She Who Laughs Last

apparently europeans have the impression that US Americans never learn the metric system.

like our science curriculum from day one is entirely done in the metric system. we just don't use metric in our day to day lives.

yeah actually we kinda just do it for the bit :)

I have had people try to gently and kindly explain to me the workings of the metric system, as if Americans are having trouble with the concept of a base ten system. like no. we get it. we were taught this when we were like eight. it's just that like. we don't really wanna do it that way. for the bit.

"cost of living crisis" give me a FUCKING break it's called "unprecedented corporate greed and income inequality" fucking cost of living crisis like it's just a natural or unexplainable phenomenon Christ

Rich people always say that they deserve the profits because they take the risks.

But when the risk doesn't pay off, they expect to be bailed out.

It’s sad that toxic game culture is so prevalent cuz like. As someone who has ended up in random matches with kids before, I can attest to how fucking easy it is to reverse and un-teach shitty attitudes in kids.

Example: I downloaded Friday the 13th because it’s free on psn. I dunno how to play, so I just enter quick play and I’m matched with 3-4 kids on mic. Immediately on mic they’re shitty and disparaging to each other. They laugh at each others deaths, they actively work against team mates and self sabotage, they call each other “fags”, etc. From the sounds of the voices they cannot be older than 13-14.

I put on my mic and just decide I ain’t havin it. I am nice. I thank them for barricading doors or leaving me items. When they break free from Jason’s grasp I say “good job!” or I try to help them. One kid survived for most of the match by himself. When he dies, I tell him he did a fantastic job.

The mood shift is practically INSTANT. These kids almost immediately stop being dick heads. They start encouraging each other and being kind. After the match all of them try to friend request me. Which should tell you a couple of things:

A) kids want to be kind, and they want to have a nice time playing games. But encounters with adults like me or so rare that they’ve trained themselves to instantly put on a toxic, shitty, defensive veneer when encountering any new person online. It’s literally just THAT EASY to not groom a horrible gaming community, it’s just that NO ONE does it.

B) the speed of which they all tried to friend me was cute, but paints for me such a sad picture? Like these kids are SO desperate to find people to play with who aren’t crappy jerks. They played with me for 10 minutes TOPS and all instantly tried to reach out to me.

tl;dr: The kids are alright. Adults are shit heads.

I cant agree with this post more

I witnessed something similar with my younger brother (this was when he was In fifth grade so bear with me here) and his friends. The teacher assigned for them to build a somewhat accurate spanish mission in Minecraft because their school had gotten some iPads and she needed to assign them something other than a PowerPoint.

Now here’s the thing. Most of these boys, my brother included, have ADD/ADHD. About a week into the project all they had in their shared world was chaos. Somebody filled the place with tnt and lit it up. Holes everywhere. Whenever one would attempt to try and build something (mostly wood huts and not the actual project) it would be destroyed within minutes as the boys began to insult each other heavily and complain that the design was ugly.

I brought my own ipad with me and decided to sit with the boys while they continued their reign of terror. I joined the world and built a hallway out of brick at the very center of this war zone. Immediately one of them tried to destroy it under the impression that “it looks bad”.

“Well, what should I make it out of?”

“Diamond.”

The ten year old mind is a mystery to me…

Anyway, then I showed him some pictures similar to these:

I reasoned that it would be easier to sway this kid toward another pretty block than trying to get him to stick to the materials of the time, so I asked him if he would like to help me replace my brick design with quartz (eh, it’s white).

Bam! One of the ten year old anarchists is dutifully building me a glittering gem hallway for our insanely rich monks.

The other three are off somewhere still yelling at each other and setting off explosives, but we have something built. Much to my surprise the kid asked if he could build the church next because he “wanted to build the most important part”.

Here’s where I learned something important. I don’t have ADD or ADHD but as I said before my brother does. When he gets fixated on something, he’s really gets into it. Once a few minutes had passed and this kid already had four walls up I decided to grid up the entire mission. One gets the church, one gets the farm, etc.

After playing the game with them for an hour, I had a pretty good idea of where each kid should go.

Church kid, I found, was very particular about materials and shape(hence his hangup over the brick). I gave him free reign over the outer walls of the mission and showed him the reference pictures to get him started.

