A Multi-Interest Blog

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[fateschains]

pearlescent beadwoven ribcage harness inspired by the iconic harrowhark nonagesimus! fun fact: this thing weighs something like 3 and a half pounds

[hellenhighwater]

I forgot to eat dinner so I'm having 11 pm corn on the cob. This counts as a meal

... It's possible that I really need to do some grocery shopping

[hellenhighwater]

Okay for those of you living in pitiful ignorance, take a raw ear of corn with the husk on and cut all the way around the base (as pictured: above the point where the husk meets the cob, so that the entire husk is severed but still wrapped around the corn. Do not cut through the cob.) Then, with the husk still on, microwave it for 5-7 minutes. It'll basically steam it inside the husk. Remove from microwave --it will be hot, so use a mitt or a towel--and firmly pull the top of the husk/silk, which should come off easily in one piece, unsheathing a flawless corn on the cob. If it doesn't, you probably need to cut a little higher around the base, so all the leaves are severed. No picking off silk!

[hellenhighwater]

For the nonbelievers (and for me, a second corn)

[hellenhighwater]

This website works so well

[yarrow-heather-and-hollyhock]

I love this little bit by Cathon

[fortunatelychaoticphantom]

I swear to fucking god. I would claw out OneDrive from my computer if I could. I would burn down their servers if I could. I would run down their stocks to the ground if I could. I hope every single one of their workers gets a better offer from a competitor in the next 24 hours. I hope every single one of their light bulbs explodes at the same time. I hope every single carton of milk in their fridge will always be expired.

Stop backing up my fucking files.

Stop asking me to back up my fucking files.

Stop taking my fucking files off my fucking computer.

I don't want a fucking reminder in three fucking days. Let me fucking say no.

Fuckers.

[prismatic-bell]

Friend, I have news you're gonna love. Here's a text tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 10.

Here's a text tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 11.

Here's a video tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 10.

Here's a video tutorial to get rid of that shit on Windows 11.

Go forth. Be free.

[ophilosoraptoro]

Reblog to save a life... and someone's sanity

[elli-incarnate]

Okay, hear me out.

One of the quiet background realities of the Star Wars galaxy is that it is spectacularly bad at labor. Not just “late-stage capitalism” bad, but structurally, culturally, and institutionally allergic to the idea that workers should have enforceable protections. You’ve got child soldiers, child labor, debt slavery, corporate fiefdoms, and a Republic that can field a galaxy-spanning bureaucracy but somehow never gets around to standardizing “maybe don’t enslave people.” The Empire of course doesn’t fix this; it industrializes it.

So in that environment, formal labor law is either nonexistent, unenforced, or actively hostile. Which means if you’re operating in a sector where the state either can’t or won’t protect you, you get a classic historical pattern: workers build their own rules.

Enter the gray economies.

Groups like the Smugglers' Alliance (Legends) and the Bounty Hunters' Guild (new canon) look, at first glance, like professional associations for criminals. But if you squint at them through a labor history lens, they start to look a lot like early, proto-union structures — especially the kinds you see in maritime or extralegal industries on Earth.

Think pirate codes (yes actual ones, Pirates of the Caribbean didn't make that up). Think matelotage agreements. Think dockworker brotherhoods that predate formal unions.

Because what do these groups actually do?

They:

set norms for compensation and contracts

regulate competition to prevent destructive undercutting

provide a framework for dispute resolution

establish reputational systems (“you don’t honor contracts, you don’t get work”)

That’s industry self-governance in the absence of law.

Take bounty hunting. Without something like the Bounty Hunters' Guild, the field collapses into chaos: clients don’t pay; hunters underbid each other into oblivion; jobs get duplicated, interfered with, or sabotaged. And nobody trusts anybody!

The Guild steps in and says: here are the rules of engagement. Here’s how claims work. Here’s how you get paid. Here’s what happens if you break contract.

That’s basically a union crossed with a licensing board and a regulatory agency, just without any moral pretense.

Same with the Smugglers' Alliance. Smuggling is inherently risky, decentralized, and dependent on trust networks. If everyone is constantly betraying everyone else, the whole system stops functioning. So instead, you hash out agreed-upon routes and territories, informal protections against betrayal, mechanisms for information sharing, and consequences for breaking the code

Again: not altruism. Stability.

