Working it all out on the remix

Nathannah, 46 (she/her/them 🩷💛💜/🏳‍⚧). Way too much into women-focused shows and WLW couples, and just don't care about any show starring a guy. All here for middle-aged women, Paris Geller superfan that has their name on my license plate, and I adore Liza Weil and America Ferrera. Paris/Rory, Barbie/Gloria, Kara/Lena/Cat, Swanqueen all make me the giddiest, and I write fanfic that just doesn't want to end. Love all sports; Brewers, Rays, Packers, Bucks, Tigres, Mumbai Indians. Favorite artists are Sarah McLachlan, Holly Humberstone, Griff, etc.

[thingstrumperssay]

Who knew that Fox News would be a great way to know who I'll be voting for during midterms?

[future-crab]

The key to writing good fanfiction is to harbor a deeply humiliating desire, and the trick there is that even pretty basic and societally-accepted desires like “being held” and “being wanted” CAN and WILL be humiliating if they’re intense enough. Become so estranged from human connection that the idea of someone playing with your hair fills you with yearning so deep you feel like you’re going to throw up and you will write some banger fanfiction. It might have some other consequences too but idrk about that.

[geopsych]

Another public service announcement. This time it’s air quality. Some of you are probably in it already if you’re in eastern Canada, New England or New York, but it’s sliding south, a huge mass of wildfire smoke. Please be careful. When it starts getting bad, especially, like when the sky gets orange or brownish, it’s best to run air purifiers in the house and wear N95 or KN95 masks when you have to go outside.

It harms your lungs and it’s especially bad for children (and pets!) or anyone with health problems. There are all kinds of chemicals in that smoke. It’s not only trees that are burning. The heat already makes it harder to breath. This makes it worse.

If any of you are experiencing it, feel free to tell about it in the comments. 💚

Also, throw out the mask every day and shower before you get in bed if you’ve been out or you’ll be breathing the particles all night. Stuff like that. It gets all over you, your skin, your hair, your clothes.

[so-i-did-this-thing]

It's a large (and shifting) smoke plume, so stay safe, folks. Look up how to make a "Corsi-Rosenthal Box" if you need an air purifier inside.

[iamnathannah]

I hate that I'm trying to push through reading a fanfic where the employer absolutely is completely violating HIPAA and someone's right to privacy with their employee, but because it's Mirandy, it's somehow considered romantic and tension-building, even though every situation should literally end with 'I have a right to privacy and choose not to divulge what's going on' by Andy, who just needs to tell Miranda to fuck off rather than somehow taking it.

[inadvertently-biblical]

Deborah “teaching” Ava how to drive stick in Paris

HACKS - “Finale.”

[orteil42]

why do closed captions keep pretending english is the only intelligible language? when a character speaks spanish what exactly is forcing your hand to transcribe it as "[speaks foreign language]" rather than "Si"

[concerningwolves]

This intersection of Anglocentric bias + ableism and audism makes my blood boil.

People commonly defend this practise with "But the audience isn't meant to understand!" or "It's inconsequential!", neither of which actually address a) their assumption that the [ideal Anglo] audience wouldn't understand, or, perhaps most crucially in the context of CCs, b) that this is a failure of accessibility. A hearing person who speaks that "foreign" language will know exactly what's being said. A deaf or HoH person – the people CCs are primarily intended for – who speaks or reads that language should therefore have the exact same opportunity to understand. It very much feels to me like an assumption that we deaf and HoH people couldn't possibly understand any language but English, so there's no point in getting those languages transcribed for us. I hope it goes without saying how profoundly audist that sentiment is.

There is also, I think, a profound misunderstanding or ignorance of Deaf culture at play. Which is to say, CCs in English-language media are written with not only the assumption that the audience will be native English speakers, but that all d/Deaf and HoH people speak English as their first language, so all other languages are as supposedly foreign to them as they are for hearing people. But sign languages are their own distinct language. BSL, ASL, ISL, AusLan, NZSL etc ≠ English (and are indeed different from one another), LIS ≠ Italian, JSL ≠ Japanese, and so on. So, if you follow the captioners' logic to its natural extreme, all non-signed dialogue is "foreign" to many d/Deaf and HoH people and should therefore be labelled [speaks foreign language] / [speaks English] / [speaks own language] / etc. – which is, obviously, a terrible idea that perfectly highlights all the biases implicit in closed captioning.