My brother liked the farms most (he was building dirt domes over the cows don’t ask me how I made this connection it just worked, okay), so he was in charge of building pens for the animals.

Another kid was, at first glance, very loud and bossy when it came to decorating (constantly said we were making chairs wrong). Turns out he likes interior design, like putting benches and beds in the little rooms, so his bossiness was just frustration with my brother’s artistic sense I guess.

Another was very good with placing trees and plants around the exterior (I guessed this because he covered the place in a ridiculous amount of trees and I asked him if he would like to know where they are supposed to go). He got to make a vineyard for us and organized how the crops should go.

So how did it turn out?

Actually very nice!!

So what did we learn? Kids actually like to play games and be praised for their creativity and intuition. If I had just told them to stop messing around rather than direct their attention to areas within their interests, they never would have gotten anything done.

After an hour of gaming they:

On the plus side, since we moved the game file to my device for safekeeping, I now have a cute little souvenir of the time I played Minecraft with four ten year olds.

This is a really long post, but it’s super important. In games like Fortnite where you’ll find lots of kids, it’s important (if you can) to steer them away from toxicity. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into kids who talk like toxic adults and the act of just being nice to them completely turns them around.

— Vincent Van Gogh

@filmnoirsbian

The entire letter is worth a read imo.

He was bipolar. And I find it very important that people don’t dismiss or change that fact.

If you're cold they're cold, bring them inside

joyceynyea

Polar Bears are the only bear to actively hunt humans as food.

This isn’t curiosity. This is lethal intent.

It is with the heaviest of hearts that we must strongly advise against petting polar bears or allowing them into your house or vehicle. Tragically, despite the fact that polar bears are the cutest most perfect animal to ever live, they do want to eat you

Melinda thanks you for your generosity

Everything is like “QUEER history” and “List of QUEER young adult books” or “Top 10 QUEER movies” and queer this and queer that and for the love of god please just say LGBT.

But queer is more inclusive

And faster to pronounce if you are talking instead of writing.

It’s not more inclusive, and if your excuse of using a slur as a blanket term is “it’s faster to say”, GENUINELY what is wrong with you

It’s called economía del lenguaje.

It’s also the respected academic term?? The acronym isn’t static and it’s usage is varied by things like generational difference, location, and knowledge of the community. Even just in the U.S. in the last few decades the common usage gone from GLBT to LGBT to LGBTQ, to LGBTQA/LGBTQIA/LGBTQIAP/etc (Which, let me tell you as someone who has given presentations in the past using these updated acronyms, are all real mouthfulls), to LGBT+.

Also yes, queer is more inclusive! Especially coming at it from an academic standpoint, people didn’t always use or identify with the terms we use now and you can’t always try to cram them into our modern perceptions of sexuality. We can argue for years about whether a famous historical figure was gay or bisexual or straight and trans or whatever, but if we can all agree that they were somehow queer then using that term allows us to move past the debate and into productive discussion. And not everybody everywhere shares the same terms for sexual and gender identity, or even the same concepts of those things, so queer really is a more inclusive term in a lot of cases.

Like yeah if you’re talking specifically about gay or trans people you can just say gay or transgender, but if you’re talking about more than one identity or someone who doesn’t conform to our perceptions of ‘LGBT,’ or a person or people whose identity you don’t know, queer is just the better word.

“That’s SO gay”, “Oh my god, you’re not a LESBIAN, are you?”

Your words are slurs, too. Why do you get your words, but I don’t get mine? What makes you so special?

I’m here, I’m queer, go fuck yourself.

queer is not a slur, stop drinking the TERF koolaid

every time one of you fools spout about ‘queer is a slur’ a terf laughs because their fucking plan to make that word ‘taboo’ is fucking working you dipshit.

I did not get my degree in queer literature for you all to keep pulling this bullshit.

baby gays,,,, i beg of you to learn your queer history and stop listening to terf bullshit

every single one of our labels has been used as a slur against us.

terfs and -phobes are always going to try and hurt us with what we identify as. but the fact remains these are OUR labels and always have been.

we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

I don’t know if this is just because I’m not American but I’ve never heard queer used as a slur. Ever. Meanwhile gay was the insult in the 2000s here. Everything you didn’t like was ‘soo gay’. Queer wasn’t even a word most of us knew back then.

