I am a question to the world

Eli, thirties. Certified Bad Queer. Wannabe badass. Dildo Aristotelian. I use an inordinate amount of capslock.  "Jsyk this book turned my emotions into pancakes and it is your fault." - paradife-loft

[agaywolf]

We’re gonna have an orgasm denial party and no, you can’t come.

[hagfashion]

Miriam Margolyes for British Vogue’s July 2023 pride themed issue: “I wouldn’t want to be straight for anything.”

Photos by Tim Walker

[basuralindo]

So I just simultaneously did, and possibly didn't lose my job today :)

Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.

So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.

But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.

It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?

So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:

Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.

And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.

So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".

So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.

I don't know what else to say aside from I've been laughing all day and I'm gonna have a hell of a time explaining Schrodinger's Unemployment to the benefits office.

[basuralindo]

Update that is not an update because I'm basically certain this isn't what actually happened:

My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.

Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.

Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.

Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).

Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues

(also shout out to the person who proposed Carmen Sandiego)

[basuralindo]

ACTUAL (partial) UPDATE:

According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.

Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.

For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.

So now I'm officially out of a job. Because my workplace was literally stolen in the night.

[basuralindo]

Actually fuck it let's share some photos cause I wouldn't be inclined to believe this myself. It's not like anyone can stalk me at my job now and I'm not gonna have to see any coworkers that might find my tumblr.

Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life

Aaand a close-up:

The last remains of a once Very Much Solid And Immobile Workplace

[basuralindo]

HEY HI HELLO THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE

via @kagaminilen

[mysteryteacup]

[cut to a kiosk on legs, sipping a boba, while wandering into the nearest forest on chicken legs]

[ardanelvilyafeanturi]

Here you go @a-bit-too-dyscrasic

[unfavorableinstigation]

I am probably very behind in knowing lace theory was a thing at all, but this was such a helpful tool for me. Not just for designing, which I don't do a ton of, but also for knowing what's happening when I knit it.

[ozempicofficial]

[thevisualvamp]

Meow

[foldingfittedsheets]

Oh to be a little orange cat curled up safely in a dragons tail.

[thepoisonroom]

that post that's like "we see it as indulgence when others express the things we suppress in ourselves" has genuinely done more for my emotional health than going on meds did

[thepoisonroom]

i wish i could find the original post bc once you start noticing that others see it as indulgence when you express that which they repress in themselves you can't stop seeing it

[thatbitchwhowritesstuff]

do you think Anne and Charles ever saw the scars on each other’s back. do you think they were ever aware that they shared shackles. do you think they realized their violence was born of the same yoke. do you think they considered the way the other was used for the sake of men who saw them as tools for pleasure and wealth. do you think they they knew that their freedom would always be tainted by the past and that its pursuit stemmed from fear. do you think they recognized the pain in those marks. do you think they ever talked about it. do you think they thought their bodies would never truly be theirs because of it. do you think—

[thatbitchwhowritesstuff]

he was the only person she didn’t have sex with who could touch her and i’m thinking about it all the time

[thatbitchwhowritesstuff]

also while we are on this topic yk in S1 when Charles left to go back to the place he'd been an indentured servant ?

Jack had no idea where he'd gone. Anne did.

She knew him in a way Jack could never understand.

[softnoodlesdoodles]

✨️ feeling your feelings ✨️

Who else hates it?

[aprettyjewishyear]

Esther. photographs of Bri Watson, Elliot Porcher, Sage Cassell-Rosenberg, and Rachel Sadaty-Ellerson by Luis Mercedes Winter for the "Flowers for Our People" exhibition, 2026. the exhibition was directed by Sage Cassell-Rosenberg and produced by Is Perlman with assistance from Ariella Cohen. Saffron Mala Kaplan provides a written reflection for this piece:

While not a queer narrative at first glance, the story of Queen Esther is powerfully relatable to anyone who has ever been in the closet, unable to reveal their true selves. Born Hadassah, the future queen goes by Esther: a non-Jewish name, related to the goddess Ashtoreth, to help her blend into her Persian surroundings. Esther is also connected to the Hebrew root s-t-r, meaning “to hide.” As she enters the royal household, Esther is forced to keep her Jewish identity hidden, though she is eventually required to out herself in an act of incredible bravery in order to save her people. To all the members of the LGBTQ+ who are still closeted, know that you are incredibly strong. We pray that one day we will live in a world where everyone is free to express their true selves.

[jewishaesthetics]

[nondelphic]

editing is just you vs. past-you in a duel of questionable comma placement and emotional instability

[zombblehh]

Shout out to the autistic who’s abilities have regressed as they’ve gotten older.

“You didn’t used to be like this when you were a kid.” I know please don’t remind me

[theconcealedweapon]

"This never bothered you when you were a kid."

Yes it did. I just let it slide because I was taught that I'm "too sensitive" anytime something bothered me. But now I'm finally standing up for myself.

"You never struggled with this when you were a kid."

Yes I did. I just burned myself out in order to do it so I wouldn't be punished. But now I'm accepting myself enough to not force myself to do what I was never meant to do.

[countessravengrey]

"You didn't have these problems when you were younger."

