you know, I get it

they/them | 27 | obsessed with magic, witchy things and ghosts | sorry I've given up on tagging | avatar by @sundiessoon

[lesbianrey]

every day i get a little madder about the ‘dream job’ narrative… all i want is to have a job that benefits society somewhat, doesn’t abuse me, and lets me live a happy life outside of my job lol. jobs should not be (and arguably can’t be) cosmic destinies and identities

[todaysbird]

fun fact about me: When I was 6 years old I sent so much hate mail to the president (the second Bush) that the mail carrier had to tell my mom I needed to stop before we got FBI’d

[todaysbird]

I was COMPLETELY unaware of the US political scene or why the adults in my life hated Bush, but I knew I hated him because he let people shoot wolves from helicopters and that’s mean and shitty

[todaysbird]

I also had a poor grasp on how stamps worked, so given that I wasn’t allowed to continually throw money away by putting stamps on my presidential hate mail, a lot of the times I just drew squares with little pictures inside on the corner.

[fantasticait]

Love, love, love reading more proof that everyone should encourage the children in their lives to write to elected officials--it teaches them about citizenship and can also be very funny.

When I taught second grade, one of the options for students who had finished their work was to write a letter to the president. I would send all of the letters in a big envelope at the end of every month.

Watching my students get more and more frustrated with him (and concerned about his wellbeing) was not the result I'd hoped for when I came up with the idea, but it was kind of hilarious.

See, Obama had a standard packet with information and activities about his dog he'd send in response to letters from very young citizens...and of course his office sent one back to our class every single time we sent mail.

So eventually all of the letters looked something like this:

Dear President Obama, I am writing about the environment. I am sad that the Great Barrier Reef is hurt. Also the Amazon Rainforest. Can you help? PLEASE DON'T WRITE BACK TO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DOG AGAIN. WE ALREADY KNOW ALL ABOUT BO. WE COMPLETED THE MAZE AND COLORED HIM IN. It is good that you love your pet a lot. But try to remember the environment. It is also important.

[ishipallthings]

[ralfmaximus]

Years ago back when I worked in cubicle land, we were hiring junior software developers. They didn’t have to have a ton of experience, just a willingness to learn, and some demonstration of their software skills. Like: show me a program you wrote (any language) or a web site you designed. Anything.

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team. 

And yes, his cubicle was loaded with ceramic frogs.

[beardedmrbean]

they used to let kids have real fun

[afriendofblahaj]

There's an xkcd for that :3

Side note: polonium-210 is a very dangerous isotope, however it "does not pose a radiation hazard when kept outside the body", as the alpha particle it emits have very little penetration power and cannot pierce even the outer layers of dead skin. It has still killed countless people, though, not because of children's rings, but because of tobacco. Polonium latches onto and concentrates in tobacco leaves, leading to heavy smokers being exposed to more radiation than survivors of the Chernobyl disaster.

It's always wild to me seeing comments about different toxins like this on information about random things in the past, but it's never discussed when it comes to cigarettes.

[persianmom-deactivated20251026]

agonizing over all the time you wasted or lost is useless. it’s gone now. you survived in the only way you knew how. doesn’t your survival deserve some recognition too?

[persianmom-deactivated20251026]

like toni morrison said, “sometimes you don't survive whole, you just survive in part. but the grandeur of life is that attempt. it’s not about that solution. it is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances.”

[finalset]

the summer is for having the worst time of your life

[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.

[graffitinight]

When you try to talk about enshittification, it sounds like conspiracy theories. (I'm not crazy)

Amazon made their service worse, to force people to pay for Prime.

Nowadays, if you order from Amazon, there is a week long delay before your package is shipped. (on purpose)

I remember when orders would ship out the same day. (I remember - it was real)

YouTube didn't used to have ads. Now, ads play in the middle of videos. (it's worse than TV ever was)

The best can opener I have owned is over 40 years old. Modern ones just don't hold up as well. (The ones I bought new broke ages ago)

The bread machine my mom got for her wedding lasted 30 years. It's been replaced twice in the last 5 years. (How can you fuck this up?)