It just baffled me that people would think an identifier is automatically a slur just because someone uses it to mock someone. If we did that gay would be a slur. Stupid would be a slur. Autistic would be a slur.

The reason people are upset about the word queer is that it’s a unifying term. You can say you’re queer and all people will know is that you’re part of the community. But you can’t say you’re LGBT, you have to say you’re gay or trans or ace. They don’t want you to be ambiguously queer. They want you to say which kind of queer you are so they can decide whether you’re undesirable.

yeah in the 90s and early 2000s kids would call each other “gay” as an insult. But no one ties themselves in knots over whether “gay” is a slur. So yeah, please ffs learn your history.

They want you to say which kind of queer you are so they can decide whether you’re undesirable.

my friend told me last night that he gets girls to come back to his place by telling them “oh i can’t wait to go home and have some stew” and “i’m so hungry, good thing i have stew at home” and it’s worked every time

bro the worst part is last night i went to his place and it’s 11pm and i’m sitting there eating fucking stew like god damn it worked on me too

THIS IS WORTH READING for those of you who missed it the 1st time I posted it.  Once again Thom Hartmann calls it like it is.  

REAGAN & HIS ADMINISTRATION BEGAN THE CHRISTOFASCIST REPUBLIKKKAN PARTY’S INTENTION TO ANNIHILATE DEMOCRACY.  The treasonous policies have continued to escalate since Ronnie Raygun was elected.  

Great article by Thom Hartmann (whose articles are always worth reading). Hartmann argues that Reagan’s deregulatory, uber-free market, pro-corporate, anti-labor, anti-higher education, and/or low taxation for the rich policies ultimately contributed to: 

Hartmann also describes other ways that Republicans since Reagan have continued to destroy our nation (and in terms of climate change, potentially the planet):

Still, Hartmann tried to end this depressing narrative  of the “Reagan Revolution” legacy on a positive note. 

________________________

[My only objection to this article is that Hartmann doesn’t tell the full story about Boomers and Reagan. He neglects to point out that a large percentage of Boomers (like myself) never voted for Reagan in 1980 or in 1984. Reagan was more popular in 1980 with the older Silent and Greatest generations. In fact, in the 1980 election, most Boomers (unlike the two older generations) were evenly divided between Carter and Reagan. Furthermore, the youngest Boomers weren’t yet old enough to vote in 1980. However, that changed in the 1984 election, when a majority of Boomers voted for Reagan. Still, about 41% of us (including myself) voted for Mondale. Many of us Boomers realized that Reagan was bad news. So please don’t blame all the Boomers for Reagan’s awful legacy.

unpopular opinion but i think the film and tv industries should have better labor laws even if it makes it harder or impossible to depict certain things

i dont care if it makes it harder to produce game of thrones or whatever, acting should not leave women traumatized

Okay I know this is about acting and people are getting more traction about it (sexuality safety coordinators are a job! yell about them. demand your shows get them) but

Any person who has worked on a set for more than a few years has at least one person they know who died.  

Not usually on set, but afterwards.  Because we don’t have anyone shutting down production for unsafe practices when “unsafe” means 16 hour days.  Or more.  For weeks.  Finishing a day before hour 12 (not including lunch) is considered an early leave.

I had teachers tell us not to, unless we absolutely had to, take music video gigs because they’ll work you for 24 hours and send you to drive home.  And if we had to work that, pull over and nap in our car because multiple people per year fall asleep at the wheel and go over the canyons around LA.

I know you mean acting but please.  Don’t forget the crew.  We have a shockingly high rate of suicide because these working schedules leave us with no sleep, no time outside of work, and it destroys lives, relationships, and families.  Burnout is high.  Chronic illness and broken bodies are common.  Cocaine use in order to get through a 20 hour day is rampant.  Every single one of your reality shows is fueled by cocaine.

The number of days that are scheduled to shoot a feature has shrunk dramatically in the past two decades.  Which means longer days.

Netflix shows are notorious for being poorly organized, understaffed, and long days.