TL;DR: your accessibility feature fails in its function as soon as you fail to transcribe all spoken languages.

[polytropic-liar]

Quick reminder that if you live in an EU Member State, those captions are not compliant with the European Accessibility Act and you can report the platform or company! EU folks please do this if you can; forcing multinational companies to comply with the EAA has a very good chance of making them simply standardize compliance, even in counties that don't have a version of this law.

[iamnathannah]

In the United States, there are also legally-required contact channels for every network and television station that you should use when you don't feel the captions are proper. Doing that and publicly naming and shaming them for every time you see 'singing in a global language' or 'Spanish' definitely helps and NBC having Telemundo means they're hyper aware of this (since they cross-caption each language).

There's also the major issue of AI captions now providing a much worse experience and I understand the tradeoff between understandability and 'nobody is watching this soccer match on Bein Sports 5', but it's not a full solution and there should still be human guidance in the system, and it should never overlay captions properly written out and placed in a movie or sitcom. They also do a very awkward job of translation, the same as YouTube's auto-dubbing feature (which is a new form of comedy to run into but not funny for someone earnestly wanting content in their own language).

[penny-anna]

okay, for those interested, here is a full timeline of how we got to Count Binface:

1977: Star Wars is released, featuring, of course, Darth Vader

(Pictured: Darth Vader)

1984: Director Todd Durham releases his Star Wars parody movie, Hyperspace, featuring Darth Vader inspired villain Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: Hyperspace poster featuring two Jawa-esque aliens flying through space in a shopping trolley.)

1987: Hyperspace is released on video in the UK, under the new title Gremloids.

(Pictured: Gremloids cover in the style of the original Star Wars poster, featuring Lord Buckethead.)

To promote the film, Mike Lee, the owner of the distributing company, ran for parliament as Lord Buckethead. He ran in Margaret Thatcher's constituency, Finchley, in order to get on TV. Lord Buckethead was representing the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with Margaret Thatcher.)

1992: Gremloids is re-released. Lord Buckethead rides again, this time against prime minister John Major in Huntingdon. (Here's a fun fact about Huntingdon: I was born there! :D) 87/92 Buckethead seems to have leaned pretty hard into the space supervillain thing, with campaign promises including 'demolish Birmingham to build a spaceport'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead on TV with John Major. Other notable candidates include Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party.)

2017: comedian Jon Harvey, having recently watched Gremloids and learned of Lord Buckethead's candidacy for parliament, decides it's a great bit. He runs against Theresa May in Maidenhead. 2017 Buckethead seems to have a wackier and also more political approach, with campaign promises ranging from nonsense like 'nationalise Adele' to gesturing at actually sensible policies with stuff like 'lower the voting age to 16 and restrict voting after age 80'.

He also made an appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. As with his previous incarnation, he was a member of the Gremloids party.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead dabbing on stage with Theresa May.)

2018: Director Todd Durham asserts his legal ownership of Lord Buckethead. Jon Harvey opted not to go to court over Buckethead and handed over the reins. Todd Durham extended an invitation to anyone who wanted to be the 'authorised' Lord Buckethead.

(Pictured: the new Lord Buckethead.)

2019: Lord Buckethead, now played by journalist David Hughes, stood against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. He ran for the Monster Raving Loony Party, the UK's pre-existing gag candidate party. He ran with a similarly silly manifesto as the 2017 incarnation, but with a bit less of a political edge. His promises included 'All doorways to be increased by 1 foot (30 cm) in height' and 'Nigel Farage to be sold for parts'.

(Pictured: Lord Buckethead and Count Binface square up.)

Meanwhile, Jon Harvey in his new persona Count Binface, also ran against Boris Johnson. Buckethead and Binface face off! Binface ran as an independent with a manifesto once again blending silly and semi-serious promises such as 'nationalising model railways' and 'giving £1 trillion a week to the NHS'. This was also I believe the debut of his promise to 'move the hand dryer in the men's toilet at Uxbridge's Crown and Treaty pub to a more sensible position'.

