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Cake for the cake god

@ephraelinhats

sick of “scottish independence” this and “irish reunification” that

theres 3 of us and 1 of england

i say we just kick the english out the uk

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Ireland, Scotland, and Wales kick England out and join the UK as the United Celtic Nations.

We can do this folks we can even steal some of france

the bretons would probably be down tbh

Solid chance that all of France will vote in favour if you promise us it’ll piss off England.

FOOD HUBRIS BY COUNTRY america: believes their shitty local burger chain is a once-in-a-lifetime culinary experience because their mayo includes onion paste canada: if your poutine tastes better than the styrofoam plate it comes on you will discover the cold rage that lies under the canadian's polite exterior united kingdom: despite thriving and unique fusion cuisines spreading from the UK to the rest of the world in recent decades, when asked to think of 'british food' the average UK citizen will start a fight over whether cold beans with a modest side of white bread is haute cuisine france: McDo Ortolan Bunting italy: extremely mad about american versions of italian food. blissfully ignorant of what happens in brazil brazil: if the scientific genius applied to making cronenbergian pizzas were applied to anything else, brazilians would all be commuting to jobs on the moon. They have pizza that can feel pain russia: obviously mayonnaise is the perfect topping for all foodstuffs, this is solved. The question is what to put on top of mayonnaise, and it might never be answered germany: less a joke than a fact: the single most produced numbered Volkswagen part is a standardized currywurst

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VOLKSWAGEN CURRYWURST IS REAL IM FLIPPING OUT

This is fucking embarrassing ‘journalism’ from the BBC.

Guy goes to an NHS doctor, flat-out states the nature of his investigation and gets behind the scenes information on assessments.

Then he hits up three private clinics actively looking for an ADHD diagnosis, has his friends fill out witness forms, and is shocked when he receives a diagnosis.

An utter disgrace.

Turns out, if you go and lie about your symptoms, they’ll diagnose you.

Consider me fucking shocked.

thank you, random white man, for this insight on the condition known to be underdiagnosed in women and people of color

i found the article and it's like, comparing and contrasting private and public clinics I think? It's a little opaque to me (American) what the significance of this is

I'm not sure what the point of this was. Like, the article doesn't really even touch on what his methodology was—it doesn't actually state whether he was filling out the forms honestly, and knowing how an evaluation works and going into the evaluation with the goal of "demonstrating" something about an evaluation infuses inherent bias into everything

this is just yet another thing that serves to create paranoia about people getting prescribed stimulant meds. Something that, in the USA, is difficult to the point that it blocks people from obtaining the care that they need all the time, and i know in many other countries it's even harder

Like, why did he feel the need to do this to begin with. I'm sure that if he went to several different doctors trying to get a diagnosis of chronic constipation, he would get one, because listening to a patient when they bring a concern up to you is Your Job as a doctor

@headspace-hotel uk person checking in! when you go public for an adhd assessment, waiting lists are YEARS long with often no indication of when you'll finally be seen. thus, many people – who are desperate for care – will pay money (which you don't have to do for public healthcare) to go private.

so basically it's stigmatising people who were so desperate that they were willing to find £1,000 to get help.

So this asshole was actively taking precious opportunities and resources away from people who need them?

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Is your conclusion “he tried to prove that private clinics are bad, something something, less people will be able to go to private clinics for these resources as a result” or “he took 3 diagnoses in private clinics which could have been 3 other people’s diagnoses and resources”?

He seems to have bypassed the atrociously long waiting list for the NHS appointment - which he biased anyway by disclosing his investigation to the NHS doctor.

He then fabricated symptoms to three private clinics which require two other people to validate his symptoms - all in a bid to frame them as predatory.

This could have been an investigation into underfunding of the NHS and absurd waiting lines forcing people to use private clinics. Instead the story became ‘ADHD is a fun trend and you can just pay to get a diagnosis’.

It’s malicious journalism that casts doubt in the public’s mind. Some people are now not going to believe other people’s ADHD diagnosis on the back of it.

we also want to challenge his assumption that private clinics apparently taking less time to diagnose obvious adhd is a reflection on their lack of diligence - it's much more a reflection on how much more gatekeepy the nhs is encouraged to be, especially when it's about "invisible" or mental health or neurodivergent conditions (we had 11 hours of meetings before getting diagnosed autistic by the nhs at 55 - a diagnosis six different other autistic people had spotted right away)

you see this with gender care too, nhs gender care (assuming you ever make it to the top of a six year waiting list) is like "yes come and see us for a year before we'll consider hrt for you - but not if you're fat or have mental health conditions because fuck you" while private clinics are like "yes we confirm that you are trans, why on earth would we make you wait?"

