asides & digressions

queer smut, nature & earth science, canes hockey for some reason. bi. Hellsite Old.

[em-dash-enthusiast]

biblionaturalist>>thoughtsfromthesinbin>>em-dash-enthusiast. Just so the mutuals know all this nonsense is still me.

[turing-tested]

doing research on people's preferred formats for how restaurants have their menus displayed online and i'm including responses to the post to send to my boss but um. i don't think i can include this specific response

[turing-tested]

[turing-tested]

I regret to inform you all but my Google drive name at my job is Dirk Strider because that is also my real life legal name in my life

[philcollinsenjoyer]

about 90% of fanfiction takes place in a utopia where men are thoughtful and unsure of their place in the world

[mycatismyfriend]

@skulandcrossbones this might be the greatest tag on a reblog I’ve ever seen.

[yesornopolls]

do you have any friends that are 4x your age or more?

Do you have any friends that are 4x your age or more?

Yes

No

Remaining time: 5 days 18 hours

[maidthings]

secretary birds look pretty normal but for some reason people have collectively decided to photograph them like they're [takes a moment to find an acceptable way to say this] women

[maidthings]

<-normal bird photography | typically reserved for pin-up posters ->

[horce-divorce]

yea

[alchemistdoctor]

I am begging you. Please learn about stress/discomfort tolerance. Practice raising it. You need this to survive. If someone online can ruin your day with a throwaway comment, you desperately need to understand discomfort tolerance and consciously, systematically build that shit.

Also! Stress tolerance is such an important skill that having a learning disability in that area is a major symptom of a whole lot of other disabilities/mental illnesses! Struggling with it is a huge part of life! It sucks!

Am I saying everyone with misophonia needs to listen to chewing noises all day? No. But you need to find ways to tolerate it enough that you don't treat others like shit if they make a mouth noise near you.

No, you don't have to read the fic with your trigger tags. But you do need to be able to handle scrolling past the tags without being upset.

It is hard! But not having it also makes you so so so easy to manipulate. That grandma is racist AF because her mom raised her to be uncomfortable around black people and she never fought that discomfort. Trans people make so many cis people uncomfortable and that discomfort turns into bigotry real fast.

Letting your discomfort dictate your actions and beliefs about things is a great way to become a terrible person. Learn. Discomfort. Tolerance.

[duskquil]

did u know that sesame street did columbo parodies where he is a sheep and his name is colambo

[duskquil]

i love you colambo

[todaysbird]

I wanted to use what ‘reach’ I may have here to share the Carolina Wildlife Center’s urgent plea for donations. If they are unable to raise $75,000 to cover ongoing and future care of their wildlife patients, the center will have to close July 20th, 2026. The services provided by CWC to the community are incredibly valuable, and without them, many wild animals will suffer without the care they need.

Original post

Link to donate

[maemaybe]

I don't know who my intended audience is here, so whoever needs to hear this, I am begging you to learn to participate in conversations that are about things you aren't interested in.

Part of socializing and having friends is being a good listener even when you don't actually give a shit about the subject.

Your are hurting other people's feelings when you bluntly respond with "Anyway..." and then change the topic.

It can not always be about your preferred topic.

You are being rude. Yes, even if you are neurodivergent. You can be both autistic and rude.

[animentality]

[opossum-mypossum]

[em-dash-enthusiast]

25 for the hockey asks :)

My favorite things about hockey are the fast pace and physicality of the game. Growing up in NC football and basketball were the main spectator sports. Hockey was like WHOA for me because it combined the quick fastpaced gameplay of basketball with the hard hits of football. And now 10+ years later I'm still hooked lol

[adhdwannabewriter]

Writers, which software do you use?

Google docs

Microsoft word

Ellipsus

Libre office - writer

Notepad (the fuck is wrong with you lol)

Pages

Other (comment, please, esp if you recommend it)

Checking results

Remaining time: 4 days 8 hours

I used to use Google docs, but the white mode only was really annoying me (tires my eyes), so I swapped to Ellipsus (which I genuinely love and recommend), but it was bothering me a bit that I need wifi in order to use it, so now I switched to LibreOffice Writer, which I do like.

It very much has a Microsoft Word feel, but is open source and you need no accounts to use it. It's local on your device, so no AI can scan it, and no wifi is needed.

I still wish it had the Google Docs cards, because, bitch, that thing is so good for easy organizing.

[notpotable]

I primarily use google docs, where I find that with a serif font and forest green font color, eye strain is much reduced for me.

But I also DO use Notepad too hahaha - Notepad is beautiful and I will hear no slander! sometimes you just gotta have the simple expedient of not wanting your fic to end up being network traffic away from home, and a little perfectly un-cloud-linked, simple monospace font is exactly what you need.

In gdocs do all my initial edits in a serif font, then switch to a sans-serif font for another several edit passes, then reach out to my beta. Lastly I add all my formatting html myself, and then put the draft into AO3's plaintext editor and I read it through again on both my phone and on a desktop to see if I like the way everything is situated.

Unfortunately, wishful thinking aside, google docs simply does not yet have a competitor that can match it in portability (or USABILITY) across devices, and I write on my phone, my home laptop, my tablet outdoors, and workstations at my university.

