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#A New Facebook Bu
unproduciblesmackdown · 4 months
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just found this summer stock pic from the 'til we meet again scene orvphil rights love wins never give up
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daz4i · 6 months
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got an ad for a course that looks right up my alley (like, too-good-to-be-true levels of up my alley) and toyed with the idea of possibly signing up. asked my mom what she thinks, including abt the price and such, fully expecting her to shut me down and say it's too expensive or isn't a good direction to take, but no even before i started listing the actual cool stuff you get from it she already got so excited and told me to sign up and that it sounds perfect for me and such. so i guess we'll see
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ff2-soda-pop · 1 year
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So I think the fact that every single day for the past week has been the exact same with literally no difference is starting to bug me—
#I have not been anywhere but this fucking house for a week and I cannot stand being in here anymore AT LEAST I USUALLY HAVE SCHOOL BUT#HAVING BREAK MEANT NO SCHOOL FOR A WEEK AND I DONT. LIKE IT#BECAUSE IF I DONT HAVE SCHOOL I DONT GET TO DO ANYTHING BUT BE AT HOME AND EVERY DAY IS LITERALLY THE EXACT SAME#like not even the stuff my mom puts on tv is different anymore it’s just the exact same cop drama -> news -> exact same talk show over and#over 24/7 and my sister always plays the exact same videos on loop so I’m hearing that all day every day and it’s the EXACT SAME and then#even if I do something different it’s still just a different version of the shit I always do so even that’s not even That different#and it just feels like the same day on an endless loop because nothings changed and it’s been a week straight of this pretty much#and no one here does anything. my mom only ever seems to get in facebook arguments or watch the repeating tv shows my sister just plays her#videos and lines her toys back up when they get knocked over and so literally everything is the exact same every single day and yeah I like#routine BUT THIS ISNT ROUTINE it just feels like I’m stuck in this endless loop and I hate it so much#‘well if you wanna go somewhere go on a walk’ BUT IM ONLY ALLOWED TO WALK THE SAME CIRCLE I ALWAYS DO AND THATS BEEN THE SAME FOR YEARS AND#MY MOM GETS PISSED IF I WALK ANYWHERE ELSE AND ITS NOT EVEN AN INTERESTING CIRCLE TO WALK OVER AND OVER FOR YEARS#and aside from school I pretty much Never see my friends and it’s not like I’d be able to go see them anyways because my mom always screams#at me if I wanna go on the bus for anything BUT getting to school and back and she wouldn’t ever drive me because she never ‘feels like it’#and there’s literally no one my age in this neighborhood anymore so I can’t hang out with anyone here either so basically if I don’t have#school then the only people I see are the people who I am always stuck with and I just- UGHH#I don’t know. I’m just tired of things having been the exact same for a week straight like it ALWAYS IS but now I don’t even get the slight#break of getting to go to school so at least I’m not stuck here 24/7#vent
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1961 motorhome in Portland, Oregon is a rolling time capsule. It's so big it takes diesel fuel and I can't even describe the custom designed interior. $75,000.
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Not sure what that is on the tufted door.
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Everything is tufted- the walls, ceiling, and furniture.
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There's even a tufted bathroom.
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And, check out the pink tufted bedroom. It's cozy, though.
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Have you ever seen a mini juke box like this?
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The tufted driver's compartment looks like a cockpit.
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Pilot to co-pilot.
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The dining area has a retro lighted picture box.
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Full size sofa with side tables.
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This thing is a truck.
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The back of it looks like a tour bus.
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The snazzy rear lights look like something off an old Cadillac.
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I don't understand all this, but I guess it's significant. If looks pretty clean and new for a vintage vehicle.
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odinsblog · 9 months
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One About The Atmosphere: Want to change minds? Stop trying. Change the atmosphere instead.
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Donald Trump in 2016 greets a screaming horde of ecstatic white christian nationalists
Minivan was a nice enough guy. He was easygoing; a happy guy with a frequently deployed smile. I don’t recall much anger from him, nor many strongly held opinions. I wouldn’t call him a philosophical type. No deep late night talks with Stove Minivan is my recollection.
This is the sort of dude I’d hang out with at a party, if there were a party we were both at, but not one with whom I’d maintain a relationship if we both graduated and then moved to different places—which I know for a fact, because that’s what happened. We drifted.
So then what happened is twelve years or so later I got on The Facebook, and Stove Minivan was there, too, and before long, we were friends again, he and I, and so were me and my other college friends, and them with him, and … look, you know the drill. It was The Facebook.
Minivan was no longer a pre-med student at a small northern liberal arts college. He was a doctor—a general care practitioner, if memory serves—in a smallish plains state town, very much like many other towns in the great plains or elsewhere in the country, I imagine.
