Ahdok

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[alexaloraetheris]

Yeah that happens on a night out

[prokopetz]

The real reason your sapient dragon character needs a "rider":

Dragons on the wing are vulnerable to being mobbed by smaller, more agile flyers, particularly in your large rear blind spot, like a bird of prey being mobbed by crows. Having a human armed with a long spear perched on your back helps to dissuade anyone from getting any funny ideas.

Breath weapons are impressive enough on the ground, but in flight they're really only good for strafing stationary targets; trying to use your breath weapon in an aerial dogfight is a good way to get fire up your nose. A real fight calls for sterner measures – and, concomitantly, a crew to aim and reload the cannons.

In today's competitive world, it's not enough to devour a flock of sheep and call it a day if you want to keep your edge. You're accompanied at all times by a qualified personal alchemist tasked with carefully regulating your internal furnace to ensure peak performance, and sometimes you even listen to them.

No dragon of any quality would be caught dead without their valet. It's not as though you can announce your numerous long-winded titles yourself when introductions are called for, can you? You suppose next you'll be expected to pick up the spoils of your conquests yourself, like a common brigand. Perish the thought!

[mikkeneko]

[ahdok]

5. In flight snack.

[norixio]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[ekjohnston]

This feels like it should not be real. But it is real.

[alias-milamber]

It does remind me of when The Now Show asked its audience for suggestions for the new motto for England, and the winning suggestion was (roughly, I can't find the exact quote):

With dignity, with grace, with chips.

[ahdok]

With dignity, with grace, with my apologies.

[cpericardium]

hey everyone "I" have something to show "you"

[cpericardium]

[cpericardium]

[ahdok]

I've read several books written in the 2nd person, and I struggle to imagine how these people would react to those.

[dingdongyouarewrong]

one time i was in a pub in london and saw lemonade on the menu and i was like mmmm lemonade!!! but i’ve been to australia and been tricked before so i was like hey is this actual lemonade lemonade or is it just sprite and she was like it’s actual lemonade so i ordered some and she brought it back and it was sprite. i hate england

[dingdongyouarewrong]

[aprilslady]

They just meant it didn’t have lime in it

[dingdongyouarewrong]

sprite has lime in it wym

[thoughtsofadame]

honestly only americans who have been to england or australia or new zealand understand the frustration.  Also you literally can’t even explain to them what real lemonade is. they simply don’t get it

[dingdongyouarewrong]

i’m actually not american i just have functioning taste buds. but GOD HONESTLY like “sprite is a type of lemonade because it has lemon flavouring in it!” no. go to jail. lemonade does not have lime and corn syrup in it, and it’s not carbonated. that’s not a sweet refreshing summer beverage, it’s canned sadness. 

[pseudinymous]

These guys are honestly right. In Australia there is nothing that even closely resembles American “lemonade”. You’d have to make it yourself. I only vaguely know how to make it from American cartoons and it’s never sounded even slightly appetising. I guess it’s like Vegemite. You have to grow up with it.

[themunofprovidence]

If you’re insinuating that lemonade is like vegemite than you’re an idiot that has never tried lemonade. 

[truffledmadness]

GUYS. 

I don’t know about Australia, but I live in England, and there’s a CODE. There is a CODE you can use to make them understand you want ACTUAL LEMONADE and not SPRITE OR ITS COUSIN FROM ASDA.

You ready?

The code is: “Is it like Fentimans?”

Fentimans is literally the only UK-available company I know to produce actual lemonade. The Actual Lemonade is called Victorian Lemonade, and it’s delicious, and they make an also-delicious Rose and Lemon variation. And most UK pub landlords and such will at least be aware of Fentimans (they provide a lot of mixers to pubs, and ginger beer), so when you ask if the lemonade is “like Fentimans”, they’ll know what you mean.

[dingdongyouarewrong]

god bless you

[dreamgirlfriendevil]

If it makes it any better, it happens in reverse too - when I was in the US with my family, my dad asked for ‘lemonade’ at a restaurant once, and was perplexed when he didn’t get sprite. It was delicious though! I wish we COULD get in in New Zealand.

[i-am-dulaman]

I never understood this problem cause like. Isn’t american lemonade just lemon juice? Like you dont call orange juice orangade in america do you?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#i srg isn’t yank lemonade just strong cordial????? 

They um

They don’t have cordial

[rizaoftheowls]

We don’t have cordial and frankly I’m not 100% sure what it is.

(Also if one of you brits could explain what “squash” is, please? I’m sitting here like “surely they’re not drinking a zucchini…”)

American Lemonade: water + lemon juice + sugar. It’s not a soda and it’s not just straight up juice.

(You could probably MAKE orangeade, @beingcuteismything, but orange juice is sweet enough already that you don’t need the extra sugar. You can definitely make limeade, tho. Very tasty.)

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Imagine if you bought kool-aid as a liquid and it was significantly less cursed. That’s cordial.

Squash is strongly flavoured fruit soft drink. You guys have fanta, right? The original orange kind? That’s a brand of orange squash. We also have lemon squash, which is the closest thing we have to American lemonade (unless you’re at a super hipstery place, or you count lemon cordial). It’s carbonated and sweet though. I assume it’s called squash because it’s supposed to make you think it’s like a juice (squashed fruit).

