Bee Kind, Stay the Bees Knees

we stay silly

[assortedbowloffruit]

post-idol awards panicked cornered animal rumi as that one captcha art trend. send tweet.

[sugarfreecherrycola]

She’s Right And She Should Say It.

[uss-edsall]

At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map

[the-murmuration-project]

My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.

We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.

[sunhatred-deactivated20220531]

Do you guys remember how kidnap fantasies were popular on wattpad because young girls and queer teens were both made to feel shame at the thought of their own sexualities, so the fantasy of being kidnapped totally against their will was a way for them to engage with a romantic or sexual fantasy without feeling morally in the wrong for doing so? Added bonus that the fantasy involved being whisked away from repressive environments like home or school, right?

Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:

“I TOTALLY love my wife and would never do anything that an upstanding Good Straight Working Man wouldn’t do but oh nooo, big strong man with broad back and strong enough arms to carry me back to bed like a princess trapped me and claimed me as his, completely against my will 👉👈 But he protects me against the bad evil sexual women (who I assure you, I am TOTALLY sexually attracted to, as any straight man with a choice would be) but trust me, I do NOT want ANY of this. What’s that? The Count is not capable of feeling love? Would be a shame if I had the special ability to change tha-”

[ardatli]

This is also the fantasy behind all those old bodice-ripper romances that people today like to mock or call problematic, by the way.

“Oh, my next forty years are going to consist of nothing but washing dishes and keeping house and bearing children for the disdainful man I married right out of high school because my parents said college was for men and I had no other obvious life path open to me? What if a pirate captain thought I was worth stealing away from it all? [what if I ran away but no-one could blame me for leaving]?”

[unclothed-i-shall-return]

#I read an article a long time ago about a woman who was raised in an incredibly repressive conservative christian community#where all that mattered was purity and virginity etc #She talked about how for a long time rape fantasies were the only way she could derive any pleasure from sex #because she couldn’t feel safe exploring the idea of wanting sex #it wasn’t really ABOUT rape or eroticizing assault or whatever #it was about creating a scenario where she was free from the shame associated with wanting #i think this is true of a lot of icky-seeming stuff in romance and erotica #it’s an imaginary scenario where nothing you don’t really want actually happens #but you can’t be blamed or feel guilty for it #you didn’t do anything wrong#anyway that article changed my perspective a lot #i think there’s also something to be said for people who have felt ugly and undesirable their whole lives #enjoying fictional scenarios where a hot alpha werewolf or whatever is so attracted to them he ‘cant help himself’ or whatever #because it can also be really shameful to want to be desired #when you feel like youre ugly and gross ( @headspace-hotel )

[ouserat]

Contrapoints talked about this in her phenomenal Twilight video essay. Click over to “Fantasy” if you want to get to the part where she talks about this topic, specifically:

[peach-pot]

being anti-amatonormativity in a romance centered world is like watching half the people you know put all their eggs in one basket and then drop the basket and all their eggs break and they’re crying and swearing they’re never gonna do that again and then a month later they have all new eggs in a new basket and they tell you the problem was they didn’t have a strong enough basket or fresh enough eggs and then they drop the fucking basket again.

[peach-pot]

(this post is about putting all your time, energy, and care into one relationship, about staking all your happiness on a romantic relationship, effectively making the entirety of your joy and stability dependent on one person who could exit your life for any number of reasons no matter how great the relationship seems. it’s about the societal expectation to build your entire social life around one long term relationship, putting all your eggs in that basket, so to speak, instead of tending to larger social network and maintaining a variety of strong connections so that even if one very important relationship comes to an end, you won’t be losing your whole social life in one fell swoop.)

[otrebot]

Sharing secrets

[ouramateur]

The unworthy / the chosen one

So far in my listen thru I havent really felt like I had the bandwith to draw any of the NPCs aside from the kiddads really until now, so I never really got to any of the S1 ones. That said I did throw together a really quick walter design in the middle of a larger project for fun + to figure out what the fuck he looked like? + a sneak peek on said wip :) Frogs is so much easier to draw than peoples yall, you don’t understand.

[ochiody]

why are you so fat and stinky

[laquilasse]

And then he lost the idgaf war because she said “the pretty lights you made changed my life Master Olly 🥺

[animenightcrew]

[theawkwardvirgin]

Ok I tried this and it was a HUGE hit!

Main recommendations: Season the dough AND season the filling. Also, make smaller loafs, about the size of a spatula head, for easy flipping!

Here’s how they look! Recipe below (doubled bc I have a big family).

Loaded Potato Loafs

Poke holes in and boil 6 large potatoes until soft

Peel potatoes (do this after boiling to retain nutrients and get the texture needed for the dough)

Mash into a smooth puree

Add 4 tablespoons of melted butter

Add 10 tablespoons of flour

Add a bit of pepper and a good amount of garlic salt

Mix until it forms a soft dough

Lay out plastic wrap and grease with a little oil

Place 1/8 of the dough into the plastic wrap and flatten it into a round shape

Add shredded cheese, shredded chicken, bacon bits, more garlic salt, chives, and Italian seasoning.

Grab the plastic wrap and use it to fold each edge of the dough over, starting with parallel ends. Make sure the dough is sealed all over and doesn’t break. It should be about the size of a spatula head for easy flipping.