Anyway, before long I noticed something about Minivan. Even though his feed was full of pictures of him and his lovely family, and he was smiling in them just the same as he always had in college, he was angry.
He was *enraged*
What was he angry about? The Demonrats.
Minivan was absolutely enraged about everything the Demonrats did. He also was out of his mind angry about Killary, and Obummer, the leaders of the Demonrats—or at least they were the front for the real leader of the Demonrats, who even back then I believe was George Soros.
What did the Demonrats do? Oh my heck, what *didn’t* they do? Mostly they hated America and American security and American economic strength, it seems. They engaged in corruption and bowed to foreign powers a lot. They shredded the dignity of the presidency, that’s for sure.
Minivan’s worldview wasn’t particularly coherent, if you want to know the truth.
I couldn’t help to notice that the Demonrats weren’t actually doing many of the things that Minivan thought they were doing.
And I noticed other things.
For example, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the policies Minivan supported were directly *causing* the sorts problems that made Minivan so angry.
And I couldn’t help but notice that well-sourced information enraged him more than pretty much anything else.
There was a lot of linking to sites I’d never heard of, like Breitbart and Newsmax, and of course plenty of Fox News. There were a lot of memes. There were a lot of conspiracy theories (a big birther, was Minivan).
Some of his posts contained subtle bigotry. Most of the rest contained not-subtle bigotry. Several of them contained slogans and statements that were, very simply, neo Nazi and white supremacist memes and shibboleths.
There was a lot of commentary accompanying these posts from Minivan, who was saying shocking stuff for a small-town family doctor … the sorts of things that it seemed to me would make people not want to use this person as a doctor, or or sit next to that person on a bus.
I hadn’t heard of Alex Jones, yet, but Minivan sounded a lot like Alex Jones, word for word and beat for beat. He’d even start his posts like a right-wing radio host: Sorry folks, but you can’t even make stuff like this up—ironically, accompanying things that had been made up.
This was all pretty distressing to those of us who had known Minivan back in the day, before he had become so obsessed with Demonrats.
So, a lot of us, myself included, did exactly what The Facebook wants.
We engaged with him.
At the time my belief was, you defeated bad ideas with better ideas, by confronting the bad ideas directly with the better ideas. Debate was for changing minds. You presented your ideas, they presented theirs, you countered, they countered, eventually everybody saw the truth.
But the intention was that I’d change his mind, with facts presented logically, delivered calmly and patiently.
This was my belief.
What happened confounded me, but perhaps you can predict it.
Minivan escalated any correction, however calmly stated or bloodlessly presented, into scorched earth territory. He rejected all proofs by rejecting the source outright as irrevocably tainted by bias, or he’d spiral into non sequitur, spamming our feeds with more misinformation.
He would claim he never said things he had just said, even though the statements were still there for anybody to read, one comment earlier in the thread.
He’d claim that I said things I'd never said, as anyone foolish enough to read through our conversations could discover.
He demonstrated a complete dedication to his ignorance and anger, and a total disinterest in anything like observable truth that contradicted his grievance.
It was confounding and unfamiliar behavior to me, at the time.
At the time.
All of it was larded with grievance, a sense that people like him had never wronged anybody, and everybody else had done nothing but wrong people like him.
The bigotry and authoritarianism grew.
And all the time, on Facebook, he and his family kept smiling their perfect smiles.
I’ll admit that over time my interactions stopped being polite and bloodless, and I’m not particularly sorry for it. I told him some things about himself he seemed not to know, but which I thought really ought to be said.
I have a bit of a penchant for sarcasm, which you may have noticed.
I employed this skill, and you can feel how you want to about sarcasm, but I think it helped convey the correct posture to take toward someone who says the sorts of things Minivan was saying.
The correct posture being "you have proved yourself to be a person who should not be taken seriously, and your positions do not deserve even a modicum of respect."
I found this a more healthy message to convey about Minivan to anybody watching, and I still do.
Eventually he blocked me, and he was out of my life forever. It was the right choice, and I'm very glad he did that.
I’ve pondered the incident since, as it’s become more and more relevant to “the way things are.”
A few things had become clear over time.
Minivan was not somebody whose intentions could be trusted. He was not operating in good faith, and I believe he well knew it, because many of his favorite sources of information have written instruction books on how to engage with people in bad faith.
Minivan was not debating; he was using debate to inject his counterfactual beliefs into the discourse, which were designed to further marginalize already marginalized people while simultaneously cloaking himself in self-exonerating grievance.
More, he was exerting an active effort to not know things that could be easily known, and to demand to be convinced out of deliberate ignorance, not because he was interested in having his ideas challenged, but because he demanded a world in which he got to decide what was real.
