It's Always November

[cryptotheism]

The Greco Egyptian Magical Fragments are so fun

[cryptotheism]

If I was drinking with the girls and someone threw a dog-bitten rock near me, I would ask the caster what's up. Why we throwing dog rocks?

[dortie]

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[bramblepatch]

The thing is you can have a grassy lawn or even a golf course without it being an ecological disaster, you just have to a: be cool about having the occasional non-grass plant in the mix and b: be willing to live in a climate that supports grass without irrigation.

[bramblepatch]

Golf courses in California are an abomination which is why the sport was in fact invented in Scotland.

[abstrusetheorist]

I always thought that golf as a sport should be adapted to the local native landscape. I think this will encourage regional pride when local golfers completely trounce visitors at Swamp Golf, Desert Golf, Forest Golf, etc. Rich tourists will be pressured to travel extensively to experience all forms of golf, instead of staying in their backyard country club golf courses. Internet discourse will probably somehow get worse but I think this is a small price to pay.

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

[biglawbear]

Good for this person. This is exactly what you do. Screw the job.

I had a job that made me work an all nighter, 30 hours straight, over Thanksgiving. I resigned that Monday and it was one of the most satisfying decisions I’ve ever made.

[running-in-the-dark]

Part 3:

[invaderxan]

Please pay attention to all the manipulation tactics this boss uses, because they’re pulling out every trick in the book.

“I’m not your boss, I’m your friend”

“Other people will be hurt by this and it’s your fault and I’m going to tell them all that”

Mocking language

Jobs are important too

“Be a team player”

“We’re your family too”

Talking as if this is a thing you must do

“We all make sacrifices”

Undermining your authority

“You caused all of this, really”

Accusing you of being “unprofessional”

“Look at the money you cost us”

“Just laugh it off and come back to work”

This is like a 101 course in how employers use guilt trips to coerce you into putting up with their bullshit. This is precisely why you should never trust those employers who insist that they’re “like a family.” They are not. It’s just a ruse so that your boss can neg you into putting your job ahead of your actual life.

[estro-boi]

we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason

[estro-boi]

torrents work like this

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

please learn to torrent

[macleod]

How to Use Torrents (with Pictures) - wikiHow

An expert guide to get started using torrentsTorrents are one of the most popular forms of file sharing on the internet, accounting for over

always use qbittorrent, do not use bittorrent or utorrent.

[pangur-and-grim]

[kommetz]

reading a textbook for class and i’m going insane. why is this just poetry. what. this is a STEM class what’s going on.

[kommetz]

HELLO????? HELLO?????

[fuzzy-oooze]

There's this really obscure forgotten DC hero named the Heckler, who's basically buggs bunny as a superhero, not having any powers or physically strong, but just really good at pissing people off until they accidentally deal with themselves.

Now they're interesting, but the REAL star of the show is one of his villains, John Doe the Generic Man, who's this guy in a stark white suit with flat pink unshaded, untextured skin with no features or anything who talks like chatGPT and has black text over his face that explains what he's feeling at the moment. That guy is fucking fascinating.

[mightym52]

I first heard about this guy from the "League of regrettable superheroes" Books, (The supervillain one, obviously) and He stuck with me because its such an interesting concept. not only is HE generic, but he has the power to make anything he TOUCHES generic too. I never actually got to experience his whole deal as an actual character, since this was just an info book that tells you about the character, so seeing these panels it really cool.

[tieflingkisser]

[animentality]

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

We've all gotten just a bit too comfortable being jerks to strangers on the internet I think

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

So I've hidden this reply, both because it's obnoxious and because I don't want the person who wrote it being harassed for it, but I need you to understand: I don't know you. We are not friends. This is not fun or cute, we are not sharing a charming joke together. You are just being an asshole.

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

literally that is what the post is about, I am saying people should be less eager to jump on any chance to be snarky and rude to total strangers on the internet

[sidedere]

DID THE JOURNAL FACTORY FUCKING EXPLODE???

you said it yourself: you're looking to vent it LITERALLY ANYWHERE

so vent it somewhere private. or at least not literally aimed AT another person, a total stranger at that

Like, this reblogger sounds so insanely self centered in their reblog. notice how both options focus on how being rude would affect THEM. "B has no consequences for me so it's perfectly fine to do"

(the only reason I didn't show their username in the screenshot is because, given how self victimizing they sound in their reblog, I believe that, if I did show their username, suddenly online stuff wouldn't seem so inconsequential to them and they'd accuse me of sending harrassment their way and putting them in danger)

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

You said it better than I could. Of all the inane and ridiculous things I've seen in my notes because of this post, "I NEED to say fuck you to strangers or I will literally die" is certainly one of them

[jacobtheloofah]

Visit Original Link

side note, teaching myself to pronounce that last one felt like learning a new fucking language

[mevil]

[nehirose]

i'm still losing my mind over this, that is EXACTLY what the weed store in Splatoon would sound like.

[ruinedchildhood]

Tigers with a frozen milk brick on a hot day

[dragondriana]

needless to say they are hopelessly dependent on the ingot

[cloudabserk]

WARNING do NOT start reading books and comics or watching movies or looking at art!!! you will start wanting to create art yourself. or god forbid. writing.

