Couldn't be good. Decided to be interesting.

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

In this office we do causal Fridays! We interrogate the effects our actions have on the world around us and how we in turn are shaped by which we cannot control. Yeah you can wear jeans

[silvernevermind]

small town diner waitress voice: Omelas? Oh, oh no, easy mistake, you're in oh - MAY - las right now, with an A. Plenty' people get the name mixed up. Nope, no utopia here, just our small little town. *face gets really grim* We do still.. Okay well we do still have a kid that we... I mean it isn't working but- well- You know. It- It's fine. I'm sure it'll start working soon.

[tickfleato]

tubi is an incredible streaming platform you'll go on there and they have like, classic who, and blue velvet, and a fuck ton of silent films, and columbo, and the donnie darko directors cut. And then they also have ants on a plane. Folks they have the hit movie ants on a plane

[cruel-hiraeth]

if you build “community” around hating other people, just know that the second you step out of line—regardless of your moral uprightness or the hypocrisy on their part—you’re the next person they’re going to tear to pieces.

[prof-grace-aspen]

And by the way it doesn’t matter if you claim your community is “pro” something if the main actual behavior of the group is hating the thing labeled as the enemy of the thing you are “in support” of.

As an example, a lot of groups claim to be “pro-women”, when in reality they are actually anti-trans. Their goal is not to uplift women, it’s to harass and criminalize trans people.

So inspect the groups you’re in. Ignore the name of the movement. What are the people in your group actually DOING?

[i-wanna-fuck-el-profesor]

applying for jobs takes 20 years off my life

[shadow-banned-the-hedgehog]

Dont say that or they'll ask whats the 20 years gap on your resume is 😨

[i-wanna-fuck-el-profesor]

SOBBING 😭

[tboy-cock]

i saw a really disturbing account of a trans girl whos in high school who calls herself a "neverpassing ogrehon," and has her body measurements?? or smth in her pinned post to "prove" that she'll never pass. and theres a picture of her on her account and she just looks like a normal teenage girl. and its disturbing and even if she didnt "pass" it would still be disturbing. it just reminds me of my insecurity and body image issues with being a trans teen and even the insecurities and body image issues of cis teenage girls when i was a kid. its just sad. anyway, being a teenager is hard. being a trans teenager is even harder. trans teens, give yourself time to grow. give yourself time to feel comfortable in your body. i dont know a single person who was comfortable with their body as a teenager. youre not alone. your teen years are not the time to get all doomerist

[baddywronglegs]

If a particular air freshener scent is only ever used in bathrooms it becomes the smell of shit by proxy

[willgrahamscock]

how are you gonna be 31 and posting fandom content bro leave it to the teenagers

People 10 and 20 years older than me are writing your favorite fanfics, and drawing your favorite characters. You'd have no fandom without the people you think are 'too old' to have hobbies.

[nessataleweaver]

Who the heck do you think started modern day fandom with Star Trek? It sure wasn't teenagers.

Who do you think makes professional quality fanart and fanfic? People who've been practicing it for ten, fifteen, twenty years!

Or even people who've been practicing it for thirty, forty or fifty!!!!!

example: Diane Duane. Currently in her seventies. Star Trek fangirl since the original run. Goddess-level Ascended Fan who has created official tie-in works in more forms of media than pretty much anyone else alive, possibly even Rodenberry himself because they didn't have audiobooks or video games when he was with us. Writer of Spock's World, The Wounded Sky, Doctor's Orders in TOS. Co-writer of TNG script Where no one has gone before, and writer of the tie-in novel Dark Mirror among others. Writer of a half-dozen Star Trek Comics. She has adapted her own work for audio, has written for the Star Trek manga series, has written short Trek fiction for anthologies, and plotted and wrote the video game Star Trek: the Kobayashi Alternative.

In other fandoms, she was a personal friend of Terry Pratchett himself. As a scriptwriter, she's also worked in fandoms like Scooby-Doo, Transformers, My Little Pony, Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, Spiderman: Unlimited (and a trilogy of tie-in novels still in print) and Barbie: Fairytopia. ...And that's just cherry-picking her imdb page.

While she can't give out specific details due to Obvious Reasons, she's still active in the Sherlock BBC fandom - and there's a specific subset of her fans who love guessing which of the legendary fanfics might be her work (I am not one of them, BTW, as it is None Of My Business. I'm old-school that way).

Fandom is not for teenagers. Fandom is for everyone of good heart and enthusiasm for a good (or even bad! No judgement!) story.

Just wait until you grow up, Anonymous OP. Wonder how long it'll take you to change your mind.

[dduane]

...Some days when you're feeling tired and sad, and wondering "what the hell is the point... why am I even bothering?"... it's nice to be reminded that you're supported.

[lupismaris]

Do it scared but please don't do it hungry. Please don't do it dehydrated. It's gonna make it so much scarier. Please.

[sandersstudies]

Every time you go in a public place and something ISN’T disgusting it’s because somebody cleaned it. Every time you feel comfortable using a public bathroom or sitting at a restaurant table or setting something on a gas station counter or playing on a playground it’s because somebody cleaned it.

Thank you to everyone who cleans the world, especially those who are underpaid and under appreciated.

[yamelcakes]

What Big Food Did to Ice Cream

The “encrapification” of the American pint — a chemist’s plain-language dissection

Really good article by a chemist on why most ice cream sucks now— it’s because it’s not really ice cream.