Yes, I did. I just spent my child/teen years with structured institutions like school while not having to worry about whether I had a roof over my head or food to eat and spent my early adult years using up every bit of adrenaline I will ever have to ignore the fact that I've been chronically burnt out my whole life.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

does the body ALWAYS have to keep the score? maybe we could just have a friendly game this time. maybe we can just have fun without putting numbers on it

[tetrafelino]

I'm noticing some interesting choices with regards to pronouns in Laura Pohl's translation of All Systems Red. See, in Portuguese we don't have object pronouns like "it/its" and neutral neopronouns like "elu/delu" are considered more analogous to the English "they/them", so gendering Murderbot the way that it is gendered in the original was always going to be tricky. There's also the other difficulty that adjectives are gendered in Portuguese, so whenever Murderbot describes itself or it's emotional state or anything, necessarily it was going to gender itself grammatically in some way. What this translation does at first is that the Murderbot's internal dialogue it genders itself in the masculine which I assumed to be just sort of defaulting Murderbot to be a masculine character, but in reflection of a different detail, I think it's just defaulting to this formal almost archaic notion of the masculine as neutral. Now, the detail that made me rethink this is this line that I just came upon of Dr Mensah's:

"UniSeg, preciso que você fique parada aí até eu chegar."

[SecUnit, I need you to stay still (female form) until I arrive]

The reason that Mensah is referring to Murderbot in the feminine in this case is that it's referring to it as a security unit, right, and the word Unidade, Unit, in Portuguese, is a feminine word. So I just went back now and I found one other previous instance in which characters refer to Murderbot in the third person and, Ratthi, he calls Murderbot by masculine pronouns but that's when it's being referred to as a robô, robot, which in Portuguese is a masculine word. So I guess the way that Pohl found to express Murderbot's object pronouns is by just using whatever pronouns are in agreement with the word being used to describe it. Which to be fair makes a lot of sense for treating objects in Portuguese. If you call something a cadeira, chair, you're going to refer to it with feminine pronouns, but if you call the exact same object a sofá, sofa, you will be using the masculine pronouns.

[tetrafelino]

okay I just realized the reason Murderbot refers to itself with masculine pronouns in its internal dialogue all the time is because it's referring to itself as a robô assasino, murderer robot, which is masculine okay this is kind of genius actually

[tetrafelino]

okay okay this is so cool actually literally the next page and Murderbot is talking about other SecUnits right and it says this

"Elas não eram os robôs-assassinos mais astutos, (...)"

[They (feminine plural) weren't the (masculine plural) most astute murder robots, (...)]

...feminine pronouns for Unidades de Segurança, SecUnits, and masculine pronouns for robôs-assassinos, murder robots...

so yeah it's it's literally exactly as I understood it we are simply using our own grammatical gender rules for objects... it's so cool

[onlybylaura]

hey, translator here! (: this was absolutely done on purpose. gendering Murderbot would always be a problem, so I, the copyeditors and the brazilian editors worked together to make sure that bots/constructs could be referred with both masculine/feminine pronouns, sometimes even in the same paragraph. same goes for ART in the second novella, who's also an It in english, but varies between nave (ship, femine) and transporte (transporte, masculine). it's an important detail and i'm happy it was noticed!

[allthingslinguistic]

I read this post first like a month or two ago and it absolutely rewired how I thought about gender pronouns in French so thank you for that brazilian translator/editors.

That's not what the French translation of Murderbot does though, it uses "iel" which, while the most common gender-neutral neopronoun used by nonbinary French speakers I know, is also exclusively used by people. Like, a chair, table, etc can't be "iel", it has to be "il/elle". So "iel" preserves the gender-neutrality, but it's much less dehumanizing than "it" in English, something that I think the Portuguese solution does a particularly good job at.

The Japanese one is still really good and more people need to appreciate it:

In the Japanese translation of the books, Murderbot uses the genderless neopronoun 弊機 (heiki), which means through its characters "both “bad/evil robot” and “this second-rate, humble company machine"." It's also a homophone for 兵器 (heiki), meaning "weapon." The Japanese translator is Naoya Nakahara, and her translation of the first four Murderbot novellas won a translation award in Japan in 2021. 

(From this long Reddit thread comparing Murderbot translations.)

[di--es---can-ic-ul-ar--es]

ME AND WHO

[shieldfoss]

#why do they call it the little death if not to remind you to do a post mortem.

lmao

[closertotheheartofthesunrise]

no no @nogoodhorsethief, you have something here

[rachamemories]

Beeswax havdalah candle. Want to bite forbidden fancy spaghetti

[vonlipwig]

developing the hots for ryan gosling because of project hail mary is so fucking embarrassing I swear to god. that is a conventionally attractive man. a noted hollywood heartthrob. he's even blond, are you kidding me? did he win people magazine's sexiest man alive? I don't know. I'm not going to check but it wouldn't surprise me at this point. it's such a mainstream taste. such a clichéd celebrity crush. like oh I fancy ryan gosling and my favourite drink is coca-cola and my favourite snack is ready salted crisps. jesus christ. 'b-b-but i only like him when he's in a science pun tshirt and playing a dorky-awkward loner type!' doesn't matter. he's still ryan 'ken from barbie' gosling. it's so trite. I feel like the weird nerd girl in a teen coming-of-age romcom falling for the super popular jock. don't I know that I have a reputation to uphold here? cringe.

[fandomsandfairytales]

This post is the spiritual successor to that post about David Corenswet: