I didn’t miss that social cue I just thought it was stupid 

‘i saw your social cue but am ignoring it in the hopes you learn to use your words and communicate like an adult. hope this helps’

straight women need to start fetishising sapphic women so there can be more femslash fan fiction. we gotta outsource and get more writers on board. I want it to get to the point where two women cant be on screen together without having a 80k space opera fic written about them. I want show runners to be scared of cancelling sapphic shows because legions and legions of fans will come after them. dont tell me my priorities are wrong.

straight women, you have been summoned for yuri duty.

And they actually met 😭

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/09/solar-eclipse-new-york-teacher/

what's this 'wife' business? nobody calls him Prince-Consort Mario

if Bowser kidnapped my plumbing client, I would be saying “wahoo” as long as those hours were billable

i love when animals just really really fuck up scientific data by just doing natural behaviours. the only remains we have of gigantopithecus (absolutely giant prehistoric hominid that went extinct somewhere around 300 tya) are teeth and a couple mandibles. because porcupines ate ALL of the skeletons

What the fuck what the fuck

Tbh when I die I think I want my bones fed to porcupines

Tbh when I

die I think I want my bones

fed to porcupines

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

"redemption arcs are toxic, you shouldn't try to fix someone!"

actually it is so important to me that being in community and experiencing human connection can save people. thanks

Anyone ever put off starting a series or getting into a new craft or activity because you're current stimuli are doing you quite nicely and you KNOW there's heaps of dopamine stored in that new thing so you're saving it for whenever your next major depressive episode hits like a pika hoarding grass for winter or do I just have severe ADHD?

Oh hang on a minute.

That's why so many of us have piles of books on our shelves we haven't read or to-read collections on Ao3. Those are future dopamine stores, for when the current interests start having diminishing returns.

Well fuck I feel way less guilty about keeping all that shit now. Because I *will* get into it at some point. I get into all my art supplies within five years and I get into books within seven. I even get back into stuff I was previously engaged with and fell out with. It's a dopamine store that needed to recharge.

Cool.

I will also now be pleased instead of confused when people tag my fic "to read". It passed the quality threshold to be put in the emergency stores. High praise, that.

Hm. The Secret Social Recognition Euphoria when I realize I have successfully implemented a technique I learned in therapy for dealing with Alexithymia (identifying specific behaviors, identifying what I'm getting out of the behavior to identify the emotion at work, deciding what if anything I want to do about that) without prompting is pretty great. I love when therapy rewards me for using it and my ADHD gremlin gets rewarded for good behavior so I keep doing it. Great design there. Good job, therapists!

This is different than "this is being hoarded because I do not have the energy for New", which is an awful place to be in, but hoarding New Dopamine then will mean you have stores for later when things stabilize a bit and you do have energy for New. It actually takes the New Thing energy threshold down because it's right there, so you can skip the step of "looking for a New thing".

This is more "I could start that right now but tbh I don't really need it" which is a great place and very achievable to get to! Also, I am very pleased with myself for putting in the effort to get here. I am consciously noting that effort does work and pays off for the next time the depression hits. I am both doing better and doing well, and I should be proud of that.

I'VE BEEN SAYING

you know you need to get back to non-gmo grassfed organic canon when the group chat AUs start turning into stuff like the characters hiking the Appalachian Trail. but will I? Non.

“that character would never hike the Appalachian Trail.”

That’s even better. Imagine the most outdoors-adverse person alive. They’ve never peed outside. They would rather be drawn and quartered than eat camp food, and they’re also broke.

Now what is it going to take to get them into a situation where they’re spending 5 months and several thousand dollars to hike over 2,000 miles? Likely with 2-3 other people they cannot stand.

This is perhaps your greatest challenge yet, but I know with some creativity and elbow grease you will find a reasonably in-character excuse to put them in the most hateful situation they could possibly imagine

& it will be so funny. And horrible. And maybe they’ll fall in love < 3 They’re at least getting trenchfoot.

Hi, I’ve been thinking about this comment for about three and a half minutes now because it’s had me so confused, and I think I know what’s going on but I don’t want to make an assumption so I am asking so genuinely:

This post is about the Appalachian Trail, a hiking route established in the 1900s, which roughly three million people visit yearly, and one option is to thruhike it, meaning going from one end to the other without stopping, which many of my friends have done.

Are you thinking of the Oregon Trail?

To be entirely fair, it's 1000% in-character for any D&D party to fuck up what road they're on and not notice until they're all standing in the waters off Key West and finally pass the knowledge check to remember that Oregon does not have gators.

I am well aware the Appalachian Trail ends like two whole states before Florida but it's also 1000% in character for any D&D party to triple down on a mistake.

My housemate reminded me of a flashbulb memory I have that I really wish I had a photograph of because it would be a magnificent image to inflict on the internet at large with Zero Context, but I'll try to describe it here, and then draw it after dinner.

Image Description:

As seen from about three feet off the ground: Interior, the den of an american suburban house built at the height of the atomic age and still decorated like it years later. There's dark wood paneling about halfway up the walls that offsets the almost neon pink-orange light of late sunset visible through the large window. Every object in the room is highlighted by the last of the sunlight. The only other light in the room is a TV set that was manufactured the same year Howdy Doody debuted on air, now broadcasting PBS Newshour in black and white.

Closest to the viewer, there is a small end table with a Nearly Full Martini glass, and a Half-empty glass Martini Pitcher, indicating that two of the five martinis it holds have been poured out.

Just behind it, an old man sits in a chair that was bright green and yellow when it was new but is now more Grellow. The man is in his mid-sixites, somewhat heavyset, with a full head of snow-white hair and thick glasses. He's wearing a dark brown tweed suit with leather elbow patches, and a white cotton button-up. He's watching the news with a calm and dispassionate demeanor. Tired, but still engrossed with the world's events. He's wearing dark brown penny loafers and garish argyle socks.

Behind him is a couch that is a matched set with the armchair, with the same Grellow chevron pattern, but there is a very large crochet afghan that has been spread out over the back to be decorative and maybe protect the couch from it's current occupant: a 120lb Wolf Hybrid.

She's seated lengthwise on the couch, like she had also been watching PBS Newshour, posed like a sphynx. She's close in wieght to the man, and definitely taller than him if she stands up, with a dark gray agouti coat and a bit of white countershading from the trace of domestic dog in her. She's turned her head to the viewer, bright yellow eyes focused on them, and the fur of her head and neck haloed with the sunset. She is pleased to see the veiwer, which means most of the teeth in her lower jaw are visible in her canine grin. The effect is very menacing if you don't know her.

Clutched rather neatly between her front paws is a second, identical martini glass, only not nearly quite so full as the old man's.

Title: "Oh, I didn't think you'd be back for another hour/GODDAMIT EDWIN"

So the Context for this is that this was the third or fouth time this had happened.

The FIRST time was when my parents decided to take a long weekend up in Mendecino to concieve me. It's apparently highly unusual for people to know within a 72-hour window of when they were created, much less what album their parent's packed (Paul Simon's Graceland) but I have to say, the amount of forethought and planning that went into my creation makes me feel very loved.

One of the things they had to Plan was for someone to watch the "Dog". Mazel had already been banned from two pet daycares and forsaken from three different petsitting services and most of my parent's coworkers in the two years that they had had her, mostly because she was distressingly smart, extremely good at leaving anywhere she did not want to be, and was entirely willing to take people with her when she wanted to go.

She was, however, exceptionally fond of my grandparents, probably because my grandfather could make friends with anyone, and my grandmother was also That Bitch (TM) when needed so Mazel felt very secure that Grandma could handle any REAL problems that might occur, so she was free to manipulate grandpa into doing whatever she wanted. Like going to the extremely expensive Golf Course nearby and letting her stalk the Bourgeoisie for fun.

