siarah

Latest Posts by siarah

She has a lot to say

genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

Favorite VERY BASIC Comprehensible Input Sources I’ve Found (all free)

These are all for Italian and Arabic (MSA + Levantine dialect) and suitable for A1! I’ve found the very early stages are the hardest to find stuff for but also when it’s the most boring to be confined to flashcards and memorizing so hopefully this helps. Also it keeps me from losing these links.

Italian:

Curioso come George (Italian Curious George, honestly a lot of kids shows can get tiring but Curious George doesn’t hit that “annoying” pitch while still being simple) (link is to one episode but you can find tons in the related vids) (also segments are themed so you can find ones that roughly correlate to a unit of vocab like weather or clothes)

Ardea Digitale Schoolbooks (schoolbooks for children that you can download as PDFs along with workbooks/worksheets)

Arabic (MSA)

Read Learn Play Arabic (cannot speak highly enough of this one it’s so good and there’s so much and idk how it isn’t talked about more)

Cartoon Network MENA (good just because the material is recognizable, obviously usefulness of vocab/level is gonna vary by show)

Arabic (Levantine Dialect)

Sesame Street! Aka Ahlan Simsim. (Some segments are more advanced than others obviously but it’s incredible for learning the sound of the dialect and is also not grating for adults imo) (free on YouTube)

Lingualism Diaries (not nearly as beginner friendly as Read Learn Play but definitely doable within a few weeks assuming you know the alphabet) (also has audio versions)

I highly recommend lingualism.com for a ton of Arabic materials in all sorts of dialects/levels but they’re mostly paid (not expensive! But not free) and this post is meant to compile free stuff.

I don’t think I’ll ever not be annoyed at how girl meets world treated Maya. Welcome to my rant on why Maya Penelope Hart (Hunter) deserved so much more.



(Also, let me just say, I work in this industry and I do get that you can’t have the best friend eclipse the main character but they were such equals it could have been let by. My girl was done dirty. )

(Ps all the gifs are from tumblr’s collection, all credit goes to their original makers)

The whole ‘Maya turning into Riley’ thing was absolute BS. That’s what I’m most mad at.

Riley and all the Matthews said for years all they wanted for Maya was to be happy and have hope and motivation to achieve her potential.

But the second she’s doing that, and isn’t the sad lonely best friend who they can use to all feel better about themselves by pittying?

She’s supposedly morphed into Riley.

She’s a teenage girl she’s not meant to know who she is. Life’s changing. She’s changing.

What did Riley represent? Hope. Happiness. Things people just weren’t used to seeing in Maya.

Girl meets upstate was all about how the day Shawn bought Maya all her new clothes she somehow changed.

I’m sorry?!?!

Did we just all forget how happy she was? How Cory told her in class the hope on her face is what looks so good? How she truly learned what hope was? How she finally got her dream come true with Shawn and her Mom? I mean look at her face. Pure joy. She’d been through a lifetime of pain and anger and heartbreak and awful circumstances.

And then, remember when she went to high school and got her first A? How happy she was to have it so proudly up on the Matthew’s fridge? When she found out all her past failings didn’t count and this track could get her to a college - a way out of the life she had lived?

For them to destroy that in her, to force her back into the depressed, lonely shell of who she used to be, which not only obliterated her confidence but probably ruined her future prospects as well all because they had to cater to Riley’s perfect little world that she’s at the centre of? Maya deserved more.

I mean Riley pretty much told Maya she can’t possibly like a nice boy as she is because she’s got too miserable if an existence. Riley obviously hasn’t come across ✨daddy issues✨yet.

OBVIOUSLY she wants a nice boy. Her dad was a ‘bad boy’, and he was the first man to break her poor tiny heart.

Then there’s Lucas. Girl meets ski lodge was so unbelievably disappointing.

Not to mention the gross Josh thing. Dude was in college, she was 15. Really Disney?! How can there be just under three years between them when he’s in college and she was in middle school. It was so freaking gross.

Also josh with all his wisdom and observations about this being some subconscious scheme to protect Riley - acting like he knows Maya and Lucas better than anyone else, even themselves. He saw them interacting like twice? And Maya is the queen of masking what she really feels when it comes to being legitimately vulnerable.

I truly fully believe that in gm upstate Lucas had picked Maya. There’s no other way that episode makes sense to me. I saw a tumblr post that said watch it twice - once thinking he picks Riley and the other with Maya, and only Maya makes sense - and they’re right. But I think Lucas knew that Riley’s emotional immaturity meant that if they wanted to keep the friend group together, there was no other choice. Maya is used to heartbreak, she could handle it and Riley couldn’t. That’s why I’m sure she pushed him to Riley. They had this moment (captured below) where they both just resigned themselves to a fate of longing for the other but never having it.

