Ritzleshneff

The inherent homoeroticism of killing your enemy and immediately regretting it

It’s about rage, it’s about obsession, it’s about making that two-person war your entire raison d’être. It’s about loving and mistaking it for hatred and loving and loving and loving to the point of destruction. His or yours, it doesn’t matter. And you think seeing him dead at your feet will make you feel better, but all you feel is a whole lot of nothing.

Many vegetables, most noticeably sweet corn and sugarsnap peas, are full of sugars that start turning to starch as soon as they're picked, so you will get the best and most flavorful experience if you eat them as close to harvest as possible.

Winter squash is full of starch that slowly turns to sugars once it gets picked, so you will get the best and most flavorful experience if you wait six weeks to three months (depending on the variety) after harvest before eating them.

Cold-hardy roots and brassicas are full of starch that turns to sugars after exposure to frost, so you will get the best and most flavorful eating experience if you wait to pick them until they've gone through multiple freezes.

This has been Vegetable Lore With Scribe.

Kyle Montgomery 2015 crystal mary

HELLO, THIS

on a similar note

the saga continues!

Wow

all video games should have a “I’m shit at video games but I’m curious about the story and I don’t want to watch a let’s play” mode

I am

I made this post because I am disabled and no matter how much I practice there are some games I will never be able to play because I physically cannot move my fingers the way you have to and the responses to this post from other disabled people, people who grew up unable to play video games, and people who just aren’t very good at them has been extremely enthusiastically positive, while people who apparently can’t conceive of the idea that some people will never be good at gaming condescendingly comment, tag or send me asks telling me to try easy mode or to get good despite the fact that the feature I’m describing already exists in some games and mods. if you’re part of the latter group, consider that some of us can not ever be good at video games and we still deserve to be able to participate and have fun

Ok, real talk, if you play PC games I use a program called Wemod that has settings for almost every game ever and you can change them to suit your needs Unlimited health? one hit kill? unlimited items? They can’t mod multiplayer games, but every genre of game imaginable is on Wemod so I use it for everything from stardew valley, subnautica, hades, farming sim and more! It mods the games to your level of ease without needing to mess with any files or get deep into webpages for mods yourself It is a life changer

FYI ⬆️⬆️⬆️

Only passing along as the only games I play are on my phone.

you know what i think really slaps? the fact that every generation of teens online have grown up with personality quizzes. when i was a teen we had quizilla. before the rise of buzzfeed they were ubiquitous in magazines and a bunch of sites had flash personality quizzes that played like games. now we have uquiz. entire chunks of the internet might be getting phased out someday but on god we have our right to find out which fruit best represents our personality

four separate people have mentioned teen magazines in the comments of this post as if i had neglected to mention them when the phrase “ubiquitous in magazines” is right there in the post. never fucking change, jared nineteens

you win

Sometimes I go to myself "you know, I don't understand what NFTs are" and then I go look it up again and discover, yes, actually I do know what NFTs are. It's just that every time I read about them again I'm left going "this CAN'T be it, there has to be something else to make this make sense" and the answer is always no.

Before I argued with a shit ton of landlords and wannabe landlords: I think we should strengthen tenant’s rights and enforce our existing tenant protection laws better, and increase our housing benefits.

After spending too much time arguing with landlords and wannabe landlords: Fuck it. It should be illegal to own homes you don’t live in. If you won’t sell to the people renting from you, people should forcibly take your property. All landlords are parasites.

"iF yOu DoN't LiKe ReNtInG jUsT bUy A hOuSe"

Houses in my city go for, like, $500k. I can't. Housing prices in the US have skyrocketed while wages have stagnated. That is in fact the problem--most people cannot afford to buy a house, and many people pay more than half their income in rent. Ever saved up for a down payment on a house while doing that?

"mOvE iF yOu DoN't LiKe YoUr LaNdLoRd"

Moving is expensive and stressful. There's no guarantee of finding another place within reasonable distance of where we work, where we buy groceries, etc.

"bUt If LaNdLoRdS dOn'T rEnT oUt HoUsInG wHeRe WiLl PeOpLe LiVe?!"

