Latest Posts by thecaffiend - Page 5
THAT guy Early Morning thoughts. #pascalcampion
stupid leftists and their belief in *checks notes* the intrinsic value of human life
idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com
I had a professor in college who used to start solving every problem with the same dialogue.
Proff: What’s the first step to solving any problem? Class: Don’t panic. Proff: And why is that? Class: Because we know more than we think we do.
I think about that a lot tbh. It didn’t occur to me until much later that he meant for us to apply that dialogue outside of the classroom to any problem. Because we always know more than we think we do. We are all an amalgam of random information that ends up being relevant with surprising frequency.
There are times that my husband asks me questions, just to hear my thoughts. Like, he’ll read an article and send it to me just so we can talk about it. And I remember the first time he did it when we dated. I realized he actually respected what I thought and my opinion and he wasn’t just asking to be a devils advocate. Sometimes he would just let me talk and talk and just say “I hadn’t thought about it that way. That’s a good point” and that’s it. Not to fight me or ask my opinion so he can say his
And it dawned on me how many men are assholes and like to hear themselves talk and that for the 24 years of my life prior to being with him, not a single man had just ever asked me what i thought, just to hear my thoughts.
“My standpoint is armed neutrality.”
— Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers
“When we set children against one another in contests - from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science “fairs” (that are really contests), from dodge ball to honour rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read - we teach them to confuse excellence with winning, as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others. We encourage them to measure their own value in terms of how many people they’ve beaten, which is not exactly a path to mental health. We invite them to see their peers not as potential friends or collaborators but as obstacles to their own success… Finally, we lead children to regard whatever they’re doing as a means to an end: The point isn’t to paint or read or design a science experiment, but to win. The act of painting, reading, or designing is thereby devalued in the child’s mind.”
— Alfie Kohn, The Myth Of The Spoiled Child
I don’t know if it’s just me but the second someone tells me they hit their kids or want to hit their future kids I immediately never want to talk to them again.
economists really took the divine right of kings and turned it into billionaire CEOs
I don’t know who wrote this or why, but this writing is just *chef’s kiss*
**Editing to add: I now know that this was said by Lindy West in her book The Witches are Coming. Good to know!
My life has been so much better ever since I traded my impostor syndrome to brilliant conman -syndrome. Do I deserve anything in life? Fuck no! Will I grasp it anyway? Fuck yes!
My art has never been worth shit, but watch me bullshit my way into art school! I am a horrid goblin, but watch me make these people like me! Am I qualified to do this task? Well I sure have the certificates that say that I am! And how did I get those? Who knows! Not me! I am so good at cheating, I don’t have to break a single rule to do it!
I am brilliant, fast, and absolutely drunk with power!
Works by Jade Merien
This artist on Instagram // Society6
“The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it then you make it worse because you project onto it all kinds of bogies and threats which don’t exist in it at all.
Whenever you meet a ghost, don’t run away. Because the ghost will capture the substance of your fear and materialise itself out of your own substance. It will kill you eventually because it will take over all your own vitality.
So, then, whenever confronted with a ghost walk straight into it. And it will disappear.”
— Alan Watts
You know, with all the language throughout Star Wars about “giving in” to the Dark Side, how the Dark Side makes you more powerful, how the Dark Side makes you age strangely and destroys you, it sure doesn’t sound like an “opposite side of the coin” so much as the “deeper end of the pool,” like it’s actually the true form of the force and being a Jedi is about keeping it tamed so it doesn’t eat you the way it actually wants.
Give me body horror in magic.
Give me pyromancy that burns the skin off your hand until your bones are showing. Give me arcane that cooks you inside-out from manaburn. Give me cryomancy that cracks your skin and chips it away. Give me necromancy that causes your teeth to turn necrotic and your eyes to glass over white.
I don’t want cute magic. I want magic to be a raw and dangerous force. I want those who harness it to feel the full effects of what a great and terrible thing it is. I want mages who wear the effects of their magic on their skin and in their bones.
That’s the good stuff.
hey guys! for those of you who may not know me, I am Alexi (@alexistudies) and the long awaited masterpost is FINALLY here on how I study for Organic Chemistry (which i might have to retake lmaooo but that’s a story for a different time). Now, I don’t get the best grades, as my professor’s exams are ridiculously hard, but I have learned the material enough to teach others. If you’re struggling with how to navigate this mind-boggling course that’s pretty much like learning a new language, this post is for YOU! lets gettin it crackin’
Always start by reading the material BUT don’t go in with a cold read (aka just reading the chapter from start to finish) break it into 2 steps: SQ3R and then fully read.