And no, ellipsus is not gonna match any of that. I tried ellipsus. I bought into the hype. Ugh. I found it not portable at all across devices because of the limits of their flawed design choices in mobile web view (owing to misuse of small screen real estate and layout shifts), and I found it poorly useablefor my needs overall on ANY device because of the limits of their flawed design choices for text editor and user interface both (using markdown for the editor (fukkin markdown, I shit you not. /spit), yet hiding real, utilitarian text formatting options under five nested layers of menu clicks), with a team too small to offer support for their beta product, yet already rolling out paid sub options. for their beta product. ellipsus is a complete mess, and I got bamboozled into wasting weeks there trying to get it to function for my personal use cases. but they have 37 different color options... so you can change theme every four and a half hours I guess? wowza.

[terriyakiblack]

Ha, Google Docs’ foothold is pretty annoying, innit? But unfortunately, their service does just sort of work as you’ve put it.

Ellipsus is a project that started out very promising and has quickly turned into something concerning, unfortunately.

The choice to use markdown is... odd. I’m not really sure why they’ve gone that route for something that is geared towards creative writing, but... yeah. The interest in markdown that the internet currently has cannot go away fast enough for me.

And it definitely still feels like a project in beta. The UI is so fucking awkward. There’s the floating top header that shows the word count and has the focus mode and timer buttons, but it comes and goes with how you scroll and it’s so fucking annoying. And you can’t change its behavior! >:\

On desktop, you end up with this weird amount of space being used that doesn’t need to be. The bottom of the page has a floating widget for formatting that hovers way too high above the very bottom of the page, leading to your writing getting covered up by it and eventually going down past it — just, what in the fuckity? And why do I need this if I have the sidebar buttons to format via and vice versa? Why can I collapse the sidebar, which has things other than the formatting stuff, and not do anything about that stupid floating footer???

I hate this! The desktop UI genuinely has kept me from using Ellipsus more than I had wanted to in the past. The rolling out of monetization when they’re clearly too small to properly support it has left a bad taste in my mouth, too.

And now there’s hush hush speak about how some of their investors are AI companies. This is really curious given Ellipsus’ stance on AI and scraping.

I dunno. I think a lot of Ellipsus’ success so far is it playing into the AO3/fanfic writers area of the Internet and taking advantage of NaNo’s crazy suicide.

[thewritinggrindstone]

crazy that scrivener isn't on the poll considering that fifteen years ago it was all the writing community was talking about. but I digress.

in the past I've used ywriter, ms word, scrivener, and focuswriter as my primary programs. I still use ms word to proofread everything. for actual drafting, I currently use writemonkey 3, which is lightweight and has the ability to sync across devices by way of some kind of file-synching software (I use syncthing). it also has the opportunity to be super super pretty, which is a key part of my process. some details found here!

[an-atlas-or-other]

Soccer players are the horses of sports. They run around in fields for hours on end. They stub their toe and they die. They fall and they die. They run into each other and

[qhockeysacrament]

This would make hockey players the cats of sports. Random zoomies, chasing the little dot, knocking things over, and not admitting sickness or injury until nearly dead.

[audible-smiles]

the worst part of summer is that people get sooo comfortable expressing their disgust at having to see other people’s bodies. they’re always complaining about wrinkly old men at the nude hot springs or fat women in bikinis at the beach. I hate that shit. if you’re not capable of being normal about bodies you personally don’t find attractive, just turn your head to look at something else! and if you’re not smart enough to do that, then at least do the rest of us the courtesy of suffering in silence, because we don’t wanna hear your weird comments. thanks.

[glovesdown]

Hockey Asks!

How/when did you get into hockey?

Are you a fan of any other sports?

Do/did you or anyone close to you play hockey?

Has hockey inspired you to try any new activities (e.g. learning to skate)?

If you’re a fan for a team in a city you don’t live in, how did you pick them? If you’re a fan of your local team, do you follow any non-local teams?

Do you go to games? If so, what’s your favorite part of seeing them in-person?

Are you a fan of any fictional hockey media, or just the real thing?

Do you collect merchandise or memorabilia (cards, pucks, jerseys etc)?

What is a moment from a game you’ll always remember watching live?

Do you watch games alone or with others (irl or virtual)?

If you had to add a color to your team’s color scheme, what would it be?

What’s the weirdest place you’ve watched a game?

Have you ever met any players, either by chance or at team signing–type events?

Have you gotten anyone else into hockey?

If you had to commentate a game, would you rather do play-by-play or color?

If you could change, add, or remove a rule from the game, what would it be?

Have you started using any hockey slang in other contexts?

Do you sacrifice sleep to watch games at late/early hours?

Do you have a favorite ultra-specific hockey stat?

What is your favorite jersey from a team you're not a fan of?

Should [insert league here] expand? If so, where do you want the next team?

What is your most hockey player–esque habit irl?

What is one overused question you wish you could make beat reporters stop asking?

Would you rather work for your team's social media (pitch/produce content) or general management (have a say in trades/drafting)?

What is your favorite thing about watching hockey?

[jewishbarbies]

we need to bring back public hatred for paparazzi. I’m so tired of actors defending themselves against assholes with cameras and being smeared as egotistical divas. they’re glorified stalkers who get paid to harass people. end of. the things these freaks get away with would send normal people to prison but we’re supposed to think it’s okay just bc they’re paparazzi. they SHOULD get shut down for being openly misogynistic. they SHOULD get told off and reported for following someone to their private residence to doxx them. they SHOULD face charges for just about running people over in their pursuit of the next hot celeb. this is not normal. and, actually, these people DO deserve to get punched sometimes.

[requiem-on-water]

Sulfur combusts on contact with air to create stunning blue lava-like rivers of light in the Kawah Ijen crater on the island of Java | Ph: Olivier Grunewald