thesweet-lamb:

Dm tip never get too attached to your NPC. You might think they are the hero of the story but really the players get bored if they have to share the spotlight all of the time. It’s their story, and the sooner you realize it the sooner you become a better dm.

pb8:

it really bothers me that so many people on this site treat ableism like it’s black and white.

just now i saw a post where op was like “i’m glad that spinners are popular because it normalizes fidgets and decreases stigma” and someone replied like “no!! it’s absolutely TERRIBLE that neurotypicals are using these fidgets because when they get in trouble they make things harder for mentally ill kids!!” and like you guys do realize that? you’re both right? it isn’t a decisive fact that neurotypicals using fidgets is either good or bad, there are both benefits and consequences that need to be taken into consideration.

a few months ago there was a post going around that was like, *neurotypical voice* why are you bouncing your leg, and somebody reblogged it saying that the post was ableist because autistic kids can get overstimulated by leg bouncing. i go to a school for the mentally disabled, and i’ve been in this exact scenario, my classmate wasn’t able to focus because i was bouncing my leg and although i felt bad i told him that i wouldn’t be able to stop for long because i do it subconsciously due to my adhd. he wasn’t being ableist for asking me to stop, and i wasn’t being ableist for saying i couldn’t, we just both had different needs. in the end, our compromise was that i went to work in the computer lab.

you have to understand that there is always more than one side to issues like these, and that we should be striving for understanding and balance over demonization of one side and blind support of the other. this is especially relevant when people on both sides are mentally ill or disabled, because sometimes symptoms will clash and you just need to deal with it.

luchagcaileag:

glorious-spoon:

theunitofcaring:

I think we can reduce suffering a lot. Maybe not to zero, but a lot. And I think that a world that has some suffering in it can still be worth living in. And, more importantly, I don’t actually get to decide whether the world will keep existing. I just get to decide how I live in it.

The difference between a million people in pain and 999,999 people in pain is a person, no longer in pain. I care about that. I don’t care about it any less because there are a million more of them; I wouldn’t care about it any less if there were a trillion more of them. It’s good that I be happy and it’s good that you be happy and every bit of happiness is a good thing in itself, not just a step towards a world that is on the whole ‘okay’.

If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

The universe is cold and uncaring and full of random horror, so we should be kind to each other, and take care of each other, and do the best we can, within our sphere of influence, to make things better. Or at least, not make them worse.

#few things frustrate me more than ~edgy~ nihilism #like #yes the world is shitty#yes suffering is endemic#but that doesn’t mean its okay to just throw up your hands #set it all on fire#and act like there’s no point in making things better if they’ll never be perfect

nerdgasrnz:

mitch-that-bitch:

owivizzle:

God I really wish carrying stuffed animals around with you was socially acceptable

I don’t mean to take over a post, but I actually did a project on this for my sociology of deviance class in college!

I carried a large stuffed rabbit whenever I went in public for about a week to observe the reaction of others. The point of the project was to do something harmless yet unusual to see if the action would be considered deviant, in which case someone had to try to correct or shame the behavior.

Long story short, nobody tried to correct my behavior. I was asked about it casually, had a few lingering stares thrown my way and when I was with my boyfriend, shop employees would direct questions to him instead of me. However, nobody refused to assist me when I was alone in a store, nobody said anything about the rabbit besides “oh, thats a cute bunny!” and I attended college classes without even a teacher questioning it.

In conclusion, it is socially acceptable to carry a stuffed animal, its just not a societal norm. ^^

#for followers with a big anxiety or self hate problem #bring a friend with you (via @kingdom-for-muses)

radiantseraphina:

authoratmidnight:

lilrabbitssong:

dearbluetravelers:

kernezelda:

nofreetrees:

moddeydhoo:

gem-under-the-mountain:

bossandsquid:

siphersaysstuff:

ayellowbirds:

adeadfreelancer:

assassinregrets:

veronicasantangelo:

janemba:

eyan-j:

janemba:

I hope Wikipedia doesnt go bankrupt it will feel like the end times . I think I will literally panic

Encyclopedia Britannica is always there

there’s this place called a library. and they have these things called books. and then there’s this thing called Google Search. where you can find books in PDF form.

Wikipedia is user edited. you can literally put anything you want in an entry almost. I think you know where I’m about to go with this.

You’re condescending and annoying. I am attached to Wikipedia out of sentimentality it’s always been there for as long as I remember and reliable to me for some casual trivia. Wikipedia is iconic and I love her. go write a research paper or something

who let high school teachers find tumblr

me: hm i wonder how many countries drive on the same side as the UK

friend: let’s check wikipedia in 2 seconds on our phones

some asshole on tumblr: um excuse me why don’t you stop what you’re doing to go to the library and look it up in an outdated book that’s edited maybe twice a decade and that definitely doesn’t have a single page article called “list of countries with left-hand traffic”

also “user edited” really doesn’t mean as much as you think it does. there are millions of people displaying accurate information, for every one person displaying inaccurate information. and that inaccurate information is usually changed quickly, and the person who made it can get their ip blocked from wikipedia if it was bad enough. way more accurate than textbooks or a library.