SQ3R: Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review
disclaimer: personally i do this method by chapter section so I am not overwhelmed with material!
survey: skim the material. read the titles of the sections and subsections, and glance over the actual material within the chapter. take mental note of weird acronyms you may see or vocabulary that stands out. this will prime your brain for all the information you’re going to get when you go the 3R’s.
question: get some sticky notes and write down questions for each section in the textbook. for example, if you just skimmed the section on “Sn1 Reactions”, write a question down on the sticky note like “what does Sn1 mean? what does its mechanism look like?” and stick it in the corresponding place. even if the section seems direct and you don’t have any questions, create one regardless. This will help the information stick! Don’t worry about answering them just yet.
read: pretty self explanatory but read a section of the textbook. read it twice if things still seem fuzzy after the first read, and this time, go slower. now, there should be a sticky note where you wrote a question during the second part of this process. write the answer in to the question based on your knowledge from your reading. also, feel free to take note of any other things that seem to stand out on this sticky note. again, i do this section by section in my textbook so i don’t get burned out or overwhelmed.
recite: once you’ve done the first three steps for the whole chapter, its time to collect all the sticky notes!!! set them down on a flat surface in their chronological order and get prepared with your notebook/tablet and stylus/etc. now you’ll compile all your sticky notes into reading notes! during this stage, read your sticky notes out loud and supplement your reading notes by copying & annotating examples from the textbook.
At this point, you should have already read and done most of the first step. Now, its time to go back through and really engage with the material. As you skim each section, you’ll answer the questions you wrote on the sticky notes! This is pretty self explanatory, I hope. This will make sure that you engage with the material and not just blankly read it. I’m a person who gets bored with textbook reading fairly quickly, this really helps me. Its okay if you don’t fully understand the concepts during this step because you’re just putting your feet in the water.
Still confused on the material? Have some small concepts you just can’t seem to get yet? Its okay! Now, you’ll get auditory/visual exposure which will probably help. I watch The Organic Chemistry Tutor’s videos whenever I feel stuck and I take notes as I watch the video to ensure I’m really paying attention.
This step is to really see how much you know. Start with examples from the book, as the solutions are usually right there and they will walk you through. Then, move on to practice problems. In my textbook, they have exercises that follow right after most examples to practice that same concept. Once you’ve gone through as many of these as you deem fit, you should do the end of chapter problems! These problems tend to be a little more comprehensive and build on things from previous chapters, while also being more conceptual.
pls do your homework. it will reinforce everything. i’ve realized that the homework is not necessarily what will be covered on the exam, but it’s like … drills to see if you know the basics. but, this really depends on the professor and what they assign as homework! for me, the homework doesn’t even begin to compare to the complexity of the exams. highlight anything you get stuck on and once you’re done, go back and redo those problems + review that section in your notes and textbook!
Review sheets are a life saver because once exams come around, you have one piece of paper you can study from and you don’t have to carry around all your notes! for ochem specifically, i recommend making a reaction sheet that’s a flow-chart (i.e., if i have these reagents, its going to be a hydroboration reaction). this was something i was hoping to do before my final, but i just burned out and never got to it :(( so i need to practice what i preach either when i retake ochem1 or when i move on to ochem2.
bonus tip!
Ask yourself the following questions when you study.
can you name things? (types of reactions, molecules using IUPAC nomenclature, etc)
can you identify things? (stereochemical relationships between molecules, concepts used in a reaction like markovnikov addition, etc)
can you develop things? (desired products for a reaction, etc)
can you interconvert between things? (from wedge dash > newman projection, chair conformation > newman projection, skeletal structure > fischer projection, reaction > energy coordinate diagram)
Hopefully this helps! I enjoyed making this post because I do enjoy organic chemistry, I just really need to do better in the class next semester and better implement these study techniques (and maybe find new ones that work better)!!
Dreamscaping
i love all the words we have that mean traveler. i love the shades of difference between wanderer and rambler and rover. i love the boldness of adventurer and the purposefulness of explorer, the lawlessness of vagabond and the capability of wayfarer, the quiet reverence of pilgrim and the wild rootlessness of nomad.
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
why are french people rude?
Ah well, the safest explanation when an entire country’s people are stereotyped as rude is that they have their own culture with different criteria for politeness than the ones you are used to. It’s probably easier for Americans to forget this than for the rest of the world, because they consume less foreign media than the rest of us (from literature in translation to foreign films) and are less exposed to aspects of foreign cultures that could inform them about different norms of politeness (online interactions happen in their own language and follow their own (anglo) social codes.) With this insular worldview it’s easy to take it for granted that American good manners are universal. They are not!
A very common gripe against American tourists in Paris is that they talk so loudly in public spaces, which is definitely rude here but I assume that in the US, people just have a different threshold for what constitutes ‘loud’ (I wonder if it is due to being used to having more space than Europeans). I also remember a discussion I had with one of my translation professors about the American concept of ‘active listening’ and how negatively it is perceived in France. It may be that in the US it is polite to make ‘listening noises’ at regular intervals while someone is speaking to you, ‘uh huh’, ‘right’, ‘yeah’, ‘really?’, and that you would perceive someone who just stands there silently as disinterested or thinking about something else. In France it is more polite to shut up and listen (with the occasional nod or ‘mmh’) and it’s rather seen as annoying and rude to make a bunch of useless noise while someone is speaking.
