There was this thread trending on Twitter where people are sharing some of their Billy Joel concert stories!

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON’T KNOW WHO THIS “HARRY” PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman

I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went “Racist homophobes? Not in our house!” And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

I’m having some emotions about it!

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

God I’m not okay about it

Now I’m mad that this is not among any of the things I was ever told about this artist.

I knew about this in general (& via all those fabulous photos), but this just adds even more beautiful context <3

Just to add to the pile: this was the cover of Springsteen’s break-through album Born to Run, in 1975:

I mean, will you LOOK at this:

This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:

There’s a lot more online if you search. They’re all pretty amazing. But the photographer is right, the one chosen for the album cover just pops.

What a copy cat

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

An actual World Heritage Post

how does this post not have a million notes but anyone online can quote it

one week until ten years of Spiders Georg

fun fact I finally got into contact properly with OP so they get a cut of this ‘ol gal’s print sales $$$:

the new dj crazytimes song … now that’s what I call music!

THIS IS SODNFJSKNJKSNFKS

I see his robot as an absolute win

OK - a very tangential takeoff: Engineering prof assigns students this question: Explain how to determine the height of a very tall building using a barometer.

Obviously meant to use change in barometric pressure with altitude. But one student submitted the following:

There are several ways of doing this

1. On a sunny day, stand the barometer up in the sun, measure the length of its shadow relative to its height, then measure the length of the building’s shadow and calculate its height from that.

2. Go into the stairwell and climb the stairs to the top, marking off the length of the barometer on the wall, giving you the height of the building in “barometer units”.

3. Go onto the roof of the building and drop the barometer off the top and time how long it takes to hit the ground, then calculate the height using the well known formula of 32 ft./sec./sec.

4. Go into the office of the building superintendent and say “If you tell me how tall this building is, I will give you this nice barometer”.

Newton….

This is basically any DnD party solving puzzles but with more success.

October 3, 1992:  Sinead O’Connor appeared on Saturday Night Live singing an  acapella cover of Bob Marley’s song “War”, changing some of the lyrics to include references to child abuse, and ending the performance by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paull II and saying “fight the real enemy”.

This ruined her career and she was telling the truth, as we all came to find out years later.

Please remember she didn’t consider it as a career ruiner. 

To speak on how it “ruined” her career ignores her own feelings on it. Please acknowledge how she felt about it, instead of how you see it.

Still laughing at Brian May offhandedly writing the greatest understatement in the history of academia in his astrophysics doctoral dissertation:

Ah, yes - “various pressures.” Like being one of the greatest guitarists ever and playing/writing/singing for the most legendary rock band of all time.

Those various pressures.

VARIOUS PRESSURES

PUSHING DOWN ON ME

PRESSING DOWN ON YOU

NO MAN ASK FOR

a collection of motivational insights regarding content creation and creative hobbies

and of course the classic

I’ve shared this story before, but some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten was from a writing professor who said, “The thing that makes your work interesting isn’t the stuff you’re good at, it’s the stuff you struggle with. Because you’ll either focus on improving those skills until you’re really good or you’ll figure out how to work around it in really cool ways.”

PSA: bot comments are taking over ao3

The above examples have been provided with the authors' permission to demonstrate what these look like.

Basic rundown:

Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly

There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate

@neil-gaiman did that actually happen to you? Pretty funny nevertheless

It did. Although it was in the advanced readers copy of Neverwhere, so we caught it before it went out to the public. Universal Find and Replace is never your friend.

Why are my friends like this

Sk8er Boi takes an existentialist stance, counter to utilitarianism. The song is critiquing Pretty Face’s friends as shallow, horrible people who do take a utilitarian view to human value - which is not something fans of the song should seek to emulate. Instead, Sk8er Boi advocates for authenticity to the self.

While Pretty Face’s friends saw no value in the young Skater Boy, and only showed interest when he had grown up and gained the trappings of what they considered success, Pretty Face always liked Skater Boy. However, rather than be true to herself and pursue what she genuinely wanted, Pretty Face caved to peer pressure and accepted a more ‘traditional’ approach to life, choosing to chase the conventional success her friends coveted. She is rewarded with what is characterized as an unfulfilling life and self-involved friends who can’t even be bothered to let her know that her old crush is now famous, instead buying tickets to his show for themselves and only sharing this information with Pretty Face when she reaches out to them directly. The last we see of her, Pretty Face is lonely and mired with regret.