And the reason this emerges specifically in gray/illegal sectors is because they have to. The Core Worlds might pretend they have laws, but those laws don’t meaningfully protect the people actually doing dangerous, itinerant, high-risk work. So the margins of the galaxy — where enforcement is weakest and risk is highest — become the places where labor organization evolves first.

Which is very historically grounded.

On Earth, some of the earliest labor protections didn’t come from governments; they came from workers in dangerous, decentralized industries—sailors, pirates, miners—who literally wrote their own rules because no one else was going to save them.

Pirate codes, for example, often included:

compensation for injury

shared distribution of loot

limits on captain authority

Which is … shockingly progressive compared to a lot of contemporary working conditions (cough Amazon cough).

So in the galaxy far, far away, you end up with this ironic inversion:

The “legitimate” systems — Republic, Empire, megacorporations — are exploitative, inconsistent, or indifferent.

The “illegitimate” systems — smugglers, bounty hunters — are the ones building functional labor frameworks, because they need to survive.

And that feeds back into why the galaxy feels so unstable overall. There’s no universal baseline of rights. Everything is hyper-local, network-dependent, and contingent on whether you’re inside a system that has rules you can rely on.

If you’re a clone trooper? You are literally property.

If you’re a factory worker on a corporate world? Your protections are whatever your employer feels like offering.

But if you’re a smuggler or a bounty hunter?

You might actually have clearer expectations about your pay, your risks, and your recourse — because your “union” is the only thing standing between you and total chaos.

So yeah: the Smugglers’ Alliance and the Bounty Hunters’ Guild aren’t just flavor. They’re a glimpse of what labor organization looks like in a galaxy where the state has fundamentally failed to provide it.

Which is both deeply funny and a little too real.

[azzandra]

#you're telling me han solo is a union man? (via @professorsparklepants)

Han Solo look SO MUCH like a union man.

[bathroomcube]

now remember, "kink" is to "fetish" as "poisonous" is to "venomous"

*hands you a knife*

you know what to do. we're all counting on you.

[superdz555]

(link)

[thunderwhenhepurrs]

Been feeding baby goats that a mama rejected, and having Jonathan and Martha Kent thoughts.

Jon and Martha find the Kryptonian ship in their corn field, but when they open it the baby is not well. He’s traveled light years, and even at the fastest speeds, it was days or even weeks. What fluid was sustaining him has been gone for some time.

They work a farm. They know what a sick baby looks like.

They take the baby inside anyway. It’s far too late for anything to be open, so they break out the milk replacer for the livestock. The bottle they find has had a goat kid sucking on it, but they wash it good, because what other choice do they have?

The baby doesn’t take to the bottle well. He barely eats.

They both know a lack of appetite is a death knell.

“I can’t watch a baby die,” Martha says. She’s done it before. She and Jon struggled to have kids. The closest they got — well. It’s a hard memory for them both.

“I know, love.” Jon’s a good old country boy. He grew up being told it’s a man’s job to take the burden. He’ll take it now. “Go to bed. I’ll stay with him.”

Sure, they both know Martha won’t sleep, but at least she won’t have to see.

Jon takes the wee babe out onto the porch. He tries to poke more milk down him. Rubs his chest, bounces him, pushes the bottle past his lips, every damn thing he can do. The hours are long and hard, but he would never forgive himself if he didn’t try.

The baby continues to fade.

The eastern sky starts to lighten.

“I’m sorry, little fellow,” Jonathan whispers. It’s not long now. He can feel it in his bones. He’s held plenty of animals as they died. He’s waiting for that long last exhale. “Sorry you came all this way and this is your welcome. Can’t even enjoy the sunrise.”

He told himself he wouldn’t cry until the boy was gone. Wasn’t fair, that his last moments would be a man crying instead of comforting him, but Jon does his best to do both at the same time. He cradles the poor little thing even as his shoulders shake.

The sun breaks over the horizon, and light floods the porch. Jon closes his eyes against it and his tears.

It’s a hiccup that is the first sign something changed. Then the wiggling.

Jon nearly drops the baby in shock.

When he looks down, the little boy sure hasn’t died. He’s got this rosy little glow to his cheeks and his eyes are bright. He’s throwing those little hands around like he’s trying to figure out how they work, but he seems to be trying to reach for the sun.

