My Postillion Has Been Struck By Lightning

I was today years old when I realized "Acronym" stood for "Anyone Can Rationalize Obvious Nonsense You Moron"

I love this post, but I figure I'll use it as a change to do a PSA about this particular irritating brand of folk etymology: as a general rule, acronyms basically didn't exist at all before the 20th century, and even after that it's pretty rare for an acronym to get "de-acronymized" and become an ordinary word that people have forgotten the acronymity(?) of. I'm sure there are a couple more examples, but off the top of my head the only ones I can think of are laser (and derivatives), scuba, and radar. So in general, whenever you see a post of the form "did you know [word] is actually an acronym?", your default assumption should be that it's bullshit.

No, it isn’t. This is a lie. “Fuck” is an ancient Germanic root that means, well, “to fuck,” probably from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to strike.” You are falling prey to the exact same bullshit 81kg is warning you about!

This is also one of those bullshit etymologies that don’t make any sense if you have even minimal awareness about how the past worked. It only sounds vaguely plausible if you don’t know the first thing about how sin, law, and the English or British monarchy functioned at any point in history.

I don’t want to pile on the person in question, but it’s very funny that they used “fuck means ‘fornication under the consent of the king’” as a counterexample, because that’s like the central iconic example of fake backronyms, to the point where I almost put it in the tags of my post. 

We NEED to make dictionaries cool again. This sort of information (correcting the misinformation of folk etymologies) is extremely easy to find, certainly for English words. Just use a reliable dictionary! The internet is full of them! There's a wiktionary, which includes etymology! Oxford paywalls the etymology but Webster's does not! There's an Online Etymology Dictionary, which should be your first choice for that sort of thing! Instead of typing a whole paragraph of half-remembered nonsense that sounded cool and is completely wrong, type ONE goddamned word and look it up.

Don't google that shit and uncritically follow the first useless, unreliable, SEO/clickbait bullshit link, go straight to the source!

Folk etymologies spreading in a world without internet, where many people simply don't have access to a good dictionary, is to be expected. But this is stupid.

There’s nothing funnier than American Trad Caths revealing that they’re just Presbyterians that think Baroque looks cool

when u go to write a mentally ill person in ur story you are presented two options. the first option is to write your mental illness realistically as you actually experience it with all the ups and downs and people who are like you will resonate with it and feel seen. except every person who reads instagram infographics on mental health that uses the phrase narcicisst for anyone who does anything that crosses them and unironically call themself a dark empath will call you scary and tell you that youre demonizing mentally ill people

the second option is to lie and write inspiration porn for those people to get hard to

the same with physical disabilities TBH

THEY USED LAB-GRADE UVC STERILISATION LAMPS INSTEAD OF BLACKLIGHTS??!

Dashcon's ball pit suddenly looks good

Holy fucking shit.

Y'all don't go all schadenfreude with this. This is legit fucked up. Nobody deserves this.

Reblogs were disabled so here you go

Sometimes when people on the Internet are like "ADULTS CAN NEVER INTERACT WITH MINORS IT'S CREEPY" I remember how, at 12, back in 1997, I was on the Witchvox forums with people ranging from me to people in at least their 50s, and no one there was ever a creep to me, no one ever made me feel uncomfortable or asked for my personal info, and when I finally broke down after a particularly brutal day of bullying at school and posted about it they were the first adults I'd ever met in my entire life who told me the bullies were the problem and it was okay to be angry about it.

Kids need to interact with adults who will listen to them.

I was practically raised by sixty year old scientists I'd never met on random science forums. I'd show up and talk about evolution with them for hours. When I got accepted into university, they helped me go through how to find a place to live and the basics of living alone (my family didn't want me to go to uni so didn't help with any of this, figuring that if I couldn't find accommodation I'd have to stay home). You're supposed to have friends outside your age group; I'd argue that it's psychologically unhealthy not to. And no, your parents and grandparents don't count.

It takes a village to raise a child. Not a village of other 6 year olds.

Yeah. In particular, note that the goal here is not to have one person you trust intensely and you have no way of sanity-checking them; the goal is to have a handful of people, who are independent of each other, so that if one of them is making you uncomfortable you can tell someone else "hey this person I know is doing a thing which sorta creeps me out" and get feedback.

In an ideal world, you could rely on your parents to perform that function. We're not in an ideal world.

Just yesterday I was at a workshop for writing stage work about disability. The host was mid-40s, the friend I was with is 29, I’m 39 and the other person there was 16. It was a safe space for us all to talk about our chronic illnesses, including ADHD, which the three adults all have and the 16 year old realised they probably have. We’re all going to keep in touch about our work and this person could talk to us about their gender identity, which they can’t with their family at the moment. It was a really positive experience but I can imagine the “adults should never talk to minors” crowd having an absolute conniption about it.

i cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have gossipy bitchy littl pirvate group chats or discord servers with like 4 people in them whose stated purpose is posting “new kind of guy” or “this reddit post is so fuckin dumb” or “i got into a fight on twitter today look at this idiot’s reply” so your homies can still see it and laugh and back you up but more importantly, so you are not tempted to post these kind of things on main

# you can also practice just having self control in private in general # for example i do my best to never shit talk actual people ever # i can guarantee you that if you never form the habit of talking about anyone behind their back you will not do that.                                                                                                                                                

seriously, there really is no reason to gossip, the whole “everyone does it” rings hard like all those “everyone spanks their kids” bullshit. Yeah they do, and you still shouldn’t do that. Pick up a weird hobby like organizing bricks by color in minecraft like the rest of us. 

Mmmm, gonna back op on this one.

I kind of wonder what you’re picturing when you hear this, because what I’m picturing is stuff like critiquing the fanfic we read way more frankly than we ever would to an author’s face.