There are labor laws but what they do is levy fines.  Those fines are either factored into budget, people are bullied into not reporting actual hours, or crew members see them as incentive to take those jobs because more money and cost of living is high.  (Also this industry has a crew culture of dick measuring by sticking your wang in a blender and boasting about how many 100 hour weeks you pulled.)

this can be applied for people working in animation as well. Like I know people who work at Pixar and they straight up work 12 hour days and go into work on weekends to meet their deadlines. The incredibles 2 made over a billion dollars and Pixar still cut jobs due to “budget”. The entertainment industry is a business at the end of the day. There here to make money and they are going to do it at the expense of workers because they know no one is going to do anything about it.

This is why I get pissy when people have a go about British TV shows only producing 10-12 episodes per season at most, instead of 24. Do you know why? Because the UK has fucking labour laws.

When I worked on BBC Causalty, as soon as it hit 5pm, everything stopped. The producer/director etc would have a quick meeting to decide if we’d go into overtime or schedule it in later in the week. And I got an extra payslip in the mail for every minute of overtime I did, even though I was paid a weekly rate.

I don’t care if it means producing less content. I don’t care if it means it costs twice as much - if treating your creatives and your crew like shit is needed to make your show, then your show doesn’t deserve to get made.

And that’s aside from the fact that actors are often exploited, neglected, coerced into doing scenes they’re uncomfortable with etc or outright abused by directors for the sake of ~performance.

No art is worth that.

It’s such a shame that so many people forget that the -punk suffix on cyberpunk and solarpunk referred to anarchism and/or anti-capitalism and it’s not just, like, -stuck but for alternate history

Also steampunk although nobody EVER knew what the punk meant there

Steampunk has never been punk. It’s just “wouldn’t it be nice if I was a rich victorian capalist and aristocrat but also with access to a doomsday machine.”

Steampunk was a complex movement centered around proving how the problem wasn’t technology but social customs that kept us divided. Most optimistic steampunk fiction that occurs in a high science fiction setting is either idealized (full automation) and/or an actual commentary on capitalism and classism.

People like to dress up and use the aesthetic because they enjoy it, and as of yet there is no other word (to my knowledge) for the aesthetic side of it.

Also, steampunk has a lot of branches/derivatives as well. In dieselpunk, the focus is on limited resources and the futility of fossil fuels (think of the video game Frostpunk). Atompunk is all about humanity’s doomed obsession with nuclear energy and weaponry (the entire Fallout series). Stitchpunk is just meant to be pretty plainly creepy and dark, bridging the old-fashioned with the modern to create Things That Should Not For The Love of God Exist (Coraline, 9, Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands) in the eyes of society and then going on to either use that instinctual revulsion as a symbol of evil or to smash down the consumer’s prejudices about the character/item.

Punk addressed more topics than just anarchism and anti-capitalism. It also tackled prejudice, classism, human arrogance, etc..

Water. Earth. Fire. Air. [x][x]

would you like to see the best video on tiktok? i present… a fancy flock

The creature that wants to kill you will not growl.

The function of a growl is as a warning. It is a communication that violence is available as a tool, but is not preferred. Other outcomes, besides your death, are available and should be considered.

But the creature that wants to kill you will not growl.

If your death is the goal, then growling will only serve as a delay and may result in your escape, which runs counter to the goal. There will be no growl, no warning. There will be no snarl or hiss or bluster. The creature that bares its teeth with the intent to kill only does so to bring closer its fangs to your demise.

The creature that growls does not want to kill you, but will if it must.

I advise you to appreciate the warning. You may not receive another.

Do y'all think the OP would mind if i borrow that first line to title a story someday? I don’t know what kind of story, yet, but that line just jumped up and smacked me all about the head and shoulders.

Made me think of:

-Men at Arms, Terry Pratchett.

skeletons

THIS IS WHAT I WANT ON NY HALOWEEN DASH OMG

I’ll never stop reblogging this

I told myself I’d wait until October to start putting halloween stuff on my blog. I’m a dirty liar.

Trans_irl

the Shame Honk

It’s a beautiful day, and you are a trans affirming goose.

My favorite thing about fanfic Zuko is that he just does not have a reference point for sexism. Like:

Some person: isn’t that women’s work?

