Racing forward

An archive to my love of stories Female/ Christian/ probably too old to still be here Will come into your inbox and jump all over you if I think you're cool.

[thehumantrap]

The compilation everybody needs - Every time Colt Seavers groans in The Fall Guy💖

[attacusmoth]

Please I love her so much you do not understand she is everything 🙌🙌 Cassandra Cain my beloved 💖

[six-months-from-never]

*sees broom*

*picks up broom*

“TELL THEM HOW I AM DEFYYYYYYYYYING GRAAAAAVITTYYYY”

[chandraleeschwartz-deactivated2]

*starts sweeping broom sadly*

“There is a castle on a cloud…”

[anemic-love-deactivated20180905]

*holds broom horizontally*

“Never need a reason, never need a rhyme. Up on the roof top step in time!”

[nerdnuggets]

*sweeps broom angrily*

“IT’S A HARD KNOCK LIFE!”

[divawithanunspoiledagenda]

*begins waltzing with broom* I could have DAAAAANCED all NIIIIIGHT

[gumptin]

*hits broom handle on the ground and tap dances* LOOK AT ME! IM THE KING OF NEW YORK!

[goth-miss-piggy]

*gently places broom against a wall* I’m the belle of the ball in my own little corner!

[scriblonza]

*broom starts dancing of its own accord* BE. OUR. GUEST!

[helena-rubinstein-deactivated20]

so apparently musicals have a thing for brooms huh

[osheamobile]

we all love a sweeping musical number

[palant1r]

the virgin loss.jpg versus the chad xkcd Seven Years

[palant1r]

[ms-demeanor]

[a-real-human-person-not-fake]

Don’t forget the latest version, Ten Years

[a-real-human-person-not-fake]

@vividaway​ Randall Munroe is an internet cartoonist who runs the ‘xkcd’ online comic series, which has run from 2006 up to today, with new comics every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Xkcd isn’t an ongoing story, just a series of funny, wholesome, depressing, or oddly scientifically informative comics.

In 2010, Randall’s fiance was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. He didn’t share too many details at first, but things tended to bleed into his comics: sometimes funny, sometimes sad.

Often in this time, other cartoonists would write in guest comics for Randall, or he’d put in short filler pieces, to try and fill space while nonstop cancer treatments took up most of his time.

In 2012, he posted a comic called ‘Two Years’, about the time since the diagnosis. It’s the one that hasn’t yet been posted here (although parts of it are included in the other comics), and it commemorates some of the things that had happened in the two years since the diagnosis.

There are representations of Randall and his fiance being together for her treatment, worrying together, traveling the world, and getting married. It’s still depressing, but it’s a lot more hopeful, showing how they’ve still managed to have happy moments together, and things will still get better.

Themes of cancer continued in xkcd, but they increasingly became less about fear and nihilism, and more about hope, or just cool facts related to cancer.

At the top of this post is the comic posted in 2017: Seven Years. In it, Randall and his wife are traveling more, trying to have fun and continue old and new hobbies, with cancer ever-present in the background of it all. At the end, the two of them observe the 2017 solar eclipse, and despite all the uncertainty that comes with the thought of another seven years, agree to watch the 2024 eclipse together too.

There are just about no cancer comics between that one and the most recent comic, the one I posted: Ten Years, written in 2020. It’s by far the most hopeful of the three in the little series: the two of them are happy, they’re playing with rabbits and riding on handcarts and going out hiking and stargazing, together. At the end, Ten Years breaks the format with a conversation in which they talk about how unbelievable it is that it’s been so long, and share their worries as well as their hopes. It even ends on a much more lighthearted joke about immortality.

It’s a good comic. Definitely in my top two comics wherein internet cartoonists express emotions about an illness suffered by their wife.

“The ten-year cancerversary is traditionally the Cursed Artifact Granting Immortality anniversary.” -Randall Munroe.

[a-real-human-person-not-fake]

And now, at long last, Fifteen Years:

[tzikeh]

Maryland to Become First US State to Ban Surveillance Pricing That Charges More After Mining Personal Data

Maryland will become the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in retail stores, after passing Protection from Predatory Pricing Act.