[raynewolferune]

This entire conversation thread feels like it has become cursed. I thought I knew what all these drinks were at the beginning & while everything is still technically what I thought it was I feel like it’s somehow all tilted slightly to the left as well. How the heck did this happen?

[supervillainny]

UK squash is like @derinthescarletpescatarian’s cordial, except we also have cordial, which is posh squash.

Also fentimans is carbonated.

[earhartsease]

squash is usually a still concentrate of fruit juice (if you’re lucky and it’s not just flavouring and colouring) and sugar, which you then dilute with water

now let’s all argue about cider too - in the uk cider is alcoholic (what the US calls “hard cider”) and the commercial stuff is horribly sweet and sticky and fizzy - what the US calls cider we call apple juice (though here there’s no added sugar) - but real cider, the original cider, is called scrumpy and comes from the sw of england, is generally home made or commercially in small batches, it’s only a tiny bit fizzy and very much not sweet as all the sugar is now alcohol and it will blow your dick clean off

we can’t drink cider as it gives us wild heartburn, but scrumpy is the good stuff - a friend once made a particularly lethal batch and asked for name suggestions and we won with Scrumpy-Pumpy “one pint and you’re fucked” (which is a play on rumpy-pumpy, a terrible british euphemism for sex)

[winged-light]

Nobody has explained this bit so here.

In my part of the UK at least, the suffix -ade basically means carbonated / fizzy / bubbly.

Orange juice will not be fizzy or carbonated, it’ll be the natural thing you get from squeezing oranges. Orange squash will be more of a chemical orange concentrate that you add water to, to make a drink that tastes like orange juice. Orangeade will be a carbonated/fizzy orange drink.

Lemon juice will be the natural thing you get from squeezing lemons. Lemon squash will be some sugary lemon concentrate, which you can add water to and it becomes a tasty lemon flavoured drink. Lemonade is fizzy/carbonated lemon drink.

Apple juice is what you get naturally from squeezing apples. Apple squash is a concentrated sugary thing that you can add water to to get a shitty approximation of apple juice. Appleade is specifically a fizzy carbonated apple drink.

Cherryade will be a fizzy carbonated cherry drink, while cherry juice would be still, and cherry squash would usually require mixing with water.

I’ve never seen someone advertise, say, pomegranateade, but my assumption would be that it is a fizzy carbonated pomegranate drink. Because that’s what -ade means.

When I first came to America I was absolutely fucking baffled by the fact I kept asking for “lemonade” and getting stuff that was not fizzy. It literally feels like ordering “lemon fizzy please” and then getting lemon that is not fizzy. And when you’re like “I ordered lemon fizzy?” they’re like “that is lemon fizzy” and you look at it and it’s not fizzy. Insanity

Anyway, if you want American lemonade in the UK, “lemon squash” is what you want. It might be hard to find at restaurants because it isn’t very popular, but it’s pretty easy to find in big supermarkets. It will look like this:

Or like these

And you just mix a very small amount of that stuff with water. DO NOT DRINK IT STRAIGHT as you will have a bad time.

UK style squash is a good budget option, especially for families with kids. It’s not as good as fruit juice, but you can go to the store and buy £3 of fruit juice and literally finish it all over dinner and then not have any tomorrow, whereas you can buy £3 of squash and have enough for a week or two. It’s very concentrated, so you mix a tiny bit of squash with lots of water to get a drink, and so your bottle of squash can last you longer.

The closest thing I’ve been able to find in the US - other than lemonade powder I guess - is those squeezy mio bottles

At first I was really annoyed I couldn’t find squash in the US, but the mio stuff is actually pretty decent. It’s so small you can pocket it and lasts a surprisingly long time for such a tiny bottle. It’s squash on steroids, you literally only need one squirt in a glass of water.

For bonus points: it is borderline impossible in the USA to find Ribena / blackcurrant squash. I grew up on every kids’ birthday party having 2 options - orange juice or Ribena. It’s just such a normal drink and most Americans have never had it. If you’re visiting the UK, get some blackcurrant flavoured things!

[just-a-random-nerd]

This is because blackcurrants were illegal in the US for decades.

[ahdok]

I genuinely don't understand anything that's going on in this thread, almost nothing reflects any of my experiences in the UK. When I visited the US and ordered "lemonade" I was given sprite, and that happened to me several times, but everywhere I've been in the UK and everyone I know understands that if you get given sprite when you ask for lemonade that's wrong. If you want to be specific when ordering, there are terms you can use to distinguish fizzy transparent soda lemonade and "made from lemon juice, sugar and water" lemonade. If you want Schwepps you can ask for "white lemonade" and if you want non-fizzy lemon+sugar+water you can ask for "fresh lemonade". Lemon cordial is not the same as fresh lemonade. It's good, but it tastes different from freshly made lemonade. You *can* get actual fresh lemonade from some supermarkets, namely Sainsbury's and M&S. Fentimans isn't the only brand in the UK that sells carbonated fresh lemonade, San Pellegrino also sell it, as well as a few smaller brands.