(Pictured: Count Binface presenting the offending hand dryer, inconveniently close to both the sink and the urinals.)

He has a point.

2021: Count Binface runs for the position of Mayor of London for the first time, with promises such as 'London to join the European Union'. He notably finished ahead of far right party UKIP.

2023: Count Binface runs in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election following Boris Johnson's resignation. He once again gets more votes than UKIP.

May 2024: Count Binface once again runs to be Mayor of London, debuting his now iconic 'build at least one affordable house' promise. Notably, he finished ahead of far right party Britain First.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Rishi Sunak. Also pictured: Monster Raving Loony Party candidate Sir Archibald Stanton with a ventriloquist's dummy.)

July 2024: Count Binface stands in the general election, running in Richmond and Northallerton against prime minister Rishi Sunak. He debuts his promise to cap the price of 99p flakes at 99p. This is his most successful election to date with 308 votes.

(Pictured: Count Binface with Andy Burnham. Also pictured: independent candidate Robert Pownell, dressed as a fox for his own reasons.)

June 2026: Count Binface stands in the Makerfield by-election against Andy Burnham, (recently) former Mayor of Manchester running for parliament with the intention of standing in the Labour Party leadership contest.

(Pictured: Count Binface on BBC's Newsnight.)

July 2026 (this week): Count Binface announces his intention to run against Nigel Farage in the upcoming Clacton by-election. He is briefly the only other candidate in the race and by the time other candidates announce themselves the narrative of 'Nigel Farage vs Count Binface' has already bedded in. And then it was now, and then I don't know what happened.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

For clarity's sake, Robert Pownall is dressed as a fox because he's an anti-fox hunting campaigner, and also he will be standing in the Farage Vs Binface election. So that's fun

[strawberrycamel]

we really should be calling it fanworks, not content

[sinni-ok-sessi]

I do think the ability to emoji-react is a net win for human communication. not only does it give you an outlet for 'I see and acknowledge this but don't have a verbal response' but it also adds a pleasing alethiometer element to things

my coworker announces that he's off to the dentist. someone reacts with a tooth emoji. is this a statement of dentist solidarity? a wish for my coworker to return with more (or fewer?) teeth than he set out with? simple word association? who can say

[fuck-u-maga]

[stone-monkey]

Looks like Nigel Farage (UK far right dipshit and conman) has resigned as MP to trigger a by-election. He'll be running again in a stunt to bring attention away from his undeclared multi-million donations, and to potray himself as against the establishment.

...except none of the major political parties are running in this election, currently leaving one opponent:

Count Binface

[taibhsearachd]

To everyone who is feeling a little sad right now... close your eyes. Hold out your hands.

I am gently offering you Ring with Cat and Kittens, 1295–664 BCE.

[yesornopolls]

do you turn the lights on when you go to the bathroom at night?

Do you turn the lights on when you go to the bathroom at night?

Yes

No

Voting ended onJul 14

[iamnathannah]

Really nice to learn that the hotel I stayed at in New York with @ubiquitousmixie when we saw Holly Humberstone in Brooklyn in 2024 is across the street from a building about to collapse two years later. 😬

But I can only laugh at how WPIX is headlining it because aren't we all just a little unstable in Manhattan? Buildings can be the same way. 🤷🏽‍♀️

[thanksiloveyou]

2014 average url: tumblring-in-the-tardis

2026 average url: weemp

[spicyvampire]

The way all the 2020s have done so far have been making me categorically against every new generation of tech that comes out is insane. Like I'm from a technological boom generation, saw the first portable phones, nokias & blackberries & flipphones etc, and the first smartphones, and the first ipods & ipads & tablets in general while still having cassettes & DVD & MP3 players around so I know how all of it work, I had computer classes in high school, I did the transition between home desktop computers to laptops and back to gaming computers. But then they started to put internet in your printer & microwave, everything has ads & AI now and every update is worst than the last. I literally loved technology and they ruined it

[salmonella-destroyer-of-worlds]