“Gossip” has a number of important social functions, and like any other social interaction it is a tool that can be used in good or bad ways.

We discuss positive and negative interactions we’ve had later and in private with our friend groups because this helps us process them. It can be a vibe check (“does it seem like this person was acting out of line towards me?”) or an analysis (“why do you think they did that? what do you think I should have done?”) or data compilation (“is this a pattern? has this happened to anyone else?”) or data sharing (“hey this alarming interaction happened, watch out”) or just venting to channel emotions into a place where they’re safe to have (“friend is processing bad thing and I’m upset on their behalf, so I need do my own processing somewhere else”).

If you can’t complain about your boss to your friends, how do you even figure out what bad boss behavior looks like?

And when some stranger’s being a dick on social media it is usually infinitely healthier and more constructive to go chat that argument out with your friends than to let yourself get sucked into fighting with someone very likely more interested in hurting people than listening.

Figuring out which social circles are the most beneficial places to have which discussions is a huge part of figuring out how to navigate the world and building yourself the support network you need.

“I never talk badly about anyone even in private!” cool high horse you’ve got there. I think you’re a liar though.

If you aren’t a liar now, time will make you one. You’ll eventually repress enough stupid little bullshits that you didn’t properly process for the back pressure to turn you into an asshole who thinks you’re justified. Worst kind of asshole, in my opinion.

Way better to be a bit of a dick in private with some friends about something annoying that you’re still able to remember is objectively Not That Serious than to be a chronic dick in general because you’ve repressed enough irritation that every new inconvenience feels like it’s a huge offense that’s pushing you over the edge.

This is a big part of it:

If you don’t gripe about “that bitch” with your friends, so they can gripe back about their own “that bitch” and you all agree that your complaints are mostly petty but they were annoying to you at the time… then you have no scale for noticing the difference between someone being a petty nuisance and someone being abusive.

Because a big part of the private friend group sharing complaints, is that sometimes one of them will say, “uh, that there? No. That is not normal and not okay. You should do something about that, not just complain to us that you don’t like her.”

Part of how you learn to recognize the difference between “unpleasant behavior” and “abuse” is by listening and sharing stories about behavior you don’t like. There is no nice sharp objective list of “XYZ behaviors are abusive and everything else is a matter of personal preference and you should just remove yourself from the situation if you don’t like it.”

Having a group of friends you can complain with is like having your own private AITA server. They can be supportive with “okay, you were sick and kinda overwhelmed by deadlines, but um, I think you’re a little overreacting here” or they can point out, “no, you’re right; that other person is totally unreasonable and it sucks that you have to put up with it” – or sometimes they can say “errr… do you know a good lawyer? Because this is a call-a-lawyer situation you’re in.”

You don’t have to be deliberately cruel and overtly vicious to find value in having a place to vent.

i was scrolling through the tags on the 'how many books have you read this year' poll and i just want every 0-5 book reader to know that whether you're dyslexic, you have trouble focusing, you have a job or other full time responsibilities, or perhaps you are just a slow reader by nature, that you're a better reader than this person

It’s not a fucking race. I can burn through some books in a day, and I draw others out over months or years. Hell, I have a book right next to me on the couch that I’ve only read a couple of pages from each year since I was 18, and that was roughly 300 years ago. Being a dick about reading gives you cancer

a red light lights up on your car's dashboard and underneath the light it says CAR

Sleeping fox

(via)

Cat’s got your tongue

I think this is a conversation that fandom needs to have in general.

When you encounter something that makes you uncomfortable while you’re playing a video game, reading something on AO3, browsing Twitter, or scrolling through Tumblr, you have the power to remove yourself. You can stop reading, you can hit the back button, you can block/mute, you can turn the device off entirely.

“Consent” has a very specific meaning. When you’re consuming a piece of media that a creator has posted on their own personal account, you are in their space. That is a one-sided interaction. They’re not at all involved, they can’t reach through the screen to hit the back button for you. They’re not “violating your consent” or “pushing your boundaries”, because you are the one in control.

We need to stop acting like creators are 100% responsible for the mental well-being of every person who could possibly encounter their work, and instead start taking responsibility for our own online experiences.

Nice

I interrupted her

I did my best, but I'm not sure I captured her.

Spot the dog

i’m starting a movement to stop calling this shit “artificial intelligence” cause it’s fucking not. it’s not intelligent, and the things it produces are not informed by logical choices. it doesn’t know how to research sources for you. it doesn’t compose art thoughtfully or meaningfully.

call it machine-generated, text generator, chat bot, but it’s not intelligent.

1980: The Australian government founds the new free-to-air TV station 'SBS'. It quickly gains the nickname 'Sex Before Soccer' after some creative attempts to drum up audiences sees it become world's only government broadcaster to regularly televise pornography.

Introducing one such film, a station presenter famously quipped on air "Tonights movie contains plenty of nudity, sword fighting, and nude sword fighting".

To keep censors happy, the pornographic films would often not be listed in TV guides, instead scheduled as part of multi-hour anthology blocks under titles like 'Erotic Tales' or 'Eat Carpet', where they would be mixed in with obscure international movies. As a result, to this day there is a generation of men in Australia with an unusually robust knowledge of the European arthouse films, gained while waiting for porn to begin.

The best part about this post is half the reblog tags are people saying "what, no way this is real!" and the other half are Australians fondly reminiscing on their favourite SBS pornos

Because the Americans are being confidently wrong as usual, references ahoy to prove we're not making this up:

A Facebook post from SBS that jokes about their nickname Sex Before Soccer

A Reddit thread from 2012 with Australians discussing their erotic programming

A tweet from SBS about Erotic Tales

And few more for good measure: [1], [2], [3]

Believe me, as an Australian child of the 80s, SBS was responsible for many a young person’s sexual awakenings.