vital organs. Imagine the damage that would be done to your elbow if your bent your arm to full flexion and then tightly bound it closed like that, for six, eight, twelve hours per day, every day, for weeks or months or years. And you don’t NEED a functioning arm to live!
-Tissue atrophy. Forcing chest tissue to lay in an unnatural way can and will change the way that tissue looks, even to risk of atrophy. Some people who bind and only moderately dislike the way their chest looks find that they HATE the way it looks after binding for a period of time. Tissue atrophy can also make top surgery more difficult in the future, and increase the risk of complications like nerve damage.
-Worsened dysphoria. Once someone starts binding and becomes accustomed to seeing themselves with a flat chest, it can be much more difficult to see yourself without one, and dysphoria that much more intolerable. You can imagine the psychological feedback loop of binding more in response.
The typical safety measures passed around about binding are harm REDUCTION measures and should not be advertised as making binding “safe.” Binding is not safe. It is a very serious health decision with long term consequences and should be treated as such. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong decision, but it should not be considered the DEFAULT decision for chest dysphoria which is frankly how it’s currently treated.
I went to the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference and went to a workshop held by a chiropractor who works with trans men (as well as being a trans man himself), so I’m going to pass on his advice to people who bind:
Stretch your chest, shoulders, and back everyday (at least)
This is a passive stretch where you place a foam roller at the bottom of your spine (to support your hips and lower back), and lifts your shoulders off of the ground, with your arms on the ground to balance you.
This stretch is meant to be held for a few minutes, open up your chest, and aid your everyday posture.
You probably don’t own a foam roller, he advised to wrap a towel or blanket very tightly and tied as a substitute. I use a layer of bed foam rolled up with two belts to keep it rolled. Whatever you use, it ought to have a bit of give and it needs to lift your shoulders off the ground.
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This is an active stretch. Stand in front of a doorway with your feet together (if the door way was not there, your toes would be touching the wall, not crossing through it). When you lift your arms up and put them against the wall, your feet, hips, and arms should all be in line with each other (your arms should not be behind you with your feet and hips in the doorway).
Make a “W” shape with your arms against the wall so that your elbows are the closest part of your arm to the ground, and take one small step forward.
You should feel a pull in your lower shoulders, but it should be comfortable to hold. Donot over stretch, you shouldn’t be leaning your weight into your arms to balance, your weight should be balanced by your legs. Do not judge yourself and think you are doing yourself a favor by thinking that you ought to have a bigger step. Sure, you could overstretch today, but you need to be able to do this tomorrow too! Hold this for 10-15 seconds. (Yet again. Do. Not. Overstretch.)
Bring your feet back together, and do it the other foot. There will probably be one foot that is easier than the other, stretch that step more often than the less difficult step.
Bring your feet together and bring your elbows up so that your upper arms are parallel to the ground and your elbow forms a 90° angle with your forearms. Take your small step forward and hold for 10-15 seconds and switch feet.
Now reach your arms up as high as you can. It doesn’t have to be much higher than the last stretch, if that is as high as you can go, then that’s it. If you can’t reach higher than the last stretch, put your arms down at your sides and then lift your arms up from your sides and put them against the wall (sorry he didn’t include a picture of this one in the slides, message me if this is unclear.)
Your goal is to be able to reach your arms up like in the picture so that you form a Y shape. Step forward and hold for 10-15 seconds, then switch feet.
His advice was to do this stretch as often as you use the bathroom at home (shoot for 3-5 times a day).
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The next two stretchs don’t have pictures! If you can do these stretches with ease and want a more intense version, try using dumbbells and incorporating it into your workouts.
If you’ve ever done snow angels? Put your heels, butt, shoulders, and arms up against a wall (as much of your body as you possibly can should be touching the wall) and lift your arms up as high as you can go like you are making a snow angel.
Alternatively, lay down on the ground instead of up against a wall if you need to work your way up to lifting your arms above your head.
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Again, with your body up against the wall, but this time with your arms in front of you, bring your arms up like Frankenstein’s monster, so that they are as high as your shoulders. Hold this for a few seconds.
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After trying these stretchs, it’ll probably be clear where your range of motion is most limited. For me, the most useful stretches are the W and 90° angle doorway stretch and foam roller stretch, bc I have the most trouble with my lower shoulders and chest. Try to maintain your range of motion where you have it, and use these stretches to improve your range of motion where you are limited.
For all my binding buddies.
