turn soft and lovely any time you have a chance

30s, she/her. It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender.

[msburgundy-but-worser-deactivat]

whoever said diamonds are a girl's best friend clearly has never met ibuprofen

[luimnigh]

Actually literally accurate. The song originates in the 1949 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, while ibuprofen was invented in 1961.

[lilcowgirl7-deactivated20210223]

Learn to love reading and research I promise you’ll never be bored again

[bludpudding]

hey so uhhh uhhhh uhhhh uhhhhhhhhhhhh

[pealeii]

hey i think about this comment a lot

[throathole]

I really love when cats use their front legs to hold something in place while they use their back legs to kick the absolute shit out of it

[throathole]

Destruction. Annihilation, even

[sexchangedotcom]

ancient roman women whose husband keeps looking at the neighbour's boy quintus and he never looks at her that way and she can't even chainsmoke in the kitchen because they don't have marlboro blues in ancient times. and she can't even go to the club because they haven't discovered drum and bass music yet. her friend clodia's having visions of a woman named doechii but neither of them knows what that means

[medievalreligiousfanatic]

[ursus-arctos-horribilis-chadder]

Foul beast ate that adventurer whole, RIP

[miraculouspaon]

GBBO: “A s’more is basically just an Italian merengue sandwiched between two ganache-covered digestives”

Americans:

[flange5]

in case anyone in wondering, this is Paul Hollywood's idea of a s'more

[theequeerstrian]

You know what, their absolute inability to grasp Mexican foods makes more sense every day

[ennairea]

[starlightshadowsworld]

Nodding my head in support of the Americans despite having no clue what a s’more is.

[mankillercalledbunny]

Okay, American immigrant to the UK here to explain all the mistakes from Paul Hollywood happening here: there is one fundamentally American ingredient required to make a s'more correctly but which is basically not available anywhere at all in the UK, and that is graham crackers. A plain digestive biscuit close-ish, but still a very different beast.

From Wikipedia: A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour.

The next ingredient (which is also extremely traditionally American but slightly more variable) is typically Hershey's chocolate, but you could probably swap this out in the UK with any plain chocolate bar.

Last ingredient is big marshmallows, the kind you do the chubby bunny challenge with, like the size of your thumb and twice as thick.

A proper s'more, the most traditional possible variety, involves to graham cracker squares, two slab segments of Hershey's chocolate, and one to two marshmallows depending on your preference for filling and gooeyness. You put a slab of chocolate on one of the graham cracker squares. Your marshmallows should be toasted, usually over a campfire but if you're doing them at home over a gas stove burner is fine, but the fire part is critical. You can toast them to whatever degree you like, some people like them nice and golden brown but still kind of firm in the middle, me personally? I want that bitch to CATCH ON FIRE, I want it gooey and sticky as hell in the middle, crispy and burnt on the outside. Slap that motherfucker on your graham cracker and chocolate square, top with the other one so your marshmallow and chocolate are sandwiched together by graham cracker on the outside. You do this with your freshly toasted marshmallow because ideally it will be hot enough to start to melt the chocolate so it sticks to the marshmallow and the graham cracker and, combined with the gooey marshmallow, it keeps the whole thing together, and for that reason some people will let them sit for a hot second to let the melting process happen (especially if like me you have chocolate on BOTH graham cracker squares, not just one, because you're a sugar fiend), but if you are a young child you do not have that degree of patience and you eat that shit immediately, unmelted chocolate and all. Consume your summer camp delight like a tiny club sandwich, get gooey sticky marshmallow and chocolate all over your hands, and enjoy.

Important note: this is a kids treat. It is a traditional summer camping trip dessert. It should be something any ten year old with adult supervision and access to the ingredients can make (and make a mess of). They're called s'mores because kids always "want s'more". If you are using a blowtorch, chocolate biscuits, and merengue, you are so far beyond the bounds of s'more-hood that you have thoroughly lost the plot. If you offered Paul Hollywood's concoction to an American child and called it a s'more, they'd tell you flat out that not only is it not a s'more, it looks dumb and you didn't do it right because it's not gooey.