There are of course countless examples like that. The infamous rude waiters in Parisian cafés probably seem a lot more rude and cold to people who have a different food culture… People from other cultures might consider a waiter terrible at his job if he doesn’t frequently check on them to make sure they don’t wait for anything, but the idea that a meal is a pleasant experience rather than just a way to feed yourself (esp when eating out) means we like having time to chat and just enjoy our table for a while, so we don’t mind as much waiting to order or for the next course. French people would typically hate if an overzealous waiter took the initiative to bring the note once we’re done with our meal so we don’t have to wait for it, as it would be interpreted as “you’re done, now get out of my restaurant.”
The level of formality required to be seen as polite is quite high in France, which might contribute to French people being seen as rude by people with a more casual culture. To continue with waiters, even in casual cafés they will address clients with the formal you and conversely, and won’t pretend to be your friend (the fact that we don’t have the American tip culture also means they don’t feel the need to ingratiate themselves to you.) I remember being alarmed when a waitress in New York introduced herself and asked how I was doing. “She’s giving me her first name? What… am I supposed to with it? Use it?” It gave me some insight on why Americans might consider French waiters rude or sullen! It might also be more accepted outside of France to customise your dish—my brother worked as a waiter and often had to say “That won’t be possible” about alterations to a dish that he knew wouldn’t fly with the chef, to foreign tourists who were stunned and angry to hear that, and probably brought home a negative opinion of French waiters. In France where the sentiment in most restaurants is more “respect the chef’s skill” than “the customer is king”, people are more likely to be apologetic if they ask for alterations (beyond basic stuff) as you can quickly be seen as rude, even by the people you are eating with.
And I remember reading on a website for learning English that the polite answer to “How are you?” is “I’m fine, thank you!” because it’s rude to burden someone you aren’t close to with your problems. In my corner of the French countryside the polite thing to do is to complain about some minor trouble, because saying everything is going great is perceived negatively, as boasting, and also as a standoffish reply that kind of shuts down the conversation, while grumbling about some problem everyone can relate to will keep it going. (French people love grumbling as a positive bonding activity!)
Basically, before you settle on the conclusion that people from a different place are collectively rude, consider that if you travel there and scrupulously follow your own culture’s social code of good manners, you might be completely unaware that you are being perceived as obnoxious, rude or unfriendly yourself simply because your behaviour clashes with what is expected by locals.
irresponsible adhd top tip #???
sleep with the curtains open because you can turn off six hundred alarms but you can't turn off the sun without effort
The best advice really is to just write. Write badly - purple prose, stilted conversations, rambling descriptions. Don't delete it, pass go, take your $200, save all your garbage in a big folder. Look at how much you've made - it doesn't matter if it isn't perfect, isn't polished, it was practice. Every time you write you learn a little more, and find another piece of your voice.
a hard pill to swallow: if an audience can pick up on where the story is going, it’s a good story.
( link )
I think people need to understand that part of living a healthy life is having different people who understand different parts of you, so that you don’t overwhelm your friends and expect too much of them, or ignore valuable relationships because they feel “incomplete”.
We all want to be fully seen and understood, but it’s not shallow or meaningless to just have a pal you talk about TV shows with who isn’t also, like, your platonic soulmate. That’s still your friend! You still enhance each other’s lives with your company. Not everything that matters is profound.
I think a lot of you are lonely because you’re waiting around for someone who sees into your soul instead of just plain old lookin’ at the people in your life, finding common ground, and planting a little garden there. Even if that garden only grows Star Trek fan theories and memes, it’s still good.
It just… makes me real sad that you guys can’t imagine a friendship where you don’t talk about sex and trauma constantly, or that you think these are prerequisites for “real” friendship. Like, it legitimately breaks my heart.
tell me a pretty thing.
Dark Academia for Brown People
Most people, when they think of dark academia is books (that’s the whole point) and ancient languages such as Latin or Ancient Greek. I’m here to tell you that you all are SLEEPING on brown culture. Love that is conveyed in the languages of Persian and Urdu (my native language) crosses borders. Sure, Shakespeare and Sappho wrote great pieces of literature but the stories and poems of Rumi, Manto, Hafez and Iqbal have a special place in my heart.
Some of my favourites are:- (all are translated)
Sit at my grave with wine and a minstrel in a trance, so your smell will raise me from the dead.
HAFEZ
My lover’s sadness lit a fire in my heart that burned my chest, there was a fire in his house that burned the nest.
HAFEZ
O the day turned night, what a shame, a gazelle of kindness a lion became, my partner and lover grew tired of my words and prayers too.
RUMI
These are my personal favourites. I can always make a longer post if you all want.
Female poets deserve a whole other post.