If you add two pounds of sugar to literally one ton of concrete it will ruin the concrete and make it unable to set properly which is good to know if you wanna resist something being built, French anarchists used this to resist prison construction in the 80s
I’m just gonna go ahead and reblog this for purely educational purposes.
added bonus is that concrete now taste good
Sugar does not really do that.
What you need is citric acid (you get that to get the hard water residues out of your pots/water boiler/washing machine), looks like sugar granules.
Or concentrated vinegar.
Cement needs a high ph to bind properly. So if you add acid, it won’t properly set and/or needs 3-4 times longer.
Speaking as someone who works in the concrete forming industry: the easiest way to severely fuck up any large concrete pour is to delay it at the wrong moment.
If someone is trying to build a huge fuckoff concrete thing – say, for instance, a giant wall – they’re going to need an obscene quantity of concrete, and that’s all going to have to be transported there from the nearest mixing plant. This means they’ll have multiple trucks coming by to decant concrete in consecutive pours while the workers place it and vibrate it to ensure it all intermixes and sets properly, forming a monolithic mass. If one pour is allowed to set before the next one is added, you get a big, ugly, possibly structurally unsound gap between the two called a “cold joint.” A bad enough cold joint can completely fuck your whole project because the next engineer or inspector who sets foot on that site is going to take one look at that motherfucker and immediately embark on a quest for blood vengeance. You will literally have to cut that whole section of wall out, slap some dowels in the nearest structurally sound bits, and re-form and pour the offending segment from scratch, which represents a fortune in cost overruns and will make everyone involved very upset. This is an especially bad problem in hot climates, because the concrete curing process is exothermic – that stuff sets much faster when it’s really hot out, and its 28-day compressive strength tends to be poorer as well.
So if, hypothetically speaking, you wanted to completely shit up a wannabe dictator’s enormous unfeasible poured concrete vanity project, you could literally just randomly hassle and delay every concrete truck on its way there. Dude’s gonna end up with a giant worthless pile of shitty crumbling concrete and exposed reinforcing steel, and an army of pissed-off contractors to boot.
reblogging for purely educational purposes nothing more
there is absolutely no reason hogwarts couldn’t’ve been founded as a monastic school for the education of the clergy, with two houses for women and two for men, except that the hp fandom is full of bitter atheists and people who don’t know shit about paganism & religious history
@ofloveandmedea said: please talk about this headcanon it sounds Fascinating and you always have such good sources
here’s two things that i don’t think fanfic writers understand about pre-enlightenment europe:
first, there is zero evidence that paganism continued to exist as a practiced faith in western europe after about 900 CE. there is more evidence for demons. (reading on this, among other things) if you want to make the case that with the statute of secrecy, wizards erased all evidence of their existence as your justification for pagan wizards, that’s fine, but you’re then left with the question of where the stories about witches came from.
second, there was no way for a non-christian organization to function. period. it didn’t happen. jewish groups, especially pre-1492, were very small and very quiet; islamic groups kept out of christian europe; there were no other options. if you were a guild, if you were a school, if you were a group of any form, if you were a government–you were christian. it was explicit. there wasn’t even a conception of how to organize without invoking christianity.
so when, in or about 950, hogwarts was founded, it had to be founded in a christian framework. there’s a big, huge, gigantic problem though: in 950, education happened one-on-one, through tutors or apprenticeships. the only, only institution educating in a group format was the church.
why? because clergy came from all classes, because clergy were required to be (at least partially) literate, and because the majority of the population (in some places and eras, from any demographic) was not literate. religious institutions were the only places collecting significant numbers of children and giving them an education.
there were two forms of this: cathedral schools, which produced priests, and monastic schools, which produced monks and nuns. (some reading)
couple of reasons why hogwarts would be monastic and not a cathedral:
the boring, the reasonable, hogwarts isn’t anywhere near anything that would be a cathedral, but monasteries were all over the place and the more remote, the better
priests were all male, which makes two of the founders difficult to explain
scotland was more connected to the irish monastic form of christianity than the mainland european bishop focused christianity
so. if you’re going to create a school in 950 in scotland that accepts students from all backgrounds with the goal of educating them, the most reasonable framework for this is the monastic school.
