i think what massively turns me off this season is 99% of it is fandom bait. the susan teases. the master teases. mrs flood. the copy/pasted scene from the end of the world in space babies. the way RTD talks about the finale being such a spectacle and then it's just the empty universe from flux copy/pasted. the ruby is normal reveal copy/pasted from last jedi.

and none of it really matters or goes anywhere or has any emotional depth. it's all just stuff he knows fandom will latch onto and talk about and theorise and argue over. it makes it feel like the whole thing was written with the audience's reaction in mind, what would generate the most ragebait/discourse to keep people talking about the show. rather than having any coherent or interesting narrative it feels like endless clickbait shit designed to just keep u watching In Case it all actually means something. like with the landscape around media atm... i get it i guess. but it also just means it. sucks ??

i see people enjoying the meta aspect and i was at first but now the series is done its just left a bad taste in my mouth because it all just feels so cynical

Idk like I think there's a really misogynist way that women are expected to consider being murdered and assaulted as like 1000x worse than anything else that could happen and do everything possible to avoid it and like it's unarguably bad! But constantly whenever I mention going hiking or whatever people are like 'omg you're going camping alone as a woman??? what if you get murdered?????' Actually by far the way I am most likely to die doing that is... some sleep deprived or drunk driver crashing into me on the way there! But no one tells you to avoid driving, meanwhile there's so much pressure on women to like, always stay in other crowded super safe areas or at home to Protect Their Virtue and it's like lol I would actually rather live an interesting life doing things that I enjoy

if pointing out that the age of getting a phone decreasing along with the prevalence of short form video as the dominant form of social media content during the most significant collective educational gap in recent history all of which happened during one of the most significant windows of psychological development in a human lifetime has had a deleterious effect on the attention spans, self-regulation, impulse control, social skills, tech literacy, and actual literacy of zoomers and gen alpha. if pointing out that that is a real and serious problem makes me a boomer and an old crank who has fallen for “kids these days” propaganda someone find me a porch and a rocking chair so i can yell at you to get off my lawn

#you have to meet the problem with empathy not deny its existence. it’s not their fault but things should also change about this #i’m extremely passionate abt this like. i am too online and was as a teenager but the extent to which you can Be Online has like quadrupled #and it is not good for you (via @aimmyarrowshigh)

We're genuinely so brave for the way we somehow manage to navigate cis society never knowing wtf is going on in their heads at any given time

many trans people have terrific bird names (jay, wren, raven, robin, piper) but it feels like shorebirds are underexplored territory.

avocet: 7/10 great sound, very elegant. fails the starbucks test

killdeer: 9/10 imagine meeting a killdeer at a party. banger

woodcock: 3/10 probably not worth it but extremely funny bit potential for a trans dude

plover: 10/10 this one's real actually. where are all the plovers

heron: 8/10 you'd get a lot of "hera" but that's good too

dowitcher, godwit: 4/10 but very dark souls

sora: this one's taken actually. sorry.

brant. willet. whimbrel. grebe. we're missing out folks

MEEEE I'M PLOVER

well folks we did it. it took six months but we found them. congratulations to everyone but especially to plover

Blessed image

This makes me want to cry

Kirill Sarychev

Video description, translation from Russian:

Tall man with apparently only a towel around his hips: It’s not easy to be a voluminous man and live in a standard apartment with standard bathtubs. Bathtub manufacturers, I want you to consider non-standard men.

Sh-ha! (dramatically takes off towel off his loins, revealing shorts underneath)

Hah! Thought I would bathe naked, did you? Hehe!

(making straining sounds, he climbs into bathtub. In an impressive display of the Archimedean law of displacement, water splashes out of the bathtub, like, everywhere. He props his feet up onto the armature, because the bathtub is too short too comfortably put them in)

[unintelligible]

(folding his legs over each other) and then you lie down the way you like, lay yourself down, and lie there.

End translation.

I love this Voluminous Man.

ISSUE 800: zeeige

22 august 2023

Shakespeare Genre Battle: Tragedies

I'm doing all of them. Don't worry if yours isn't in this poll.

I am including some things with disputed authorship, collaboration, or apocrypha just because.