[cambriancrew]

[muppethole-deactivated20240312]

[yebisu]

how i back up in the target parking lot after my car is 15% out of the space and it’s now legally not my fault if i get hit

[leebrontide]

Ok so my kid had an ear infection, right? As kids often do.

The doctor scraped out a bit of earwax to have a better look inside.

I was sent a bill for $200 PER EAR for this 5 second procedure which I did not give permission for them to do.

That was key- they did not ASK me if they could do this "procedure". And, as I OWN a medical practice (it's me. The medical practice is me, sitting in my house on video calls) I knew to call them when this bill came in to be like "You did not obtain informed consent for this procedure, and it was not en emergency procedure. You had full ability to gain my consent and didn't. I'm not paying."

And the massive hospital who owned the bill said "yuh-huh you do have to pay."

And I said "I own a practice. I know these laws. I do not owe you money for this."

And they conducted an "internal review" and SURPRISE! Decided I totally owed them money and they had never done anything wrong ever.

And so I called my state's Attorney General office, and explained the situation because, as I mentioned, I know the law. The AG got in touch within a couple days to say they were taking the case and would send the massive hospital conglomerate a knock it off, guys letter.

Lo and Behold, today I have a letter where said hospital graciously has agreed to forfeit the payment.

"How not to get screwed over by companies" should be part of civics class.

Know your rights and know who to call when they're infringed on. This whole process cost me $0 and honestly less effort than I would have expected.

May this knowledge find its way to someone else who can use it.

[musefortheages]

This post is super cute and all but like.... This isn't practical advice. I called the AG???? And they got involved over a $200 bill. Maybe because you yourself are a medical practitioner. Not just your knowledge but also your status.

Civics class wouldn't help most people in this case because the AG will not take on all these cases and most people cannot afford an attorney in this instance or more importantly, the hit to their credit.

The issue is not education over the system, it is the system

[leebrontide]

I agree the system is a mess but I think education does matter because people seem not to know that this is actually perfectly routine AG office stuff. I’m not the only person who’s done this- this is just what they do?

Were they going to get into a lawsuit over my $400 bill? No obviously not. But they printed up a letter on fancy letterhead to say to stop and it worked. They followed up with me the next day to be sure, and so ask how much money they had saved me.

They use dinky cases like mine to track habitual misbehavior of large scale companies to build cases they could actually go to court over.

And because people are shocked- I never spoke to the AG of my state directly. He operates mainly by overseeing a whole crew of people. And this is what those people do.

This didn’t happen because I’m special because of my tiny therapy practice.

This happened because this is what the AG office is for.

“The problem is systemic” doesn’t mean “and there’s nothing you can do”.

This is a systemic problem but that doesn’t mean there are no resources to help.

[ktempestbradford]

Thank you for clapping back on this. I'm here to reinforce. Yes, you CAN call your state Attorney General office when an entity is doing something illegal, even if it's "only" for $400. You think they don't care a hospital is doing a crime because it's not a big enough crime?

Then you've been trained well by "The System".

Yes, that System you say can't be fought? Where did you get that idea, huh? Who taught you that "small" acts of illegality don't matter? Who made you think that there's no point in fighting back because it will all come to nothing?

Might it be the same entities that benefit if you believe all that?

Gonna pause and let you ponder.

Never. Ever. EVER.

EVER.

Let companies or corporations or hospitals or organizations or any business big or small get away with screwing you over without a fight. Maybe you personally don't win every fight, but you lose 100% of the time you don't try. You'll win more often than you think you will. I know cuz I've done it.

So have others. Attorneys General offices bring lawsuits against businesses all the time. They do so because citizens contacted them to say "someone is doing a crime" and the crime doers did not stop when told and got into way more trouble than if they'd just stopped. FAFO. The Find Out can't happen if you don't even bother to report the Fucking Around.

On that note, as OP said, please know your rights! And, in a situation where you don't but suspect something is hinky, ask! The people of the internet can help! So can librarians! So can many others. Find out what is and is not okay for them to do. If it's not okay, report them! See something, say something.

Don't let the System win by default.

Fight, damnit!

[themardia]

Additionally, pay attention to State Attorney elections! Here in Minnesota, our AG Keith Ellison has made it a POINT to go after slumlords, has created an entire UNIT in the AG office dedicated to wage theft, and gone after debt relief for people who were conned by those scummy fake universities. And despite MN being a blue state, one of his elections was a fucking NAIL-BITER.

Absolutely fight the system, absolutely go to your AG office if you’re being screwed over, and also pay attention to the people running for AG in the first place.

[sabra-n]

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people only works if the people make it work. That's you! You're the people.

"Don't bother doing anything because nothing will happen" confused cause with effect: it's really "Nothing will happen if you don't bother doing anything." Yeah, I know, it's a travesty that they don't hand you psychic powers when you take your oath as a civil servant, but until we fix that clear defect in our democracy: you're serving the public, too, when you report fuckers like this.

[ktempestbradford]

Not gonna leave this in the tags:

[mxlabradorite]

Suspicion of The System™️ is one of the ways The System™️ perpetuates itself.

If you believe The System™️ is only for Them™️ and not you, it will only ever be so.

Know the rules so you can make them work for you. Or better, how to break them in ways that hurt The System™️ and help you.