cherry valley forever
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izzy's playlists!
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I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
hello vonnie
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bliss lane
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almost home
will byers stan first human second
Cosmic Funnies
One Nice Bug Per Day
$LAYYYTER
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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@ahdok
looking for animal references on image searches has always kind of sucked but it's much worse after AI image generation technology has begun to actually past muster, which is why i always just go straight to inaturalist. can't recommend this highly enough. you get to both find out about niche species you've never even heard of and also see some really good photographs like this one
x
Artwork for recent music releases by Scuba
Space ring: ah cool
Overgrown apocalyptic space ring:
Ah. Cool.
there was an incident at work today
When I worked supermarket retail, sitting at the checkout for 4 hours at a time can be mind-numbing. I'd often try to keep my brain occupied by actually observing each customer and their mood, and trying to tailor the brief conversation to them. For example: if the person looked like they were in a hurry on their work-break, I'd process their stuff more quickly and get straight to the payment. I'd also look down the queue, and if someone seemed agitated or in a hurry, I'd try to process the whole queue as efficiently as possible. If they were an old retiree who was chatty with other people in the line, I'd ask if they had any favourites in what they were buying etc etc. - You don't always guess right, but most people seemed to appreciate my tone, and it kept the brain-cogs spinning. One thing I'd do to keep me from falling asleep was I'd see if the groceries they were buying told a story by themselves. If someone was buying 50 bottles of wine, they were probably having a party. If their cart was FULL of every baby supply we sold, there was probably a new baby, etc etc. Most people just buy regular groceries, but if there was an odd pattern, it made a good way in for a conversation. That habit just sticks with you too. (The technical term is called "being a nosy bugger") So one day I'm in a Tesco, one of those really huge ones that sells everything like a department store. The guy in front of me is unloading his shopping trolley, and I see forty packets of jelly go onto the checkout. "Okay, it's a children's party" I think. Then twelve packs of kitchen roll. "Okay it's a children's party for young kids and it's gonna get messy." I think. Then finally, the piece de resistance. Five (different) mobile phones.
Cool curves made from straight lines. This twisty wooden tunnel (2016) is installed in the Parc Mallet-Stevens, in Croix, north of Lille, France. Photos from April 2025.
Photo from "Wake the Tiger" in Bristol, UK.
To all my international friends, yes the leader of the UK's biggest far right party is going to have to defend his seat as a member of parliament against a man with a bin on his head, this is not a bit, this is a real and genuine thing happening in UK politics
Pulling the gist of prev's tags into the main post because it does very much add to this: this was an entirely predictable result of an entirely unforced choice on the part of the far right party leader. He fully did this to himself. Claims to be a man of the people; clearly does not understand the fundamental British commitment to Silliness.
Much like this by-election, everything Farage does is performative, he's a pure cynic who just wants money and power. Like here's an example: The one thing people know best about Nigel Farage outside of his xenophobic politics is that he goes down the pub and "loves a beer."
Here's the thing though. Farage hates beer. He never drinks it in private and prefers fancy red wines. He only drinks beer for photo shoots.
In Ancient China, they had hard pillows made of stone, wood, ceramic, etc. Makes me imagine a murder mystery where the victim was murdered by being bludgeoned to death with their own pillow. Lethal pillow fight!
My pillow fort can stand up to light siege weaponry.
loz twitter was briefly trying to decide if the hero of time can read. i genuinely think the answer is no
"the hero of time doesnt know what doors are" is good. but allow me to present a second, funnier option,
Whatever horrors you may find in these dark spaces, have heart and see them through.
There are no premature endings. There are no wrong decisions. There are only fresh perspectives and new beginnings. This is a love story.
Slay the Princess is 50% off for the FIRST TIME EVER! That's UNDER 10 bucks!!! That's a mere $8.99 in your American moneys! And SCARLET HOLLOW is 25% off! Get the bundle with BOTH games for only 23 bucks! We're practically giving 'em away!
It's a good.
It's pride month so I'll allow myself to express one opinion on the internet :
There are no "exact color" of pride flags.
I see more and more sites and posts talking about the exact hex codes for the lesbian flag, or the right purple for the ace one, and how it should be more or less saturated and I just want to say: pride flags were meant to be sewn in your kitchen. To be spraypainted and to be recognised.
There are no "exact colors" of pride flags because you should do them with what you have ! Nobody should care if you use a crimson red instead of a cherry red or whatever ! Be free ! wave your colors ! The colors you have !
I own a full set of one of the best makes of colour pencils, and half-sets of all the big competing brands, and *none* of those pencils match the deep orange in the lesbian flag or the pink in the bi flag. I'm sure as hell not gonna blend that hue. It takes forever to do, and I draw those flags a lot.
I'm instituting a new policy of "if I can't easily read your crusty scanned PDF then I'm sending it back to you, telling you to get your shit together and save your .docx as .pdf, and causing snakes to manifest inside your house"
this but also if you are in accounting and you have an Excel file please do not save it as a PDF or take a screenshot of it and then paste it into another Excel file
I take it back whatever you have going on is way worse than what I was dealing with holy shit
@thesummoningdark hello?????
yeah no this is a real thing an actual human being said to me
Sometime in the mid 2000s I had to renew my passport, and I decided to use the UK government's (then new-ish) "online portal" to fill in the forms, because I figured that doing it online would be less work than going to the post office. They had a digital form with a load of boxes to fill in on your computer, which I dutifully filled in, at which point it took me to a page that generated what looked like the paper forms, but all filled out with my details. There were instructions to print it out and then mail it to the post office. Frustrating. What if I don't HAVE a printer? Well, at the bottom of the page, there was a bit of extra information and a link "what to do if you don't have a printer." so I clicked it and got the following instructions: 1) Find a printer. 2) Print out the form and mail it to the post office.
Yeah that happens on a night out
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!
5. In flight snack.
This feels like it should not be real. But it is real.
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.
With dignity, with grace, with my apologies.
hey everyone "I" have something to show "you"
I've read several books written in the 2nd person, and I struggle to imagine how these people would react to those.
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
They just meant it didn’t have lime in it
sprite has lime in it wym
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
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.
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.
If you’re insinuating that lemonade is like vegemite than you’re an idiot that has never tried lemonade.
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.
god bless you
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 never understood this problem cause like. Isn’t american lemonade just lemon juice? Like you dont call orange juice orangade in america do you?
#i srg isn’t yank lemonade just strong cordial?????
They um
They don’t have cordial
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.)
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).
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?
UK squash is like @derinthescarletpescatarian’s cordial, except we also have cordial, which is posh squash.
Also fentimans is carbonated.
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)
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!
This is because blackcurrants were illegal in the US for decades.
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.