If landlords/property companies all were forced to sell every place they owned except housing they specifically lived in, the market would have such a glut of housing that prices would nosedive in nearly every city in the US, possibly to the point where normal, average working people could buy one. Houses and apartments do not blink out of existence because a landlord stops renting them out. Why do I see this dumbass line of logic so fucking often.

People literally cannot wrap their minds around the fact that landlords (and I include property companies--the kind that own multiple apartment complexes--as landlords) don't create or do anything of value. "But when I need the water heater fixed, the landlord fixes it." Except for some mom'n'pop landlord operations that insist on DIY'ing everything, your landlord is not the one who is fixing it. The person who physically comes to your unit and fixes it is the person who fixes it, and your landlord is just an expensive gatekeeper who decides for you whether you actually need your water heater fixed. If you owned the place you could have insurance against that kind of thing, you could put money in a co-op that pays for that kind of thing (like condo associations do), or you could just pay out of pocket for it if you have the money. If you did take on the risk of repairing it yourself, the only person who would suffer is you. But you wouldn't be at the mercy of some dipshit who tries desperately not to get your water heater fixed (even though that's illegal), or who hires the cheapest person they could find (who might suck ass and make it worse), or insists on doing it themselves (whether they know what they're doing or not).

HUMANS REQUIRE SHELTER TO SURVIVE. The modern standard for housing includes things like locking doors, ceilings and windows that don't leak, walls that aren't covered in mold, and working electricity, plumbing, and hot water at a bare minimum. On top of that, we need shelter that's near enough to our place of employment and places to buy food, etc.

Landlords do not provide housing. They hold it ransom for as much money as they think they can get, because they know we need housing to survive. They buy up as much housing as they can (reducing the supply of available houses for sale) and then rent them out at a profit (which means more than they're paying on the mortgage, if they have one). They are hoarding housing, creating a false scarcity, and then profiting off of it.

I'm volunteering for a literary journal right now and there's two things I think you all should know.

1. Most people that submit to literary journals are cis white men. We know this because our journal has an anonymous survey about demographics for people that submit.

2. Most things that get submitted to the creative non fiction section are on the level of middle school "What I did over the summer" essays.

I cannot see the demographics of the people whose essays I'm reading, but guys, if you are wondering if you should submit your work to a literary journal or not, I promise you that just in terms of statistics there are a lot of mediocre cis white men and people in general confidently submitting weird crap that isn't literature to literature magazines. Do it. Submit your work. Please. If you want there to be more diversity in literature, be the diversity. Do it. Do it do it do it.

In general literary magazines want to include more diversity, but if poc, queer people, disabled people, etc. don't submit their work then they aren't gonna get more diverse because we just won't have the material necessary to get more diverse. Submit your work. Do it. Do it. Do it do it do it.

Here's a list of university run literary journals. Do it. Get published.

Many indie lit mags also welcome works from BIPOC and LGBTQIA creatives because the editorial staff themselves are in that demographic. Quarantine brought on the start of the SO many indie lit mags - it’s almost a golden age. Don’t be afraid to submit — there will always be so many niches and aesthetics that one will bound to be the one that fits your style. 

There is so much work from marginalized narratives in litmags these days — people lament there is no representation in media, but that disregards the progress and diversity of the works of editors and writers who help make these litmags possible. 

There is representation, and it is flourishing. They are waiting to be read. 

The Lumiere Review compiles a list of submission opportunities every month, and it are always very useful: 

https://lumierereview.com/sub-sep-oct-2021

List of Litmags that Specifically Look for Work from Marginalized Creators or is Run by Marginalized Creators:

Warning Lines: https://warninglines.com/

With Confetti: https://with-confetti.com/

Giving Room Magazine: http://www.givingroommag.com/

The Bitchin’ Kitsch: https://www.talbot-heindl.com/

Tealight Press: https://www.tealightpress.com/

Tipping the Scales: https://www.tippingthescalesjournal.co.uk/

The Winnow Magazine: https://www.thewinnowmagazine.com/

perhappened: https://www.perhappened.com/

AZE Journal: https://azejournal.com/

Honeyfire Lit: https://honeyfirelit.com/

and so much more!!