Jon just stares at him until the baby gets frustrated enough with his clumsy limbs that he opens his mouth to tell the world about it.

The baby’s cry is so powerful Jon falls right out of his rocker. It’s a miracle he doesn’t launch the poor thing.

Only thing he can think to do with a screaming baby that’s about to take his eardrums out is shove that bottle right in that open mouth.

The little boy shuts right up and clings to the bottle for dear life as he drinks with a fury.

When Martha comes stumbling out wild-eyed in her jammies, Jon’s sitting on the porch with a grin as bright as the dawn despite the fact his ears are still ringing.

“Turns out he has a good set of lungs.”

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[doodlesorganizationland]

The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe made this card for their citizens to present to ICE.

If you are in a different federally recognized tribe in Washington State:

“I am a member of the (insert tribe here) Tribal Nation, which is Tribal Nation federally recognized by the United States.

This means I am also a United States citizen according to the U.S. Citizenship Act of 1924, 8 USC Section 1401.

Our tribe’s enrollment office number is (insert phone number here).

The Native American Rights Fund will assist me if you attempt to illegally detain me. Contact them at 303-447-8760”

[helenvaughans]

[quasi-normalcy]

No source, but with your help, we can make this true.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

[bigmann-mclargehuge]

Share the knowledge

[dragon-in-a-fez]

Okay, here we go! I'm gonna try and put this in order from least to most technical knowledge required. I'm not responsible if you accidentally create SkyNet etc.

Level 1: browser extensions

This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.

Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.

Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).

uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.

Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.

FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.

Level 2: leaving enshittified services

The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.

Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.

Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery

DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.

Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.

Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.

With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.

Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery

Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.

To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.

Level 5: automated media piracy

The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.

The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.

Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.

Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.

Level 6: fucking with Android

Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.

Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.

Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.

You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.

Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.

Level 7: fucking with Windows

This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.

Level 8: switching to Linux

I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.

And that, friends, is a comprehensive approach to banishing the demons of capitalism from your home!

[klymilark]

Something I want to add:

You don't even need a pihole for it anymore. You can throw "dns.adguard-dns.com" into your android phone under Network (or Connections) > Private DNS > Private DNS Provider Hostname in your Settings app. You can also set your router up to use it via the IPs:

94.140.14.14

94.140.14.15

Link to to source for that:

AdGuard DNS — ad-blocking DNS server

Create your ad-blocking DNS server that will protect your personal data, prevent tracking and allow you to control access to specific conten

That will depend on your router, just search "How to set up custom DNS for (router name & model)". You can usually find that info on a sticker on the router itself. The model name is often nonsense like CM1000.

For switching to Linux:

If you're worried about software not working, and the software isn't something with work-related requirements attached, you can usually find alternatives. Alternativeto.net is a good place to start with that.

AlternativeTo - Crowdsourced software recommendations

AlternativeTo lets you find apps and software for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Android Tablets, Web Apps, Online, Windows Tab

If you're a gamer, protondb.com will let you see how well your specific game runs on Linux. Ranks are from:

Borked - Does Not Work At All, or works so poorly that you cannot play the game at all

Bronze - Sort of works, but with glitches that don't exist on Windows that affect gameplay

Silver - Works, but requires tinkering, and has glitches that don't affect gameplay, or requires heavy tinkering to get running

Gold - Works, requires mild tinkering (usually just selecting another proton version from the drop down)

Platinum - Works out of the box

Native - Is made for Linux

Other common alternatives:

Spotify: I've heard good things about Tidal, but haven't personally used it (I use a cloud storage service and local files for music)

Google drive: Nextcloud. You can find free servers on their website

Google office: OnlyOffice has a desktop/mobile app, and most of the features

Gmail: Free providers aren't common, but disroot is one of them. They also offer quite a few services. Personally I use mailbox.org, but they do cost $36 a year minimum

Google search: Disroot has a searx instance, startpage.com exists, and you'd be surprised at how far you can get by setting your default search engine to Wikipedia. Marginalia's also good, but selective about what they index (mostly indieweb stuff)

I, admittedly, run almost everything through Emacs nowadays, so there may be better alternatives now.