[roach-works]

the point is the mess. the point is getting to make a food, at age seven, whose two basic food groups are 'sugar' and 'fire'. the other point is that this food item is so crumbly, chaotic, sticky, on fire, and prone to being dropped (outside, in the dark, while you are surrounded by other children who are also sticky and on fire) that your supervisors cannot accurately monitor how many smores you personally have consumed. the point is also that you may get away with a smore that is five blocks of chocolate and two marshmallows if you move fast and let nothing stop you.

if you haven't accidentally yet unrepentantly eaten a chunk of twigs or dirt or a bug that got enmeshed in the creative process around smore number 3st, you are too old to have any legitimate input into what makes a smore.

[kedreeva]

There's 2 other points that I think are important.

The first is that you don't pull the marshmallow off the roasting stick and somehow put it on the chocolate. Your staging area will look something like this, with the graham crackers and chocolate already set out (though not usually on the fire like this, for us it was always someone's lap or a picnic table or something)

And when your marshmallow has reached appropriate roasting perfection, you use the graham crackers to slide it off the stick.

and ideally, as a CHILD you are using a literal stick. Like you walked around and spent time looking for The Perfect Stick off the ground while the adults set up the fire. It has to be thin enough the marshmallow will fit, sturdy enough that it won't bow, long enough that you won't burn yourself roasting your marshmallow. And preferably doesn't have a lot of bark that's sloughing off, OR so much bar sloughing off you can peel it all back and get to the clean stick under it. If you're smart, you might stick the tip into the fire first to "wash" it/burn off anything that was still lingering, but. well, most kids don't.

When you bite in, the marshmallow and chocolate SHOULD ooze out all over you. If you don't kinda look like this eating it, you've probably done it wrong:

[figmentera]

The description of the marshmallows as being either brown on the outside but still firm on the inside or fully melted but burned on the outside is missing the true art: fully molten in the middle, without the black burns. Not to say OP is wrong for preferring the burn! But there is a technique for perfection and it goes like this:

You find a spot, not above all the logs where everyone sticks their marshmallows by default, but at the heart of the fire. Ideally between a couple logs already glowing gold. Something like here:

Below the leaping flame. Near the logs. There's probably only one or two spots good enough for this on any given fire, but that's okay because everyone else is up above. They will get their marshmallows faster. They will be either firm or burned or both. That's not your goal.

Rotate the marshmallow slowly. Ideally come in at an angle so the part closest to the flame is the side, not the tip. The spot closest to the fire is the spot that turns a crispy golden brown, and you want that everywhere, on the tip and around the circle.

You keep going, slowly turning, for several minutes. Several people will rotate in and out of the higher sections, getting their fast delight. Eventually, your marshmallow will start sagging badly, risking falling. Maybe it does fall and got start over. But eventually it will be golden brown all over, and so liquid it no longer clings to the stick. It is ready, finally.

You say "who hasn't gotten one yet?" And deposit it onto their waiting graham crackers and chocolate. You've made an excellent marshmallow. It isn't for you. Get another while you're over by the bags and go back to the heart of the fire.

That's your evening. One, slow, perfect marshmallow at a time, given to whomever still wants s'more. You're making art for children to stuff into their mouths cheerfully. You're watching the movement of the fire and the heat of the logs, like you would if you were maintaining it — maybe you would be, maybe you were the one who built it — but right now that's not the goal. Let someone else put more logs on, while you take only the one stick and find the best spot for it to live.

You will, eventually, finish a marshmallow and find that nobody moves to accept it. Maybe they're all eating right now, or maybe they've gone through so many they're hesitating. Eat your masterpiece then. Enjoy it, the hardest and most perfect result from a fun and beautiful moment. Go back in for another, until you've run out of marshmallows and the fire is too low or until even you are done with s'mores, until you have made enough.