Airfry two at a time. Fry one side at 450 degrees for 7 minutes

Flip with spatula and airfry other side for another 7 minutes

ALLOW TO COOL BEFORE EATING

[rattle-my-stars]

🥔 picture perfect babey🥔

Couple of notes:

Season the shit outta this thang

Like it’s actually fucking crazy that neither cook in the video mentions seasoning 🤨

Don’t overstuff with fillings if you’re frying in oil bc it might lose structural integrity and fall apart on the flip

I filled mine with just cheese and hot dog bits (it’s what was immediately available and I’m lazy) and topped it with some ketchup + mustard to go with the hot dog theme

It was bomb as fuck chef kiss 😚👌💋

I’ll definitely be making again and trying new fillings; this recipe is pretty much endlessly customizable

[dee-the-red-witch]

Did these. Albeit at a smaller size:

Must admit- you pair these with ANY comfort food, and you’re set. Was amazing with a pork loin potroast and gravy to just slather over them.

[elodieunderglass]

Oh I forgot to say.

Bug (4) is going to start school now so we’ve been doing literacy practice. One set of exercises was about “opposites” and I drew a card reading “fat”. Ok what’s the opposite of fat.

Bug thought about it and then said dreamily: “meat.”

[sufficientlylargen]

Other fun opposites to teach kids include that the opposite of "white" is "yolk", the opposite of "up" is "asleep", the opposite of "down" is "happy", the opposite of 'in" is "unfashionable", and the opposite of "fast" is "eat".

[sufficientlylargen]

When I was a kid I had a book of word puzzles (well, I had a bunch, but this one in particular stands out to me), and one of the puzzles was exactly the above - it just gave a bunch of words and asked for opposites of specific lengths, like "Opposite of fast (3 letters)".

And I was absolutely stumped. The puzzle text assured the reader that they were all common words - no archaic lost words or anything like that - and I spent FOREVER trying to figure out a three-letter word for "slow". The book had Will Shortz's name on it, so there was no way they'd accept something as sloppy as "slo", and obviously the opposite of "fast" had to be something that meant "slow" so... what could it possibly be?

Eventually I gave up and looked at the answer in the back the book, and saw "eat", and I was like

Like my third eye just blew the fuck open and I could suddenly see that language is sounds and symbols and they have no meaning except that which we assign and agree to, and a word without a context is just a noise I make with my face, and the opposite of "fast" is a reflection of it across an axis, and it's is "slow" when you talk to a driver and "eat" when you talk to a dietician and "loose" when you're holding a screwdriver and "unfaithful" when you're telling your new best friend about your former best friend and "impermanent" when your laundry is now pink and "sedate" when you're talking about how people live and "lightly" when you're talking sleep and "feast" when you're celebrating Ramadan and all of these are just thoughts that people before us wanted to share and so they gave sounds and letters to them and "fast" could be a kind of refrigerator or the feeling of pain in your gallbladder or a dance with a carp if people wanted it because words aren't things, there's no platonic ideal of "fast" there's just my "fast" and your "fast" and his "fast" and their "fast" and a million million other "fast"s and we even each have many "fast"s ourselves and a lot of the time they mostly align but nothing is ever perfect and "a language" isn't a thing it's just a map we each made up on our own to try to understand the territory and we made up the territory too.

[elodieunderglass]

Thank you for telling me this story!!

[elodieunderglass]

Pretty accurate to being 4 or hanging out with people who are 4

[stillnaomi]

in a recent survey, people in england and wales thought that 55 percent of convicted killers in the UK were from ethnic minorities. the real number was 35 percent. they also thought that 30 percent of sex crimes were committed by ethnic minorities, and that they make up a quarter of the prison population. the numbers are half that

the rightwing media feeds the population endless stories about immigrants, black kids, and Muslims committing crimes, and this is the obvious result. the average person in the UK has a distorted worldview that lines up with reactionary politics. coupled with the narrative that immigrants, many of whom aren't white, are to blame for all the of ills caused by capitalism, from the crumbling NHS and the high youth unemployment rate, to the lack of affordable housing, the racist pogroms that keep happening are no mystery

the communist movement and socialist media ecosystem in the UK are so underdeveloped that there's very little opposition giving working people an alternative explanation for why their lives keep getting harder. except for the technocratic babble of other establishment media, which makes declining living conditions appear to be the fault of forces of nature, and of the government having to make "tough decisions". we've got a lot of work to do

[redstonedust]

i love being aromantic it's so oo o awesome to be painfully aware that no matter how much you love someone itll always be deemed less important in the eyes of most because its non romantic. it's really cool that the absolute maximum of care and love and attachment i can give is called 'just friends' and is considered inherently second best. im super fine and normal about this.

[bakwaaas]

I will create a beautiful life no matter what

[digitalmyyth]

Cultural exchange between buddies

drew this for a laugh and then. wanted to make a comic

[mikeyfuckinway]

"cozy bookstore" "cozy cafe with a bookshelf" "omg imagine if there was a place you could just sit and read at" we have this its called the library. you guys want to go to the library. the two college libraries near me have cafes inside and they are open to the public. people need to go to the library

[isawken]

experiencing adolescence in the 2010s has fucked my perspective of the word “epic” totally beyond repair. i will forever view it in the same league as words like “awesomesauce” and “legitness” im sorry. theres just no going back

[catplushy]

any time i read the word "epic" this fucking thing flashes in my mind