xxcommunistd0gh8rxx:

overlyygayy:

So the Great Barrier Reef was pronounced dead today.
Do you even realize that is this our home. We were blessed with such a beautiful, loving, and magnificent home and look what we have done to it. Mother Nature doesn’t deserve this. We don’t deserve this world we were so graciously given.
Are you waking up yet

a PART of the GBR was declared dead, not the entire thing holy shit all this sort of thing does is make people want to give up when there’s still so much left that can be saved

http://fightforthereef.org.au/

GO HERE^ FOR ACTUAL INFORMED DETAILS AND WAYS YOU CAN HELP PROTECT AND CONSERVE THIS NATURAL WONDER OF THE WORLD. 

PLEASE HELP. SPREAD THE WORD. 

culturalrebel:

ratherembarrassing:

k-loulee:

fozmeadows:

hollowedskin:

derinthemadscientist:

languageoclock:

deflare:

penfairy:

Throwback to the time my poor German teacher had to explain the concept of formal and informal pronouns to a class full of Australians and everyone was scandalised and loudly complained “why can’t I treat everyone the same?” “I don’t want to be a Sie!” “but being friendly is respectful!” “wouldn’t using ‘du’ just show I like them?” until one guy conceded “I suppose maybe I’d use Sie with someone like the prime minister, if he weren’t such a cunt” and my teacher ended up with her head in her hands saying “you are all banned from using du until I can trust you”

God help Japanese teachers in Australia.

if this isnt an accurate representation of australia idk what is

Australia’s reverse-formality respect culture is fascinating. We don’t even really think about it until we try to communicate or learn about another culture and the rules that are pretty standard for most of the world just feel so wrong. I went to America this one time and I kept automatically thinking that strangers using ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ were sassing me. 

Australians could not be trusted with a language with ingrained tiers of formal address. The most formal forms would immediately become synonyms for ‘go fuck yourself’ and if you weren’t using the most informal version possible within three sentences of meeting someone they’d take it to mean you hated them.

100% true.

the difference between “‘scuse me” and “excuse me” is a fistfight

See also: the Australian habit of insulting people by way of showing affection, which other English-speakers also do, but not in a context where deescalating the spoken invective actively increases the degree of offence intended, particularly if you’ve just been affectionately-insulting with someone else.

By which I mean: if you’ve just called your best mate an absolute dickhead, you can’t then call a hated politician something that’s (technically) worse, like a total fuckwit, because that would imply either that you were really insulting your mate or that you like the politician. Instead, you have to use a milder epithet, like bastard, to convey your seething hatred for the second person. But if your opening conversational gambit is slagging someone off, then it’s acceptable to go big (”The PM’s a total cockstain!”) at the outset.

Also note that different modifiers radically change the meaning of particular insults. Case in point: calling someone a fuckin’ cunt is a deadly insult, calling someone a mad cunt is a compliment, and calling someone a fuckin’ mad cunt means you’re literally in awe of them. Because STRAYA. 

case in point: the ‘Howard DJs like a mad cunt’ meme.

I recommend this bloody good article by Mark Di Stefano of Buzzfeed Australia about the origin of John Howard’s DJ skills: We Found The Guy Behind Australia’s Greatest Ever Meme.

extra pro level aussie: calling a stranger mate. depending on context, they’re either about to become your new best friend, or someone’s about to get king hit.

@determamfidd your country fascinates, confuses and frightens me in equal measure

seriously my darlingest @culturalrebel​, if Strayans had informal and informal pronouns, we would only use the formal ones to indicate how much we HATED the person we were addressing. We’d manipulate it to say ‘THIS PERSON IS SO FAR UP THEMSELVES THEY NEED A HARD HAT AND A TORCH.’

THE cardinal Australian sin is to be ‘up yourself’. To be ‘up yourself’ is to be an arrogant person who thinks and acts as though they are better than others. 

‘Bitch’ is either a killing insult or a term of affection. Same with ‘bastard’ and ‘dickhead’. ‘Wanker, however,’ is ALWAYS an insult. We use ‘wanker’ for the same sort of thing as ‘up themselves’ – a wanker here doesn’t just mean an annoying person, it also means someone who elevates themselves above others, insists on preferential treatment, etc. 

And yeah, if someone you’ve just met calls you ‘mate’ in a particular tone of voice, you’re about to get punched. 

Hello! I’m sorry, this is probably not the kind of ask you usually get, but I heard that the great barrier reef is dead. Do you know is it true? :( I love your work!

Hey Nonnie! I live 100km away from the Reef, so I am actually very close to it. I get a LOT of news about the Reef.

No, it is not true. The Reef is NOT dead.

It is, however, in danger. Very grave, immediate, and serious danger.

Coral reefs are INCREDIBLY delicate ecosystems.

Leaving aside the long-established threat of Crown-of-Thorns starfishes (it swarms in the MILLIONS and destroys coral), man-made threats are now endangering the Reef beyond its capacity to adapt.  

Port and shipping traffic in and through the Reef is set to more than double by 2025. 

