What Was It

[victusinveritas]

Like this sort of thing? Follow sluttyprimarysource on Threads and think about reading Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[atlinmerrick]

I literally said, "Are you kidding me?" IN THE GASPED ADMIRING WAY.

[parkchanwoohoo]

[bananonbinary]

tony's chocolonely mildly pisses me off every time i eat it. like yeah i get it ur doing a whole symbolism thing about unfairness and whatever, but its actually SO DIFFICULT to eat fucking. gerrymandered chocolate. your symbolism is ruining my chocolate experience.

who approved this.

[bananonbinary]

like. ur already more expensive. i understand this. i am willing to pay more money to have slave-free delicious chocolate. why must you punish me further by making it a goddamn puzzle to break a piece off.

[closet-keys]

Tony's Chocolonely does not ensure a living wage for cocoa workers in West Africa (see 2020 report by Voice Network).

Food Empowerment Project maintains an updated list of chocolate brands they recommend based on the following standards:

transparency about the country of origin for cocoa

if sourced from Western Africa, the workers must own the companies/be in charge of the profits from their labor (this standard is because child labor and slavery have been widely documented for decades in this area)

if sourced from Brazil, the workers must own the company and/or be in charge of the profits from their labor, or the company must be going above and beyond to support the workers and their families (this standard is because "child labor and slavery only recently have been documented in cocoa in Brazil" and they are "giving Brazilian companies that are trying to address the issue by supporting the workers and their families the benefit of the doubt.")

this isn't perfect, obviously, but it is much more grounded in the rights of workers than the various certifications (e.g. Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, etc.) you'll see on product packaging

[aloofraven]

I think it should be noted that the Food Empowerment Project specifically only lists companies making "at least one vegan chocolate product" and that they only ask about the companies' vegan chocolates specifically. Their list is not an exhaustive resource for every type of chocolate.

[Source: "Understanding Our Chocolate List" from their website]

Before I found that link I was curious as to why I didn't see any Norwegian manufacturers on their list(which makes sense now, as their chocolates are almost exclusively milk chocolate) and looked up where our companies source their chocolate from and found Nidar gets theirs from the Rainforest Alliance and Freia from Cocoa Life, both of which have been under scrutiny for not preventing child labour and not paying farmers a living wage among other things. So it appears Norwegian chocolate is out of the ethical picture.

[roninnozlo]

I stated this in the comments of the post already, but it’d probably be better to add it as a reblog, so it’s more visible and doesn’t need to be restated by anyone else in the future.

So, Tony’s allied with Barry Callebut to get its cocoa. Barry Callebut is one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world, and it is unethical, obviously. This led to Tony’s revealing in February 2022 that 1701 child laborers were in their supply chain. Barry Callebut had over 21K at the time. Both of those numbers have risen, and Tony’s has outright admitted they don’t give a fuck about child labor laws when asked about it, content to let children to continue farming their cocoa instead of actually doing the activism they claim to do. (business-humanrights.org, feb 6 2022)

About a week ago, Tony’s joined Barry, Nestle and Ferrero in pushing against the reinstatement of important EUDR deforestation legislations. Under that regulation that they pushed against, they would’ve had to be more transparent about their supply chains for their more key ingredients - So Tony’s is lobbying against the exact thing they claim to stand for. (confectioneryproduction.com, mar 18, 2026)

Won’t restate @closet-keys’s addition, of course. That’d just be redundant and maybe annoying since, yknow, it’s already been said.

If you wanna find a better chocolate brand it’s really damn easy. There’s lists on slavefreechocolate.org of both the ethical and unethical companies. Both lists can be found here:

Below is a list of chocolate companies that only use ethically grown cocoa.  Find out how you can tell if the chocolate you are ea

And it doesn’t have the vegan product restriction the other list has, which solves @aloofraven’s issue.

[prokopetz]

You know, when I've remarked that a lot of the responses to my posts feel like people are just plucking out keywords they think they recognise based on the shape of them and replying to what they imagine the post says based on that, the possibility never occurred to me that this is actually how many American schools are currently teaching kids to read.

[prokopetz]

Like, my assumption this whole time has been that when folks go "I misunderstood this post that says [thing] as saying [unrelated thing] because I mistook [word] for [completely different word that happens to start with the same letter]", that was a bit. What do you mean they're teaching kids a reading method that's tailored to produce this exact error?

