Baron Fulmen's Good Time Hoedown

Mostly not a jerk, with the exception of the Fairy/Walrus thing.

[saywhat-politics]

There are currently more bills attacking trans youth’s right to play sports across the U.S. than there are trans youth in school sports. @aclu.org

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[tokkibean]

i do not “delete sentences” when they start “hindering the plot” i COPY PASTE THEM into a SEPARATE DOC made just for keeping all my USELESS LINES that i will also NEVER USE so therefore i should JUST DELETE THEM but i DONT because id FEEL BAD if i did

[harpyharpyharpy]

You don't actually have to kill your darlings. You can just put them in the oubliette #myoubliette

[argumate]

I keep thinking this! very frustrating

[argumate]

fuck!

[aaaangel444]

[baronfulmen]

"Okay, that payment has processed, your cell phone should have service again within the hour. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Uh... I love you."

"..."

"Sorry, it's just that the phone says..."

[elbiotipo]

More than "here in the Southern Hemisphere we have inverted seasons :)" thing, which is TECHNICALLY true, I would go a step further and encourage to think about that "much of the world does not exactly has a spring-summer-fall-winter season sequence as they show in cartoons"

[paperdragonsong]

I will scream about this to anyone who listens forever. AUSTRALIA DOES NOT HAVE "ENGLISH SEASONS BUT BACKWARDS" and the insistence that it does creates a massive layer of alienation from the natural world.

I never really realised how much difference it makes until I went to England and realised that here the change of seasons is an obvious, visible, physical change in the world. Like, everything REALLY IS orange and foggy in autumn! In spring there are flowers EVERYWHERE, so much more than any other season, and the trees really do have all blossom and no leaves. Even if it doesn't snow, in winter there's frost all the time and the trees are bare and the sky is visibly greyer all the time. You don't need to be told "this date is the first day of spring", you can SEE IT (although this is getting way messier and less precise due to climate change).

By contrast, most places in Australia the seasons we're taught feel like arbitrary categories - and is it any surprise considering they're colonial constructs? Orange-leaved autumn and blossom-covered spring is a cartoon stereotype with no relevance on a continent where ALL NATIVE TREES ARE EVERGREEN!! Snowy winters are a joke in the desert, and even sunny summers don't ring particularly true considering that much of the country is in the tropics, where summer means monsoons - not that I've ever seen the concept that WE HAVE A MONSOON SEASON taught at an Australian school.

Most Indigenous nations around Australia had six or more seasons, revolving around wet and dry times as much as hot and cold, and marked by the appearances of certain native animals and flowers. Schools need to start teaching the real seasons, and explaining that climate cycles are too complex to generalise globally, or else we will keep raising generations who view the natural world as hostile and unpredictable and climate predictions as generally irrelevent and frequently wrong - and I'm sure I don't need to spell out why that's a problem in the era of climate crisis.

[tiredtransgal]

i want to add that 40% of the world's population lives in the tropics, and the 4 season model just doesn't make much sense for a lot of places in there. usually it's just the wet season/monsoon season and the dry season. it's often hot year round.

the 4 season model as you and i know it is a european invention, though 4 season models aren't unique to europe! most notably china has the same type of season subdivision.

in general the way humans define seasons is largely subjective and varies across cultures. the one you were taught is not at all universal!

[baronfulmen]

Fuck yeah, I'm 2/3rds of the way through my story!

843,330 words. 199 regular chapters, plus some Interludes and Bonus thingies and a prologue. Wheeeeeeeeee!

I have relatively few people reading it - I haven't made any attempt to advertise or anything - but the ones that have found it are saying very nice things:

Anyway, I'm pretty fucking pleased with myself. You can read it if you want. You might like it.

[baronfulmen]

[baronfulmen]

[markovchaingang]

RULES FOR DATING MY DAUGHTER:

my daughter cannot, through action or inaction, harm a human or allow a human to come to harm

a daughter at rest or in constant motion remains at rest or in constant motion unless acted upon by another force

daughters are never created or destroyed, only transformed

always treat every daughter as loaded, even if you know she isn't

you do not talk about my daughter

[abalidoth]

6. If x and y are my daughters, then there exists a set that has x and y as elements.

7. You can fold my daughter through any two points.

8. I have exactly one daughter parallel to a given line passing through a given point.

[inthefallofasparrow]

9. If my daughter is hung on the wall in the first act, then in the following one she must be fired. Otherwise don't put her there.

10. When two or more daughters are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest daughter is preferable.

11. Any sufficiently advanced daughter is indistinguishable from magic.

12. Without a clear indicator of intent, it is utterly impossible to parody my daughter without someone mistaking it for the genuine article.