Zuko, thinking of Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee: women’s work? You mean homicide?

When Zuko becomes Fire Lord he’s sitting in a meeting where there happens to be only one female advisor, Takiko (Which strikes him as a bit weird but for now he’s got bigger gazellefish to fry because he’s still trying to figure out who is worth keeping around even if *sometimes* (every day) he’s tempted to just turf them all out and start from scratch rather than deal with the paranoia) and Takiko’s in the middle of giving a presentation when they run out of tea. One of the male advisors remarks on this loudly, staring pointedly at Takiko. Because some female in the room “obviously” she’s the one who should be making the tea.

Takiko, used to this nonsense, starts to move towards the pot but to the collective shock of everyone in the room she is waved away by the Fire Lord.

“No, no, you’re in the middle of your presentation, I’ve got this,” says Zuko.

Male advisor: *sputtering* “My Lord! Surely Takiko can do that. Is it not below your station to pour tea?”

Zuko: “It’s fine. Uncle Iroh always pours his own tea and he’s ranked above all of you.”

*Room collectively recalls that Uncle Iroh is Dragon of the West*

Male advisor, changing tack: “She has uh… much more experience with such things.”

Zuko: *displaying an impressive level of control in using a fire technique to heat the pot that he learned during his time working in the Earth Kingdom tea shop* “I doubt it.”

(The kicker: Zuko makes better tea than anyone in the room has had in an official meeting in *years*.)

So many anti friend groups are just straight up cults and it's genuinely terrifying to see and be part of.

If you're scared of your friends for whatever reason, it you're scared of liking being in a specific fandom or liking a specific ship because you think you'll lose all your friends over it, if your friend group is essentially built on the idea that you're all good and everyone else is bad, if your friends use social ostracization and online stalking and harassment campaigns as threats and weapons, if your friends use fear and moral panic to keep people in line. . . . .

Please get out of there. This isn't even about shipping or fandom or whatever, it's about staying safe and not getting sucked into a literal cult. Cut them off, block them on all your social media, remake accounts if you need to, and make new friends who don't leave you feeling like you're walking on eggshells around them. Just stay safe.

Having to reblog the right call outs, memes, and discourse at the right time,  or come under suspicion or attack yourself? Getting scolded or called out for delay in responding to messages, even if you were away from your computer? New friends must be vetted by powerful members of the group? Private discussions may be screenshotted and shared at any time? Behavior control.

Extensive block lists with social consequences if your friends find you still follow any of those people? Mainstream books or news sources with conflicting opinions dismissed as “problematic” or out of touch? Information control.

Being expected to adopt the newest language, positions and targets without explanation even if they rapidly change? Any concerns or objections dismissed as evidence of incurable stupidity at best, unforgivable moral corruption at worst? Lumping wide varieties of info and theory together in simple good and evil categories? Thought control.

Effusive praise for complying with group demands, including and especially behavior that may make you uncomfortable, like bullying others? Seeing your friends send dissenters death threats? “Hot and cold” treatment, favoritism, competition for attention by powerful or BNF members of the group? Guilt trips about spending time and attention elsewhere? Emotion control.

Remember.... BITE!

This is an amazing breakdown, thank you so much.

If you don’t recognize all of these things but recognize some of them, still take it seriously. Not every abusive relationship will look the same. Start with the question “Am I afraid to express that I disagree with this person or people in anyway?” and if the answer is ‘yes’, something is wrong and it’s worth examining that further.

getting diagnosed with adhd as an adult is basically having a doctor tell you that a bunch of the things you thought of as universal human experiences were actually Symptoms of Problems Disorder so it shouldn't be surprising that someone can say "enjoying content consumption is actually a symptom" and a bunch of people will go "oh goddammit, another one?"

like, the last time you tried to say "no, everyone does that" you turned out to be clinically wrong so the best you can do is just

fun coincidence! I was talking to my behavioural therapist today and we got to talking about how I figured out that I had adhd by talking to my kids' teachers about their adhd and she said 'do you know that now it's standard when a kid gets diagnosed to test the parents as well? there's a huge genetic component' (at least they do this in my jurisdiction, ymmv)