Yeah, I wonder if the NHS considers the entire time from the start of assessment. Their ‘thorough assessment’ is someone else’s frequent misdiagnosis and the doctor even not believing them at face value.

‘don’t you want your favourite character to be happy???’ no? i want my favourite character to be interesting. i want me to be happy. which sometimes involves my favourite character being in exquisite agony

Meme news: The Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah came out as bisexual at the age of 76

That's her, btw

She's an icon and also very talented. We Stan.

Diversity win! Icon for indecision comes out as bisexual!

June 22 2019 - A fascist trying to pick a fight at Bologna Pride gets more reaction than he bargained for. [video]

Exit, pursued by bear.

The description of the original video:

Translation:

“A neo-fascist, in all his Italian virility, begins to insult some women participating in Bologna Pride. This until, frightened by other protesters covered with glitter and by a bear far more virile than he, to devote himself to what the Fascists do best: escape.”

EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR. I’M SOBBING

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La fuga, pursued by bear in glitter 🤣🤣🤣

“to devote himself to what the Fascists do best: escape.” ROAST HIS ASS

the Strength, the Solidarity, and the Shade here is examplary

I need people to stop blaming the death of movies on “quips”. A quip is just a funny line of dialogue. That’s all. Like I just saw a post talking about quips and the death of movies and brought up Pirates of the Caribbean as an example of a better movie and yes it is but also that movie is FULL OF QUIPS. I just rewatched The Princess Bride. It’s all quips. Every single line. And it’s a masterpiece.

Movies suck when people don’t care about the art they’re making. That includes them not caring about their quips. Which is why a lot of comic relief dialogue ALSO sucks now. But the problem isn’t that funny dialogue exists.

The Princess Bride is almost all quips, but it’s all sincerity. Every aspect of the plot is ridiculous and yet no movie dialogue has ever gone as hard as “I want my father back, you son of a bitch”

people recognize the problem contained within Whedon-style quippyness without knowing the term for the actual issue so they say “quips” when they mean “bathos”

another problem with quips that’s a little harder to analyze and explain is the quips are all in the author’s voice, NOT the characters’.

steve rogers, natalia romanoff, james barnes, tony stark, pepper potts, and bruce banner are people from radically different walks of life, and should therefore have extremely different styles of communication, despite all off them nominally speaking the same language (english). they should have different senses of humor, different senses of where the boundary lies between irreverence and insult, different boundaries, different sore spots, different goals as well as different methods of communication.

the fact that all these characters banter the exact same way, i.e how joss whedon thinks is funny, is incredibly shallow and grating.

steve grew up as a challenging little shit, who was also very small and poor, and he did it in 1920′s-30′s brooklyn new york. he regularly got his ass kicked. tony stark is also challenging and provocative, he’s a shit stirrer, but he grew up rich as all fuck. no one was beating the piss out of him in a dirty alley. tony has grown up surrounded by sycophants, rich enough to get away with whatever amount of bad behavior he wants to pull; steve grew up poor and disabled in a society that openly advocated for the death and degradation of the weak and unfit. why the fuck would they enter a conversation the same way? why would they deliver a snappy retort the same way? natasha romanoff is a spy, she’s manipulative, she’s always watching to see how a joke lands, she’s always conscientiously tuning herself this way and that to get results. she doesn’t have the luxury of casual defiance, or unthinking obnoxiousness, or even standing by her principles and pissing off someone she hates. again, why would she be tossing off little asides the same as tony, or even the same as steve?

the princess bride is sincere, and the characters still banter in their own voices. fezzik is cautious and methodical, inigo is weary and incredulous, vizzini is desperate to impress everyone with his own intelligence and in so doing often sounds like a complete twerp, buttercup is so incredibly pissed off she doesn’t have any brain cells to spare for joking around, and westley is here to ruin everyone’s day. and it works! the characters have great banter because they’re striking sparks off each other, not meshing like identical cogs in a machine.

humor is about subverting expectations, about breaking up patterns, about confrontation and absurdity. you can’t get that from a blandly uniform pulp.

I have never heard anyone summarize Westley’s character so perfectly in a single line

Dave the Immortal really enjoyed it when the assassins came for him. He knew that when they failed, they'd have to go home and explain "So yeah, we totally stabbed the hell out of that guy, HOWEVER he got better."

Honestly, he liked the thought of the size of that "HOWEVER" more than the satisfaction of survival.

He likes big buts and he cannot die.