13. My daughter is nine-tenths of the law.

[charlesoberonn]

14. Anything my daughter can do wrong, she will do wrong

15. You do not talk about my daughter

16. The number of my daughters that can fit on a microchip doubles every 18 months

[thewelllitweenie]

17. Never attribute malice to my daughter which can be equally be attributed to ignorance.

[allegedly-human]

nonsense words such as "blorbo" and "skibidi" are outliers and a minuscule minority and thus do not invalidate that statement

[brightlotusmoon]

[baronfulmen]

I can trace the use of "slop" to way before Nazis existed without running into any Nazi stuff along the way, so I was really confused about how that would count as a Nazi thing. Like, slop is a very very old word that has seen continuous use, and while the meaning has shifted a little bit it's a very clear evolution to the current "AI slop" etc. usage.

So I went through the notes, and found this:

Goyslop - Wikipedia

Which I had never heard of once, but which does seem to be a likely source for the current Internet usage of the word slop. Fucking wild. Never in a million years would I have guessed that.

IMO it falls into that category of "the result of unfortunate influences but not inherently harmful on its own", but... yeah I'm still never going to look at it the same way again.

[thestuffedalligator]

“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.

“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”

She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”

After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”

[iraffiruse]

[tim-official]

see every time i see this status i get angry because i’ve played through literally every scenario in rct1 and there is no place where this is a thing. there is never more than one park per map. and in rct2 you can’t make that happen i the scenario editor either. it is not remotely within the game’s functionality to simulate two discrete parks and these games were coded in assembly for christ sake so it’s not like someone modded it in by adding the line “int const TOTAL_NUM_POSSIBLE_PARKS = 2;”. there is no conceivable way this post is anything close to true and even though i know how writing all this out reflects upon me as a person and even though i know exactly how meaningless and trifling of a takedown attempt this is on some random facebook screencap with hundreds of thousands of notes im going to post it anyway because i’m too petty to have any say in the matter

[baronfulmen]

THE FIREFLIES ARE BACK!

They put me in such a good mood you guys.

[mariacallous]

[kimiko24]

I fucking love this video

[she-ramen]

the she-ra reboot makes this video relevant again which means we are in the best timeline

[she-ramen]

the kids these days dont know this masterpiece…they will learn

[logan-exe]

the Masters of the Universe remake makes this video relevant again which means we are in the best timeline

[pinkbowsandstripedsocks]

[edwardspoonhands]

Honestly, Tvyek is pretty miraculous. It’s permeable to water vapor but not to water, it’s nearly impossible to tear, but can be easily cut. It’s cheap and made entirely without binding chemicals. In addition to being used for wristbands, it’s used to wrap construction sites to keep out water during construction, for tear-resistant envelopes at Fed-Ex, coveralls for mechanics, and my wallet, actually.

Fun tip, though it looks like paper, Tyvek is plastic, and cannot be recycled with paper.

[fairypsychicarchive]

[andromedafalls]

holy fuc

[piisbetterthanpie]

I didn’t even know it had a name

[baronfulmen]

They're super easy to take off. Turn it inside out, and pull on the end. It'll pop apart immediately.

[curiositysavesthecat]

Do you think it's weird and/or predatory for a 13 year-old and a 30 year-old to be best friends if they're not family members or related by blood? Assuming everything is innocent and platonic. Nothing romantic or sexual.

Yes, it's weird and predatory

It's weird. But not predatory

It's predatory. But not weird

No, it's not weird or predatory

Remaining time: 13 hours 37 minutes

*This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).

[creelson]

unpopular opinion but I don't think there's anything weird or predatory about an innocent friendship

[dianxiacantastemolecules]

The question is why the fuck is a thirty year old hanging out with a 13 year old if not in their family?? The only other relation that could have them interact is through teacher/student and bring friends like that would be weird as fuck

[creelson]

found family? the kid not feeling safe in their house? the adult wanting to help? family / teacher / school isn't always a guaranteed safe place. should the kid and adult each have friends that are their own age too? sure. but if their friendship is genuinely innocent then I think the problem isn't them but people who project their weird and predatory thoughts onto them

[the-bar-sinister]

Don't forget shared hobbies?

A 13 year old and a 30 year old could reasonably meet at a tabletop gaming store, a fiber arts group, a book club....

[audacityinblack]

They could literally just be neighbors. This whole isolationist thing of never even talking to the people you live closest to is new and weird.

[olderthannetfic]

When I was 13, an art teacher who worked for my mother (who ran after school programs) got into the X-Files. This was season 1. Neither of us knew anyone else who was into it, and she wasn't very online given that this was 1994, so she had nowhere else to discuss it. I'd call her every Friday night after the episode, and we'd obsessively go over it.

I'd probably have called her my best friend at the time, though I very much doubt she'd have said the same, partly because having One Single Best Friend and being super weird about which of your friends gets this coveted spot is not something middle-aged people care about.