"We don't want a gooey mess" pfft even the artistry studied at the feet of my father is inherently a gooey mess. That's the whole point!

[jssangel]

Every word of every addition to this post is both 100% true and Pulitzer Prize winning writing.

[only-cat-memes]

[tlirsgender]

My most diagnosable take is that honestly. As much as people in social justicey spaces talk about exercising your empathy ... there's also value in being able to turn it off so you're not extremely susceptible to emotional manipulation. Sometimes you have to be able to recognize "oh, this is bullshit propaganda trying to tug at my heartstrings" and stop giving a fuck about like. Colonizer feelings or whatever. Vibes can't override your principles

[tlirsgender]

Like idk being niceys is a good start but your politics can't begin and end with 🌈 kindness 🌈 or you're gonna get taken advantage of. The worst people on earth will be like "but what if........ I have a sob story about it 🥺" & you Need to be able to tell them to Fuck Completely Off

[tlirsgender]

There's a certain strain of ... Everyone Is Valid 🌸 style pseudo leftism that ime invariably caters to whoever throws the biggest tantrum. And this is a Problem interpersonally & it's especially bad if you let these people dictate your opinions. Not everyone is valid some of you are racist

[adz]

i am a biological machine that turns cold cans of Campbell’s soup into shareholder value and nude selfies

[adz]

>:(

[holespoles]

Yuzu Kato "Keep it warm"

かとうゆず「『温めておきました』和紙/岩絵具/水干絵具/胡粉/金泥雲母」

[rathayibacter]

you spill dr pepper on the concrete and a single perfect rose pushes up out of a crack

[anti-parent]

people make a lot of flippant jokes about the literacy crisis but like. learning to read isn't an automatic neurodevelopmental process the same way learning to walk or talk is for most people. it takes explicit and systematic instruction for the vast majority of people to be able to do it at all. if someone doesn't know how to read, that is a systemic failure, not their individual fault.

in cognitive science, there are a lot of different ways to think about reading. but the various models for the most part hinge on two specific processes: word recognition and comprehension. word recognition means the way people recognize and break down words, and comprehension means how people understand the words they read. some of the dominant literacy models in cognitive science include

The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tumner 1986)

Scarborough's Rope (Scarborough 2001)

The Active View of Reading (Duke and Cartwright 2021)

all of these involve some combination/exploration of recognition and comprehension.

unfortunately! in the US starting the 90s, phonics instruction was increasingly abandoned in favor of the three-cueing method. basically, instead of learning how to break down the sound chunks (phonemes) that make up words, kids were encouraged to learn to read by looking at the pictures or guessing via context clues. so the word recognition aspect of reading took a big hit. many kids grew up with functional learning disabilities because of that style of instruction alone.

reading comprehension is also really, really culturally dependent. the way you understand (or whether you can understand) what you're reading relies on the body of background knowledge you have access to, which in turn depends on your socioeconomic position. there's also the matter of what kinds of knowledge and analysis are valued/prioritized by society. critical thinking is a key part of comprehension, and schools are actively invested in not facilitating that skill because their overall objective is to produce a compliant labor force that will ensure the reproduction of capitalism. critical thinking is emphasized in imperial core education only to the extent that it's absolutely necessary: for developing decision-making capacity for postindustrial knowledge workers, managerial types, politicians, lawyers, doctors, and so on.

so. basically. both recognition and comprehension are core to literacy development, and they've both been fucked with heavily in the US (and a lot of other countries). breaking the literacy crisis down this way also helps with figuring out how to fix it. teaching more kids phonics will help them decode words more effectively, but it won't help them comprehend new material. and when we talk about the "media literacy crisis" we're mostly talking about a comprehension problem, which can't be fixed just by having people read more. each issue needs targeted intervention.

so! recommended reading list:

my full essay on the literacy crisis, of course. there's more analysis of structural interventions that would actually work to address children's literacy issues.