(monastic schools were also notoriously apolitical, which would go a long way to explaining some things in the books…)
but wait! you say. what about christianity and magic?
i’m so glad you asked. medieval catholicism didn’t actually have a problem with harry potter magic, as long as it was dressed up in the appropriate forms.
quote from holy feast and holy fast by caroline walker bynum:
By 1500, indeed, the model of the female saint, expressed both in popular veneration and in official canonizations, was in many ways the mirror image of society’s notion of the witch. Each was thought to be possessed, whether by God or by Satan; each seemed able to read the minds and hearts of others with uncanny shrewdness; each was suspected of flying through the air, whether in saintly levitation or biolocation, or in a witches’ Sabbath.
in other words, it’s not the things that people do that make them witches: it’s their relationship (or not) to God and the Church. things that we today would call magic–healing people by touching them, or saying incantations; turning one bread into many; transporting from place to place–all of these turn up in hagiographies of saints as miracles that they performed.
(complicating matters is that they did have a conception between good and bad witches, it’s just that all were damned. so you have good witches, who are doing good things, and bad witches, who are doing bad things, and saints, who are doing good things, and the quality of the thing…well it does matter, but it matters less than the position of the person doing it)
additionally, throughout the middle ages, you see records of people definitely doing magic which is contemporaneously acknowledged as magic who are…not getting burned as witches. the big easy example here is court alchemists & astrologers, who were all over the place telling the future and/or making things blow up and only really getting into trouble when their patrons did. (some reading)
there were also tumblr’s favorite women, the herbalist or local midwife (or, equally common, the wealthy widow). the line between “medicine” and “magic” was not all that well formed: if you knew that certain herbs with certain prayers would keep someone alive, who was to say that it was the herbs vs the prayers that did the heavy lifting? later there was a clear(er) distinction, but even then, the association of midwifery with witchcraft is not new and it is not unfounded. (more reading)
so there’s a deep, deep split here. because on the one hand, yes, people were (irregularly, but routinely) tortured and (less commonly) executed for witchcraft (under a variety of names). but on the other hand, people were socially rewarded for practicing magic within accepted forms, and while sometimes this was because the source of the magic was seen as different, sometimes it was not.
in this context, then, in this understanding that some people could (and did) work magic without being evil, in this society where education was the province of a very, very select group of people who were also (what a coincidence!) more likely to be workers of magic, in this situation that j.k. rowling seems to have absolutely no idea of–
hogwarts was a monastic school to produce good catholic magical monks and nuns.
(some more readings i didn’t have an excuse to share earlier: link (on merlin), link (on anglo-saxons), link (on things witches did), link (on what the witch hunters thought they were hunting and why)
I am a medievalist and damn it I am totally here for this headcanon because as stated above, a completely pagan school and society just doesn’t make sense in the medieval world, especially as magic was largely accepted during the middle ages to the point that scholastic magic was a big thing and often performed by monks (as they were the ones with an education).
I would fight so hard for a Pagan Hogwarts… if there were any indication in canon that it could ever have existed. Instead, we’re left with the vague impression that Hogwarts has always been quasi-atheistic, because it’s founded by wizards who “know the truth” about magic and that prayers, of course, don’t do anything unless they happen to be spells.
A monastic order makes much, much more sense than “secular apprenticing institution for a guild that can’t say its name in public in most places.” (B’sides, guilds had strong ties to the church. They usually had a patron saint, and a chapel at the guild-hall, and if they looked like they were getting too powerful, the church would take action to limit that.)
As mentioned, the church was EVERYWHERE and into EVERYTHING. There was no aspect of government and no community organizations that did not have ties to the church. (Think of it as similar to the modern internet… sure there, are people with only a little connection, but anyone with no connection at all is a bit weird, and you certainly can’t operate a business like that, other than a very tiny, very locals-only shop.)
I would love a Pagan Hogwarts. I cannot believe it existed; Hogwarts was established in a time and place where the Catholic church was the absolutely unifying meme for humanity.
And then The Reformation comes in and mucks everything up. What happens to Hogwarts when Scotland goes Presbyterian? That would have been (pardon the pun) an ungodly mess.
The African Renaissance Monument in Senegal, larger that the Eiffel tower and the statue of liberty .. Things you don’t see in mainstream media. @KrystVegaNeteru
This is beautiful.
I think this picture better illustrates the size of that monument.
I never even knew this existed this makes me so happy to find out about it
Thorki Modern AU: Soldier!Thor and Arms Dealer!Loki
@brotherplease is the first to respond to my request for collaboration on Thorki AU gif sets here. It is my greatest honour to work with her. She basically formulates most of our narrative and finds many beautiful gifs to back it up.
Soldier!Thor is tasked to bring Arms Dealer!Loki to from site to another for trading. Thor and Loki are on opposing sides. While Thor is risking his neck out in a complete war zone to find some peace Loki is making profit on selling fire arms for said war.
During the first few weeks, Loki looks down on Thor’s job and finds the army’s disciplined lifestyle intolerable.
