Terrible, Beautiful Sparks in Space

Talk shit get bit. ey/em they/them Ao3 link

[sing-you-fools]

i must say, i am a huge fan of when a book is in the middle of a very exciting plot containing many interesting problems when out of nowhere for a few pages it's like, "hey by the way, real quick, here's a detailed explanation of the city's water filtration system! i'm telling you this for a reason and you should worry about it. anyway! haha okay back to the plot" and you just get to be Scared for a while

[lauramkaye]

if George Wickham lived today he would use his career as an influencer to peddle some kind of scammy MLM scheme and end up going to prison for wire fraud, having a Netflix documentary made about him, and a bunch of people would propose to him via letter in jail

[shabbytigers]

[dinosaurcharcuterie]

I've lived in Germany for 14 years so far. This discussion comes up at least once a year.

A summary of the most common points that come up.

Most Germans do not consider toast bread (i.e. wonderbread) bread.* It is a product you finish baking at home. I have eaten it untoasted many times** in front of them, and a significant number of people*** react in horror.

"Ungetoastetes Toastbrot" is a popular phrase that sounds as insane in German as it does in English to all who hear it, but the reason it sounds insane depends on if the German in question believes it is ethical and proper to consume it untoasted. Alternatively, there is the even more strange but not that uncommon "rohes Toastbrot" — raw toast bread. Which isn't the same as dough.**** Truly die-hard toasters will refer to the bread itself as "Toast" in all forms, as if that will manifest it as the only possible destiny for every slice in existence.

Toast bread is only unilaterally fit for consumption after it has been sufficiently toasted. There are discussions about what shade of toastage makes it "genießbar", but the general consensus is that it's toast the second it gets a crunchy crust through the application of heat. This might be achieved in a toaster, but using it to make a grilled sandwich in a pan, toastie maker or a contact grill is equally acceptable. Just letting it go stale does not count. The application of cheese, mayo or butter to the outside does not influence the becoming-toast process in either direction. The cooling down of the toast does not reverse the status change; not even if the toast is exposed to circumstances that revert it to its previous softness, or even make it soggy*****.

One more or less acceptable exception to toast bread needing to be toasted is when one orders 1) currywurst 2) without fries from a 3) street vendor who does not 4) stock white bread rolls and 5) does not advertise the currywurst as coming with a roll. Any deviation from those 5 points negates the toastbread clemency and is a legitimate reason for grumbling******. The toast bread also has to be of a generic brand, white and cut on the diagonal. One triangular half is an acceptable serving, but two marks a more generous******* vendor.

*They, incidentally, are joined in this sentiment by Norwegians. The Norwegians, however, sort it into the same category as baguette and loff (white bread); bread products with little flavor, vitamins, minerals, or fiber, and thus not really something you'd include as a major part of a "proper" meal.

**all standard issue German bread is cursed to go rock hard within 24 hours after baking unless it is hermetically and tightly sealed in plastic. There are many Germans who claim this is untrue and a bread box suffices to not make it so. I've got "proper" bread from other countries to compare it to, I've made my own bread to check, and can confidently say the German bread box enthusiasts are either hopeful and delusional, malicious and lying, or dentists with a mortgage to pay off. I'm guessing the nation as a whole offended Hestia at one point, and all offerings to appease her thus far have been insufficient.

***If you have friends who believe it needs toasting, them regularly trying to convince you to do so is a sign they care about your well-being and never give up hope for your self improvement.

****German toast bread philosophy has more layers than a croissant in that way.

*****This was a very heated debate between two of my coworkers, one of whom had wrapped a lightly toasted ham and cheese toastie in aluminium foil for lunch. She was accused of eating untoasted toast bread by one of her fellow toast-must-be-toasted fanatics and did not take kindly to what she perceived was an attack to her moral and dietary integrity.

******Serving currywurst without any bread or fries, however, is madness on par with eating hot soup with your bare hands.

*******Price for a 24 large slice loaf with no ends from my supermarket of choice: 2,19 €, including 7% tax.

[mortalityplays]

talking about impenetrable accents/dialect just reminded me. when I was in Milan a couple of years back I was staying in this little rathole hotel and I had the biggest fucking migraine, so I was like non c'è problema I'll just go buy painkillers. of course every pharmacy on the map in a three block radius was closed, so my stupid ass just starts wandering around trying to figure out on the fly if you can get OTC from supermarkets in italy.

I walk into this little everything store (to my foreign eyes the kind of place that back home could sell you a bunch of carrots, a 6-pack of beer, pantyhose, bleach and a screwdriver set) and I see some household basics in the back but not what I need. with the confidence of a person who is only in the city for 3 days because he got bored and packed a bag and booked the cheapest flight available the week before (<= MENTAL ILLNESS), I was like no worries I know some italian, I can just ask.

I grab a bottle of water, walk up to the counter, and I'm like Ciao, hai il paracetamolo? And the guy is like che, and I'm like paracetamolo. Per la mia testa. And he's like che?