[myjetpack]

My latest Guardian Books cartoon.

[libertineangel]

It is implied through gameplay mechanics that the two kingdoms at war in chess both formally permit regnal polygamy, allowing the King to take at least nine wives of equal status, and that marriage can be bestowed as a military honour, but curiously that honour - in stark contrast to the conventional attitudes of the aristocracy - can only be bestowed upon soldiers of the unlanded class, leaving great questions to be asked of the material interests and stability of these kingdoms' aristocracies

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

also, their horses lack limbs & their castles are small

[worlds-tiredest-girl]

yknow the smallness of the castles is FAR from their most interesting distinction from the noticeably immobile ones we are familiar with

[ahdok]

They're from Colostle.

[tblrnaturespace]

Minack theatre, Cornwall

[ahdok]

[writingdose]

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

the only thing AI checker does is harm genuine artists and people in general too.

[ahdok]

The absolute BEST I've seen one of these detectors do tells me that my own artwork is ~50% likely to be AI generated. Literally the best answer I've seen for my own hand-drawn analogue art is "50-50" which is useless to everyone. However if I put images I know for sure are gen-AI into that detector, it comes out at 25-30% likely-AI... As far as I can tell, these things are just scams. Most of them try to sell you on premium models or "hide your Gen-AI work" tools or subscription nonsense. If you want to interrogate a piece of work to see if it's Gen-AI or not, the absolute best way is to take an interest in it and pay attention to what's there. Once you're familiar with it, talk to its creator about their process, what they did and didn't do and why. Pick out features that are unusual or interesting to you and ask them why they chose to do things that way. Real artists almost always have answers to these questions, and can talk about what they struggle with and what they find natural. If you're in an educational setting, hiring for work, or otherwise assessing someone's capabilities, and you're trying to work out if your candidate actually has the skills they profess, the best way to check is to have them do something in person. Give them the appropriate tools and an hour, and get them to do a simple task for you.

[stedilnik]

Employee orientation

[stedilnik]

Self-defense training.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

It's really funny how art can be so important and enriching and sometimes downright life-changing but every single piece of art about how important and life-changing art is is the lamest shit ever.

[simplyspider]

this vibe

[ahdok]

Direct comparison in metal. First line of each song: 1) I am a Wizard. 2) You love heavy metal, don't you?

[thebelfry]

comics about ditto

[belbar74]

[tfw-adhd]

[meet-again]

This is weird bevause ive had this exact thought before

[wordsaremylife]

Actually it really does help to paint the picture

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

"why don't you set an alarm to remind yourself to put your marbles in your bag?" i will fill your shoes with goo

[ahdok]

When someone tells you to do something to manage your ADHD, like changing your routine or setting an alarm, they are handing you a marble to look after.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

"can you explain this large gap in your resume?"

yeah I tried to move an image in Word

[jollyfurydragonballer]

[fairyable]

[ahdok]

Alright, I'm gonna teach you all about picking out a bowling ball. Bowling balls at bowling alleys have different weights. If you're in the UK or USA, this will usually be measured in pounds, increasing in 2lb increments. You can get other weights, but usually they're not offered at the bowling alley. You should pick a weight that you're comfortable swinging like a pendulum, slowly with your arm straight.

If you're an adult, but not a regular bowler, typically aim for 8-12lbs depending on how strong you are and how much you work out. You can go up to 14lbs if you're comfortable with a 12lb ball and it feels a bit light for you. Typically don't go higher unless you know what you're doing. At your alley, all the balls of the same colour will be the same weight, and it should be written on the ball. What's NOT written on the balls is that they have different hole sizes and spacing. Most of these events happen to people who pick a ball with holes that are too large for their fingers (slips out too easily, and you lose the ball on the backswing) or too small (your fingers stick in there and don't release at the bottom of the swing, and you end up throwing it during the upswing.) - picking a ball with the right size fingerholes is far more important than getting the exact right weight. When holding the ball, your thumb should go into the biggest hole at the bottom. The other two holes are for your middle finger and ring finger - NOT your index or pinkie fingers. Your index and pinkie should be on the surface of the ball to help you balance it during the swing. To check if the finger holes are the right spacing for you, insert your thumb, and lay your other fingers flat across the surface, with your middle and ring fingers over the holes. Your second knuckle should rest directly over the holes if the spacing is right. (There are a lot of amateur and pro bowlers who use a different grip style called "fingertip bowling" - the balls at the alley are not sized for this and you need special inserts to do it. Don't try it unless you know what you're doing.) To check if the holes are the right size for you, insert the correct finger (or thumb) into the correct hole and withdraw it a few times (like you're trying to be lewd about it.) - the sides of your digit should lightly brush against the hole on both sides, but you shouldn't need to use any pressure to get the finger in and out. It's okay to go up and down the alley and check lots of balls in order to look for the one that fits you best, there are a lot of variations so you might need to check 10 balls before you find a good one. With a house ball it probably won't be perfect, but take your time and try to get close to these guidelines at least. Take the ball to your lane and only use that ball for your game. Learning good technique will also help, but if your ball is the right size, you should avoid anything catastrophic at least.