Jesus fucking christ that this exists in the first place

[boyslit]

I WAS FUCKING WONDERING WHAT THOSE DIGITAL PRICE TAGS WERE ABOUT SUDDENLY i had hoped they were so the workers didn't have to finagle those little papers into the slider part anymore 😭

[eclipticasolaris]

Hi, yes, that is the OFFICIAL excuse made to me by the guy replacing the paper tags with digital ones at my local Walmart, but the end goal is to remove the numbers off the shelf entirely, replacing them with QR codes that you have to scan with the app…. Which requires your login information….. and also stores your card information so even if you didn’t use your Walmart account at the physical checkout, if you used a card they recognize, they assign that purchase to your Walmart account purchase history.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Yes, call your reps. Yes, push for more legislation like this in more places. But also take an extra minute out of your shopping trip to MAKE IT HURT for companies to pull this shit.

[antisocialxconstruct]

I've seen some people in the notes express (very fair) concern that this is only going to inconvenience already under-paid laborers, and not have any impact on corporate. While I can't speak for every company or every store, I do work in a grocery store and I can tell you this is precisely the kind of thing that would have an impact, especially if people are doing it en masse. Stores absolutely track their shrink numbers, and they do draw distinctions between what gets stolen, damaged, or wasted for other reasons. If people are making it clear that the reason they're bringing things to the cashier is that the prices are not adequately represented on the displays, and rather than improving business it's wasting product, slowing down transactions, and causing confusion and mistrust in customers, that is a language that shareholders speak.

[hallwaysss]

Genuinely I think this might be the most important scene in the book

[hallwaysss]

@carlyraejepsans how does it feel to be the most correct person ever. You're so right

[cuprumbao]

star-crossed buddies 🥺

[jethroq]

dialectics

[deadseacorpse]

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Fellas, is it counter revolutionary to eat.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Hey, to be fair, the most authentically communist thing one can do is starve :)

[h0lyshift]

The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.

[imoriginalvisual]

Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian but it’s Toxic by Britney Spears

[gallusrostromegalus]

I’m gonna propose something: if your combat/ass-kicking sequence can’t fit to a top 40 female-vocalist Banger like “Toxic” or “Mama Mia” or “I Need a Hero” you’re not Doing It Right.

[fatsexybitch]

At this point its starting to feel like Editors are using 140-150bpm as a standard for action sequences, and I cant say I hate it.

[homestuckphobia]

I agree wholeheartedly with every point above but I watched this first with the sound off because I forgot that was an option and what struck me most is how efficient Luke's lightsaber style is. Almost every flourish he makes and all of what, 2 entire spins?, is defensive to better parry blaster fire while nearly every offensive swing he makes is basically a head or chest level kill shot. If I had to make a guess about his character I'd say this vintage twink has probably Seen Some Shit and maybe comes from a background where resources are scarce and help is far away so if you get in a fight you have to end it before it starts or you're dead meat

[screamting]

deeply want a time travel fic where Luke visits the old republic and the Jedi are like “that’s not a dueling style” and luke is like “yea am not doing much dueling tbh”

[washiing-machine]

i started watching teen titans and i love these two idiots so much

[the-supernatural-atheist]

if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills

[the-supernatural-atheist]

where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*

[makaeru]

I hate learning about instances of "oh yeah we know how to do that, we just don't".

[demiboydemon]

[prismafox]

Colored!

[crown-princess-carrion]

I think it's a sign of good media when you have to reread or rewatch it to get the full experience. First time is for getting your brain blasted by the story and being confused second time is for knowing who's who and what's what and willingly getting your brain blasted again.

[sztupy]

Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers

A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previou

[ayeforscotland]

Let’s fucking go

[made-in-manetheren]

This is HUGE.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

TL;DR Google reeeeeally stepped in it this time.

[lunarisart]

The fact that Rocky has a FAMILY crest obviously suggests he, well, has a family beyond Adrian, duh.

Imagine Rocky's siblings, hell, his PARENTS, waiting for what feels like an eternity with Adrian, not yet allowing themselves to mourn because the idea that Rocky will never return is unthinkable. The idea they'll never see him again is agony that they refuse to process because then hope, for them, vanishes alongside him.

And then he does return, with a member of another species that he calls his friend, and tells them a story that would be extremely difficult to believe were Grace not standing right there—

And they are at a loss because they owe the world and beyond to this human. He brought Rocky back, saved him when by all intents and purposes his end would've been as set in stone as the 22 others, had Grace not found him. He saved the stars. He saved Erid.

And so they take him in. He is part of their family now. And they'll make damn certain that Grace lacks nothing for the rest of his life if they can help it.

He's given them everything. He's given them hope. It's the least they can do.