Much Ado About Literacy

Let's talk (and read!) about the US literacy crisis - what the real causes are & how to fix them.

the podcast Sold a Story by APM Reports. it has a lot of good information about the shift from phonics to three-cueing. the narrative is a little oversimplified and they weirdly keep praising the bush administration while ignoring how it contributed to the problem, but i still recommend the podcast for understanding the basic facts of the situation

Schooling in Capitalist America (1968) by Bowles and Gintis on how the US school system developed to meet the needs of the capitalist economy

Making Workers (2018) by Katharyne Mitchell for a more recent analysis covering more western countries besides just the US

[afroesoteric]

Me

[gayvampyr]

i love thinking and reading critically at all times i love analyzing media even when it’s low brow or adolescent or when I’m just decompressing. i love you themes and motifs and author bias revelation i love you media literacy <3

[gayvampyr]

i don’t really empathize with wanting to just turn my brain off to consume content mindlessly or shutting down critical thought processes with “it’s not that deep”. i love thinking in depth about the media i engage with, even when it’s “not that serious”. i love asking “what did the writers want us to think in response to this” and “what thought patterns and belief systems led the creator to present this work in this manner.” and i love rereading my own work with fresh eyes to examine it too, making revisions or just appreciating my growth. it might feel exhausting or overwhelming at first if you’re used to a consumerist approach to media (i.e. watch, don’t think) but the more you exercise media literacy the more reflexive and second-nature it becomes and, ime, the more gratifying it becomes to read and watch content. no more anti intellectualism!

[blastdamage]

the paris catacombs are 1000x more fucked up than i imagined

[blastdamage]

did you know the cops once found a fully functioning movie theater with a well-stocked bar inside the catacombs and they when they tried to go back later to formally investigate it was completely emptied out save for a note that read "don't search for us"

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Underground french cinema

[npd-vriska]

my little bro is part of the catacombs community and yeah, it's basically a fully autonomous society! enough that when my bro goes in on a friday night, they don't come out until monday for work- sometimes longer if they took days off.

some of the rooms have fully stocked pantries with cooking equipment, some have movies like the one described above, some have books you're allowed to just take but people always put back- every day people bring things from the outside. artists often set up galleries there. there are rooms with mattresses and hammocks set up for people to sleep. one of the room is just a place where people leave shoes for the fun of it.

this is Known, it's not a secret by any means. the catacombs are as big as paris itself, and people live there just as people live above. it's wonderful when you think about it.

[npd-vriska]

A little update! My little bro is now my little sister. Please don't misgender her :)

[enbylesbie]

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

[rebel-hunk-enjoyer]

The worst-sounding piece of advice I've ever been given that does actually work is to frame your health concerns as coming from someone close to you, whom you do not believe. Tell your doctor that you've been having pain and your mom/friend/partner thinks it might be an ovarian cyst, but you don't think so because the pain is much more intense and it has to be something else. This gives your doctor an unseen third party to fight instead of you. They can't just tell this third party, who isn't present, that you pulled a muscle, they now need to prove to this third party that it is not an ovarian cyst.

At which point they will find an ovarian cyst, but they now get whatever fucked up satisfaction they derive out of proving you wrong, because you didn't believe it could a cyst at all, but guess what? They did find a cyst! It's such a good thing you didn't listen to your intuition and came to them to verify your lay diagnosis from that third party! Bonus? Doctor doesn't have to feel like they look stupid in front of a patient, which is really what all this is about. Not your health, why would you think your medical diagnosis is about your health? It's obviously about a doctor's potential ego.

And apparently this works. Apparently you just need to be able to always play 4D chess with your medical professionals in order to find an avenue of advocating for yourself and getting you medical needs met. Isn't that great?

I hate it here, actually.