Vasco, his face one inch from Machete's: DIDJU KNOW. didyou. know. that you are the FINESHT JENTELMAN. that i have EVERmet. inmylife. NOOOONONO DON'T ARGUE WITH ME. i am SHERIOUSH. (hic)

Machete, trying desperately not to be sick: thaAnk you,,,

I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money. 

“A scam” people are fucking wild.  

This happened to me, too. A woman had used WIC for the majority of her stuff (which I say from personal experience is such a long and embarrassing process) and to buy the remainder of her groceries, which included diapers and wipes, she used a card, and it got declined. I bought the other $30 of her groceries because hey, I’ve been there, and now I’m not. She was extremely emotional and began to cry and even hugged me. My mom called me on the drive home and could tell I had been crying myself, asked what was wrong, and when I told her what happened, she berated me for being “duped.” I couldn’t believe she could be so disappointed in one of her children for doing something- nice? Is that the hill you want to die on? Getting mad about people needing groceries?

I once paid for a woman’s bill at the vet…it wasn’t a big one, but she was trying to pay for some medication for her dog, and her card was declined. And her lip started trembling, and she says “I don’t get paid until Tuesday, would he be ok until then?” 

So I just told them to add the $20 something onto my bill, and I thought she was going to break down crying right there.

And I don’t care if it was a scam or not. Just do nice things for people sometimes. 

Do good recklessly.

I think “Do good recklessly” would be fantastic word art to hang on one’s wall. Artistic people, go!

So this has happened to me but from the other side. Several years ago when my oldest was around three or so, I had my debit card decline at Walmart. It wasn’t a scam or a mistake, I was genuinely broke. Out of money. I checked my bank and discovered I had something like 7 dollars left to my name and a hungry kid and nothing to eat at home. So I sat there trying to come up with the best way to stretch that tiny amount of money to feed my kid. Not even to feed me. I can live on popcorn or something if I have to but my kid was three and he had to eat. So there I am trying really hard not to cry while I slowly take things out of my basket to get it down to under 7 bucks, when a lady tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up and she smiled at me and started putting the things back in my cart. I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t have the money for them but she stopped me right away and said “Don’t worry about it. It’s gonna be fine.” Then she handed the cashier her credit card and said “Ring up all of it.” My kid got to eat because of her. I got to eat because of her. I had laundry soap and deodorant because of her. She could’ve just ignored me silently struggling in that line. She could’ve decided I was a scam and gone home feeling good about avoiding being duped. But instead she chose to help me and she saved us. So maybe the person struggling in front of you is trying to put one over on you or maybe they are just sad and broke and trying to figure out what to do. You get to decide which you want to believe and what you want to do. But I’ll tell y’all, no one has ever been more beautiful to me than that lady in that line who saved me and my baby. Be like her. Be beautiful.

DO BETTER. BE BETTER. STRIVE TO BE BETTER.

DO GOOD RECKLESSLY

One time, my dad and I were living the grocery store and there was a guy outside asking for money to buy some stuff to take home for his kids. It was around Christmas time. My dad asked him if he could give him groceries instead of money, and the guy immediately said yes, so my dad gave him one of everything we bought (meat, rice, some chocolates, milk, oil). At that time, my dad hadn’t gotten his paycheck because the company he worked for was going through a tough time, but he didn’t care, he saw an opportunity to help someone and he did.

Another time, my dad gave 50 bucks to a guy who said he needed to buy medicine for his kids. I told my dad he was probably going to spend the money on alcohol or something, but my dad said that “whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when I have the means to says something about mine”.

I never forget that.

“whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when I have the means to says something about mine”

louder, for the people in the back

Part of being a Warrior is doing good recklessly. 

-FemaleWarrior, She/They 

About a decade ago, I was trying to figure out how to put together a holiday meal for my little household, with only $7 to my name. We were joking around about it and stuff, because it’s better to laugh than cry, and this very nice older lady noticed us, and said it looked like we were having fun. I laughed, and told her what we were doing, and she insisted, then and there, on giving us $20 to help us out. We tried telling her we’d be fine, but she would not take no for an answer. It’s not the first time a stranger’s kindness has helped me during a rough time, but every time it’s happened, it’s made such a huge difference. If I refused to help out in turn when I can just because the person in need MIGHT be a scammer, it would feel like spitting on the kindness that was shown to me.

Delusion, 1949 - by Grete Stern (1904 - 1999), German/Argentine