Describe "dollop-head".

29-year-old now in New Zealand. This is where I come to put off doing any work :) (she/her) (background - ediblepurple)

[2productive]

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

this is from "research as a leisure activity" by celine nguyen, publs. on stubstack in 2024. it's a very good read

[dailymanners]

After years of meaning to read it but never seeming to have the time, I finally started reading "How To Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. I've been told by countless people that this book is the ultimate handbook on how to talk to and deal with people.

I'm not far in, but so far it's been pretty interesting and insightful. This book is almost 100 years old but so far everything I've read seems to still hold up today.

I've had a few people message me asking about more resources on how to improve their social skills. There's always r/etiquette (I don't even have a reddit but I find myself lurking) but, if you're looking to read something to help brush up on your social skills, I can so far recommend "How To Wind Friends and Influence People"

Although, take my recommendation with a grain of salt because I haven't finished it yet. But I tried looking up if there was any criticism for it and had a hard time finding any. It is slightly more focused on social skills for a business setting, but honestly those skills can transfer to just about any social setting. (such as presenting your views and opinions to people in a way that doesn't make people feel attacked, and generally making people feel comfortable and at ease around you)

[dailymanners]

If there was one book I would suggest to everyone on here, Twitter (or X or whatever) and everywhere else on the internet where people lash out at strangers for no reason, it would be this book.

Because one concept it keeps returning to is that people do not like people who lash out at them, people who criticize them, people who scold them. People also do not listen to people who lash out at them, criticize them, and scold them. If you want people to like you, and people to actually listen to you, you should start by not doing that.

[dailymanners]

@2ndgengeek thank you, gonna go ahead and add this to my to-read list :) also as an FYI for any of my followers looking for more sources on manners / etiquette / social skills

[dailymanners]

@connanro also adding this to my reading list (and reccs for books on manners to my followers), thank you!

[aprillikesthings]

It's been ages since I read it and it is older, but What Does Everybody Else Know That I Don't? by Michele Novotni is specifically aimed at people with ADHD. Some of it is hella basic, but in all honesty it's shit I didn't know until I was an adult.

[walk-up-songs]

Bought my uncle a burger and milkshake in exchange for letting me disrupt the holiest day of the week, NFL Sunday Football, so I could install a Pi-hole and free the household of ads...the thing abt the specific boomers I live with is they told me not to trust people on the Internet but they do not understand the algorithm or online advertising and think that Facebook has their best interests at heart. And every time I have tried to explain to them that no, blorbo from my dashboard is not selling my kidneys on the dark web but Google from your capitalism is definitely selling your web searches to every advertising company on the planet, they think I am paranoid. How could their personal friend Mark Zuckerberg want anything bad to happen to them etc. I am fighting battles I did not know existed!!!

[walk-up-songs]

Update I have had Pi-Hole successfully installed for two (2) hours and have since learned that 40% of the web traffic in this household went to advertisements. FORTY FUCKING PERCENT. We live in hell. This is the greatest gift I have ever given my family that they will not understand or acknowledge or feel any gratitude for.

[walk-up-songs]

Update #2: it was rising all night but the number it finally settled on was...60%. 60% of the web traffic in this household went to advertisements. I can't tell if this high number is bc I live in Silicon Valley and probably am subject to the Algorithmic Internet in ways people outside of Silicon Valley are not or it is normal to have 2/3rds of your web traffic be ads, but it did make me set up a recurring donation of the EFF lmfao.

[walk-up-songs]

Okay I have had multiple people ask, so here are the useful websites that me and Beryl used to muddle our way through:

Using Pi-hole and Raspberry Pi (on the Raspberry Pi website, really good overview of what Pi-hole does)

Tumblr-archived Twitter thread about one household's experience with Pi-hole (this is what sold me on it. Also the tweets were published in 2022 and Pi-hole is actively being developed, so I think some of the teething problems he mentioned might have cleared up or are at least being addressed.)

Pi-hole website (gives broad strokes of the software and imho is not actually that helpful, however this proves that I am not making shit up)

Pi-hole documentation (read prerequisites carefully, you do NOT need the newest model of Raspberry Pi to run this thing!! You don't even need a Raspberry Pi at all, you can run it on a bunch of Linux systems however I'm very stupid when it comes to Linux and when my options are install and learn a whole ass new OS or spend $$ on a Raspberry Pi and hook it up to my TV with a wired mouse and keyboard I will unfortunately be spending money)

Privacy International's guide to setting up Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi (bro this one saved our asses)

You guys can ask me questions if you want but I guarantee I will not know the answers bc I don't know shit about fuck, I just followed the directions and reaped the rewards. It did take us 2 hours to set up bc I'm bad at following directions (and it's kind of complicated if you've been out of the software game for a while like I have), and you do have to be sososo brave about fucking around with your internet provider's configuration. So make sure you eat before you do it!! However it has been so worth it for me so far, given that now all my devices at home are running faster and I'm not seeing any ads while web browsing. We will see what complaints my family comes up with, but I love it so far.

Also!! if you've never heard of Raspberry Pi, which I realize are not all of my followers are lost in the Silicon Valley sauce so you might not have, here's is their website and their page for using Raspberry Pi at home.

(And here is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that fights for digital privacy, free speech, and innovation, if you, like me, were presented with cold hard data about your personal internet usage and suddenly realized that our internet is fully a dystopia. haha.)