Further still: Minivan *learned* from me. The effect of telling him he was using one or another logical fallacy was not to sharpen his reasoning, but to teach him about the existence of logical fallacies, which let him (incorrectly) accuse others of those same logical fallacies.
So Minivan was deploying the language of logic, in ways that betrayed a total lack of understanding about what those fallacies were, granted, but in ways that likely made him seem more knowledgeable and reasonable to a casual or sympathetic observer.
He learned to ape our phrases and arguments, in much the way he’d learned to ape the style of Alex Jones and all the various Breitbart and Newsmax contributors he used to inform himself.
And these days it occurs to me: I hear a lot about "groomers."
We were not changing him by engaging with him thoughtfully.
We certainly weren’t changing him by engaging with him in kind.
Rather: we were making him better at what he was doing, and we were validating his world view—to himself and others—as one that merited engagement.
And week after week on Facebook, Minivan kept smiling and smiling and getting angrier and angrier, at us and Obummer and all the other Demonrats and liberals and every member of every minority group who dared to fail to ceaselessly assure him that he was right about everything.
I don’t miss Minivan's black-hole-sun smile. I think of it as my first hint of MAGA: politically overrepresented, socially coddled people, often living outwardly happy privileged lives, while seething inwardly that other people might be getting anything, anything at all.
Indeed, soon enough, another figure would come on the scene, whose behavior matched that of Minivan almost exactly, a perfect avatar for this spirit of aggrieved bigotry and supremacy that seemed to be moving through my former friend.
And sure enough, as I saw, there were millions and millions of smiling seething people who loved him.
And that guy became president.
Nobody believed he would. And then he did.
Because Stove Minivan, it turns out, wasn’t some weird outlier.
He was part of a growing new normal, a group of people who had been offered a chance to immigrate from observable reality and enter a dark world of constant hostility, misinformation, and self-loving grievance.
It's an invitation they leapt at, to which they cling even now.
It's a constituency immune to proof, angered by equality, cheered by cruelty, who blame others for the foulness of the shallow puddle of reasoning within which they have demand to be seated, even though we can all see them fouling it themselves, every day.
And afterward, a huge number of those shocked by this development decided the proper reaction was to accommodate it, in the name of unity—a belief, it seems, grounded in the idea that what you choose to get along with isn’t as important as getting along no matter what.
I’ll finish with the question that all of Minivan’s former friends would eventually ask, whenever they gathered together long enough for the subject to arise.
"What the hell happened to Minivan?"
Here’s the answer, I think: nothing.
Nothing happened to Minivan. Nothing at all.
He was always that guy, and he always thought the things he thought.
What changed was that he was given a lot of language with which to express those ideas, and access to enough other people who thought that way too, that it created a critical mass of permission.
The permission allowed him to change his attitudes and actions, and created a lot of other people willing to accommodate and normalize his antisocial anti-reality behavior, rather than reject it out of hand.
In college you could be pretty conservative, honestly. It was a pretty conservative place. But you couldn't behave like Minivan later would.
You’d be understood to be a far-right extremist, and people would then treat you like a far-right extremist.
Which is what you'd be.
I think it just wasn't possible for Minivan to be what he later became, because the atmosphere wasn't conducive to the possibility.
But then the atmosphere changed.
If we want to change it back, it's worth thinking about how atmospheres change.
(source)
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unhinged-diaries · 3 months
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Business Guide:
How to get started
When you have a business name in mind look up the domain name to see if it’s taken. You don’t want to spend money on an LLC just to find out that your name is taken. Thats a waste of money because you also have to pay to dissolve it.
If the name is not taken, great, don’t file an LLC yet. Go online and get a virtual business address. Why? If you’re running your business out of your home like I am, just know that it’s public information if you use your address to file your LLC. A virtual address should cost like $10-$20 a month. Use that to file your LLC.
Once you’ve filed that LLC get your Ein. That’s your Employee Identification Number. It’s your businesses tax id. It’s free to file on the IRS website. Don’t fall for the scam websites you guys.
Once you’ve gotten your EIN go to Google domains and get your website name aswell as 3-4 emails. An email for your social media accounts, an executive email for yourself, an [email protected] for things like your business bank account, Shopify account, etc; and maybe a customer support email. I use the social email as a customer support email. All of this should be like $50/month.
Once you’ve don’t that get on Canva and make that logo bookie. Personally I paid someone on Fiverr to make mine because I’m a “soft business life” kind of girl and I’d rather pay the professionals. Thats just me though.
Once you’ve got your logo go ahead and get them social media accounts going. Instagram, tiktok, Facebook.
Alright now this is where it gets specific to clothing brands because that’s what I own.