(Directed generally) Also remember that in most cases the problems are Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. If you find a small project that isn't perfect, remember that those five companies are probably worse in every way imaginable. Look for an alternative, but for the love of whatever you hold dear, Google is *not* a better alternative.

[sokkalore]

season 2 of atla is so good because you’ll watch an episode and it’ll be like -

A plot: aang learns to stand his ground in order to begin earth bending

B plot: zuko screams at god to strike him down with lightning

C plot: sokka is stuck in a hole

[faithful-grigori]

”#I. the off chance anyone is not aware, #this is literally an episode, #like, #I cannot stress enough, #that is is an episode of the show, #go watch or rewatch atla if you can”

[raccoonmilf]

When I was in grade school I used to send emails to biologists and zoologists asking them questions to get answers to include in school projects I was working on, and would cry when they did not respond because I thought I was stupid for thinking that some random kid would ever be deserving of a response from someone who does something as smart and cool and important as *checks notes* studies frog fungus.

Now, at 29, I’m lowkey having a panic attack because my academic email is filled with middle schoolers wanting me to answer their questions about pygmy raccoons and I keep putting off answering them because I’m so overwhelmed with all the other raccoon stuff I have to do.

Anyway, greatest apologies to any scientist I ever emailed as a child and also an adult.

[raccoonmilf]

I know your research is really important and I appreciate all you are doing but this is so fucking funny

[lemonsharks]

I've been finding a lot of job postings that ask me for a photo lately, which is uncool of them.

So I made an image which lets me bypass their demand. I don't care if I get that particular job, I just want to shame the HR goons who thought the photo requirement was a good idea.

Note: this only applies in the USA.

[msilverstar]

Took me a bit to figure out the implications: this image can be downloaded from here and uploaded whenever a job application asks for an image. Clever!

[lemonsharks]

That's the hope! Save this image and upload to job applications that "require" a photo

[teaboot]

You know that Margaret Atwood quote talking about how a major effect of existing as a women in a patriarchal society that objectifies women is that when you are a woman, even when you're alone, you can't escape that self-peception from the view of the male gaze?

The one that ends, "You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur."?

I really do think that pushing this concept precisely one degree further in the other direction would explain a LOT about how we ended up with this whole "Incel, looksmaxxing, manosphere" clusterfuck, I just need 20 minutes and an antidepressant to articulate how

[laurelindorenan]

A funny moment in creative writing class today:

Someone's story involved Character A believing Character B was terminally ill. In their initial draft, Character B deceived Character A – but that results in Character B coming across as super twisted, which doesn't really fit the vibe of the story. We discussed alternate possibilities and I said "You know, it's actually plausible that Character A could think that Character B was terminally ill without any deception required. In fact, my fiance thought I was terminally ill for several weeks at the beginning of our relationship."

It was like a bomb went off at the class. Everything exploded. The professor collapsed in his chair and laughed so hard that he cried for a long time. I got bombarded with a million questions. The professor could only get the class back on track by intentionally avoiding looking at me for rest of the class because he was in danger of hysterically laughing again at any minute. No one left after class ended because once the bell rang I was called upon to give the full story.

[greater-than-the-sword]

Well now you have to give us some explanation of how that happened

[laurelindorenan]

It's been nearly 3 years since I've told the story on my blog (and even then, I think it was in the tags of some other post?) so I might as well.

Spring of 2023, my fiance and I were going on super casual dates. Emphasis on super casual, because most of the time they were like grocery store trips with dinner attached, and I thought they were platonic hangouts. I hadn't had so much as a crush by that point, so I was pretty clueless.

He was totally in love with me though and just playing it cool, because the guys at our school have an unfortunate reputation of practically proposing marriage on the first date (which kills the chance to organically get to know a person) and because he knew I would be easily spooked (unfortunately true).

After we went on a hike together (I invited the whole friend group, but only he came), I realized we were becoming good friends. On the ride back, right as he was dropping me off in front of my dorm, I told something that I told my good friends: I have a chronic illness called fibromyalgia. He was very quiet. I said goodbye and got out of the car and we didn't speak of it again.

From then on, I was pretty open about my chronic illness. I made a billion jokes about it and such. He always got weird and quiet when I did. I was sad about that. "Great," I thought, "yet another person who is weirded out by my health issues. I hoped he would be better than that."