(And even if some litmags’ mission statement isn’t specifically for marginalized creators, they will always welcome these narratives.)

So please, please submit!

Independent magazines are great too! I’m more familiar with the university journal scene so I appreciate this addition.

I said it in the notes on the last post but I’m gonna say it again.

I’m married to someone with severe memory problems. Automation of household appliances & systems helps him a lot and helps me a lot because it reduces the number of things I have to keep in my brain at all times. I love doors that lock themselves, being able to schedule dog food being delivered, a thermostat I can manipulate from wherever. Beyond my little bubble it should be noted that voice controlled appliances can be really good for people with mobility concerns. Appliances that can measure and talk and remember little tasks can be such a blessing for people.

I will never forgive Amazon and Google for taking technologies that could be really helpful and weaponizing them, and fuck everybody who acts like its some kind of conspiracy theory that those devices are spying on you. You absolutely should be distrustful of those devices but just make sure you’re getting angry at the right people.

Making accessibility devices evil is just like so Disney villain

My mom is blind and without her Alexa literally could not cook, go shopping, or do a million other things. Because Alexa is voice-activated, she doesn’t have to fumble with knobs or write a list she can’t read.

I will never forgive Amazon for how much I hate a tool that allows my mother to live her life.

Open source and secure alternatives for some of these:

- Voice activated smart speaker: Mycroft (can be purchased as a complete unit, or DIYed with a Raspberry Pi and microphone+speaker array) https://mycroft.ai/

- Smart Home automation: home-assistant (cannot be purchased, originally developed by MIT) https://www.home-assistant.io/

- Zigbee (the wireless protocol for smart lights and other smart devices) bridge: Conbee II (this takes the place of a Phillips Bridge, for instance. And is in many cases better because it works with all brands of smart light that use Zigbee--which is almost all of them, including the cheap IKEA ones--and also works for devices that aren’t lights. Cannot really be DIYed because Zigbee needs special hardware, not just software) https://phoscon.de/en/conbee2 

I don’t know any alternatives for locks, vacuums, thermometers, or anything else sadly. None of these are that difficult to set up with just a little bit of tech know-how, and extensive guides already exist for almost all problems you could run into because the open-source community is almost psychotically dedicated to its projects, unlike Amazon, Google, and Apple where it’s practically impossible to get help with any problem that’s even slightly unusual.

Oh thank you!! These area really neat

Oh thank you so much! My grandmother has an alexa and it’s really improved her enjoyment of life, but I hate even talking around it. It’s linked to my amazon and I’ve gotten suggestions based on things it’s heard. That wigs me out so much.

Can confirm, Home Assistant is amazing; I transitioned everything I could for it to control and right now that’s literally everything. It can also be integrated with other voice-activated smart speakers than Alexa as well as Alexa. It also comes WITH an Add-on called Ada for voice.  So far, there is very goddamn little on the market that isn’t either officially supported or community supported and stuff is being added at the rate of literally weekly. If you do scripting and have a taste for diy, you can be Dr. Doom and your home is your supervillain lair.

Because of the market, most smart appliances and devices are Alexa enabled, but unless they’re made by Amazon, that doesn’t mean they’re Alexa exclusive and even then, someone is hacking their way into the API and pulling the endpoints. Right now, the only thing I can’t work in here (yet) is my Nest Thermostat and HA is working on adding that back in right now.

Home Assistant is fully compatible with the zwave and zigbee standards as well as wifi and bluetooth; you can directly control zwave and zigbee items or link up your existing hubs for it to control like SmartThings.

https://www.home-assistant.io/

It can be run in several ways; I’ve done it on a Pi 4 both 4G and 8G and a VM on my Ubuntu server and while the Pi is recommended--I recommend it too for convenience--it’s one of several possibilites.  Currently I’m using a Raspberry Pi 4b 8G with a solid state hard drive instead of SD card.  You can purchase z-wave and zigbee modules to add to it for direct control of z-wave and zigbee devices or use your existing hubs (or both). Beneath the HA umbrella is also links to the blueprints of building your own zigbee and zwave devices with Arduino just to start that HA can also control. I’m not saying you’re going to be building your own smart thermostat on the weekend, but apparently, some people are doing just that.

