#EnglishMajorProblems

Once upon a time, I annoyed my friends with all of my jokes about literature, grammar and wordplay. "Go start a blog for that!" they said. So I did. I've since evolved the blog to include inspirational quotes for writers, my own original writing, and posts about the general love of books and reading- anything you would imagine an English major would find thought provoking, relatable, or funny.

[promptsforthestrugglingauthor]

Writing Prompt #2085

I never thought I would be the one to suffer in all this. Every step of my plan had been flawless. I was sure I had done everything correctly. I hadn't a clue what the oversight had been.

[kitschycritter]

Though the jokes that "since gay pride month is over, july is now gay wrath month" are funny and all, it's important to remember that July is ACTUALLY Disability Pride Month and ya'll should really be focused on boosting disabled voices and issues this month! For instance, the fact that marriage equality doesn't actually truly exist in the United States for disabled people, or the fact that disabled people are forced to live in poverty or lose their disability benefits, or the fact that 1 in 5 people with chronic pain end up sufferring from alcoholism or other addictions, or how accessibility is still a daily battle for all of us, or how there are active hate groups on places like reddit who try to "call out" those they see as "faking" their disabilities.

This July, boost disabled voices. Talk about the issues that our community faces. Call out ableism.

[lordsmaf]

I will forever respect Animorphs for tricking kids who are just really into animals to read a book series by going “Hey you, you daydream about what it’s like to be a dolphin or a bird or a wolf? Have I got a book for you!” and then slowly radicalizing them with 50+ books of “There are no winners in war. Whatever ‘victory’ you perceive comes at the cost of sacrificing your own morals and killing the part of you that is human. In the end you will resort to murder, torture and war crimes and the knowledge of what you have done will haunt you for as long as you live.”

[trickstertime]

I also respect the author for putting them all online for free

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#what the FUCK is going on in the animorphs books

Why not find out they’re all online for free

[trupowieszcz-moved-deactivated2]

hey btw if you wanna read dracula in real time as it happens you can have the chapters delivered to you via e-mail by signing up here:

Dracula Daily | DraculaDaily | Substack

Get the classic novel Dracula, emailed to you in real time as it happens. Click to read Dracula Daily, by DraculaDaily, a Substack publicati

it’s fun

[sunderedstar]

[thatdisasterauthor]

Oh neat!

[funnytwittertweets]

[eternalgirlscout]

shakespeare wasn't lying that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow can creep in this petty pace from day to day

[adamtheredbeard]

neither was Smash Mouth. the years start coming and they don't stop coming

[curseworm]

bro oh my god … vanilla extract

[curseworm]

vanilla extract smells wonderful but tastes horrific on its own. but mixed with sugar and flour and cream it tastes just like it smells. we need the support of others to reach our full potential

[curseworm]

no man is an island everyone is vanilla extract

[wuzzyletoastermac]

if u ever worry that ur writing is too cliche or tropey or whatever, just remember that the “powerful rivals who brawl themselves into an intense ride-or-die friends-to-the-death bond based on their mutual respect for each other’s skills and recognition that they’ve found the only other person in the world who could ever truly understand them” concept dates back to the epic of gilgamesh and we clearly haven’t gotten tired of it after 4000 years or so

[titleknown]

In even more terrifying internet news, long story short, there’s a big committee happening in the US Copyright Office to try and talk about whether they should expand Content ID to the entire internet, and they’re asking for public input.

So, tell them how much automated Content-ID-type systems suck and how Copyright enforcement needs to be relaxed not tightened.

Here’s the EFF Overview on this and why it’s so important, here’s the rules/guidelines for submitting your form (Pay special attention to the Statement of Interest Questions, because it’s those they’re asking about), and here is the form itself.

Again, the deadline is February 8th, so get on it as soon as you see this post! Don’t delay, the answers don’t have to be long, as long as they’re loud and clear!