Time to find a manufacturer. Head over to alibaba and search what kind of product you want to sell. Be sure to add “oem” if you want a manufacturer that customizes. Look for the amount of orders they’ve gotten on that product. If it says zero orders that’s ok. Some styles are new and thus haven’t been ordered yet. Check any reviews they have for other products. Also check the total revenue they’ve done. It’s on the store profile. I can’t tell you what the sweet spot is yet bc I’ve only used one manufacturer so far but I’d look for mid six figures and up if you wanna be real safe.
Chat with them and order a sample. Even if you buy from a vendor list you’ll need your own sample to make content with. I suggest buying one and first. It’s worth the wait because if you buy multiple and end up not liking them you’d have wasted money that could’ve gone into testing a different manufacturer.
Do not launch with more than 2 products. Even 2 is a stretch, wallai start with one.
This is because if you’re doing the preorder, which I suggest, you’ll be depending on customer orders to pay for the bulk order. Manufacturers do their moq by color or style. If you have too many options in your website and customers order a mix of things, you better pray you have enough money to cover the bulk for all those different styles. Stay safe and give them 1-2 options to choose from.
Pre order method is great if you don’t have a lot of cash to start with because the orders pay for themselves. Bulk orders start to wrack up. Especially if it’s a custom style or material. You don’t want to break the bank for something that might not sell.
Once you’ve gotten and approved your samples choose a launch date. 2-3 weeks before that launch dates post consistently. At least once a day but remember quality over quantity. Now don’t be tricked. Quality doesn’t mean a full cinematography. It means connecting with your audience and relating with them to a point where they’re like “this business gets it”. Either that or attaching yourself to an identity they want to have. “It girl ig influencer”, “feminine soft life babe” “clean girl Pilates princess” whatever the fuck it is embody ur as best as you can. When customers attach your product with an identity that is aspirational to them they will buy it without rationalizing. It’s why the luxury market makes so much off of ppl who can’t afford to buy it twice.
Focus on the backend
If you have a goal of getting an influx of orders and making a lot of sales, be sure that your business is structured in a way that can handle it happening at any given time. You know those tiktok businesses that get one viral video and sell out over night? That could be you but if you’re not prepared ppl are going to be upset. I suggest working backwards:
A customer service platform/inbox so that you can answer them right away with frequently asked questions.
Have stock so that you have something for customers to buy once they finally land on your website.
Have a well presenting website so that ppl don’t think you’re a scam. I’m going to do a post on this bc some of these business websites drive me fuckin nuts. Color theory ppl, color theory.
A social media page with some kind of social proof ie reviews from customers in some way shape or form. Ppl are going to be looking for what others have to say about your brand. Hire UGC creators to make videos that you can post on your page. They’re cheaper than influencers but still know how to convey the message well. You’ll have to have extra samples and items on hand to send them. Also check out their usage rights. Some will allow you to use their videos in ads but you have to pay extra and it’s only for a certain amount of time. But if they do it right, you’ll get a great return. Scared money don’t make no money.
A social media page that shows the products in movement and different lighting. I need to be able to imagine myself in the item before I buy it. Where would I wear it, how will it fit on me. Even when I’ve already ordered something I stay going back to the businesses social media page just to see the clothes again. I might even search it up to see other ppl wearing it.
Packaging
No need to go crazy with the packaging in the beginning. Don’t get me wrong, branding is important but as a beginner you may not have the money for that yet. You need to focus on spending money on what will give you the best return. Just get regular poly mailers from Amazon in your brand colors. You’ll also need:
A stack of 6x4 shipping labels
A thermal printer
A scale
When your manufacturer sends you the clothes they will most likely be in their own little bags. If not you can get those from Amazon too.
Later on you can go to alibaba and find a manufacturer to print you custom poly mailers for that extra edge. Put your logo, a cute message, and your social media handles on the bag and that’s it. Good to go.
You can also design your own thank you cards as well. I won’t be doing that.
Little things to remember
Don’t feel like you have to keep up with big brands. You don’t need to launch something every two weeks. As a matter of fact I advise against emulating super fast fashion brands. I only launch a new item once the pre ordered items have been shipped out to customers.
Be nice to your customers. You’d think this was obvious but it’s not. Some ppl are rude, ghetto, and uncouth. If you hate authority and have a smart mouth I think you should either take a customer service course or hire a virtual assistant from the Philippines to do your customer service for you because no customers = no money.
I’ll update this as I learn and grow:
12/18/2023
Influencers
Not every influencer with a mass follower base is going to be your influencer. It’s possible that you pay $5000 for an influencer with 75k followers to post your product on her page but that post makes you less than $3k. That means you’ve net negative $2k. What a fuckin waste of money.
This is why it’s important to develop a persona for your brand. What is your brand identity? Who is your target audience? What are their psychographics?