Now, my grandfather was never drunk in front of his children, absolutely never got behind the wheel of a car if he was not 100% alert and was one of the gentlest souls on the planet, but he lived before they invented SSRI's and so he coped with the Depression, ADHD and PTSD he never talked about by coming home from work, sitting down in His Chair and drinking an entire pitcher of Martinis while he watched the news.

It's what passed for Self-Care the 1950's.

Anyway, before they left, Mom happened to mention to Grandpa that Mazel sometimes liked to sit on the couch and watch the news with her, so don't be surprised if she wants to do that with you.

What my grandfather apparently heard was "She's a sociable creature, you should be sociable too, and in the style of a Silent Generation Irish-American Man, pour the nice lady a drink as well :)"

Both my parents lectured Grandpa extensively about how YOU SHOULD NOT GIVE DOGS ALCOHOL, AT ALL, EVER! WE DON'T CARE IF SHE DIDN'T SEEM TO FEEL IT!!

What my grandfather apparently heard was "It's fine but you shouldn't worry your daughter-in-law while she is carrying your first grandchild, so just don't tell her next time :)"

A few years later my parents took another trip to Mendecino to make my sister and I spent three days with one of my parent's friends and her pet macaw that gave me a permanent and entirely justified fear of parrots, but they came back, collected me and took me with them to collect Mazel. We made startlingly good time for California Traffic, and I, age three, sprinted into the house to see my beloved Lupine Guardian, to be greeted with the scene described above.

Granpa, realizing he'd been caught in the act, decided to pretend the thing my parents were turning red about was him not meeting them at the door and not, say, the fact he'd been lightly poisoning Mazel or the prospect of having to take a drunk wolf to an unfamiliar vet, said "Oh sorry, I thought you wouldn't be here for another hour!"

Which is how I learned my grandpa's middle name was "Richard" and that you could all-three-names an adult if you wanted to, which is an unholy amount of power for an autistic preschooler to have.

(I decided it looked a bit like an Album Cover, so I made it one. Feat songs like "Three-name family" and "Pebble Beach Predator Bedlam")

---

(if you like my stories, please consider supporting me via my Tip Jar)

Multiple people have said VIBES and my brain is actually melting.

I'm so confused that "by subject" isn't one of the basic choices.

You know, you have your shelf of gay books, your shelf of Jewish books, your shelf of gay Jewish books, your shelf of art books, your shelf of Scion RPG books, your shelf of Chronicles of Darkness RPG books, your shelf of the RPG books you wrote on or backed on Kickstarter but never play because you only play CofD and Scion, your shelf of comics trades, your shelf of gay comics, and miscellaneous.

Exactly what I was saying! Subject/genre is, I thought, one of the main ways of doing it???

I'm just so proud of everyone who has actually gotten their books up on shelves instead of rifling through the boxes I thought I put those books in when I moved house. Last year.

You are allowed to exist alone in public btw. You're allowed to go to the movies alone and go out to eat alone and hang out in a park alone and go for a walk alone and whatever else. It isn't weird or creepy, it doesn't make you lonely or a loser or whatever. You are allowed to just exist as yourself.

WHAT A DREAM

Finally, some good fucking interior design

@shrimpsisbugs

you know the economy is in shambles when all of us are looking at a moderately spacious single bedroom apartment like a Bolshevik at the Romanov imperial palace

men love being tied to chairs and gagged it makes them feel masculine it's the same as working in an office

this is very funny bc i went to a class on gay cowboy bondage that discussed hypermasculinity in the practice and basically made this exact point but like, unironically

a class on what

📢 GAY COWBOY BONDAGE

all my life i've gone to wrong schools it feels like

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections from ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

I live in NC and did not know that prisoners legally can’t make more than $1/day. I didn’t think it was, like, a good situation but that is much worse than I even imagined. Damn.

And of course the exploitation of prisoners is criminal (except for how it’s not, apparently).