[buggyhuman]

Three cueing. Once you learn about it, a whole lot of very frustrating online discourse with US Americans makes so much sense 😭

How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers

For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have

[woodsfae]

If you were taught to read with the three cueing method, and now struggle to read fluently, you can still learn to read properly!

-> Phonics For Adults <-

If you're a teenager, you can still use this resource.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

ohhh my god I just fact-checked, Nolan actually DID cut the "Nobody" scene from his Odyssey movie. Mfer that is like cutting the Father reveal from Star Wars. Let me speak in a language you understand this is like not dressing Batman up in his suit. "It was not possible to work it in" the TikTok musical with a budget of $4 and a scratched Hamilton CD managed to work it in in SONG form, step up your FUCKING GAME

[theterribletenno]

bro are you fucking kidding me they might as well have left out the damn boat

[midnightnautilus]

I haven’t even seen this movie but I need you to see this Letterboxd review of The Housemaid - the discord server I’m in and I have been losing our minds over it

[rodrickheffeley]

This is the only valid tik tok.

[naenaenoodle]

[lotus-of-light]

Bro….

[kyleblackpaw]

This should have been a vine. I will never not be mad about losing vine and gettting saddled with fucking tiktok

[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.

[crankydevon]

map.purpleair.com shows privately-owned sensors, in case you have a hard time finding a government site. It doesn't rely on government funding, so far as I know.

This map shows fine particle pollution (PM2.5) from wildfires and other sources. It provides a public resource of information to best prepar

[yayxstitch]

I am always packing scissors and memes.

[hotvampireadjacent]

You guys are gonna wanna see this

. A baby giraffe was born Monday at Hogle Zoo (Salt Lake City, Utah). Photo by Kennedy Camarena of KSL News.

[bloop-bloop-boop]

The full pic. 😭 “The smallest of the tallest.” 🥹

[english-history-trip]

Excerpts from a primer in Irish gifted to Elizabeth I by Sir Christopher Nugent c. 1564. The author notes that the queen had specifically requested that she be provided with "the Iryshe Caracters with instructions for reading of the language". Elizabeth studied multiple languages later in life, including Cornish, Welsh, German, and Hebrew, which joined her more fluent command of French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek.

[nerdicornthetrekkie]

[gamechangershow]

Sorry but it's not complete without...

[theresthesnitch]

Hold on, this is fascinating. Reblog this and tell me in the notes how old you are and if you ever had typing lessons.

[irishironclad]

What in God’s good name is a “typing lesson”

[intjint]

I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not

[irishironclad]

I’m serious what is a typing lesson? What would they teach you? To type? My brother in Christ it is like writing with a pen but technically easier.

[intjint]

Before home computers were very common, people typically only typed for business-related things, so the only people that actually knew how to use typewriters and word processors were authors, secretaries, accountants, etc. These people would take classes for typing bc it was seen as a skill. This gradually fell out of fashion, much like teaching kids cursive

Typing is only intuitive to gen y & z bc most of us learned through computer games or had someone tell us where to rest our fingers. People who never learned to type use just their index fingers, hit one key, take a long time to find the next letter, hit it with an index finger, and repeat until finished

[robin-hood-for-freedom]

34 i played this:

[stilldickslappinthestate]

33 and i started with Mavis Beacon

24 and I had typing lessons all through school.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

34, had typing lessons in 3rd and 4th grade and Mavis Beacon as a kid and I’ve still never used home row except when I was forced to. I type everything with my left hand. The only thing my right is for is using the shift, backspace, and enter keys.

[deuceofgears-deactivated2022101]

43, first had typing lessons in 4th grade on some type of Mac, then my mother bought me a book and a manual typewriter and made me learn to touch-type, for which I am still grateful 30+ years later. I remember how excited we were when we upgraded to an electric typewriter.

Of course, I got hit by nostalgia so hard that I recently bought a manual typewriter and have been writing letters to people with it! I love it to pieces.

[zarohk]

28 and I learned to type through Type To Learn. I have severe dysgraphia to the point where I couldn’t keep up with writing in school early on, so the summer after second grade my parents trained me intensely on all the typing programs they could get, and found ways to help me learn to type fast.