What Loki does not know is that the illegal arms deal has fallen through and his superior decides to get rid of him to avoid leaks. When he is attacked at the meeting spot, Thor stays behind and rescues him regardless of their mutual dislike. The turn of events disorients Loki’s perception of himself and his surrounding. To survive, he tasks Thor into returning him safely back towards a base far off, passing right through the heated war zone.
After seeing the horrors of war first hand, Loki and Thor make pact to cooperate with each to ensure his safe escape.
Deep inside, Loki finds himself vulnerable, stunned and overall afraid.
Thor comes to dislike Loki less and less with their time together. Genuinely concerning himself over his well being and safety as he drives Loki to finding hope and depending on Thor for strength and guidance.
The long term partnership turns into something more one night, when a seduction attempt brings the new found friendship to another level. Mutual respect soon converts to unambiguous sentiments of passion, tenderness, lust and perhaps something more. Thor finds warmth in Loki and Loki in turn finds protection in Thor.
When Thor delivers Loki to their agreed destination one early morning, he has expected the end of everything, the love, the hate, the passion, the differences and mostly importantly, the companionship.Thor can hardly contain his surprise and joy, when he sees Loki join his army three months later as the consultant. A wide grin spreads across Thor’s features only to be met with a responsive smirk from Loki.
Together, Loki and Thor pull themselves through the war in hopes of finding peace. While their days are filled with violence and terror their nights are filled with desire and fulfillment.
It disgusts me that Buffy never beat the living shit out of Xander after he yelled at her in 3×02 and not after Buffy finally found out Xander lied about Willow telling her to kick Angel’s ass. Joss Whedon’s scummy ass just loved putting himself in that character to put Buffy “in her place.” Scumbag. Xander never faced consequences and that was because Joss never did. Until the 2010’s came for ha white Thano’s looking ass.
Actually Joss is Buffy.
It was about four years after the end of the run of Buffy that I really just went “Oh, I was Buffy! The whole time.” I always thought I was Xander before he started getting laid. I’m the wacky sidekick. Then I had this shocking moment of idiotic revelation that I’d been writing about myself that whole time. -Joss Whedon
It was about four years after the end of Buffy that I went, oh! I was Buffy the whole time. I [thought I was] Xander–before he started getting laid. It’s the best thing about the work. If you’re not writing about yourself, why are you writing? -Joss Whedon
Which casts an exceptionally depressing light on the fact that Comics Buffy apparently can’t handle a long term relationship.
Also, really says a lot that you want a heroic character to beat the living shit out of someone for yelling and one lie. I mean, what does theft merit? Beheading? What if Xander had like, dared to lay a hand on her while yelling? Castration for sure.
There’s been rather a lot of “Any character who ever so much as looked cross-eyed at Buffy is scum who deserves to be BOILED IN LAVA and their fans should be pelted with fruits and various meats!” in the tags recently.
It seems to come in cycles. Someone dares to suggest her friends had the right idea once, and then all this for a while.
I honestly don’t get where it comes from. I mean, I love and protect my faves, but still, yeesh.
If you want a quote about Joss seeing himself in Buffy that’s more about Buffy than a guy he isn’t:
“Buffy went through a lot, but I always had a very firm base with her. She’s the guy you don’t see coming. She was my avatar. She was the girl in the picture. Whereas Angel was a straight-up hero, and that made him hard to write.” –Joss Whedon, Cultural Humanism Award Q/A
Also, feminists generally regard the trope of “male character does something skeezy to a female character, who responds with cartoonishly disproportionate violence to teach him a lesson” as misogynistic. Like, it essentially excuses bad behavior on the part of the male character and the male audience who would be presumed to use the character as an extension by including a built-in punishment mechanism. No lesson is taught, just a fee for bad behavior that is paid and moved past with the full intention of committing it again and paying the fee again. If Buffy really beat up Xander for bad behavior, the discourse would be about Joss Whedon thinking that a fee for bad behavior is an excuse for including it at all, and there’s already speculation that female characters beating up male characters is an expression of his masochistic desire instead of any real illustration of female empowerment. I feel like these kinds of criticisms are more about subjective emotional outbursts than any analytical appraisal of feminist storytelling.
1. Progesterone: not for everyone, but for many people it may increase
sex drive and WILL make your boobs bigger. Also effects mood in ways
that many find positive (but some find negative). Most doctors won’t
prescribe this to you unless you ask. Most trans girls I know swear by
it.
2. Injectible estrogen: is
more effective than pill or patch form. Get on it if you can bear
needles bc you will see more effects more quickly.
3. Estradiol
Cypionate: There is currently a shortage of injectible estradiol
valerate. There is no shortage of estradiol cypionate. Functionally they
do the same shit.