Where do currently shop? What are there favorite social media apps?What is their race? Their age? Their ethnicity? Are they in college or highschool? Do they have parents that support their lifestyle or are they hustlers? Are they concerned about price or quality more? Are they married? Do they have children? Are they environmentally conscious?
You need to embody Joe Goldberg and peer at them through their window. Acquaint yourself with every part of their life.
Also, you might not be your target demographic yet and that’s ok. The girls that shop with my brand have social lives. They go out with their friends and need outfits to wear. I don’t have a social life. The only clothes I wear are my work clothes to go to work and my robe when I’m at home.Or a sweat set and a bonnet to run errands.
Don’t think to yourself “ I would never wear that.” “I would never buy something at that price point”. That’s fine cuz someone else will. A lot of people will.
Another thing is your demographic could change once you start your business. It might be that you create content that attracts a different type of person than what you originally planned and that’s cool too. We don’t live in a perfect world. As long as they’re close enough to what you had predetermined it’s ok. Sometimes our business comes out different than we hoped but it’s just as good if not better. It’s like child. Don’t destroy its greatness trying to turn it into something it doesn’t want to be.
User generated content
Love, love, love her down. She’s that sweet spot between making content yourself and having an influencer with a large following make the content for you. UGC is a form of social proof which is something you need for an e-commerce brand especially. Ppl can’t just pop into your store and try on your stuff so they need the opinions of “regular” people to sell them on it. They want to see that person try it on, do a close up of the fabric, wear it to a social setting, etc;
What I like about UGC is that I can pick someone who fits into my brand persona to represent my brand even if I don’t. Someone that appears aspirational but still relatable. Like I said previously, you yourself might not embody your brands persona but you can pay someone who does.
A little translate for yall: I do not live in a nice apartment. My room is small, and dark, and filled with boxes. My living room has mix matched decor and I myself am not the body type I’d like to be (pls don’t hit me with body positivity babe). What I can do is pay a girl with the opposite of all those things and knows how to sell a product.
I have a girl right now that I’ve inquired to make posts for me and she’s got it all. Her rate for one video is $100 with an extra $30 for 90 days of usage in ads. $100 is the new 50 and for the return I’ll get on her, THATS A STEAL.
If you need to find a UGC creator search it up on tiktok and Twitter. Most of them have a portfolio of past work they’ve done. If you feel like they match your brands vibes, keep their info for when you’re ready.
I suggest to have a roster of them because if ppl keep seeing the same person over and over, the thought that that person is just a regular degular customer leaves their mind and you lose the magic of UGC.
Update 12/21/2023
I’ve been sick but yall ain’t paying me so it’s ok. Here’s the update.
Website
Your website is your home babe and when you’re preparing for guest you can’t have your home looking any type of way. Not only does it need to be clean but it needs to be cohesive and inviting.
You know how many times I’ve opened someone’s booking page on Instagram and I click off. Not only am I not reading through all of that small ass text but my head hurts cuz you’ve got a black font on a hot pink background.
Some of yalls websites to not comply with accessibility guidelines so pay attention to that bc you can be sued. Ppl should be able to read what you have on there without getting a headache.
Good rule of thumb is to have one primary color, and then black and white. Don’t over complicate it. Your primary color will be your logo, think twitters blue, then your secondary colors should be black and white, for your text. You might have an accent color like gold or silver, this should be used sparingly for a little dazzle.
If you’re a clothing brand like me, keep the text short and sweet. Think about it, when you go shopping on your favorite website are you bombarded with a soliloquy on how the collection came to be? And even if you are do you stop and read the whole thing? I don’t bc I don’t care. That’s what your Instagram story is for.
All I want to see is the attention grabber and a short,but convincing, tagline.
Example: Ski Resort 2023-“Stun the slopes and stand out on the ski lift with best sellers spotted at St. Moritz”
Let you images tell the rest of the story.
Don’t overwhelm them with options
Guys this is so important. The more options ppl see the less they buy or the less likely they are to buy. Why? This is the thought process.
“Omg the stuff on this website is so cute! Let me go through their catalog and add to my cart as I go”
5 minutes of scrolling
“Ok I have too many things in my cart let me just save to a wishlist instead”
Another 5 minutes of scrolling
“Ok I’ll just stop here and go back to my cart and decide what I’m going to get rn”
Goes to cart
Spends 10 minutes deciding what she’s gonna get bc there’s so many good options
Takes 10 items out of her cart and only buys two basics bc she knows those are less likely to disappoint.
And scene
That is if she didn’t leave after the second five minutes of scrolling. Nowadays five minutes on a non stimulating website is a lot, don’t let it take that long.