Once I started suspecting that he was in love with me, I used that as evidence to gaslight myself into believing that we were just friends, because clearly he was too freaked out by my crazy illness to be in love with me, right?

But then he started hardcore pursuing me and asking me to hang out with him in some small way every single day, and in general being very kind and thoughtful and caring for me in every mundane way he could.

Then, several weeks later, he confessed his love. The story of the events leading up to that love confession are also very funny (involving migraines and an impassioned rant about Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy) but I will not bog this narrative down with the details. The next day, we had a good old-fashioned DTR. I told him I reciprocated his feelings and then, because I was still bothered by how weird he got whenever I brought up my chronic illness, I said "Oh, by the way, I'm super open with talking about my fibromyalgia, so feel free to ask me any questions if you're curious about how it works!"

He said, very earnestly, "Are you dying?".

Rewind to the day we went on that hike. I say I have a chronic illness. He completely misses what it's called (I guess "fibromyalgia" doesn't stick in the brain) and just hears chronic illness. I was the first chronically ill person he had met before and the wires got crossed in his mind and he mistook it for terminal illness. He didn't want to ask, though, because he assumed it was a very sensitive matter.

A couple days later, he overheard me have a conversation with another chronically ill friend about death and suffering and Christian hope. In that conversation, I said (quoting Sarah Sparks) "you know, with this chronic illness, every day I'm learning how to die."

He took that as confirmation of his suspicions: I was dying. He told no one. He just bore that silently for weeks. When I made jokes about my terminal illness, he thought I was being very brave, but did not have the heart to joke along with me.

Fast forward back to the DTR conversation. After I find this out, I laugh in his face for like ten minutes (poor guy). I ask follow-up questions, like

Q: How did you cope with the fact I was dying?

A: I just decided I wanted to spend as much time with you as I can, for the time I had left, and then when the time came I'd cross that bridge when I get there.

Q: When did you think I was dying?

A: Well, I figured there was no way you would move to [UNGLAMOROUS COLLEGE TOWN] in your last year of life, so I figured you had like...five years, maybe?

He was so matter-of-fact about it. After I stopped laughing, I was deeply moved. Here I was, thinking that this guy was freaked out by my chronic illness, when all along he was quietly preparing to weather my terminal illness with me for the rest of my life.

A week later, in a follow-up conversation, I asked, "So is the reason why you've been so kind to me was because you thought I was dying?" and he replied, "Nope! My behavior was not conditional. I wasn't kind to you because you could die. I was kind to you because I could die at any time, and I want to be like Jesus in whatever time I have left."

Anyway, that pretty much convinced me I had to marry him and now, in a little over six weeks, I'm going to get that taken care of.

[sandersstudies]

My Shakespeare students (they are 12) wanted to summarize the lessons they learned this semester. If. Um. Anybody would like to see.

[sandersstudies]

I cannot emphasize enough that they made these with very little input from me.

Henry the Fifth

- ALWAYS encourage others to do their best.

- NEVER talk about people behind their back.

Antony and Cleopatra

- ALWAYS check your produce for pests. [They liked this one so much made a rap about it.]

- NEVER count your chickens before they hatch.

Hamlet

- ALWAYS act decisively

- NEVER tell your girlfriend to go to a convent and become a nun [Oh boy they REALLY liked this one]

Romeo and Juliet

- ALWAYS collect all the important information before making an important decision

- NEVER bite your thumb at us, sir. [They enacted this scene in the original language a lot, except they swapped every “sir” for “bro.”]

The Merchant of Venice

- ALWAYS pay your debts.

- NEVER judge based on appearances, because “all that glisters is not gold.”

The Tempest

- ALWAYS try to forgive others.

- NEVER be a colonizer. [Yes, a middle schooler said this]

Midsummer Night’s Dream

- ALWAYS stay on forest trails

- NEVER fall in love with an ass. [They were excited about this one for obvious reasons.]

Twelfth Night

- ALWAYS stay in touch with those important to us

- NEVER read other people’s mail

Macbeth

- ALWAYS wash your hands. [One of the girls performed Lady Macbeth’s entire Out Damn Spot monologue at the end of the semester]

- NEVER succumb to peer pressure.