It's possible to love a shadow, shadows ourselves.

Aurora, 30. Kitty mama, professional reader, haunted and blessed by big and scary dreams, and TV shows junkie. For Cory. Always for Cory. Sidebar credits to icanhardlysay

[farmgf]

what the FUCK is going on right now. what is going on

[farmgf]

this post is so funny because it has over 10k notes and no context but all you have to do is look at the time stamp to know exactly what the context is

[marisatomay]

I was talking about this with a friend but a really interesting cultural shift over the last ohhhhhh ten years maybe is that many people in fandoms view themselves as stakeholders and not audience members. Because of that, they think that the fandom should be running things, or at least have an acknowledged say in how something is run. And every reminder that they are not in control, no matter how small, bothers them.

[marisatomay]

This has always existed to an extent but it used to be very siloed and only noticeably prevalent in certain fandoms and everyone else in fandom spaces generally agreed that it wasn’t healthy to act like that. Now it’s seemingly every fandom with an online presence and it’s all happening much more publicly than ye olde Trekkie forum.

[marisatomay]

I do think that the increase in access to creatives through social media, extended promotional cycles where you do a thousand interviews and all of them get clipped for instagram and tiktok, and an increase in entertainment and fandom aggregate social media accounts which keep people updated on all of those clips and every second of the creative process has had a big hand in creating this sense of ownership that audience members feel. It makes us feel like we’re on the team because we think we know so much. But we are not and we don’t.

[depsidase]

[do-not-u-dare]

Stole this from somewhere but i think it’s appropriate

[zmpl]

it’s funny how we’re getting to the point in the AI lifespan where you can feel the desperation from tech companies to have you use their AI features. instagram has moved their AI effects to the top of the menu when you’re creating a post for your story, exactly where the draw/edit button used to be. gmail is creating one-click AI-generated replies right before you open up the text box. spotify put a beta AI playlist generator on the front page that looks just like a search bar so all of their users accidentally click on it when they go to search for a song.

tech companies are shaking in their boots trying to prove to shareholders that their investment in AI is worth it, to the point where they’re tricking their users into using the AI features even for a split second in order to fudge the numbers. like awww is your little environment-destroying toy not wielding the results you hoped for? so sad!

[kyonite]

they're so desperate because the thing AI is best at is losing money. OpenAI lost 38.5 BILLION dollars in the year 2025. (Ed Zitron reported it here, also verified by the financial times.) this is the type of shit you see right before bubbles pop.

[lovely-v]

Being crazy about a piece of media for any amount of time will leave a weird mark on you forever because years later you’ll see someone posting something about it like “can we talk about this frame” and you’ll be like “ah that frame. i know all about that frame. I was once a scholar of that frame.”

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

so what you're gonna do is you're gonna trim the top off a bulb of garlic, using the knife's edge to take off the tip of every individual clove, that's important. you're gonna place the garlic face-up in a square of tinfoil, drizzle with olive oil, wrap completely in foil, place in baking tray, repeat with a copious amount of garlic bulbs. you're gonna put that baking tray in an oven set to 375-400°F, for 30-50 minutes, until soft and browned. you're gonna toast some good bread, slather generously with butter and honey, maybe a tiny lil bit o' salt. and then. you're gonna SQUEEZE. OUT. THAT. ROASTED GARLIC. onto the butter honey toast. and you're gonna eat it. food stolen directly from the plate of the gods. that's what you're gonna do.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

the garlic. it beckons you

[thesweetestsupervillains]

It occurs to me that "1920s gangster doing a cooking show while holding you at gunpoint" is an untapped market.

We've had normal cooking shows. Now we need period piece cooking shows in character.

[depsidase]

[ndnbutch]

personally I am of the opinion that vegans who are like “the way our food system currently works under capitalism on a large scale is exceptionally cruel to all animals including humans and is not sustainable, so I’m doing what I can to make the most ethical choices available to me about what I eat and encourage others to do the same” are generally very reasonable people who I agree with in spades. but vegans who seem to think human beings are not themselves animals who are ultimately also part of the food chain but instead some kind of other paternalistic higher entity that can never engage in ethical and sustainable hunting practices (and especially the fringe I’ve seen who think other carnivorous animal predators are also evil and need to be eliminated) are people I regard as foolish at best if not actively anti-indigenous and racist

[subjectsix]

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

[subjectsix]

glad this post is resonating with the local populace fr

[stillnaomi]

using violence to liberate people from sweatshops, unsafe mines, and grinding poverty isn't the same as using violence to impose those things on people. the idea that violence is morally repugnant regardless of context is a belief that every oppressor throughout history would love for the oppressed to hold

[simply-a-dream]

“don’t take it personally” how would you like me to take it then? professionally? romantically? academically?

[creative-anchorage]

[suriandtaal]

[aqueerkettleofish]

For those who have missed it, a tourist in Hawaii decided it would be fun to chuck a rock (a BIG rock) at a monk seal. He missed, but he was captured on video, and when told it was illegal to interfere with them, said "I'm rich, I can pay the fine."

Is the best part that he got doxxed? No.

Is the best part that he got tracked down by a local and beaten? No.

Arrested on state at federal charges, looking at up to 5 years and 50K? Nope.

The best part is the local city council's reaction.

And the best part of that is the look on the attorney's face.

[ralfmaximus]

More of this please, everywhere.

After the incident, another video went viral showing what appeared to be that man getting a beating. The Maui Police Department said they had no record of any reports of disorderly conduct or assault related to the monk seal incident.

Even the local police are being cool about this.

[closet-keys]

My friend Mahmoud is separated from his family in Gaza by the Rafah Crossing. They are part of the majority in Gaza who have been displaced and had their home destroyed. I want to elevate Mahmoud's words here:

I swear to you, they depend on the donations you send them to meet their needs. They never recovered; the bombing has been renewed daily since yesterday, with dozens of martyrs and dozens of attacks. Commodity prices have risen horribly and unacceptably. The problem is that the world is turning a blind eye to Gaza. All the promises are false; there is no implementation of the agreed-upon truce.

His family's sole source of income is their fundraiser vetted by @90-ghost, shared by fairuzfan. My wife @cannilyuncanny hosts this fundraiser, and sends wire transfers directly to Mahmoud's sister Mahrah (@mahrahpalestine) in Gaza. Any money you can spare will be the entirety of their grocery budget for the week. Please send them enough to survive.

[anexperimentallife]

Despite sixty years of trade embargo, and now a total blockade, Cuba has outpaced the US in literacy, life expectancy, and other areas--and this is after the country had already been plundered of much of it's natural resources.

The only thing the US is "proving" with this blockade is that large, powerful countries can use their power to harm smaller, less powerful ones. If, as capitalists claim, "socialism doesn't work," it wouldn't take sixty years of intervention from the most powerful country in the world to "prove" it.

[preserving-tiktok]

[that-stone-butch]

personalized ads are so funny to me

'hey we've been spying on you and tracking your every move. it's a culmination of state of the art technology and an unprecedented invasion of consumer privacy. a room full of men with made up jobs bent their will toward decades of constructing this system, defending it in court, and tirelessly innovating new ways to aggregate more data about you'

and the end result is

'yeah so uh we saw that you recently bought a car. so here's an ad for that car'

like no i'm good actually. you might be aware that i already have one

[elfwreck]

[pityboy]

affirmations for when you have to send emails