This is where I would have said 'aspirina' except I can't take aspirin for medical reasons, or 'antidolorifico' except I don't know that word and I've got no phone data for google translate and also I'm stupid. So in my fucked up leith-glasgow-italian accent I'm like paaa-ra-cetta-mollll-ooo. He's like ohhh bene, bene, and he calls another guy out of the back and asks him to go get something. Other guy then walks out of the store into the street, and before I can be like hey, che la fuck, he comes back and hands me a huge bundle of herbs.

At this point I'm like okay this entire interaction has been a bust, but these guys have been very nice and patient and they're both smiling happily at me because they've been of service, so I'm like ahh perfetto, grazie, pay them a couple of euros and leave.

EVENTUALLY I find a pharmacy that's open, and my head is fucking killing me, and my phone still isn't connecting, and now I have this small shrubbery poking out of my coat pocket, so I don't even bother looking around the shelves. I just walk straight to the counter and I'm like uhh ciao, scusi. And hearing my nightmare of an accent the guy answers in english and I'm like thank christ, do you please have paracetamol. Not aspirin, I can't take aspirin. And he's like yeah yeah hold on, goes into the back, comes out with what I need.

Only when he comes out he gives me this look, and then he starts laughing. And then he pretends he's not laughing and rings me up and I pay, and as I'm leaving I can see him losing it. But I don't care, my head is going to explode, I'm going back to the rathole to close the blinds and fall comatose for four hours.

When I get back to my hotel room I take off my coat and remember the huge bouquet of herbs in my pocket. They smell amazing, and I'm like I'm pretty sure this is parsley in which case I can just get some tomatoes and mozzarella later and make it work. but since I have no idea what that interaction was, I want to make sure. I bring out my phone to get a visual reference of what parsley leaves look like, and because I was using it for google translate earlier I put 'parsley' in the wrong box like a dope and translate it to italian.

prezzemolo

I wish I could have been the pharmacist in the moment he looked at my tired pissed off anglophone ass, heard me say 'paracetamol' in my fucked up accent, and turned around saw what was in my pocket. I'd have lost my shit too.

[elodieunderglass]

Respect to the first guys who, after you left, said “what a nice bloke. He looked so tired. We can relate. Whom amongst us has NOT had a parsley-related emergency”

[creature-adjacent]

Carnivorous plants doin this is so funny to me

They don't wanna eat their pollinators :(

[questionablepastries]

[dykeferatu]

now i don’t know enough about omegaverse to say anything definitively but from what i have seen it certainly looks like it emulates insects much more than wolves.

[dykeferatu]

like if you’re looking for an animal with strictly defined castes and extensive use of pheromones you are looking for ants i think

[prokopetz]

Oh, wait, roguelike when talking about games means similar to this one specific thing called Rogue and not having features and protagonist somewhat related to the fantasy rogue class of character skill preference

That clarifies many things.

(With reference to this post there.)

If you really want to blow your mind, look up the origin of the genre name "adventure game" some time.

[discar]

Come on, you can't just leave us hanging on that one.

[prokopetz]

For those disinclined to spend thirty seconds skimming a Wikipedia article, the term "adventure game" is another video game genre name taken from the title of one of that genre's founding texts: it originated to describe games in the style of 1976's Colossal Cave Adventure, whose name was often abbreviated simply as Adventure.

Colossal Cave Adventure is an early form of parser-driven interactive fiction, in which the player moves through a grid of rooms solving inventory-based puzzles by typing VERB THE NOUN style commands. When later examples of the type began to introduced graphical, often mouse-driven GUIs to replace or supplement the command prompt, the nomenclature fissioned into "text adventures" to describe the classic style, and "point and click adventure games" to describe the newer one. "Text adventure" remains in use today as a (somewhat outmoded) term for parser-driven interactive fiction; "point and click adventure game", conversely, is rarely used in everyday conversation, as it's now the dominant strand of the genre, and folks just assume that's what you mean when you say "adventure game" unless otherwise specified.

(Meanwhile, a third branch of the nomenclature, "action adventure", split off to describe games which retained Colossal Cave Adventure's basic framework of moving through a grid of rooms solving inventory-based puzzles, but added traps and monsters which the player must evade in real time. You may recognise this description as one to which the original NES Legend of Zelda answers; for this reason, games in the mode of the Legend of Zelda franchise are to this day classified in the English-speaking world as "action-adventures".)

[writingdose]

this used to be a common knowledge

via AO3Tikli 2022

[omegaversereloaded]

southern american politicians will be like "m'name's buck bingo and i'm a hard worker...... just like y'all" and he's an private school + ivy league educated guy actually named buckley beaumont carlisle who was born into a family who owned slaves and still profits from it to this day. and people eat that shit up.

[omegaversereloaded]

last night i went on a crazy wikidive lol

[omegaversereloaded]

i was going to ask what other versions of this exist in other countries lmao

[punkrorschach]

it is... unfortunate to see trans people go through their own version of "all boys are stupid/all girls have cooties" after they come out. take my hand. you dont have to act like a cis person to validate your gender.