Image Descriptions
Image 1: A power point slide titled back stretches. The picture on the slide is of a woman laying on a foam roller. The roller is positioned in the middle of her back and her arms are splayed out to the sides while her legs are bent and spread shoulder width apart.
Image 2: Another power point slide, this one titled chest stretch. The image on the slide is split into three sections, one for each step of the stretch. Section A depicts a person standing in a doorway with their right leg slightly forward and bent (similar to a lunge position, but higher off the ground). Their arms are placed on either side of their head on the door frame. Their arms form a W, with the fore arms parallel to the door frame. Section B depicts the person in a similar position, but the arms are slightly higher than in Section A; they no longer form a W. Instead the persons arms are held in a goal post position (American football goal post, looks like the upper half of a capitol H. IT’S GOOD) Section C depicts the same person in the same position, but with their arms higher than Section B. The arms are now almost fully extended, but the fore arms remain on the door frame.
this may be really nitpicky BUT I am listening to Solas speak about Elvhenan and he pronounces “Arlathan” as “Arla - than” which differs from how most modern elves say it as “Ar - lAth-an”
The interesting part of this is that these pronunciations could be linguistically distinct, as in they have different meanings.
“Arla” is canonically “trap” as in “Elgar’arla” - a spirit trap, where “Elgar” means “spirit.
“an” is a suffix to indicate location, and it is the same in both pronunciations (the /th/ in the first pronunciation could be written off as a linguistic insertion rule to separate two /a/ sounds from each other, but I digress).
So by how Solas pronounces it, with distinguishing between “Arla” and “than” we can translate “Arlathan” to mean something like “Trapped Place” or “Place of Traps” or “Place where there are Traps”. This makes sense considering Elvhenan’s history of slavery and ALSO the lore that says Arlathan was sunk under ground - it is literally trapped.
Here is where it gets interesting.
“Ar” is a first person pronoun, meaning “I” or “me”
“lath” means “love”
In the second pronunciation, we can say that “Ar-lAth-an” mean “Place I love” or “I love this place”, or perhaps even “The place where I love”.
Two very very different translations then! And an indication of how just a simple pronunciation can completely warp the concept of something. The first translation gives Arlathan an ominous feel, potentially even sinister, but the second is more loving and whimsical. Language actively shapes our perspectives, and so it would be no surprise then to see the Dalish have a romanticized idea of Arlathan and subsequently Elvhenan (in addition to the passage of time, being removed from it, and so forth).
Now this isn’t to say this is just a result of VA preference and interpretation *shrug* it could be coincidence. I could be reading into things, but it is a neat little thing to possibly consider. This is mostly to consider the interesting possible ambiguity and double meaning Arlathan’s name may have. This is by no means a perfect or even correct analysis. Mostly just a thought.
Also, I heavily sampled the wiki if you want a reference.
What’s even more interesting is that Arlathan might be the Black/Golden City in the Fade. If the theory “the Evanuris are trapped in the Black City together with the Blight” is true, then Solas’ pronunciation implies that Arlathan is literally the “Place of Trap”, “A Trapped Place”, because that’s where the Evanuris and the first Taint that threatened the world are locked away. That’s where they are trapped in.
We know for sure that there are some ancient elven ruins in the Forest of Arlathan: Tevinter claims that they sank the city underground using blood magic and powerful spells after conquering it, but we know that Elvhenan was already lost when the humans came, that the elves fought against each other in a bloody civil war caused by the absence of their gods and their new, disarming, weakened condition and magic.
So it’s probable that Imperium merely feasted on what remained of Arlathan and later came up with sly propaganda to show how powerful and mighty their empire was. The ruins found in the Forest of Arlathan are probably just a minor part of the city or the most external parts of it and the main, most important part of it might be what’s been floating in the Fade since the creation of the Veil.
It’s also not secret that the depiction of the Black City we can find in Solas’ frescoes and other pictures is very similar to elven architecture and the mosaics on the floor of elven temples that depict Arlathan.
Me practicing this housewife thing for when I drop out of uni
Hey so I just feel the need to add this. NEVER deep fry in a shallow pot. What happened here is this person put frozen fries in hot oil, and the hot oil will nearly double in size when you drop something cold in it. Then it overflows out of the pot and you have a grease fire. You should never have oil more than about a third of the way up the pot.
Reblogging because even I didn’t officially know this.
Also, never use a solid lid like that. They make splatter screens, but if you put a lid over grease, when the food starts steaming it will condense on the lid and drip down into the oil, and water + hot oil = explosion of grease flying everywhere.