4. Bicalutamide: This is an anti-androgen that
has almost none of the side-effects of spironolactone or finasteride.
The girls I know who are on it are evangelical about it.
Are there HRT medications that don’t increase blood clot risk? I’m already at risk because of my blood pressure, and my doctor won’t prescribe HRT that increases clot risk while I’m on the medication – and I may never not be on the medication.
Absolutely.
The concerns surrounding venous thromboembolic events as a side-effect of hormone replacement therapy can mostly be traced back to one particular study known as the Women’s Health Initiative. This study was an enormous undertaking which, unfortunately, demonstrated significant adverse effects of the hormone therapies studied. As a result of this the use of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal cis women was dramatically reduced as the medical community began to question whether or not the therapy caused more harm than good.
Naturally, trans women have been suffering from this fall-out ever since.
What physicians seem to fail to recognize is that the study examined a very specific hormone regimen which was, arguably, outmoded at the time the study was conducted: It examined the use of conjugated equine estrogen (Premarin) with or without the use of medroxyprogesterone acetate. Neither of these drugs is regularly used for the treatment of transgender women.
The estrogen most commonly used to treat transgender women nowadays is 17β-estradiol either in pill form or in the form of a sticky patch that you apply to your skin. Esters of estrogen (e.g. estradiol valerate) are also sometimes used either in a pill form or as an intramuscular injection.
Transdermal estradiol patches are the gold standard when it comes to treating women who are at high risk of a venous thromboembolic event. It simply does not increase the risk of developing a venous thromboembolism. The only thing you should keep in mind is that patches are not always well tolerated because of the lifestyle changes required to keep them from falling off and the fact that they tend to irritate the skin.
It’s difficult to find hard numbers regarding the relative risk of venous thromboembolic events with regards to hypertension. The best I could find after an hour or so of searching was this study regarding VTE in lung cancer patients. Hypertension increased the risk by a factor of 1.8.
As far as the anti-androgen is concerned: The primary use for spironolactone for cisgender people is as an antihypertensive.
Even if the risk of thromboembolism was truly significant with modern hormone replacement therapy it wouldn’t justify what your doctor is doing to you. The fact is that mortality in the transgender community from suicide–caused in part due to the lack of access to hormone therapy–is substantial. The quality of life lost when a trans woman is denied hormone therapy is substantial. The fact that your doctor does not appear to be taking this into consideration when they weigh the risk of thromboembolism against not receiving necessary medical care is deeply concerning.
I strongly recommend that you seek a doctor who is more sensitive to your medical needs as a transgender woman.
Edit: Fixed a minor, but embarrassing, error.
oh wow this is so helpful & good info
Everyone who cares about transfem people please reblog this
I’m in rehearsals for Macbeth right now and this line is always hilariously underwhelming.
Oh, but this is exactly the kind of thing I love as an actor! If nothing can “remove the tone of small talk”, then let the line be small talk. Does he think it’s a joke, and he’s playing along? Is he clamping down on his emotions? Does he just not know what to say, and this is the only thing that comes out of his mouth? If “gasping and mimed horror” don’t do the trick, stop doing it. Let the line be what it’s trying to be, and find the truth and the weight in that.
Remember back in 2011 when Obama had GOP members over for dinner, and he served so many peas that the republicans made him eat their servings, and a bunch of cartoonists argued about who made whom eat peas?
what the fuck
Legit, I was reading through these comics like “ are the peas supposed to represent the issues in our country?”, then you fuckin tell me “nah bro Obama just served a lot of peas at dinner.”. You have to be joking.
Playing 5th edition for the first time and feeling overwhelmed? Here’s a quick glimpse into the classes.
Barbarian
Fundamentally: It’s like when you step on a Lego in the middle of the night and for a moment your capacity for rational thought is eclipsed by the fact that the entire world must tremble before the unfathomable depths of your wrath. Only with fewer Legos and more swords and stuff.
Mechanically: You can go into a rage in battle that diminishes the damage you take and increases the damage you deal. A lot of your fighting is based on high-risk, high-reward strategies, intimidation, and instinct rather than careful calculation.
Bard
Fundamentally: The words you speak change the shape of the minds around you. You’ve taken motivational speaking to a whole new level. You can also insult someone so hard they die from it.
Mechanically: Your day-to-day repertoire of spells stays the same (once you’ve learned a spell, it tends to stick in your head) and also pulls from a lot of different specializations. You can also inspire your allies, mess with your enemies’ morale, and, yes, insult someone so hard they die from it.