[punkrorschach]

this is something a ten year old girl or perhaps jk rowling would say.

[natalieironside]

There's always a moment of intense cultural whiplash whenever I realize I'm talking to someone who thinks "legal" and "illegal" are meaningful categories and ascribes innate goodness to following the law. It's like meeting a space alien.

[natalieironside]

Like ppl will say things to me like "But that's Against The Law 😱" or "but they Broke The Law 😱" like sinners in the hands of an angry God and idk what to do w/ that

[natalieironside]

"But [action] is A Crime and if someone does [action] then they'll be a Criminal who Broke The Law! But what about The Law?"

[bark-barkley]

I WANT TO LOOK AT THINGS MADE BY HUMAN BEINGS

[softwetmoss]

And also occasionally by pufferfish

[unwell-radio-transmissions]

was plan make new tote bag 4 aac go on wheelchair. Thought 'would be cool if design like computer keyboard' because fun silly have Radio's words in. Next thought 'if be computer keyboard could use as low tech AAC. Should then probably have yes/no symbols.' Then plan got out of control and now want 2 embroidery low tech AAC board for fashion (silly) and practical use.

not will rush make, just enough have project work on.

[unwell-radio-transmissions]

[ID: canvas bag with low tech AAC symbols and words embroidered on. Examples include feelings, 'lift' and 'toilet'. On reverse side is embroidered computer keyboard, yes/no symbols and words 'please', 'thank you' and 'sorry.' /end ID]

3 half months to finish, very very happy with result. Bag good and sturdy. Take bit of figuring out to make. Strap piece wrap all way around bag so more support for heavy AAC. Strap long enough for wear cross body.

full list of symbols & words: - happy, sad, tired, surprised or anxious, angry or frustrated, overwhelmed. - safe, unsafe. - too loud, too bright, too many people, too many choices. - lift, toilet. - love, stop - i need, to lie down, help, space, to leave, company. - I don't understand, please explain what's happening.

these are for communicate with strangers who not know sign or when body brain too tired for effective signing and as alternative to electronic AAC.

[chongoblog]

It’s fun to use contractions inappropriately, but it’s hard to explain why that’s

[lunarthesugarglider]

thats a common interest we've

[chongoblog]

Yeah, but people get annoyed by it, like when you throw soda cans in the trash can’t the recycle bin

[beaft]

worst part of getting into the traditional folk music scene is that you will hear a song in the wild and fall in love with it, and when you try to find it online you discover that there are 900 different cover versions and the only non-terrible one is a recording of a church hall concert filmed in 2002 on someone's nokia

[nenastrology]

light was such a loser cuz he didnt just google the 100 richest people and start writing down names

[wyrmzone]

how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and find out exactly 100 of the world’s richest people died of heart attacks at exactly noon universal time. can you imagine the theories. light is absolutely a loser for not doing this

[jotaillustrator]

[exigencelost]

[ID: Reply from elumind that says: “Do the richest one every week and see next in line lose their shit and try to get rid of the money. I think of this almost daily.” /end ID.]

The notes on this are wild because people are legit passionately arguing about why this wouldn’t work. No one said it would work. They said he’s a loser for not doing it.

[athingofvikings]

There has to be a *pattern* to it, though, to really get their attention. Like it has to be the same time of day, the same day, each week.

[hazeldomain]

The first one stands up and draws a massive A on the nearest wall before dropping dead. 

Exactly one week later, Thursday at 3:13 PM, the next one looks up, blank-faced, and uses a car key to scratch the word ‘CAMEL’ into the side of their car. There are memes. 

The week after that, in the middle of an interview, the third victim turns to the camera and says ‘THROUGH.’ He drops dead. 

The man who writes “EYE” is in a private underground bunker. Enough radiation shielding to survive a direct nuclear strike. There are fifteen guards posted at the door- surveillance confirms not one of them left their post. 

By the time “NEEDLE” is scratched into the upholstery of a private yacht, people are starting to give money away. 

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Like most of us I’ve thought extensively on this since I first saw Death Note and came to the conclusion that the most likely reaction would be people creating more byzantine ways of keeping hold of their resources while not technically counting them as personal resources and not technically being so rich. With enough shell companies, fake charities, and resources stashed in secret or illegal places or the bank accounts of relatives, people could keep most of what they have while dropping right off any list of wealthiest people. The wealthy are often experts at this for tax fraud reasons. Light’s response, of course, would be to start taking these things into account, seeking out hackers and accountants and various other experts to keep track of the actual wealthiest, and the wealthy (many of whom would be willing to risk their lives to stay that way) would use the dying as a metric for what the mysterious killer was using to score wealth and try to find ever more secret methods of resource hoarding. An accountancy arms race would be underway.

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. I’m saying it would make a fantastic Death Note rewrite. Instead of Light making stupid mistakes against L, he could actually put his genius to work in Death Note: The Accountancy Wars.

[yteicosanievilew]

“this makes me personally uncomfortable”, “this seems in poor taste”, “this is somehow harmful but presumably because you’re misinformed” and “this is actively malicious” are all different things. remember that