[image description: A beautiful haloed dark-skinned woman with long flowing black hair, several golden bracelets, a star on her forehead and two stars for earrings. Behind her, a bright yellow gold circle radiates out into a deep purple then violet sky. In hand, a huge sunflower with an eye at its center. Other flowers (also with eyes) float around her amid several concentric rings of 6-pointed stars. Text reads, “ #261, ANNA SPIRATION, the small god of NEW IDEAS”]

• • • • •

She comes when least expected.  In the shower.  At a cocktail party.  On the crosstown bus.  While waiting for airport security.  And then she goes when she feels like it.  As soon as you get a pen.  When the house is quiet and your coffee is hot and there’s nothing else demanding your time.  She is fickle and she is fleeting and she is never, never here for a long time, just a good time.  She knows how quickly her hour is over and done with.

For indeed, she arrives, and she makes herself comfortable, and then she is replaced, by Mr. Wippy and the comfortable middle.  She understands why it has to be like that.  The hot light of inspiration is too much for the body to bear for very long; only when it dims and eases can it be made real, rather than something too perfect and precious to behold.

Anna comes only briefly, but if you treat her kindly, she will come to you over and over again, never staying long, not always welcome, but always gowned in glory and ready to lift you up into the brilliance of a future sketched entirely in ideal, not actuality.  Every book is perfect when Anna brings it to you, every harmony lilting, every painting breathtaking.  And they’ll stay that way, as long as she cups them in her hands, which is why she puts them into yours.

Anna yearns, more than anything, for imperfection, for presence, for the dirt and distortion of actual existence.  She’ll keep bringing you her dreams until she gets it.

[image description: A white sign with thin red and blue lines around its edges and held to a rusting wall with small silver nails. It shows an iconic soft-serve Ice-Cream cone character in a running position, giving a thumbs-up. His pupils are shiny dark hearts, but what is most unusual is that he himself is a work in progress, appearing in notional pencil to the left, and becoming a fully realized… ice cream cone at right. Text reads, “Yippee for Mister W.i.p.py!  ~ small god of Works in Progress, #259”]

• • • • •

Golly gee, friend-o, it looks like you’re struggling with structure and motivation!  With foreshadowing and intent!  Need to get that gun on the mantle in act one so you can fire it off in act three, or else you’re going to be short a corpse!  Gosh, is this all too much to keep track of?  Do you need an outline?  Do you need a rubber ducky?  Do you need a nap?

You’re walking with Mister Wippy now.

Mister Wippy is a transitional god, between Anna Spiration, Small God of New Ideas, and Long Hal, Small God of Finished Projects.  He knows he won’t be with you for long, but that while he is, he’ll be all-consuming, swallowing your waking hours, dominating your days.  He can live with that.  He’s not a god of Once Upon a Times, but the god of what comes after, the long inhale between story’s start and “happily ever after.”

He isn’t a cruel god.  He’s not a kind one, either; Mister Wippy is neutral, devoted only to the stories he’s here to see told, and when they’re finished, so is he, melting like the memory of summer sweetness, off to his next worshipper, the next hand he needs to hold.  Mister Wippy is grateful that you spend the time with him, that you support the network of literary gods to whom he is bound.

He loves this project, for there are so many gods to be documented that we will always be among his congregation, however many others we may also be a part of.

We try not to let that worry us.  Some gods wonder and some gods wander and Mister Wippy…

Mister Wippy watches us sleep.

[image description: A very tall white-haired fellow in a grey suit with black shoes sits on a throne of books, with an open tome resting on the leg he’s crossed over his knee. He is bearded but - like Abraham Lincoln -  has no mustache. 

He is haloed in a light violet light and looks up from his book in an expectant manner. Text reads, “262 LONG HAL – SMALL GOD OF FINISHED PROJECTS”]

•••••

Beginnings are easy. Everything begins.

Endings, though—those are hard. Seeing something small and fragile from conception to execution can be the next best thing to impossible. The world changes while you work, you see. That idea that seemed so brilliant a hundred thousand years ago is played-out and dull now, or you get bored, or Netflix releases a show that has just enough superficial similarities that you know you’ll never be able to convince anyone you didn’t rip off your whole beautiful nightmare from someone else’s dream.

Middles, though—middles are the worst of all. People get lost in middles, never to be seen again. people wander into the swamps and snarls of the undefined center and sink into the muck. The road between inspiration and completion is littered with the bones of those who never escaped the middle.

He comes after you’ve made your beginning, and no one sees him arrive; you just look up at some point and he’s there, walking beside you, eyes on the horizon. As long as you press forward, he presses forward with you, and if you sink into the swamp, he won’t save you, but he will grieve. He grieves for all the ones who fall along the way.

And if you make it to the ending with him, if you get there, he will take the dream you have walked into the world in his long-fingered hands, and he will smile at you, and he will tell you your creation is safe with him. If you’ve been a good companion, traveled well, enjoyed the road, he may tell you where Anna is waiting. Because she’s always waiting, and he has always loved her, fickle, brilliant creature that she is. They are two sides of the same coin, morning and night, and they are never once together, and they have never been apart.