Librarian here! I’ve worked at both academic (college/university) and public libraries, and let me tell you this: most print encyclopedias are useless garbage we can’t get rid of fast enough. With the exception of subject-specific sets which we need to buy again every few years because the information has become outdated, most of the information in any volume of an encyclopedia is far more accessible and far more in-depth on the internet. 

Wikipedia as a reference resource is fantastic because, just like print encyclopedias, it serves as a jumping-off point for research… and so do librarians! A librarian isn’t going to just write your paper for you, we’re going to point you to the books, articles, and websites that contain the information. Wikipedia is great for that, too, because any article that gets more than a bit of traffic will wind up with sources and external links. But print encyclopedias don’t go that far in citing their sources, and because they’re static media, the references may not only be outdated, they might be entirely inaccessible due to age, obscurity, or cost of access.

And there’s an interesting thing about all those books we have on the shelves… anyone can write one, and usually they only have a handful of other people checking their work. Academic journals are somewhat notorious for the ease with which a completely falsified paper can see publication (especially in cases of electronic journals), but printed books can also be easily falsified, whether as a result of publishers with an agenda or just fact-checkers slacking off.  

 As has been pointed out above, wikipedia is really great at getting obscenely specific in terms of the topics of articles. It’s an amazing collection of data, and more importantly, it’s an amazing collection of sources of data.

The role of a reference librarian and a wikipedia editor are basically the same: show you a brief summary of the information you need, and point you to more in-depth, reliable sources.

I was helping a friend clear out their dad’s old stuff from their home recently and we came across encyclopedias from the 90s.

They all went to the dump. They were ASTOUNDINGLY outdated. Totally fucking useless.

High school English teacher here–I regularly get crap from some of my colleagues, but I am completely fine with students using Wikipedia for info. Wikipedia does an excellent job of flagging articles that have been recently edited until someone can verify the changes, so pages with inaccurate info often have giant warnings at the top saying “THIS PAGE MAY CONTAIN IANCCURATE INFO”. Won’t find that in an out-of-date print edition.

Not only that, but Wikipedia cites its sources. It tells you right at the bottom of the page where all its info came from, so if you want to use a fact from Wikipedia but don’t want a teacher annoyed with you, just cite the source in the footnote. Teachers and professors are (a) not likely to check up on this and (b) it’s a real source so even if they do it’s legit?

The biggest problem I have had with letting students use Wikipedia is actually that Wikipedia articles are often written in such academic language that students sometimes struggle to understand them. That part kids have to overcome on their own or with the help of their teacher. But there’s nothing wrong with Wikipedia as a source. Hatred for it is a remnant of academic elitism, thinking that “peer-reviewed” can only mean some handful of crusty white dudes instead of literally anyone with enough knowledge and motivation to review it.

Honestly. My dad is a college professor and he’s told me time and again to always start my research at Wikipedia. You have to go further, obviously, but its such a great jumping off point for information.

Plus, where else can I find an itemized and updated list of every Cryptid known to human kind?

For the impenetrable articles, here’s my tip.

The list of other languages in the sidebar? Look at it and check whether the article has a version in Simple English.

Simple English is a mode for non-native English speakers but is also great if your reading comprehension is not super good, you’re having a slow brain day for any mental health or developmental disorder reason, or the English version is just poorly written.

Librarian here, and this whole post gives me so much joy.

@sugargroupie, @turtletotem

I feel like people think “not a reliable source” means “not true” but it actually means “can’t be quoted because the words might change”

I never knew there was a simple English version? I learned something new!

‘Just use EB/the library’

Ah yes, because these are absolutely going to have:

The filmography for a foreign voice actor(or any voice actor really)

The updated episode list of an ongoing tv show + the cast list

Alphabetize lists of gods/goddesses/various mythical creatures from around the world, ordered by type and region(i.e list of sun gods from around the world, organized by region and alphabetized)

24/7 access because I want to look something up at 2am

This is coming from me, the college professor. If you’re beginning research or don’t understand a topic start with Wikipedia. No, you can’t cite Wikipedia, but part of the difficulty students run into with academia is not understanding the language. So if you’re trying to research something, and some guy named Roland Barthes keeps popping up? Heck, yeah, you should Wikipedia and get a vague idea who he is. And then, you can look at Wikipedia’s sources. Or related topics to figure out keywords to search properly. So no, you can’t use Wikipedia as an academic source, but it’s a great starting point if you’re trying to figure out where to go. If you’re reading an article in a library on the Marquis de Sade and the Kantian sublime, and you’ve no idea what either of those are, it doesn’t do you any good. Because guess what? If you’re reading academic articles, they are rarely going to explain who the Marquis de Sade or Kant are because they’ll assume you already know. 

Oh, and those encyclopedias? They aren’t academic either.