Some of you have very weird ideas about 13-year-olds living in hermetically sealed bubbles. Frankly, many neurodivergent weirdo 13-year-olds who grew up to be Tumblr users were far, far better at talking to adults at that age than at talking to other 13-year-olds. Many of you would have had a way happier year if you'd also had an old-ass "best friend" to talk to back then.

[katanahime]

People really need to be more normal about intergenerational friendship.

This concept that it is still "weird" even if it isn't predatory is cutting kids off from community and from the concept of safe adults. And I think it's really really important to have that outside of spaces where people can legally control you.

And as far as what the adult gets out of it. Basically the same thing you get out of any other friendship? Teens are people just like adults are people. You may not be on the same maturity level, but that doesn't mean they aren't fun to hang out with and talk to.

[avayarising]

Also, is ‘friend of the family’ not a thing any more? At thirteen I was good friends with a 27-year-old whose family had been friends with mine for three generations at that point. Our generations were a bit out of sync (due to differences in when people had kids) but it didn’t stop us being friends.

[baronfulmen]

It's for sure weird, but specifically because the poll said BEST friend. Most of the examples above are friends in one specific context (like when doing some particular hobby). A best friend is someone that's a preferred person to hang with across multiple contexts.

More importantly, I don't think of someone as my best friend unless we can share each other's lives and burdens to some extent. I can't talk to a thirteen year old about sex, bills, marriage, death, etc. in the way that I would need to for it to feel like we're in an equal relationship.

There's nothing wrong with a thirty year old and a thirteen year old hanging out and considering themselves friends in certain situations, but if the thirty year old considers the thirteen year old their best friend I'm going to assume they're socially stunted.

[bumblebeerror]

I didn’t take it to mean that the friendship had to be openly stated to be “best friends” mostly bc like. As someone approaching 30, I have multiple equally close friends in a variety of ages. But by your definition, my best friend is my mom. Which like, I do love her and live with her and prefer her company, but she’s firmly my mom before anything else.

Either way, I don’t think it’s weird. Friendships with adults, even best-friendships, are incredibly important for kids. Your parents and teachers cannot be the only adults in your life. Someone has to teach you how people who haven’t changed your diapers or given you Tardies are supposed to treat a kid or young adult.

[baronfulmen]

I think a lot of you guys are not realizing just how young thirteen is. Thirteen is SO YOUNG you guys.

What does this friendship look like? What the fuck are you talking about? What are you doing together? And again, the poll says "best friends" which - regardless of your personal definition - is for sure not the same as "neighbor kid I chat with because he always runs out to pet my dog when I'm walking him" or "kid that always comes to Magic: the Gathering night at the local shop and we have fun playing together" or "kid that I'm mentoring in some specific way".

It's: "this is my friend Bobby, he's in seventh grade and thinks saying 6-7 is the funniest thing in the world. He's gonna ride his bike over so we can go see the new Mortal Kombat movie, since I need to buy the tickets; he's too young to be allowed in by himself. My ex wife says that I'm trying to make up for the fact that my own thirteen-year-old son isn't living with me, but that's ridiculous. We're just good friends. I told him about all the stress I'm having at work, and how my dating life is going, and he tells me about the other kids that are mean to him in Roblox. It's a really solid friendship that we both for sure get something out of."

[bumblebeerror]

Well no, that’s not how a close friendship with a person that much younger goes.

You can be incredibly fond of a child without having to “get anything” out of the interaction?? Never have I EVER assumed a friendship with a young person would involve me getting anything out of it, and in an innocent and platonic friendship as stipulated, adults have the responsibility to NOT unload on a kid like you would an adult.

There are ways you treat a kid as an adult, and those ways you treat a kid don’t go away when you become friends with them unless you’re being untoward.

Like I have worked in a daycare and I considered those children, as a close second to “my responsibility”, my friends, just like they considered me their friend. I did not ever talk about money or my problems with them, because they are *children*, and that’s not how you interact with a child. I’m sure for some of those kids, I was their best friend. Whether or not I considered them my “best” friend isn’t really needed imo.

I think, again, you have a very narrow idea of what a “best friend” is, and what it must be.

[baronfulmen]

Would you, the adult, consider the child to be your best friend? Not just someone you're friendly with, not just someone you have positive interactions with in some limited context, but in a general "who are my closest friends? Karl, who I've known since we were both in high school, Wendy, who was originally another friend's girlfriend but we kept her when they broke up and hang out all the time, and Billy, who is thirteen and does everything with us" kind of way?

Again, this isn't "can you be nice to kids without being a creep". It's not "can a kid consider YOU to be their best friend?", this is "can you, the ADULT, be BEST FRIENDS with a child".

And I mean yes, obviously you CAN, but it's 100% weird.