Expansion of the ports at Abbott Point and Gladstone would have involved dredging the Reef. Furious opposition has seen these plans scrapped, but there’s still noise and worry.

There has been fantastic action on the part of most farmers, whose pesticide runoffs were contributing to the decline of the Reef. Now there is common support for the Reef Guardian Farmers initiative – but it remains that farming runoff is a major MAJOR threat. 

Climate Change/Global Warming is causing coral bleaching as the seas warm faster than the delicate organisms can cope. As the oceans absorb pollution, the water gets more acidic. This is the most dangerous and the hardest threat to address, as it requires not only Australia-wide but world-wide action.

Tourism has too much footprint on the Reef. Tourism is so important to the economy of Eastern Queensland – hell, the town I live in was BUILT on tourism – but the damage that boats, divers, etc make as they view the coral and fish is a real concern. Many formerly popular diving places are no longer the beautiful, stunningly vibrant displays they were, but rather grey and drab and denuded, thanks to too much disturbance and human destruction. 

The Federal Government has put forward a long-term sustainability plan called Reef 2050. It has also come under some criticism for not addressing many causes of the damage, and for not allowing time and funding. 

To fix the Reef would cost $8.2 billion AUD, over 10 years. The Federal Government has only set aside $1 billion. 

I don’t know everything, but I can tell you that I am far from the only Australian (or Queenslander) worried about the Reef. 

Check here for more: https://fightforthereef.org.au

How would Halloween go in ME? Would there be little Gimli’s, Thorin’s and The company walking around?

Wee Thorin has been Azahgal, Bifur, Dain, his dad, his mum, his uncle, and finally Bard the Bowman.

The hallow’s day Wee Thorin dresses up as his namesake is the day Dwalin tries very hard not to cry.

Gimizh has dressed as Gimli for twenty years running. He is planning to go as Gimli again next year.

Balinith would damn well dress as Narvi. Damn it, he fucking would.

Frerinith has ambitions to be a cake.

The merit of your writing.

bead-bead:

awfullythick:

starlinghawke:

thatgirl-who:

So, you’ve read something that has resonated with you. It’s everything you’ve wanted in terms of characters, prose, plot and pace. It’s the best you’ve read in years. You reread your favourite lines. You have to take a break just to absorb every meticulously crafted line. You are in awe of how something so small can seem to take up so much space.

And in a perfect world, it would inspire you to go out and create. To work on that story that is languishing in your save files, to pick up that WIP you abandoned, to make you want to write something different and new and better. 

Instead, it makes you feel inferior. The words are too good. You could never write like that. The characters are too perfect. You don’t have that insight. The story is too captivating. Your ideas are boring, cliche, plain. The insight is remarkable. You can barely string a thought together coherently. 

Why even bother, you think.

Don’t fall into that trap. I have been there so many times. I have abandoned writing for years because of “why even bother”. I have let it destroy my confidence, only to patch it back up in a cheap imitation of what it once was, just to let it invade my thoughts again. I have questioned every thing I’ve written, every choice, every line, because why even bother if someone is so much better. 

YOUR WRITING HAS MERIT. What you don’t realize is that it’s not in terms of better, but different. Different style, different story, different interpretation, different mind.

Someone out there will love the way you describe the night sky in poetry. Someone out there will love the way you describe the look on someone’s face when their heart breaks. Someone out there will love your idea, that strange one that seems impossible or already done, because it’s new and exciting or they love endless amounts of that same story. Someone out there will love your interpretation of that character, whether more gentle or bitter or broken or healed. Someone out there will love the words you write, the grandiose use of adverbs (my guilt) or the minimal scattering of dialogue. Someone out there will love your abundance or lack of something you saw in that story you so loved, the one that rendered you speechless and snuffed out your fire. 

Someone out there will love your words. And you need to share them. 

Speaking as a writer, no one sets out to create something to discourage others. No one wants to dominate their corner and be the only one there. No one wants to be alone in their craft. If they do, they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Speaking as a writer, I would never want you to read my writing and think, why bother. 

I want you to think, why bother waiting?

Your story matters. Your writing matters. It’s beautiful and defined and gorgeous and a work in progress and growing and already there and insightful and mysterious: it all has merit. 

Never stop. Never stop writing and practicing and doing and creating and learning and loving the words you weave.

You may think someone has done it more beautifully or better or too many times or never because who wants to read it? 

They maybe have done all those things, but they lack one thing: they haven’t done it like you have.

Thank you, I needed this.

One thing that helps me get over this is to go back and re-read my own fics. Usually not the newer ones, but the older ones, where I’ve forgotten the exact gist of the story and no longer have a really strong impression of what I wanted that story to be (and thus a strong impression of how short it fell once it actually existed) to get in my way. Nothing makes me want to write more than going “wow, I wrote this, and it’s pretty decent!” about fics I wrote a year or more ago.

Comparing myself to other writers is a very, very bad idea. Enjoying my own past fics, while at the same time thinking about the ways I would improve on them if I were to write them now, is typically pretty inspiring.

Thank you, thank you. I needed this, too.