[acquitarte]

After a few months with pi-hole, I recently switched to AdGuard Home. It was recommended/is co-promoted in a pi-hole discord server, and it seems to be blocking a bit more successfully/consistently for me than the pi-hole did.

I also use Blokada on my phone when I'm not home and have the Windscribe browser extension which includes 10GB of free VPN traffic and has uBlock integrated into it. (AdGuard does technically make things that do this but I like those better; ymmv).

It all takes some setup and tinkering, but I highly, highly recommend taking steps to clear out some of the internet garbage and protect your info.

[thickness-protection-program]

Dang rip America

[karlyboyyy]

[naamahdarling]

I lost a needle I liked in my pincushion so I decided to get a strong magnet and see if I could pull it back out.

I pulled out 68.

I very rarely sew.

This was my grandmother's pincushion. How many were hers?

[autisticnightfury]

Finding a 68 needles in a haystack pincushion

[naamahdarling]

Where you would expect to find needles!

AND YET.

(I jibbled out some more so we are at 71 and I can feel at least two more in there by sweeping the magnet across. Now hunting for my strongest one.)

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

tomato is perfec t size for put needle inside very soft and comfort needle

[featherwurm]

A friend suggested 'a mimic that eats needles' and I got the most vivid mental picture.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

Every time OP dances, her parrot flies along with her. OP says she never trained it on purpose and her parrot just loves doing this naturally. Sometimes it’ll just hop right onto her face. (cr 月下郭城)

[frontmansdefender]

Source

[bogleech]

I like how cat humor is just universal

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[curioscurio]

I have a confession to make... I thought the idea of wireless headphones like air pods were so so stupid when they first came out. But having owned wireless headphone pods with a case I have to admit that I do enjoy them quite a lot. But we should still eat the spleen of every person who lobbied to phase out the headphone jack in electronics

[mariasklodowskastwixbar]

Wireless headphones: great, can move around without having to drag my phone or laptop with me, chord doesn't get caught on doorknobs anymore

No headphone jack in my phone: terrible, awful, everyone involved should get hit with a hammer

[thickness-protection-program]

Alright girlies we can't let the executive dysfunction win today

[thickness-protection-program]

I mean alright girlies we can't let the executive dysfunction win tomorrow

[kosmogrl]

my beautiful bestfriend called ibuprofen

[transpotato5]

sometimes i forget that i need to talk to my friends in order to talk to my friends

[nervebynerve]

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin 

[kosmogrl]

you’ll be fine. you made it out of impossible situations before and you will do it again

[kosmogrl]

ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? YOU WILL DO IT AGAIN.

[kosmogrl]

#Iprommy

[ot3]

one of my favorite types of media to experience is stuff that i know in another lifetime i would have been absolutely obsessed with as a kid/teen. going through something as an adult and being like yeah that was pretty good. however if this had made its way to me when i was 12 years old it would have fundamentally altered me and i hope it's fundamentally altering some other 12 year old out there right now. that's the good stuff.

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

Went to the grocery store with my kindergartener. We weighed some bananas: 2 pounds even. We weighed a watermelon: 4 pounds even. We weighed some mangos: a little over 1 pound. We weighed the watermelon AND the bananas: 6 pounds even.

“That’s funny” said the child “because 2+4=6 and two pounds and four pounds is six pounds. It’s like the same as math!”

“What happens if you add 6+1?”

“SEVEN”

“What if we put one pound of mangos on the scale?” <mangos added>

“IT’S THE SAME!!”

“OK, what’s 7-4?”

“Three?”

“What if we take the four pound watermelon off the scale?” <watermelon removed>

“Mama! Are you telling me math works In Real Life? Think of all the things you could measure!!”

[justgivemeabookplease]

Shrek 2, while a cinematic masterpiece, is also an interesting look at queerness and comp het.

Fiona is married so it's time to reunite with her parents. But instead of marrying a prince, she's married to an ogre. Not just that, but she's also an ogre. (Yes everyone knew she would sometimes be an ogre but that was when she was a child, she didn't know she would be an ogre for the rest of her life, and besides once she met the right prince she would stop being an ogre. She was supposed to stop being an ogre.)

But okay they're both ogres. We can still ask about when they'll have children because even if they're ogres they can still have kids, right? That's what married princes and princesses do so naturally that's what everyone does. Even if ogres might not be great parents (I've heard that ogres eat their young, is that something you people do?) it's still something that should be discussed.

And okay you can stay in Fiona's childhood bedroom filled with all the reminders that hey, everyone thought she was just a princess and princesses marry princes. Her toys left out from the last time she played with them. The prince slays the ogre. The princess offers a token of gratitude for slaying the ogre. Fiona wrote Mrs. Fiona Charming a million times in her diary because what else was she supposed to grow up to be?

And Harold you have to fix this, your country can't be ruled by ogres. You were unfit to rule when you were a frog but I changed you, I made you better, I made you a prince. You know how this works. Think of your daughter's safety.

Shrek goes to the Fairy Godmother and oh honey, ogres don't live happily ever after. It's just not done. It hasn't happened in all of fairy tale history. You have to change the both of you to be happy. You have to present as a prince and a princess. It will be better. You'll fit in better that way. You'll be accepted that way.

[fitzchivalry]