lokispriestess:

tilthat:

TIL During Prohibition, moonshiners would wear “cow shoes.” The fancy footwear left hoofprints instead of human shoe prints, helping distillers and smugglers evade police.

via reddit.com

I can’t let myself form a complete thought about this because I would die from the sheer amount of dionysian aesthetic this situation contains

gowns:

man the crazy thing about babies is that like, some people would think that reading a baby a book about farm animals is teaching them about farm animals, but really it’s teaching them about the concept of a book and how there’s new information on each page of a single object, but really, beyond that, it’s teaching them how language works, and beyond that it’s really actually teaching them about human interaction, and really really it’s them learning about existing in a three-dimensional space and how they can navigate that space, but actually, above all it is teaching them that mama loves them.

effiecalvin:

anauthorandherservicedog:

effiecalvin:

cryptidsnail:

effiecalvin:

I am the very best at marketing.

Amazon
Goodreads

im honestly gonna get it. you had me at “made a homophobe so angry” 

This actually happened! I’ve always felt that if you buy a book where the stated summary is “two princesses attempt to fight dragons and get married” you don’t really have a right to be mad when the book turns out to be about two princesses attempting to fight dragons and get married but what the hell do I know.

To be fair, maybe the reader expected the princesses to marry the dragons?

Please tell me there’s a sequel where that happens.

BUT ONLY IF THE DRAGONS ARE ALSO LADIES.

Actually, the main complaint was that it was “historically inaccurate” for two princesses to be allowed to get married. Which was weird to me, since this story is not set on earth and I’m pretty sure it is historically accurate for gay couples to be allowed to get married on this super convenient wish-fulfillment fantasy world that I concocted after logging 300 hours in Skyrim.

Curiously enough, she didn’t complain about the dragons being inaccurate.

Source: effiecalvin

snakebitcat:

2ndplacewins:

In class we were talking about how cats teach themselves to hunt around their collar bells, and this dude followed that up with “well you know how Santa has those reindeer covered in those bells, right?” 

and what he going for was “the bells on cat collars are the same that reindeer are pictured wearing”

But what *I* heard was “Santa’s Reindeer are predator animals that are covered in bells for our protection” and let me tell you I did not appreciate that.

Just hear those slay bells jingling.

why are bats called bats?

bloodlooksblackinmoonlight:

elodieunderglass:

linguisten:

awed-frog:

because they look like flying mice [Danish: flagermus, German: Fledermaus, Luxembourgish: Fliedermaus, Swedish: fladdermus]

because they look like half mice and half owl [French: chauve-souris]

because they look like half mice and it’s not 100% clear what the other half is [Ladin: utschè-mezmieur, Catalan: rat-penat, Lombard: mezzarat]

because apparently they make a flap flap noise [English: bat]

because they’ve got badass leather wings [Gaelic: sciathàn leathair, Old Norse:

leðrblaka]

because they look like cute nocturnal butterflies [Maltese: farflett il-lejl]

because they’re probably, like, blind mice [Serbo-croatian: sismis, Portugese: morcego, Spanish: murcíelago, Arabic: khaffash]

because they fly at night [Italian: pipistrello, Slovenian: netopir, Polish: nietoperz, Greek: nykterides, Farsi: shab parreh]

So bat literally means flapper. You’re welcome.

This, my friends, this is true etymology. Explaining why something is named the way it is, finding patterns and principles of meaning, not just tracing a word’s form back through time (which, admittedly, is oftentimes a prerequisite for exploring the former).

This exact conversation is how I became friends with @pipcomix

SKY FLAP FLAPS