Cleric
Fundamentally: You’re pretty tight with some sort of higher power who’s granted you abilities commensurate with their sphere of influence. You might be a warm and fuzzy beacon of light and love, you might heal the sick, or you might make swarms of insects descend on your screaming foes. God stuff, you know?
Mechanically: You have access to a huge number of spells but don’t know them all off by heart, so every morning you spend some time in prayer and contemplation to make sure a few of them are ready at your fingertips when you need them most.
Druid
Fundamentally: You can turn into animals and control a lot of powerful magic that’s tied in with nature and the elements. You also may have read too many Animorphs books as a kid.
Mechanically: Much like clerics, you have a huge number of spells potentially at your disposal but have to concentrate each morning on picking out which ones you’ll pack with you. You can also, you know, turn into animals. That’s a thing.
Fighter
Fundamentally: You probably watch a lot of action movies and wince every time a character pulls off an amazing fight despite not having any experience or training. You’ve worked very hard to learn strategy, tactics, and precision, and when the stars align, the whole battlefield is yours to control.
Mechanically: Depending on your specialty, you’ll have a variety of abilities to make combat go a little more smoothly for you and your friends: taunting enemies so they focus on the right people, shielding your squishier allies, or just doling out an absurd amount of hurt.
Monk
Fundamentally: You think people get a little weird about their swords; you’ve never needed more than just your fists and maybe a good stick. You’re highly trained and absurdly dexterous: if someone tries to pull a coin out from behind your ear, they’ll probably find themselves with a rabbit in their hand instead and no idea what happened.
Mechanically: You’re so quick that you can snatch arrows out of mid-air. You’re also very centered on precise, devastating strikes, and have a store of ki points that allow you to do special attacks/defenses.
Paladin
Fundamentally: While clerics are generally a little more buddy-buddy or reverential with their divine patrons, yours is something more of an… employer. You know how it is when you’re on the clock: sometimes you gotta do your best to be the good you want to see in the world, and sometimes you gotta swear to enact vengeance for ancient wrongs. It’s a living.
Mechanically: Your singularly goal-oriented abilities are a blend between magic and more traditional combat, and you can frequently use magic spells to imbue weaponry with divine power. You also have an impressive ability to suss out both strong good and strong evil.
Ranger
Fundamentally: You know the wilderness pretty darn well (and probably complain about weekend hikers a lot). Your idea of a good time is being dropped in the woods without a map and having to puzzle your way out, preferably while hunting a few monstrosities along the way…
Mechanically: Your experience and survival instincts will serve you especially well in particular regions (a favored terrain you select) and against particular enemies (a favored type you select). You pick up a bit of magic here and there, mainly to help yourself and your friends make it through the wilderness unscathed.
Rogue
Fundamentally: You’re a very sneaky person who figures the best battle is the one that you ensure is over before it even gets a chance to start… mostly because you know if you get cornered you’ll probably get squashed like a bug. It’s probably a good thing that you’re so stealthy you practically vanish into another dimension.
Mechanically: You get huge bonuses and incentives for attacking first or when an opponent is distracted. You’re also notoriously quick-fingered and can be assured that if something ever goes missing, every eye in the room is going to be looking at you. Whoops.
Sorcerer
Fundamentally: You’ve got some powerful magical abilities that just sort of… happen, and your control over them is a little shaky at best. But it’s fine, it’s all good, you’ve got it handled. That tree was always on fire, right?
Mechanically: You learn a limited selection of powerful spells that are always at your disposal, and also gain access to a pool of Sorcery Points that will let you further manipulate your magic as you get more and more comfortable with your spellcasting.
Warlock
Fundamentally: Some incredibly shifty and absurdly powerful ancient being decided you seemed kind of neat, so they were all, “Hey, how would you like to have some seriously freaky magic in exchange for making a sorta dodgy pact with me?” and you were all, “alksdjflgk???” because hey, otherworldly and unfathomable, and they were all, “Cool, have fun,” and now you can kill things with your brain.
Mechanically: You have an extremely limited number of very powerful spells, but your spellcasting recharges very quickly, since the channel between you and the source of your magical abilities is pretty darn open. You also made a pact with something strange and a little bit unknowable. What could go wrong?
Wizard
Fundamentally: You’re the kind of person who got all A’s in school but also studied their ass off to do it. It’s like you read Harry Potter so many times that you managed to will magic into existence. You’re probably going to drag the party to every used bookstore on the planet.
Mechanically: You have a spellbook that contains every spell you know. Every day, you have to study up on a handful of these spells that you want to have immediately at your fingertips. You can add to the spellbook by finding more spells out in the world and copying them down using fancy-ass stationery.
Loki is the Philosopher King 