[titleknown]

[Image Descriptions: A Twitter thread where Jason Scott tells you for the love of god please comment to the Copyright Office why mandated internet filtering would be a bad idea End I.D.]

Transcription of Thread:

Your pal Jason has a Friday Writing Assignment for you. I am sorry about that, but it’s about the future of the Internet, so I hope you understand what’s at stake here. It’s for what seems like a very boring committee, but this committee is about to make some very big decisions.

Sen. Tillis, who is owned by the content companies (he’s the newest “Senator From Disney”, if you want to google that) is pushing a range of legislation to change ownership rights. He is the legislative side of a push to completely change what you think of as “digital property”.

I don’t want to flood you with paragraphs about NOTICE AND STAYDOWN, Universal ContentID, and a bunch of massive killing blows to fair use, sharing, plus the corporate takeover of the public domain and culture, but, well, you can find plenty tracked here: https://techdirt.com

So, we’re getting to the assignment part. There’s a committee meeting and zoom call coming now, where the pros and cons of what we call Content ID will be discussed. It sounds boring, and I’m sure it is, but what it is, is taking the steps towards passing legislation.

But I want it clear what’s really going on here. There is a coordinated attempt to use laws, crappy AI, incredibly intense fines and threats of jailtime to ensure that a tiny minority of companies REALLY control what’s on the internet.

Here is the form for submitting your comments. Please read it carefully, and respond using their instructions. I will not guide you on the form of your response. It does not need to be long.

What a boring URL, right? That’s how this works. Bore them out, build up a case, say “Well, we asked The People, and they didn’t have much to say.” This is a nightmare landscape coming unless we speak up. Thanks. The deadline is February 8th, but please do it today.

[verylostpenguin]

Personally I love books that put the footnotes at the bottom of the page instead of at the end of the book so that I don’t have to keep flipping back and forth like an absolute barbarian

[guerrillatech]

[moveslikekeithrichards]

the horrific way language evolves in a group chat

[yayfeminism]

Very informative thread -source

[lastroseofspring]

Dr. Sarah Taber fucking SNAPPED

[thepoisonroom]

for the record writing a universe with magic but no trans people betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of literally everything and anything

[ms-demeanor]

You know how people are like "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS CENSORSHIP IT'S LIKE NINETEENEIGHTYFOUR COMMULISM RAHR" and so on?

Have a quote from one of Orwell's columns in 1943 (quoted in a book about Orwell):

It is an astonishing thing that few journalists, even in the Left wing press, bother to find out which names are and which are not resented by members of other races. The word ‘native,’ which makes any Asiatic boil with rage, and which has been dropped even by British officials in India these ten years past, is flung about all over the place. ‘Negro’ is habitually printed with a small n, a thing most Negroes resent. One’s information about these matters needs to be kept up to date. I have just been carefully going through the proofs of a reprinted book of mine [his first novel, Burmese Days], cutting out the word ‘Chinaman’ wherever it occurred and substituting ‘Chinese.’ The book was written less than a dozen years ago, but in the intervening time ‘Chinaman’ has become a deadly insult. Even ‘Mahomedan’ is now beginning to be resented: one should say ‘Moslem.’ These things are childish, but then nationalism is childish. And after all we ourselves do not actually like being called ‘Limeys’ or ‘Britishers.’

So at least as far back as 1943 we have the creator of the concept of doublespeak saying "yeah we should try to respect what people want to be called because otherwise we're kind of shitheads."

[hedwig-dordt]

That’s because Orwell was committed democratic socialist, who wanted to uplift people. In sharp contrast to most of those free speech warriors who just don’t want consequences for being assholes. 

[sarahconnorjr]

[einsatzgroping-deactivated20220]

The Tolkien society is mad that someone used an image they have a copyright on because they bought the physical copy and God fuck the Tolkien society so hard.

[tophthegoph]

Holy shit they made a Tolkien nft

[sapokanikan]

non-fungible tolkien