I’m so nostalgic for those games.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“It is like writing with a pen but technically easier” my brother in Christ children also take writing lessons

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#LMAO yeah^#i had computer class in 2001 where we eventually had to put paper over our hands to take a test to see if we could type without looking#we also played games#i hated the paper thing at the time. i knew i just needed MORE practice. i dont think i got GOOD at typing until a few years after that#also.. when you have a pen. you can just create the letter you need. with a keyboard you have to FIND IT. and its NOT IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER#how is that easier??#but i guess i dont know any kids whove grown up with computers and could probably type before they could write….????? 😳 

Modern kids can’t type before they can write. I mean, most kids understand how to use a keyboard, and pressing letters takes less coordination than writing them so can be started at a younger age for learning to spell, but I’ve worked a lot with kids in the 8-14 year age bracket and they’re usually FASCINATED by how fast I type. (My typing speed is… not impressive. If they made me take one of those speed/accuracy tests they used to do for admin or data entry jobs, I would NOT pass.) But many of the kids I’ve worked with take my comfort and familiarity with a keyboard (I’m a writer) as some impressive, magical skill, because an awful lot of them are letter-peckers.

[peregrineggsandham]

24, learned actual touch-typing when I was maybe 4 or 5 with this, the sound effects still live rent-free in my brain:

The shift keys on our computer were broken, so up until high school I would type capitals by turning caps lock on for a single key and then back off again.

[average-monster]

I’m 39. We had typing lessons every year throughout elementary school. I never really got good at it until I started playing mmos, though.

My kids are in 5th and 6th grade. They’ve never even seen a fingering chart. The 6th grader is expected to do nearly all of his schoolwork on a computer, and he doesn’t even know the term “home row”. I don’t know how they expect them to excel without giving them the skills they need to use the tools they have to use.

I’ve gone what I can to help them learn how to type, but I’m not a teacher.

[iconuk01]

Mid 50′s.

Typing classes were only availble to those taking the secretarial class, which was not open to boys.

It should be noted that there is a distinction between typing as it used to mean and word processing. Typewriters were unforgiving machines, not only could you not cut, paste or delete (for obvious reasons) so your spelling had to be very, VERY good, but the legibiity of each letter produced depended on how hard you hit the key (unless you went to a fancy school which had electric typewriters, which were not the norm).

Those of us who were subversive enough to learn keybaord skills through computing had a MUCH easier time of it. Though it was often offset by the shitty keyboards some computers had, and YES, I’m calling you out ZX81!

If you can’t see any depth to those keys, you are correct, they have none because the ZX81 keyboard was a damned membrane!

But believe me, if you could learn to typeat a decent speed on of these, then NOTHING could stop you, expcet for the fact that the odds were good you were typing faster than it could process input.

It’s successor, the ZX Spectrum had spongey keys, which whilst not great, were better than nothing.

[physicist-pi]

Genuinely as a computing teacher in the 11-18 age group, I’m saying this now:

We need to bring back typing lessons to the curriculum. The kids will fly if you give them a tablet or smartphone but they have no clue on how to use a keyboard or keyboard shortcuts. If the senior PE class decides to be twats and pry up the keys and swap them round, I will still have 14/15 year olds unable to type because the keys are swapped. And I often don’t notice when helping them because I just.. touch type.

I legitimately broke a Higher Computing Science (so a 16 year old who had chosen to do computer stuff) by showing him how Ctrl+H let him find and replace because he’d made a consistent error in his code and I could see him going back and adding up all the time he’d spent trying to find all the incidences of a specific variable in his code and there I was showing him CTRL+F and all these things.

These kids might not pick a computer based subject after the age of 13 and half of them don’t understand file systems, version control, difference between cloud vs local storage, how to save, etc.

So many kids would just turn off the monitor and think that was the computer, usually leaving themselves logged in (to the point I locked the monitor power button and had multiple posters up reminding kids to press the spacebar on the keyboard to wake up the monitor first).

Basically, digital literacy is being fucking stolen by the appification of the digital platforms available to kids.