Meanwhile, we can presume that Skater Boy, even if he had never become famous, would still have had a more fulfilling life than the one Pretty Face accepted, as we see that he chose to pursue things that genuinely interest him (i.e., music). He also appears to have found a devoted girlfriend who shows up for him, shares his values, and “rock[s his] world” in Avril Lavigne. In contrast, Pretty Face is “all alone” and her enduring group of friends are (at best) wholly ignorant (and more likely blatantly inconsiderate) of her interests and feelings. Regardless of the world’s judgment of where they ended up professionally, Skater Boy is supported, happy, and self-actualized, and Pretty Face is not.

Sk8er Boi is a lesson about self-determination - choosing your own life path regardless of how others feel about it and seeing the value that comes with being the arbiter of your own destiny - rather than a tale that endorses the idea that one’s ultimate worth is determined by their eventual career success. Its message is that authentic pursuit of your own fulfillment without regard to other people’s judgments is what creates a rewarding life, regardless of the material outcomes. Ultimately, the question Sk8er Boi leaves us with is not ‘if she’d made a different choice, could Pretty Face have ended up with a famous guy?’ - it’s ‘if she’d made a different choice, could she have been happy?’

Microbelr

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[You need to equip the 🔬 Microscope to properly view this post.]

[>EQUIP 🔬 Microscope]

@pabloernesto said:

every browser except firefox runs on chromium. they are just chrome reskins. firefox is the only good browser. install firefox

Firefox does a ton of cool shit but just out of the box, fresh install it does less tracking and dataharvesting than Chrome (in that it does essentially none while chrome's goal is to crawl all the way into your asshole and monetize the data of the unique features of your intestinal lining) and does not contribute to the chromium near-monopoly (Firefox and Safari are the only non-chromium browsers with any notable market share).

Also you know how Adobe fucking sucks and is really annoying and it's frustrating to have to use their PDF reader? Firefox now comes with a built-in PDF reader AND editor. Check this shit out:

Firefox also has a feature called Multi Account Containers that allows you to log in to accounts in different containers so that you don't have to open up an incognito window or log out of various services to use a different account. For instance, I have my Work container and my School container and I can log in to office 365 in either one of them without having to log out of the other, or I can have seven tabs logged in to seven different tumblr accounts (not sideblogs, separate accounts) in the same window if I want to do that for any reason.

Also fuck google.

i really really really like this post

While this isn't the usual focus of this blog, I know this story and wanted to share... This is not edited! This was a stray cat from the streets of Varna, Bulgaria; who dyed himself green by sleeping on paint. Find more footage below with a video from 2014, the year it happened.

https://youtu.be/I38vYIebEsk

The cat got lucky as the pigments were non toxic. Eventually, he was caught and washed by volunteers.

actually this cat ate a greenberry and now he's green forever

Dioooooos

Watching the first one: Yes, my brain that is used to Atlantic coastal dolphins registers that as the size that orcas probably are.

Watching the second one: OH LAWD HE COMIN'

First orca: oh cool! What a lovely thing to see that close and capture the moment on film. How nice!

Second orca:

playing a new game where i talk about fandom using words that belong on corporate powerpoint slides like:

✨ we have to align our headcanons to authentically reflect our strategic mission and meet quarterly margin objectives ✨

sorry to everyone who understood that

as per my last 5+1,

Hello team, 

With all due respect, I cross-checked your references with Kakashi from accounting, and the error in your fics was statistically significant. Every fic published in our “Enemies to Lovers” tag after the most recent episode’s air date needs to be updated and reviewed due to new policies issued by the author. 

Please re-aquaint yourself with the source material before next week’s meeting and prepare to discuss the changes. 

Cheers!

you guys are really good at this game

While I certainly appreciated your iniative in writing this AU, I feel it might be more appropriate to your skillset if you leveraged a canon approach.

more of today’s greatest hits for your nightmares

and of course