[jmtorres]

part of me wants to be like "do people really not know this" and part of me knows full well i only read the labels because i have gut problems and don't want to suffer

anyway i've had my eye on the fat content for years. actual ice cream made with real cream won't trigger my lactose intolerance, because the higher the fat content of dairy, the lower the lactose content. my personal tipping point is around half-and-half so if you make "ice cream" with with skim milk, the enshittification i experience is unfortunately literal

[chromalogue]

I started checking labels more than a decade ago. My Breyer's Rocky Road, which I'd enjoyed for years, not been able to afford for a few years, and then suddenly found on sale in a much smaller container, had this really weird texture. Because my uncle was a baker who taught me about various labelling tricks (eg. if something is described as "chocolatey" it's because they can't legally call it chocolate), I had an idea of what to look for, and saw that I'd been eating frozen dessert.

I'm in Ontario, so I have access to Chapman's ice cream, which isn't fancy, but is real. And I trust them, but I do make sure to periodically check the label.

[luna-azzurra]

A non-writer asked me "but where do you get your ideas" and i genuinely did not know how to explain that it's not a place. it's not a website. it's not a folder. it's that i was on the bus and a woman was holding a paper bag very carefully and something about the way she held it made me need to know what was inside and then i needed to know why she was sad about it and then there was a whole person and then there was a whole story and the bus had already stopped and i missed my stop. that's where.

[loveridden1999]

guys i just figured it out. it's all about the little joys

[inkskinned]

i was the exception to the rule. i should be the ambassador of the american dream. i did it all right.

we were dirt poor. my parents sacrificed a lot so i could be in an area where the schools were exceptional. we all bootstrapped. i paid my own way through college and grad school. i have student debt, but not a lot of it. it took me a long time and a lot of jobs and working and connections and luck and all of it.

now i make good money at a good (remote!) job with pretty good health insurance. I have vision and dental. they even offer pet insurance and 6 free meetings with a therapist. i work with an exceptionally sweet manager, i like my team, and i don't mind the job. i make much more than some of my friends.

so why the fuck can't i afford to eat.

i looked it up. ten years ago, my current salary would amount to 106 thousand american dollars. it was "well over" median wage.

my position's base salary (according to what i could find) has only increased by about 3 thousand dollars. after all, the work has not changed drastically. estimates say that for me to live "comfortably" in this city, i'd need to be making 139,776 dollars a year, before taxes. i am making half of that.

i always bristle when someone on the other side says something about how we just don't want to work, how it's really about me and my failure to succeed. that i need to be pushier, flashier, better; and then capitalism will work out for me.

in the car yesterday, she said that america is probably fucked. that the amount of damage trump is doing to america is largely permanent. i have difficulty arguing with her. prices went up during the pandemic, and then they just - stayed there. i want to believe in the inevitable rise of the human spirit (you know i'm an optimist) but the truth of the matter feels like a smeared handprint - i have no proof it gets easier.

elon musk becomes or unbecomes a trillionaire. we spend billions of dollars in a pointless war. health insurance companies kill people in cold blood. ai "takes over" jobs; assigns you a random number score for your resume so you are automatically rejected by the system. you're fired to make more profit for the shareholders; they rehire someone else for half of your pay. the government spends millions of dollars to destroy national monuments. the white house needs a ballroom. the fbi just posted that they can preemptively arrest someone for domestic terrorism for "extreme" beliefs about america. when i went to go check my facts about that - i found that the this fucking government website has an email sign-up popup that covers the entire page & i literally could not figure out how to close it.

so yeah, the price of eggs is not going to go down. the cost of RAM is not going to go down. why would it. in the free market, without regulation, all the companies really need to worry about is how else they can bleed a stone.

sometimes when people my age make fun of gen z or gen alpha for being unwilling to work; i think about the lie we've been telling them. because i am not an unusual case. so fucking many of us did it "right". so many of us put our heads down and agreed to the terms and conditions. this was how you do it, right.

almost none of my friends own a house. all of us are in our 30s.

it's apocryphal and likely didn't happen as written, but the myth goes that when Marie Antoinette was told that the general population was starving and had no bread to eat; her chipper reply was so let them eat cake.

there's a 250 foot ferris wheel breaking down on the national mall right now. i can't afford gas, but whatever. our nation's birthday is coming.

i am told to keep trying. do the impossible. solve the puzzle, open the portal. coupon your way to success, high yield savings, skip the coffee break. hustle harder, show up early, leave late. the problem is you, right. it's how you're living life. just keep going!

look forward to the cake.

[do-not-u-dare]

let’s talk about how they made it impossible to function without a phone and digitalised everything and then turned around and went “actually! these phone things aren’t safe for kids but it’s magically ok once you’re eighteen. guess you’ll have to have your life dictated by your parents now lol cause we’re gonna take the devices away from you. IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD WHY ARE YOU COMPLAINING”

[do-not-u-dare]

ok my apologies. take away my ability to buy anything too ig because these fuckass stores don’t accept cash anymore. take away my ability to communicate with people outside my house and school because I can’t text and I can’t email and I cant drive to them either and I can’t even fucking get public transport without a phone either. can’t order at a fucking restaurant without being asked to get a membership and install an app and also very sorry but you can only order through our online menu now! have you ever considered that it’s not just about instagram?

[prokopetz]

It's fine to disagree with the IAU about the definition of "planet"; however, if your definition includes Pluto but not Ceres, Orcus, Haumea, Quaoar, Makemake, Gonggong, Eris or Sedna, you don't actually care what a planet is – you just want the exact list of nine planets you learned in primary school back. Your cute little Pluto-including orbital distance mnemonic ought to be at least seventeen words long, and good fucking luck with the Q!

[thefiresontheheight]

My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Orphic Palaces, Slandering Hungry Quaker Matrons Going Erotically Southward.

[prokopetz]

I appreciate that you included Salacia but not Charon – really threading the needle pedantry-wise there.

[deepspacescully]

i truly believe in order to make peak star trek again you simply have to get a cast of actors who have only done theatre and nothing else. you can have one token TV Guy if you wish. but so help me god i need those aliens doing shakespeare up there