Obviously this also depends on the customers budget. Some people have the money to just buy everything in their cart (I wish- one day), but most are just window shopper you hope to convert with your nice styles, images, and prices. Don’t make it harder for people to give you their money.
I have more but I’m tired of writing so I’ll update yall tmrw.
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bloombubs · 4 months
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Adrian Chase x reader dating headcanons where reader had worked alongside Harcourt and John for years and was forced to relocate with them to since they also helped Task Force X defeat with Harcourt and John. Maybe here, reader has done gymnastics for years and incorporated their gymnastics skills into their fighting styles. And maybe they are pretty shy in the beginning, often times clinging to John or Harcourt (which they don’t mind) but once reader gets used to the new recruits (Adrian, peacemaker, Leona), they’re pretty energetic and bubbly and also an idiot
I'm going to apologize now and say I definitely did not hit the head of the nail with this one.
notes: ....idek. mentions sexual themes. 1kish words. thank you for being the first request <3
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In the midst of the team's activities and occasional chaos, Adrian always noticed you. Your silence amidst the noise intrigued him, and he saw it as a challenge to get to know you. But you clung around Economos and Harcourt in the beginning.
Despite his boisterous nature, Adrian made a concerted effort to get to know you. He sensed a potential for humor and snark beneath the surface and was determined to uncover it. He had a gut feeling that you were full of funny comments, snarky replies. He always noted how you bit your lip, rolled your eyes, and shook your head. Some ideas caused your eyes to widen, whether it sounded exciting or completely stupid.
Not content with simply observing you, Adrian took his curiosity to Harcourt and Economos. His relentless questions about you, ranging from your music preferences to your quirks, often left them a little annoyed but entertained.
“So, do they like Taylor Swift?” “I don’t know, Vig, you ask them.”
“Do you think they’d go out to the bar?” “Are you going to ask them out on a date?” “What? No, what makes you say that?”
Adrian made it a habit to sit beside you whenever the opportunity presented itself. Whether it was during briefings, downtime, or meals, car rides, he strategically positioned himself next to you, ready to engage in conversation.
Your reactions became his focal point. Adrian would glance at you whenever something noteworthy happened, waiting for your response. Majority of the time when he spoke, it was directed at you–hoping to get a reaction.
Adrian’s jaw visibility hit the floor when he saw your style of fighting. You’re so flexible, so grateful on your feet. He didn’t know you were a gymnast, but it was a lovely surprise. You felt more confident in showing your ability, mostly prepping yourself with Chris would make a lewd comment about your flexibility and how it piqued his interest. It definitely piqued Adrian’s.
Adrian compared you to being the next version of Nightwing, which was far from the truth, but you found it flattering either way. “You’re no match for Judomaster,” “He knocked me out with the first punch, Vig.” “…Maybe it was a fair fight.”
Maybe it was the first time in the car that he saw you singing along to the song, nodding your head and smiling at everyone. Eagly perched in your lap once, you were petrified. Adrian saw the sight endearing and wholesome–a photo for him to take to add to the collection of his best friends.
He added you on Facebook randomly at three AM.
Eventually, he did invite you out to the bar. As well as the others because he was a bit nervous himself to be on a date with someone like you–he thinks you're the coolest, sweetest, talented, badass person he had ever met.
On this date, everyone took a hint and left you two alone, Harcourt and Economos giving you a look before they left.
The two talked about everything and anything–once you fully peeled back from your shell–with a few drinks to help–Adrian just couldn’t get you off his mind.
Somehow it spiraled to the two of you doing drunk karaoke.
He definitely didn’t drink as much to make sure you got back to where you were staying–he even took you for a ride in his Vigilante mobile.
The night finished and he asked for another date, but just him and you this time right off the bat. You agreed and kissed him on the cheek before ending the night.
Adrian definitely texted Chris all about it. You definitely texted Harcourt all about it as well.
Everyone just knew the two would wind up together at this point.
Leota and Chris placed a bet when Adrian would ask you out.
Chris said he would would be too chickened to ask you out.
Leota was convinced that he would wait at least two months–in the similar fate that Adrian just needed to build courage to ask you to be his significant other.
False.
Adrian never formally asked you to be his significant other. After a couple of months filled with constant dates, sleepovers, and quickies in the Vigilante mobile, both of you assumed exclusivity without the need for explicit conversations.
You would always support his decision on any choice of weapon. But you adamantly believed that Economos had the right to use a chainsaw, passionately advocating for his moment to shine.
Seeing you in action became one of Adrian's biggest turn-ons. Whether in a protective or provocative way, his eyes were always glued to you in the field, often causing distractions as he couldn't help but admire your skills.
One day you both come into the headquarters, covered in hickies. No one was surprised, but god they had a field trip making fun of you two.