The cardboard tubes in the middle of toilet paper rolls have gotten larger. (This too?) Companies increasing the price of the product while selling you less. (REALLY?)

It sounds crazy. (it's the truth) When you talk about it, YOU sound crazy. (it's true)

Even when people believe you (do they really), all they can say is "it sucks". (it's too big) Because the problem is so big, so pervasive, what can we even DO about it???

To get the necessary laws written and passed, we need politicians, to get the politicians elected we need information campaigns, to fund campaigns we need money, and all the money is being hoarded by the people profiting from enshittification. (it sounds so fake)

So I talk about enshittification (it sounds crazy), so people don't forget that things have been made worse on purpose (it's true), even though I sound crazy. (maybe I am)

[grimboigio]

It's called planned obsolescence and it was invented when lightbulbs could still run for 1000 years. Enshittification is the web-specific (and more specifically social media) version of that.

[aqueerwindinthewillows]

can u imagine being adam parrish. u quietly turn 18 and then day 1 of fully being 18 you witness your friend’s situationship kidnap his brother and then summon a dragon and then blow himself up. like what a precedent for the year

[hiveswap]

Everyone go look up the song nasa banned from space

[hiveswap]

Don't forget to play it loud as fuck

[kowai-kabuki-tanuki]

please….listen to the whole thing. And imagine that you are IN SPACE in 1973 and you JUST woke up. Every time you adjust…it escalates somehow.

This song had to be designed in a lab for the sole purpose of fucking with astronauts. whoever added it to the NASA playlist was a genius.

[hiveswap]

It took them two tries to ban it?

[kvotheunkvothe]

[keplercryptids]

I spent the afternoon arranging our books by size and color (and it’s so satisfying and looks amazing) and my partner came home and stared in shock at the bookcase and then said “i’m a librarian, you can’t do this.”

[keplercryptids]

him: you split up all the song of ice and fire books

me: yeah i know, they’re all primary colors, it’s perfect

him: [self-destructs]

[operativesurprise]

You’re a monster

[thetumblrofrassilon]

As a former bookstore employee, this hurts my soul. I mean, sure it looks nice, but how do you find anything?

[keplercryptids]

it has occurred me during this process that apparently not everyone thinks about books by what color they are? like, literally when i’m looking for a book, i picture it in my mind. i have a very…tactile experience with the books i read and idk! i thought everyone did that lol.

my partner was like “how will i find [this book] for instance” and i replied “easy, it’s purple” and he looked at me like i was a witch.

[holdmecloseandfast]

OP your brain is neat and I love you for it you funky little color-coded cupcake. But you’re still a monster.

[krsonmar]

This actually is interesting in terms of information-seeking behavior, which is a thing librarians think about a lot and often actually study (some library jobs require you to publish, and academic librarians, for instance, will often use the students at the college they work at to study how they search for information in order to figure out how to best provide them services).

When you go for an MLS (Master’s of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for “professional-level” library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I won’t go into here]), one of the things you study is the organization of information. This deals with how to determine what a book or other material is “about"—a concept we tongue-in-cheek call “aboutness"—and how to convey that to a potential user of the item and make it easy for them to find. Things like keywords and subject headings, do I put this book about how often wild birds attack aerial drones in with books about birds or with books about technology, if its a fictional novel do I put fantasy in it’s own section or mix it in with all of the other fiction, so on and so on.

OP is organizing books by how they would look for them. OP’s partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because it’s their personal library: they know basically what books they own and they only own books that are relevant to them, and if they know what the book looks like, that can be a quick way to find it.

In a library that assumes the public (or people who do not own that particular collection of books) are using the collection, that doesn’t work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesn’t know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, they’re lost. That’s why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what it’s “about”, and then put books about the same or similar topics together, marked with labels and signage so a person unfamiliar with the book or collection can find their way to it.