But he asked her why she dumped the smoothie on his head. What was she going to say, “because with her you might have to be some Mr Perfect all the time but with me you only have to be your messy, imperfect self and you tried to recycle the same thing you told Riley on me so I humbled you back down” while Riley was sat right there?!

Riley’s reaction when she found out about Lucas’ past in texas shows how she truly only loved the fantasy of him. She wanted Cory and topanga and to be honest anyone could fill that role as long as she was the other one in it. But she couldn’t just accept that there was something that made him not perfect. That the world wasn’t just black and white.

Maya let’s him be himself. She has no expectations of him. She understands everyone has flaws and accepts him for his.

Plus the way he predicts her moves, catching her before she tries to chase farkle or the hand thing in science class. You know when you know someone so well it’s like they’re a part of you? Yeah, they know it too.

They can be imperfect together, and they both felt that ease and comfort. I honest think that’s why he lets her call him so many names. It’s their own affection. Others don’t have to get it for them to feel it. It’s a familiarity - a fondness.

Not to mention him calling Zay back home and calling her the blonde beauty.

Maya constantly gave up her own happiness for Riley, and I truly wish she didn’t, because Riley wouldn’t do the same for her.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Riley thinks she would, but she hasn’t got enough experience of the world to know what that commitment means. Maybe the protect Riley committee was actually harming her in that way. She was shielded too much.

To reduce Maya as a human being who was growing up, who was a normal teenager who was unsure of her identity and self worth, and boil it down to the claim she can’t be happy, or work hard, or be smart, or hopeful unless she’s copying Riley is so selfish. She deserves that growth too. She deserves that happiness. And that’s one of the many reasons that even when I love them as a pair, their friendship could get really toxic when she went too ‘full on Riley’.

It literally demeaned mayas entire humanity, so of course she backed down without telling Lucas how she really felt. She felt broken. She felt lost.

I think she wanted him to fight for her in gm upstate, not that she’d ever say that out loud. He was so passionate when Maya nearly lost art class, I think all she’d want is for him to stand up to absolutely everyone else in her life and say that she’s allowed to be both Maya and happy. He looked gutted when she said he picked Riley either way.

The people she was meant to love and trust took it too far and forced her to undo everything she works for and was happy because of. And waiting for her volcano eruption:

I mean Riley really genuinely thought that Maya would steal from her moms work place?! After every money trouble Katy and Maya went through, Riley really disrespected Maya THAT much?!?

She was told by everyone around her she couldn’t be Maya and be happy, so she pushed away the one guy who’s always met her toe to toe, always challenged her, always defended her and fought for her, always understood her.

It broke her heart. But it wasn’t Lucas who really broke her heart, it was Riley. For never letting go of the fantasy. And also, if farkle cared about Maya as much as he did Riley he wouldn’t have said anything on NYE. Maya deserves happiness, but they’re all so used to seeing her unhappy they think it’s normal and okay to keep her that way so they can grow around her and use her as a spring board for their personality growth.

The fake stories both girls told of what the future would look like for each of them wasn’t what Maya was really thinking. Because Maya feels safe in very very few places, and his arms is one of those. She wouldn’t ‘rather argue with him than save the world’ with him, she’d just hide all her fear and vulnerability until she was alone.

And I don’t believe Riley or the matthews was a safe space for her anymore - because they took her and shaped her and let her flourish - and then intentionally crushed her. I think it’s a good thing she had her mom and Shawn more after that. Because the matthews didn’t want two ‘identical daughters’, so they made an already impressionable Maya back into the sad girl they used to feed.

I’m so mad on mayas behalf. I know she’s not real but I think, as one of the kinds of people who always constantly lets my happiness be trodden on and broken down so those I love can be happy, I’m finally seeing how much the world could offer if for once people like Maya and I let our happiness matter just as much as other peoples.

Like a best friend like Riley who can’t handle the idea that something not be perfect. The world had to revolve around Riley, but sometimes being the best friend in everyone else’s main character story sucks.

Maya lost her happiness and her hope and her motivation to be the best version of herself all because Riley was selfish and kinda toxic, and everyone else went along with it. Riley had to be the centre of everyone’s world, she couldn’t possibly imagine anyone else being happy. This isn’t even just about how we were so robbed of Lucaya, the whole girl meets upstate ep spent the entire episode disparaging and undoing one of the most beautiful episodes of giving a girl who had been through the mill some actual hope. Gm hurricane was when Maya learned that life could be beautiful. Gm upstate taught her that it was all a fever dream and she can’t have good things. She can’t have aspirations, or a popular sense of fashion, or hope, or happiness.

And I hate that. So much.

Maya Penelope Hart (Hunter) deserved so much better than season 3 gave her.

genuinely hate that the german wird for concise is prägnant, because whenever I want to translate it into english my brain tells me it’s pregnant

They’re back!!

reblog this if you're okay with booping spams please !!

today a fascist won an election for the first time since 1933. here, in germany.

i don't care if it's just one (out of 16) states. björn höcke is a fascist. a court decided not long ago that it's allowed to call him a nazi. bc he is one. not "far right" or "conservative" - he is a nazi.

here. in germany. and he just won an election.

it hasn't even been 100 years.

i am scared.

this picture my mum gave me out of an old calendar is so funny to me bc

for an image that has nothing to do with skulduggery pleasant, that is straight up chinduggery. At the very least, that is china sorrows 100%.

but oh? What's this? In the background, is it-? Yes it is!

That's fuckin Obi-wan Kenobi!

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Dude, how can it be that every single fucking thing about US politics trends on here immediately, yet when 27 countries in the EU vote and there's a historic, alarming lurch to the right (far right parties have won the elections in Italy, Austria and France), it's not even trending? In Germany, the AFD, a right-wing populist, anti-democratic, racist party with a wing that is officially extremist (read: Nazis) and is in parts monitored by the office for the protection of the constitution, is the second strongest party (also among 17-24 year olds!). Guess I'll die.

the team is chasing the sickest murderers to ever live meanwhile these two on the phone sexually harassing each other

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide has released a statement saying that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and the United States is complicit. The statement was released in the aftermath of the horrific attack on a refugee camp in Rafah

In April, Lemkin also issued a genocide alert for the West Bank

we were meant to live slowly!!!! we were meant to savor moments and feel unabashedly lazy and frolic and smell the flowers and laugh with our entire hearts and love with our entire souls!!!!! don’t ever feel guilty for resting!!!!!! don’t ever feel guilty for slowing down!!!!!! enjoying life shouldn’t be something you’re ashamed of

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

Bothering the beast

i really like looking at google image searches for “firemen rescuing cats” or something because you get super cute pictures like

AND THEN THERE’S THIS ONE

Kenobi was luminous, a transparent being, a window onto a sunlit meadow of the Force.

Skywalker was a storm cloud, flickering with dangerous lightning, building the rotation that threatens a tornado.

——Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith, Matthew Stover

de una forma una mini pimer es como una cinturonga …

I spy, with my little eye, a photo that was faked by an AI image generator! Can you spot the clues?

FB is turning into a parade of fake AI images churned out by click-farming pages. More misinformation is on the way. Learn some tricks for spotting AI photos!

One thing which genuinely bothers me is Annabeth's perception in the fandom. How she's seen as this cold, stoic, emotionless, reserved and intimidating girl. When in reality, she's a character full of love.

Annabeth, who immediately cried and felt attached to Cerberus after playing with him for a few minutes because she wouldn't get to play with him again.

Annabeth, whose deepest desire, which the Sirens lured her with, is saving Luke and having a good relationship with both her parents.

Annabeth, who believed in Luke's goodness, even after all the countless terrible things he did simply because she had faith in his humanity.

Annabeth, who cried in Percy's arms before entering the labyrinth and refused to reveal the last line of the prophecy because it said to lose a love worse than death and the idea of losing any of her friends is too painful, heartbreaking and worse than dying.

Annabeth, who kissed Percy before parting with him in St. Helens because if he's going to die, she at least wants him to die knowing she loved him.

Annabeth, who took a poisoned knife for Percy during the war because she'd rather die herself than let him die.

Annabeth, who convinced Luke to switch sides by reminding him of the promise of family he gave her. Which in turn, influenced Luke's decision to end himself to destroy Kronos. Hello, she saved the world with the power of love.

Annabeth, who spent months after months losing sleep and searching desperately for Percy when he went missing.

Annabeth, who kissed Percy to eternity in public at their reunion, not caring what anyone is going to say or think. An asteroid could've hit the earth, and she wouldn't have cared.

Annabeth, who told Percy “I love you” when falling in Tartarus because if she was going to die, she wanted them to be her last words.

Annabeth Chase is a sweetheart, who has always felt things deeply and she's so full of love. And I think it's time we let go of the “cold-hearted annabeth” headcanon because it's not true, that's not her.