The classic, did a vacuum cleaner suck on your neck?
Adrian would just claim that he was testing the limit of what his body could handle–turns out, he can endure a lot.
Chris just made a remark that you were claiming dominance over someone that never needed it in the first place.
But you two are safe, nothing could ever top seeing Leota’s wife’s nudes–unless Adrian would accidentally leak the homemade videos the two of you on a whim decided to make.
After missions, you two would watch whatever movie Adrian wanted to see, have a small dinner, hear him ramble about anything and everything.
He tries teaching you DND.
You scared Harcourt, Adebayo, and Economos once when they were needing to have an emergency meeting and you weren’t sleeping in your bed–but you were over at Adrian’s.
Chris would definitely try to convince Adrian for a threesome. A man’s gotta try.
Adrian would refuse to let you get hurt on the field and he would be damned if anyone was trying to harm you. He would not let you do anything alone–which didn’t necessarily mean you had to be paired with him, but you wouldn’t be alone.
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the-fibre-stuff · 2 months
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The Facebook group for the Loose Ends Project finishers is funny in a depressing way. Semi-regularly someone will post asking "how do I get a project" or complaining that they haven't gotten a project.
And sure, I get that people are unaware of the finisher to project ratio (delightfully high), and are new to the group (or new to being a finisher) so they aren't aware that this question has been asked multiple times before.
But the answer to the question is "someone dies or is otherwise unable to complete the crafting projects that used to bring them joy" Maybe don't be impatient for that?
Yes, you want to contribute, and that's why you joined! (And you're aware that the number of projects you have on the go at any one time would keep a LOT of finishers busy if you got hit by a bus tomorrow). But the project only works because we have an excess of volunteers. Not entirely - it would work with something closer to a 1:1 ratio IF the numbers of volunteers were high enough. But we're spread out all over the place, and to get better coverage (ideally projects shouldn't need to be shipped, for cost reasons) we need more volunteers BEFORE we start getting lots of projects, because without a lot more volunteers, you can't rely on there being one nearby.
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chrollohearttags · 1 year
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can we get a little more of musican eren’s background, like right before he blew up or his childhood 😞
hmmm, so I kinda touched on it a little bit in the actual story but Eren had sort of a strange and wild road to fame. So from childhood, he didn’t have it hard, per say; his family was well off so money wasn’t an issue but he was a little lonely. His big brother didn’t move in until he was almost an adult anyways and they were already ten years apart. He had his two best friends, and they would be the only ones to pry him away from his instruments and practice. They’d all go to the mall or skate park when they were kids. All of them together were trouble though and it didn’t change when they got older. Like when Mikasa was eleven, she got her black belt and they tried to start a neighborhood fight club, where they charged $5 for the older boys to challenge her and she’d whoop their asses! Their parents were not happy. But once he reached high school, they moved away for a bit and he was by himself. Zeke was already in college so they didn’t see each other much. At this time though, he was getting serious about music. Writing songs and raps during class, spending all his time in the library on his MacBook where he had FL studio downloaded so he could practice making beats. His head was always in the clouds when it came to music. He could write about anything and any emotion he felt, he poured it into his songs. Up until he dropped out, he maintained super good grades. But he had band and chorus for like two periods of the day. He was of course, the class favorite. Singing to and with all the ladies, playing every instrument set in front of him and always acing every performance. During lunch, him and all the basketball players would make beats and freestyle at the table. Needless to say, it was his whole life. Although she didn’t care for the idea, his mom supported his goals. His dad, however…hated it all. He did not want Eren chasing some unrealistic pipe dream and certainly not using his money to do it. Which he held over his head A LOT. Called him ungrateful, spoiled and stupid. “You know how many kids would kill for a life like yours and you wanna waste it making shitty music? What is wrong with you?” So when Eren was sixteen, they had a huge argument that led to him leaving. He took everything he could fit into his backpack and couch surfed for a while. Even ended up staying with his brother in his off campus apartment and it was there that he told him exactly what his plan was. “I’m sure dad didn’t mean it. Why don’t you just go back?” “Nah, I’m going to Miami. I know I can make it.” Mind you, he’s a kid so his brother isn’t hopeful but god knows Eren doesn’t listen to anyone. He just made him promise that he’d stay safe, give Carla a call from time to time so she wouldn’t worry and gave him like three hundred bucks to survive on. So he ended up taking a bus to Dade County, where he worked for a while; doing odd jobs and still chasing his dream. He’d sneak into the underground clubs where artists like Denzel Curry performed. He realized that’s where he should be.
