I fall a bit more in love with the world each day

Charlie | they/them | queer as fuck | space will always be my first love

[pakchoys]

there's going to be a doctor who renaissance someday soon and when you finally give 12 a chance you will come crawling to my door and say i was right all along. that weird old man does fuck so hard after all

[brattylikestoeat]

So let’s talk about Flex.

I’ve been getting email from them and my apartment complex. Flex is a new payment options where they take your rent and divide it over two to four payments. But of course flex has it own fee.

So essentially Flex pays your rent with a fee and you pay flex back. Sounds good right.

But I did some digging because they are pushing this so hard.

Come to find out, Flex is horrible. It doesn’t tell you how much the fee is until you sign up. Once you sign up it’s damm near impossible to get out of it.

So let’s say you need to split September rent, but in October you are fine. You still have to go thru flex and pay the fee.

Then I found this article. Not only could the lady not get out of flex, she ended up oweing them about 1k in fees.

That article also states that Flex as a business has 1 out of 5 stars on BBB. Their customer service is damm never nonexistent.

But I think we are missing a bigger issue. Apartments are pushing flex because they know people can not afford the rent. And because people can’t afford the rent there are more evictions and loss of payment. So instead of lowering the rent they push flex. They want it to seem like they are helping when they are not.

Most people get evicted and the apartment never get their money. 7 years later it falls off your credit report.

So to keep people in these buildings and to keep a steady income they offer some shit like flex.

It’s predatory and will most likely leave a tenant in worst standing than before.

Please don’t use it.

[brattylikestoeat]

I also never subscribed to Flex at all. Never been on their site. So my apartment complex had to mass sign us up for these emails. That alone piss me off because I never gave permission.

[letslovefood]

boosting bc my apartments having been pushing this too

[yusuke-of-valla]

GAMES MADE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE PAID MORE TO WORK LESS

[sniperct]

[jupiterslifelessmoons]

[pointnclick]

"we live in an uncaring universe." sorry the special planet full of beauty and animals and food literally growing out of the ground isnt good enough for you. i guess

[radgepacket-deactivated20241030]

parents got a new cat they named lord montague and this morning i heard my dad in the other room say "i would have to advise against that decision, my lord" followed by a crashing sound

[cwrldpc]

[elldritch-horror]

Spicy-brained friends, I would like to propose an update to the very useful ‘if you hate everyone, eat, if everyone hates you, sleep, and if you hate yourself, shower’ mantra to live by

Have you suddenly become a petty, hateful little gremlin who thinks people should face the firing squad for (checks notes) leaving teabags on the counter, breathing loudly, or daring to exist in the same space as you? Perhaps mundane and reasonable requests like ‘hey, we agreed to hang out now, let’s hang out’ make you want to scream and move to a yurt in the woods.

You. Are. Overstimulated.

People talk a lot about being overstimulated, and the physical/mental effects of it. What I haven’t seen is people talking about what it does emotionally, and it took me an embarassingly long time to link up those nitpicky, resentful emotions with the state of overstimulation/meltdown/shutdown.

These feelings do not mean that you’re a bad person! They probably aren’t how you actually feel about the people around you. They probably do mean that your nervous system is at its absolute limit and any request/demand/stimulus is Too Much and taking you into fight or flight territory.

Go lie down in a dark room for an hour, or find somewhere safe and familiar to stim for a bit. If it’s happening a lot, schedule yourself regular low-stimulation shutdown time

Signed: someone who moved in with their nearest and dearest only to have a massive crisis of faith about Suddenly Hating All of Them. I don’t hate them, it’s just overstimulating living with people. If I can spare anyone else a similar 9 months of suspecting that they may actually be a bit of a shit person, then this post is worth it!

[bananonbinary]

you might especially feel this way if someone picks up on your bad mood, but all their kind suggestions make you want to bite and scream. in my experience that’s not because you hate them or even the suggestion, it’s probably because *any* new information or ideas, no matter how gentle, is just Too Many Thoughts. this is when it helps a lot to have a plan in advance, even if the plan is just “take medication” or “go to hidey-hole,” because trying to think of a solution in the moment might be beyond you.

(also if ur overstimulated, it’s often worth checking if you need to eat/sleep/shower as well, because that might be part of what’s overstimulating you!)

[gay-jewish-bucky]

i miss "filler" episodes

i miss when television seasons were longer

i miss seeing character development that made their arcs make sense

i miss shows flowing at a natural pace instead of constantly being bombarded with high stakes conflicts

i miss seeing my fave characters exist in situations that aren't essential to the plot

i miss when ceos didn't cut the amount of episodes in half to maximize profit and minimize how much they have to pay to the people (actors, writers, editors, vfx, crew, hair & makeup artists, costumers and many more) who's blood sweat and tears make them rich

[dyscomancer]

lest we forget

[cryptiddies]

Hey shout out to every custodial/sanitation worker taking out and cleaning up literal hot garbage so that the rest of us can go about our summer days like it doesn’t exist

[the-cassquatch]

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

[dj-of-the-coven]

Long collection of resources under the cut.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

I hope this is of some help to you. The internet may feel less magical than it used to be, but that doesn't mean that the spark has completely died out. These types of indie websites need more attention if we ever hope to reverse the damage done to the internet by centralization and corporate interest. People are trying to make the web a cooler place to be, but we're going to have to do the work of finding and interacting with these projects in order to get them off the ground someday.

[xerxestexastoast]

ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose

[biothreads]

Another one that I just found recently is this, which is a whole collection of blogs, organized by topic!

ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

A collection of 1,966 blogs about every topic

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Look guys the real internet IS STILL THERE I'm going to cry

[beaft]

allow me to tell you of the grave error i made yesterday. it was 8pm. i was cooking moroccan stew. needed to let it simmer for 25 minutes before i added the chickpeas. i shall go upstairs, thought i, and take a shower, and leave the chickpeas on the counter to drain. puddles the cat is sleeping near the stove. i briefly consider locking her out of the kitchen - but surely even she, leviathan of unconquerable appetites, will not concern herself with hard, drained, uncooked chickpeas. surely not.

with this set-up in mind, what do you imagine i found when i came back downstairs?

[beaft]

i'll not keep you in suspense.

the moral of this story is never own cats

[horseabortion69]

Sometimes I see straight women posting and I'm like hmmm okay I can see why some straight men are driven insane without necessarily being like Andrew Tate psychos

[flesh-is-the-fever]

Oh there's so many of these

[a-book-of-creatures]

The feminine trait of *checks notes* wanting to stay hydrated

[kbsd-moved]

if i were showrunner i would have simply licensed ABBA

[milfgeto]

I’ve never seen a single episode of supernatural. Is this the ship everyone has been waiting to become canon? Because I get why

[oddfuchsia]

i sometimes forget that if u haven’t seen spn u would have absolutely no idea that misha collins had to put on this ridiculous fucking voice for 12 years

[midnight-coffee94]

No single line has ever wrecked me as hard as this one from the Good Place and I think about it constantly

[thickness-protection-program]

With all due disrespect anyone who thinks a full grown adult can survive off of 12$/hr in 2023 should die