I know I'm a bit late to saying this but frankly if I found out a secret society of magic-users were just playing nonsense sports and making up slurs for the rest of us instead of helping us out with famines or leukemia I think I'd apply for a job with my local witch hunters

did a study of that one ahsoka pic

This is canon 😭😭😭

This is amazing!! Thank you :) I really love the idea of Leia realizing she misses Han pestering her and then interrupting his work for a change

Since you asked for a number that might or might not be for a fic prompt: How about 7?

Ah, the last of the ficlets! I'm sorry for taking so long on this (and...honestly, I'm unsure of the quality here, but...you know, these are mainly exercises, so).

Number 7 on this list was "visiting them at their place of work", so here you are!

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

She didn’t want to invite trouble merely by acknowledging it, but the Command Center had been painfully quiet for her entire shift, and Leia needed something to happen. Not a disaster, mind; they already experienced those on a regular enough basis, and it wasn’t like she was looking for an adrenaline rush. No, she just hadn’t seen anyone except the staff on duty, which was…strange.

Strange? It’s strange that the only people I’ve seen today are the ones I’m sharing a shift with?

It was, though. Her day was usually interrupted by a number of beings, from a single smuggler to an entire squadron of pilots, all of whom thought their own concerns more important than anything she could possibly be busy with. The complete lack of contact from any of them was unnerving.

Well, the Rogues were out on a mission, so the lack of contact from them was to be expected. Han and Chewie weren’t, though. They weren’t due to leave for another run for several days, and Leia was certain she had heard loud cursing in Basic, Corellian, and Shyriiwook emanate from a nearby hangar when she had grabbed lunch from the mess.

The fact that she had even had to get lunch herself was strange. It shouldn’t have been — it shouldn’t have been — but the number of times she missed the lunch window only to have Han or Chewie or Luke show up with her midday meal probably outnumbered the times she had sat down and had a proper lunch without interruption.

Leia’s shift had ended a solid half hour ago, but she found herself waiting in the Command Center for…something. Someone? She rarely had so much time to devote to thoughts of her own movements and often relied on outside indications that she should be somewhere: an alarm, a meeting alert, someone stopping by on their way to dinner…

Someone.

Right. Han almost always annoyed her until she gave in and ate dinner in the mess when he was planetside. When he wasn’t…well, she was usually too busy to notice until her stomach growled, at which point she ate a ration bar or two.

I wonder where he is. It was a silly thought; they had no agreement, no contract demanding that he irritate her into eating away from her desk, but she had apparently started relying on that outside cue more than any other.

Leia walked to the mess. She heard loud banging, followed by Han shouting to Chewie as she passed the hangar where the Falcon was housed. What is wrong with that disaster of a ship now? she wondered.

As she entered the dinner line, a thought occurred to her: Han hadn’t bothered her about dinner. He might have gone with just Chewie — it was possible they were in a hurry and couldn’t bother with going to get her — but she wanted to be sure. Leia caught the attention of the ensign spooning a brilliant orange mystery grain into containers. “Have Captain Solo or Chewbacca come through yet?”

The ensign shook his head. “No, ma’am. Haven’t seen ‘em.”

Leia checked her chrono. The dinner line was minutes away from closing, and Han and Chewie had certainly sounded preoccupied. She asked the ensign for three meals and carried the stack out of the mess hall toward the hangar.

The area surrounding the Falcon looked as if the ship had been sick. Parts — old, new, refurbished, destroyed — were strewn everywhere, and Leia couldn’t discern any meaningful order just by looking at them.

Han hung upside down from the belly of the ship, his legs completely consumed by the Falcon’s hull, while Chewie handed him a tool of some kind. Before the smuggler disappeared entirely into the ship, he caught sight of Leia and scowled.

“No time for whatever you’ve got for us, Worship. We’re workin’ on a deadline and we’ve gotta—”

“Dinner?” she interrupted, lifting the boxed meals emphatically. “One of the guys on dinner duty mentioned you two hadn’t been through yet, and you’ve seemed busy all day, so I thought…” She shrugged.

Han blinked, checked his chrono, and shook his head once. “Didn’t realize it was so late.”

Leia nodded. “I figured as much.” She set the boxes on the lid of a nearby crate. “I’ll leave these here. You may want to get to them pretty quick; whatever grain they served looked half-congealed by the time I went through the line.”

[Thank you, Princess,] Chewie said.

Leia nodded. “You’re welcome.” She turned and took a step away from the Falcon, intending to eat…she wasn’t sure. Maybe her quarters, or back at her desk just so she wouldn’t be completely alone.

“Hey, Leia?” Han called. She turned to look in his direction right as he freed himself from the guts of the ship and twisted just enough to land on his feet. He took a few steps toward her. “You wanna eat here with us?”

Leia nodded and walked back toward Han and Chewie. “Yes,” she said with a smile. “That’d be nice.”