i saw a man at work the other day wearing a shirt that said "i was normal 2 pomeranians ago" with pictures of his pomeranians on it. important to note he had his pomeranians in his cart
artists rendition (i forgot to add the poms on his shirt but you get the gist)
Every time someone makes an artist's rendition of a weird little guy they saw in public instead of recording them without consent, an angel gets it's wings.
my mom finally bought a toaster
why did this get notes
we’re happy for you
its just a toaster
it’s been three years since i made this post. stop congratulating me on the toaster! stop asking me how the new toaster is doing!! i don’t know!! i haven’t lived with my mom in almost a year! i haven’t seen that toaster in months!! she might even have a new new toaster now!!! who knows!? not me!
@egberts how’s the toaster?
well the 10 year update to this saga is that I don’t talk to my mom and I have my own toaster 👍 don’t let your dreams be dreams
i love acquiring new sounds for my vocabulary. ough. oughghghgh. ough,,,,,. weh! wehhhh. lkjghslkdfjghsdjghs. hhhhhhhhh. hrgngnggnhghghghghgh,
i know this is the autism webbed site but it’s not gonna go that big, right?
YOU PEOPLE CAN’T DO THIS TO ME
my dad took some ancestry tests and eventually found out who his father was (and that he has 5+ siblings who are also finding all of this out) and honestly it's been pretty bizarre and emotional so far, naturally
but one of the biggest changes for me is no longer having to give the whole spiel of "oh i know i'm racially ambiguos but hey there's a whole story behind it because this that and here's my father's backstory"
like no i... i just have a grandpa from Nigeria now
...that's way less mysterious >:(
Did you guys know that the most recent version of sharks have fins that are kinda leg like and they like to walk up onto land?
no way i must have missed an update!
The Epaulette shark is only about 9 million years old as a species, making it the most recent branch in the shark family. And it is slowly but surely evolving into a land animal
LAND SHARK!
LAND SHARK!
WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN HE COMES FOR YOU?!?!
I will give him a kiss on the top of his little head
The thing about Those White People Baby Names is the way they so poetically express the tension between individuality and rigid conformity. These parents all want to name their child something unique, because they value the concept of uniqueness, yet simultaneously they abhor it in practice… ergo, 30 different spelling variations on the most normative possible names. This homogeneity-masquerading-as-diversity is inseparable from capitalist consumer culture and in fact is directly analogous to the experience of walking into a grocery store and being asked to “choose” between 50 varieties of toothpaste with the same exact ingredients, 12 brands of laundry detergent, etc.
Somebody’s third eye is WIDE the fuck open??!!!!!!!
okay so there’s actually a reason behind this that isn’t just “white people are terrible and really really boring!” it’s to do with Mormon culture. specifically: the fireworks you get when sexist expectations and terrible petty drama collide.
most of Those White People Baby Names are originally Mormon baby names. they’re chosen (or invented) by women in Utah; they tend to filter out to the rest of the world through things like “mommy blogs” and “baby name books” and “parent forums.”
you know how every culture has a “hey, welcome to the world, lil baby!” ritual? the mormon version of that is called a baby blessing. the baby’s father, and a handful of other men in the family, go up in front of the congregation during a Sunday service and say a special prayer. it begins by reciting the baby’s full name and then saying “I give you a name and a blessing.” It’s not something you can avoid doing- if you try, people will think that you’re trying to hide something. baby blessings are mandatory, and everyone in the congregation will watch and judge you.
because of this, your baby’s name gets a good bit more of a spotlight in Mormon culture than it does in secular culture, and that’s saying something.
Mormon women start picking out names for their hypothetical future kids in fourth or fifth grade and snipe at each other for picking “weird” or “bad” ones. it’s something that’s supposed to be in the back of your head long before you have a kid. and because people will judge you if you pick a name that’s “too boring” or “too weird”, it is already an intricate dance of finding something that’s “interesting” enough to pass muster but not so “interesting” your kid won’t survive kindergarten.
and that dance becomes even more intricate when Baby Name Drama gets involved.
see, because you’re supposed to put so much time into your baby’s name, a lot of women get… overinvested, let us say. the perfect name they picked for their baby is THEIR baby’s name and NO ONE ELSE’S. if you so much as dare to BREATHE that you’re naming your baby/pet/favourite laptop the same thing, you have STOLEN their BABY’S NAME.
so here’s the thing… say you really wanted to name your daughter Amy. You love the name, it’s classic, it’s cute, it’s perfect for your little girl-to-be… and then your sister-in-law gets pregnant and LOUDLY ANNOUNCES that she’s naming her baby Amy! and you know for a fact that she’s the type of person to throw a massive petty shitfit over you STEALING her BABY’S NAME. your family will take sides. her family will take sides.