[whosname]

[id. A twitter post by @/Bennieeexyz Jury duty letter came addressed to my cat. Not a mistake. "Felix Martinez" - that's his full name according to his vet records. My last name. His first name. Somehow he's a registered voter now. Called the county clerk. Me: My cat got summoned for jury duty. Clerk: Is the name correct on the summons? Me: Yes, but he's a cat. Clerk: Is Felix Martinez a legal resident of this county? Me: He's a legal cat. Clerk: Sir, if the name matches our records, he needs to appear or file an exemption. Me: He can't file anything. He has paws. Clerk: You can file on his behalf. Me: Under what exemption? There's no box for "is a cat." Clerk: (pause) Check "unable to serve due to medical reasons." Me: What's the medical reason? Clerk: He's a cat. Me: That's not a medical condition. Clerk: It is if it prevents him from serving. Sent in the form. Got rejected two weeks later. "Insufficient documentation. Please provide medical professional's statement." Took the letter to my vet. Me: I need you to write that my cat can't do jury duty. Vet: Why is your cat summoned for jury duty? Me: Excellent question. No good answer. Vet: This is the weirdest request I've gotten. Me: Can you just write that he's medically unfit to serve? Vet: On what grounds? Me: He's a cat. Vet: (started typing) "Patient is unable to serve due to species-related limitations including inability to speak, read, or comprehend legal proceedings." Me: Perfect. Sent it in. Got another rejection. "Summons is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in contempt of court." My roommate thought this was hilarious. Roommate: Felix is going to jail. Me: This is serious. Roommate: Bring him to court. See what happens. Decided that was actually the only option left. Day of jury duty, put Felix in his carrier. Brought the entire paper trail of rejection letters. Checked in at the courthouse. Clerk: Name? Me: Felix Martinez. Clerk: (looked at the cat carrier) Is that Felix? Me: Yes. Clerk: (long stare) He's a cat. Me: I've been saying that for six weeks. Clerk: Why didn't you file an exemption? Me: I filed three. All rejected. Showed her the letters. She read through them, expression shifting from confusion to disbelief. Clerk: Someone rejected the veterinary documentation? Me: Twice. Clerk: (called her supervisor over) You need to see this. Supervisor read everything. Looked at Felix. Looked at me. Supervisor: How did a cat get registered to vote? Me: You tell me. Supervisor: This is a data error. Me: Took you six weeks to figure that out. They dismissed Felix immediately. Apologized for the inconvenience. Supervisor: We'll remove him from the voter registry. Me: Appreciate it. Supervisor: (pause) Out of curiosity, how would he have voted? Me: Probably whatever party supports universal treats. Got a formal apology letter a week later and a voter registration card. For me this time. Apparently I wasn't registered, but my cat was. Roommate: Felix committed voter fraud. Me: Felix committed nothing. He's innocent. Roommate: That's what they all say. Felix is sleeping on the jury summons now. Fitting end to his legal career. end id]

[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

[bwabbitv3s]

I finished the last constellation tonight. All 40 of them are now done! Went through and double checked and every stitch is in place for them and all the beads are in place. Which just leaves the milky way part to do.

[bwabbitv3s]

Started stitching the Milky Way in. Slowly making progress on it as I am hiding the travelling thread so the back will look nice.

Looks pretty cool and keeps the readability of the other stitches. Very happy with it. Just a thousand or so to do. As they are in a grid roughly every centimetre apart.

[bwabbitv3s]

Update on the constellation quilt. I have gotten the last Milky Way stitch done now. Which means the quilting part of this project is done. My next step will be to baste the edges down, remove the pattern, trim the quilt square, and lastly attach the binding.

[bwabbitv3s]

Progress on the constellation quilt has come along quite a lot now. Finished the binding on the quilt over the weekend. I prefer to machine stitch the binding to the front then hand stitch the back side. It gives such a nice finish to the quilt. Took the time to measure it also and it ended up being 72" by 72" (183cm by 183cm).

With that done I could finally start removing the pattern. Which is taking both less time and more time that I thought it would. As it rips really easily so that goes fast, but the tiny corners and removing it under the beads is slow. You can now see the difference in the glow effect with it against the dark front of the quilt instead of the pattern.

[bwabbitv3s]

Behold the stars of the constellations of the northern sky! I love how this quilt has turned out. It was a lot of fun to work on and the effect is so cool in person. Overall I would estimate it took about 90-100 hours to complete. Give or take 10 hours if you want to count the time I spent custom dying the fabric.

I made sure to get a nice photo of it in daylight. For once I also remembered to get a quilt label on it. The back really shows the difference in readability of the quilting on the ice dyed fabric compared to the solid front. Thank you everyone that has followed this. I am glad you all found joy in it.

Those that are interested, here is the pattern I used by Haptic Lab. I made the large northern hemisphere version, and plan to make the matching southern hemisphere one next year. I also got your back for the less crafty people. Haptic Lab sells finished quilts in this pattern, both as a large quilt and a small one.