Basically, OP’s system works for their own personal library, because it’s best suited to how the primary user—OP themselves—looks for books. OP’s librarian partner is coming from a background of thinking in terms of a public-facing collection, where aboutness is the key criteria and communicating it to a user unfamiliar with the collection is the priority.

And also, OP is a monster.

[therootbeersprite]

@official-library-posts

[official-library-posts]

official library post

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

some people will be like “I wonder why fanfic writers don’t share their works anymore😔” and then this is them when a writer is kind enough to share something they write — as a hobby, for their own enjoyment — with them for free.

some people really don’t realize how privileged they are that they get fanfics for free. imagine having access to something for free because someone is kind enough to share it with you… and then being rude, entitled and an ungrateful pos to that person who was kind enough to share their creation with you for free

“almost 1 year is a lil too much for me” fuck off. fanfic writers don’t owe you anything. one of my favorite fics was updated after 13 years, and what I did is that I thanked the author for choosing to continue the work, I didn’t act like a spoiled toddler by asking why they didn’t update sooner. and even if a writer chooses to abandon their fic permanently with no explanation, that is their choice, their hobby, their decision. they don’t owe your entitled ass anything.

you people let tiktok rot your brains to the point you see everything as content farm and engagement. not a piece of art created by the artist’s love and passion. it’s dystopian.

[writingdose]

this and also the only difference between fanfic writers and writers who sell their own original works as careers is that fanfics aren’t monetized. that’s all.

being a “professional” writer doesn’t mean your works are inherently better than fanfics. I’ve read so many fics that are more professionally written than some published books.

whether or not a piece of writing is monetized has nothing to do with its quality.

[whyenn-reader]

''what if you regret it'' then you will expirience regret - a normal and unavoidable part of the human expirience.

[oldcoyote]

if you ever doubt that your ao3 comments matter or mean something: i have been struggling with my writing for 6 months straight, crying myself to sleep afraid that i will never be able to write again, that the thing i love most in the world has left me, that my writing is just gone

this morning i got this comment:

and after i stopped blubbering over it, i picked up my writing notebook, and re-read all my fic research, and opened up my document again for the first time in weeks without being afraid of it

you have no idea how much writers treasure every single comment we get. you have no idea how big an impact you can have. sometimes, just sometimes, your one "insignificant" comment changes everything

[hellpotter]

it’s not weird to find fanfiction from 2021, or 2017, or 2014 that you’ve never read and actually taking your time to read it.

it’s not weird to love it and comment and leave kudos because the author will probably still see it someday and it will make them happy.

it’s not weird to like said author’s work so much that you want to go look for other fics from them.

it’s not weird to go through the authors profile and look for other fics from the ships you like (or maybe some that you’ll give a chance because you liked the author) and maybe bookmark them for later.

it’s not weird to read these other fics and like them too and comment on them because you actually like them and you want to let the author know.

it’s not weird to read fanfiction from 5, or 8, or 10 years ago and actually enjoy and engage with it because it’s perfectly normal to relate to something that’s less than a decade old!

let’s stop treating fanfiction like they’re instagram posts that stop being interesting in 24 hours! fanfiction is NOT social media, fanfiction is art!!! and art doesn’t get old in one day, one year, or even a decade!

read fanfiction! write fanfiction! comment on fanfiction! let’s not let fanculture die people!!!!!

[bundibird]

Not only is it not weird, it is ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED. Authors LOVE IT when people do this!!! Its not "weird" and its not "neutral" -- its a fucking DELIGHT. Feel very absolutely free to read though an author's entire back catalogue, leaving kudos and/or comments along the way; we absolutely freaking love when someone does this. There is nothing more joyful than getting a comment notification for an old fic. It will make our day, I promise.

[taraljc]

There needs to be a special word for the warm, gratifying feeling that you get when you watch someone kudos everything you've ever written in a specific fandom in backwards order over 3 days. and that word needs a modifier to express the inexpressible joy when they start leaving comments on every story no matter how old it is.

[1five1two]

'Early'. Evgeny Lushpin. 2019.