if you want to avoid the drama, and you’re dead-set on naming your daughter-to-be Amy… well, then you name your daughter Aimee, or Aimi, or Aimy. It’s not the same name, it’s pronounced the same but it’s not the exact same name, so you can shut up, sis-in-law.
from what I understand a lot of the Crazy Name Spellings came from this root- “it’s not Kaylee, it’s Kayleigh, I swear I didn’t steal your idea”- and then once it became a trend, people named their kids that to be ~trendy~ just like they did with every other stupid trend.
but the root cause of Terrible Trendy Misspelt Baby Names has very little to do with white people being boring and conformist, and certainly nothing to do with capitalism. it’s a good old fashioned case of a) sexist expectations warping women’s behaviour into really really stupid shapes and b) Petty Small Community Drama.
I think it is worth noting here as well that Mormon culture is hyper conformist. Like you think the rest of western capitalist culture is stiflingly conformist? You have seen nothing. There is a reason people frequently call Mormonism a cult, and having been raised Mormon myself I think it is an accurate assessment.
I mean to give you some idea, the male mormon ‘uniform’ for sunday worship is white button up shirt, two piece suit, conservative haircut, and a tie. Your allowed points of personal expression are the knot you chose to tie your tie in and the color of said tie. If you are in a casual mood, you might wear slacks - people will look down on you for doing so. And wearing a not white button up shirt? Say you are in a blue shirt mood? You might legitimately get pulled aside by your Bishop (think congregation leader, all congregations are led by a bishop) and told that doing so is bad behavior. I know this because it happened to my brother when he wore a light pink shirt one time. And our bishop was a relatively relaxed guy with that sort of thing.
It is bad enough that Mormon congregations have to be reminded on a regular basis not to look down on visitors and treat them poorly if they show up in clothes that don’t match the allowed conformist uniforms because they either don’t know or don’t understand the seriousness of the conformist rules in Mormon culture.
And more than this these social rules matter a lot in a society like that. So you break the two piece suit rule? A good portion of the most influential people in your life will think poorly of you and it will effect your life going forward.
With so few allowed outlets for personal expression they are warped to be of much greater importance than they would be in any sane society. This level of conformity fucks with your mind. It warps how you see the world and other people.
There is a whole culture of expression based on tie color and tie knots among mormon missionaries because that is basically the only thing they actually get to chose about their own appearance. I had a friend who used a quadruple windsor knot and it was like his signature thing. Other people could use a quadruple windsor, but Elder Bird, he was the quadruple windsor guy.
I was notable among missionaries because the way I tied my tie caused a small but consistent wrinkle just below the knot, which was notable enough that I got many complements on it and was asked how I achieved the effect multiple times. I was just being lazy and tying the easiest knot I knew, but in mormon missionary culture tie appearance is so significant that it became known as my unique style. I was also notable because I managed to get special permission to wear my hair neatly trimmed to a half inch long, which is extremely rare and generally not allowed among mormon missionaries. I was the only missionary out of over 200 in that specific missionary group that had special hair permission, and it was widely understood that this was sort of a reward for my generally exemplary missionary behavior.
Think about how fucking insane that is. I had to get special permission to wear a highly conservative hair style because it wasn’t conformist enough. I still have regular nightmares about how oppressive and stifling mormon culture is. Christ I am glad I got out.
Anyway, the point of all this is that naming your child is one of the biggest points of personal expression a mormon will ever have. This is why “stealing” the name is such a big deal - it is devaluing an important choice of self expression. This will cause big divides in your family. It is going to be a problem, and a problem that will last for years if not the rest of your lives.
So it isn’t white people capitalist conformity. It is religious cult like hyper conformity that gave rise to the trend of stupid name spellings.
since the tumblr veterans have been kind enough to introduce us newbies to their site and culture, i think it is only fair that we explain the culture of our glorious former home to any tumblr users who might be interested in the #196 tag. keep in mind, all these things are based on my perspective of the situation.
first of all, some general information (that you might’ve already heard):
196 (r/196 on reddit) was a subreddit with only one (official) rule; "post before you leave." it was mainly a meme/shitposting sub, but it cultivated a large queer and left-leaning community. in protest of the recent api chances in reddit, 196 has shut down indefinitely until reddit reverts these changes.
now for some culture/references that you might come across
spronkus kronkus:
spronkus is this yellow, rabbit-like creature.
they were the mascot of our subreddit. their appearance can vary from images to image, but as far as i’m aware, their full outfit consists of a bandanna in the colours of the trans flag around their neck, a gun labelled as such (other wise you obviously wouldn’t know what you’re looking at), and an axe also coloured like the trans flag.
r/place:
this is a rare event on reddit where the entire website gets a huge white canvas and can start creating pixel art on it. 196 participated by collaboratively creating our mascot, spronkus with "196!" written next to them.
this version of the pixel art was recreated by me as i couldn't find a nice image of it. there were some changes between the first version and the end result, so this might not be exactly how it looked in the end
post titles/"rule":
reddit forces it's users to title every post they make. as most of the posts on 196 spoke for themselves, many user instead titled their posts "rule", to indicate that they followed the subreddit's only rule. some people also tried to make puns with the word or tried to include it in words that shared some letters (example: wor(ule)d).
anarcho-stripperism:
as the amount of cropped porn jokingly posted to the subreddit increased, the moderators decided that porn would be banned from the sub, with one exception: anarcho-stripperism. she made food fucking videos, in which she jokingly tested the fuckability of different food items (fruits, pasta, etc.)
bigotry showcase:
bigotry showcase was a post flair (basically the reddit equivalent of tags) on the subreddit and was later restricted to only be used on saturdays. under this flair people posted instances of different forms of bigotry to make fun it.
eating babies/hungryposting:
at some point, the subreddit started to pretend to like eating babies, which started a variety of memes regarding the subject. even a post flair called "hungrypost" was added because of this
goblinhog:
goblinhog is the most prominent and well-known member of the 196 moderation team. besides this, on 196 he was mostly known for changing people’s flair if you enjoyed him enough about it.
flairs:
flairs are little tags that are displayed under your name in posts or comments, they are also subreddit specific. most subreddits give their users a palette of preset flairs and the option to make your own custom flair. however, in 196 you only had the option to customize your flair during special events. if you wanted to customize your flair outside of those events (which was basically the entire time), you had to ask a mod to do it for you.
punching nazis:
from time to time, the same gif of a person with a nazi armband getting punched in the face, and promptly falling to the ground, was reposted to the subreddit. this became a sort of tradition.
discourse/drama
wasp discourse:
the wasp discourse was a one to two weeks long heated discussion that generally divided the subreddit into two factions. one side said that they were justified in killing wasps if they were attacked by them, while the other claimed that since wasps are just animals, they aren't aware of what they're doing in the same way humans are, and therefore should be spared.
drama about the british:
there was a time when jokes along the lines of "ew, british" became pretty frequent on the subreddit. as a response, some user claimed that this was akin to racism and tried to get others to stop with the jokes. a debate over whether or not it was important or necessary to stop followed afterwards.
pillar discourse:
this was a debate over which type of pillar should be considered the best (ionic; doric; corinthian). i have seen the question "which pillar is the best?" being used as a sort of greeting between 196 refugees on here.
related subreddits
195:
195 was the predecessor to 196, and also was a social experiment with the same premise as 196 (one rule, post before you leave). as the creators of 195 ended the experiment, the community wanted something with the same vibe to continue posting, and thus 196 was born.
197:
197 is another part of the 196 ecosystem and is commonly understood to be the more politically right-leaning and bigoted as 196, as some people who were banned from 196 continued posting there. besides that, the subreddits were essentially the same in terms of how they functioned.
19684:
this subreddit adds a second rule which banned all mentions of sex (that’s why it’s name is a pun on 1984). some people took this as banning all discussion of sexuality, which resulted in a community that was slightly less accepting of queer people. it is currently still up and running as the 196 moderation team wants a way to stay in contact with the community.
amendments to the posts:
femboy expert:
another well-known 196 user. as the name suggests they're an expert on the subject of femboys, with their flair on 196 reading "phd in feminine boys". as the subreddit was somewhat obsessed with femboys, it's no wonder that they became popular.
shitcum_backup:
this was the main account of a pretty popular shitposter on the subreddit. although i didn't see them as much in the last few months, i remember them sometimes having a unique speaking pattern, in which they referred to themself in the third person.
monko74:
i must admit that i didn't know about this person beforehand. they seem to be quite popular. some research reveals they even have a few subreddits dedicated to them. they seem to be known for the quote "Me balls burn [sic]"
691:
a sister subreddit that inverts the rule of 196, here you would be (temporarily) banned for posting. some time ago the members of this sub initiated a rebellion/revolution against the bot who performed all the bans (roomba).
it's going to be very interesting to see which aspects of 196 culture are going to survive the tumblr migration, and which aspects won't be applicable on this site.
i'm obviously not the ultimate scholar on 196 lore. if i’ve missed or left out anything, or said something wrong, please comment it.
the main difference between reddit and twitter refugees is that twitter people type in the most annoying english known to man and you end up trying to decipher hieroglyphic shit like oomfies and su!(1de and s33x. r/196, meanwhile, are just here to provide the best shitposts ive ever seen. their addition is beneficial to the whole habitat. asbestos bleeding into the water supply vs when they re-introduced wolves to yellowstone.
Me and my fellow native tumblrinas walk amongst the shell shocked reddit refugees, clustered by our clown houses and clown cars in their little tents, distributing animal balloons and clown noses.
[ ID: A thread of five successive tweets by C.W. Howell @ cwhowell123 that read as follows: So I followed @/GaryMarcus's suggestion and had my undergrad class use ChatGPT for a critical assignment. I had them all generate an essay using a prompt I gave them, and then their job was to "grade" it--look for hallucinated info and critique its analysis. *All 63* essays had / hallucinated information. Fake quotes, fake sources, or real sources misunderstood and mischaracterized. Every single assignment. I was stunned--I figured the rate would be high, but not that high. / The biggest takeaway from this was that the students all learned that it isn't fully reliable. Before doing it, many of them were under the impression it was always right. Their feedback largely focused on how shocked they were that it could mislead them. Probably 50% of them / were unaware it could do this. All of them expressed fears and concerns about mental atrophy and the possibility for misinformation/fake news. One student was worried that their neural pathways formed from critical thinking would start to degrade or weaken. One other student / opined that AI both knew more than us but is dumber than we are since it cannot think critically. She wrote, "I'm not worried about AI getting to where we are now. I'm much more worried about the possibility of us reverting to where AI is." /end ID. ]
i love that ppl never stopped with the showdown polls on this website but they have to keep resorting to stranger and stranger things to pit against eachother. we started at tumblr sexyman and now im seeing like. most codependent wlw ship. most iconic blonde & blue eyed character. most sensual steam train. this is the data we truly need.
i feel like we should dig up some of the good old posts as a celebration of the reddit migration. the michael jackson fries post that got nuked by his estate, you're lowballing the furry art amount tbh, tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit, that's pussy babe!, when my werewolf boyfriend pulls out, then perish, that sort of thing. the silver age of tumblr posts, if you will
Audio processing disorder is just like "you are going to be able to differentiate 27 distinct sounds happening simultaneously EXCEPT for when someone's talking to you. Good luck"
People think because my ears are so unreasonably sensitive I must also be able to "hear" them. This is false. I can hear the clock ticking though
Google’s search quality has been in steady decline for years, and Google assures us that they’re working on it, though the most visible effort is replacing links to webpages with lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a confident habitual liar chatbot:
The internet is increasingly full of garbage, much of it written by other confident habitual liar chatbots, which are now extruding plausible sentences at enormous scale. Future confident habitual liar chatbots will be trained on the output of these confident liar chatbots, producing Jathan Sadowski’s “Habsburg AI”:
But the declining quality of Google Search isn’t merely a function of chatbot overload. For many years, Google’s local business listings have been terrible. Anyone who’s tried to find a handyman, a locksmith, an emergency tow, or other small businessperson has discovered that Google is worse than useless for this. Try to search for that locksmith on the corner that you pass every day? You won’t find them — but you will find a fake locksmith service that will dispatch an unqualified, fumble-fingered guy with a drill and a knockoff lock, who will drill out your lock, replace it with one made of bubblegum and spit, and charge you 400% the going rate (and then maybe come back to rob you):
Under the new rules, homes that are not occupied for at least six months of the year are subject to a tax of one per cent of the property’s assessed value. The deadline to rent out empty dwellings was July 1.
Fazli said many of the people he has talked to are thinking of renting or selling their properties. He recently met with a woman who owns three empty properties in Vancouver — and says one of them is now listed for rent, another will be listed shortly and she is thinking of selling the third.
“This is a scenario of someone who is kind of in a panic now and needs to rent them out,” he said. […]
amazing
Why were they empty?
they’re meant to be investment properties, bought, left empty, and then sold a year or few later for huge profit as housing values continue to rise. it’s a massive part of the bc housing bubble, and why despite so much new construction it’s still so difficult to find rental housing
the fact that these landlords are panicking because they might have to actually use their housing properties as housing rather than finance capital is deeply funny
It should be more than a 1% tax rate though. I want it to be 100%. Torture them.
trotting side by side we go,
and into sleep away we steal,
'what did you learn?' the sandman asks
i smile and tell him 'love is real'