This does not require a high tech start value; most integrations are automatic, you just say yes and login and let it happen, it even creates your Dr. Doom dashboard with TABS.

Again, you DO NOT NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING BUT COMPUTERS EXIST AND HOW TO CLICK YES AND NO TO USE THIS. For me, it was actually easier than a lot of setups with shit I had to pay money for that said they were easy.  This is open source, but that is not synonymous with user unfriendly; a lot of work was done to make this accessible to the casual automation user. The UI is card based; when you first start, HA does it all for you and creates discrete cards that control different things on your dashboard; no effort on your part, you can turn on and off any light in here or turn them red while someone is in the bathroom because that’s fucking funny.  But as you get more comfortable, you can start to create your own configurtions, take direct control of the UI, and mix it up; it’s up to you.

But.

If you are a DIYer or just want to be or never knew you wanted to be but feel the vibes and need a place to start, this is the perfect sandbox for learning and escalating.  There are a metric ton of tutorials, community add-ins, and message boards to consult. If you can imagine it, it can be done and its likely someone is working on version eight right now. The primary languages are python and javascript with yaml for configuration files for DIY.  You can create your own layouts, your own sensors, and your own cards if you don’t like what they have. If you’re like me, you may also go in to community addins and add new stuff to their code so it runs like you want it to; it’s all up to you.

I am not a dev pro, I’m a QC analyst with a scripting hobby; I do this quite literally for fun on weekends or when I’m bored or anxious and need to soothe myself with coding.

Here is the home page of my MULTI-TAB dashboard. Yes, that is a floorplan of my apartment and those glowy orange and dark grey bits are things that I can turn on and off from the comfort of my bed.  It’s fun.

I seriously would kill to get more people into this and have someone to play with and enjoy the feeling of controlling all within my (apartment) kingdom with but a single command.  Dear God tell me if you’re into it; we’ll be best friends and hopefully you’ll be okay with that.

Here’s an intro to Home Assistant I wrote back in September in DW when I first started, with screenshots.  You’ll also be able to see my Dash when I first started compared to the dash above. Feel free to ask me anything from the perspective of someone not a dev professional, an engineer, or even has a degree in anything, much less anything like this, and yet is a QC lead who codes their own testing tools and for whom this is just something cool and fun.

Home Assistant: An Introduction

this is cool af! reblogging for anyone interested in automation but not bezos!

Midsommar (2019)

this video is incomprehensible

Russian sleeper cell activation tape

broo fuck off im trying to look dreamy

— The Police Can’t Solve the Problem. They Are the Problem.

it’s too early for this

oks

me and the boys, felsírtam

tegnapról

Flags Mashup Bot is really out here trying to start World War III

UPDATES

Source: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2019/08/02/ethiopia-tree-planting/

Plants some trees, please

Our Lady of the Damp and Rain

It really is disturbing how aggressively journalists use the passive voice in contexts that relieve perpetrators of violence of any shred of accountability

It reminds me of the break down of grammar on sexual violence transforming “Jack beats Jane” into “Jane is a battered woman” where by the end of it Jack isn’t even part of the situation at all and the harm inflicted is just part of Jane’s identity rather than something inflicted onto her by someone else. 

They took “Thomas Woodworth, a Captain at a for-profit ICE facility, drove his personal vehicle, a 2012 Chevy Silverado, over a crowd of Jewish people protesting ICE concentration camps” into “A van tried to drive through a group of protestors.” By the end of it, Woodworth isn’t even mentioned– a van driving (itself?) into a group of people is just something that happens to protestors, it’s just something that happened, like a force of nature. 

Is there any way to more distance Woodworth from accountability for this act of violence? 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/the-curious-grammar-of-police-shootings/?noredirect=on