honestly, Eren wasn’t hoping to be done mega star or super famous, he just wanted his chance to showcase his talent, stack his bread and work with some of the greats. However, it wasn’t until he turned eighteen and was working at Foot Locker, that he’d get his first big break. One night, while cleaning out the stock room, one of his coworkers recorded him singing some random R&B song and it went viral the next day. He was on Facebook, Twitter and everybody was talking about it. Saying that he had such a beautiful voice. But his true moment came when a renowned Grammy winner, singer-songwriter and new talent scout by the name of Vivian James discovered him that things took flight. Not only was Vivian one of Eren’s idols (and celebrity crushes) but she was the long time girlfriend of music exec Levi Ackerman. While in the midst of looking for new artists to sign, she told him flat out: “This boy is your next star, Levi. He’s the total package.” Vivian had a show at the fancy club he was cleaning for part time and asked did he know one of her songs and could he play. “With my eyes closed, honestly.” Because he loved her music and the rest was history. “Show me what you can do, sweetheart.” And that night, he played her backup better than her own pianist. She knew that he was going to go far so Vivian took him under her wing; showed him proper technique and more tips when it came to piano, guitar and vocal training. Ms. James was very hard on him but she had good reason. “If it’s anything I know about Mr. Ackerman, he won’t waste his time on anything mediocre so I gotta make sure you’re every bit of the hype I put behind you before I send you his way.” All the while, he continued working by day, performing her backup by night and studying under her tutelage when possible. During that time, she also helped put him through school for music engineering. Six months later, he got his first audition with AMG. Sang, rapped..the whole nine yards. Immediately, he could hear his girlfriend’s hard work all over him. “Damn, you’re good, woman.” And signed him the same day. He ended up breaking down, crying and thanking her because she was the first person to give him a chance. “Thank you for believing in me.” And from there, it all began!
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unhonestlymirror · 3 months
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When I was a kid, I used to wander around without any gadgets. So when mom allowed me to hold her smartphone, I was really excited. Usually, I just scrolled through her Facebook.
And I was really surprised to find out that her news feed had posts, "Today I wasn't killed with a rocket! Good morning, everyone! :D" or "I can't believe I'm alive just because I missed my bus. They had another terract there, N dead, X wounded." Almost every time, for many years.
I thought, "Well, it must be horrible to live in Israel and be constantly scared for your life and for your loved ones. Thank God we don't have this all in Ukraine." But I didn't really care, and I didn't fully realise what they've felt. I was a kid, after all, a kid who didn't taste the true russian culture yet. I'm embarrassed to admit, but I didn't care.
What I want to say is that Palestine, as a state, has been doing to Israel the same things for MANY YEARS russia is doing to Ukraine now. Which is understandable since Palestine exchanges the knowledge of how to kill and rape people better with russia. By the time the Internet became worldwide, Israeli just got used to that.
And I was really surprised to find out how many people I used to find smart suddenly started repeating that Israel is an occupier fashist state. After October 7th. How many people started justifying organized mass rape and burning children alive "because Nakba" or something else. How many people, including Ukrainians, started justifying the state, which literally works with russia and teaches its kids how to kill Jews better. I was shocked and disgusted.
Then I wanted to laugh nervously after some people I used to read started doing this way: after every "Israel is fashist and occupier" they shared something about Jewish culture, to show they are not antisemitic. The fact that Israel is as much Jewish state as Ukraine is Ukrainian - they don't care about it. Watching your friends becoming brainwashed in real time is not the best experience I had.
It's not military targets that have been fired upon by Palestine in Israel at all. It was not the fashists zionists who were raped and killed on October 7th at all. It was the same people as me and you, kids, women, elderly, students, tourists, pro-Palestinian activists like Vivian Silver - they all were murdered brutally by Palestine because Palestine shares the same rhetoric as Houthis in Yemen. They just want to kill all Jews and "rule the whole world".
I think it's only natural to wish the state, which organises mass rape and mass murder on your land, to stop exist.
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teacupsandtopgun · 1 year
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Be My Commander
Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin x Felicity ‘Flick’ March (OC)
Summary: The squad discovers Jake has a girlfriend. Flick discovers Jake has been promoted. Jake discovers he has a rank kink. You learn something new every day.
Author’s Note: This a smutty two-part sequel to my previous fic about Jake and my OC, Flick March. If you would like to read the origins of their relationship, check out my first fic, California Problems.
Warnings: 18+ no minors please. Swearing, explicit sexual references (full-on smut will be in part 2).
Disclaimers: Navy inaccuracies. I also have no idea if the flight manoeuvres I’ve described are remotely possible, but hey ho!
Part 1/2
Word Count: 2.9k
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For the second time in the space of a few short months, Professor Felicity March found herself on a bus to Top Gun.
This time, she wasn't running away from her students, she was accompanied by them. Her Faculty Leader had organised the trip, quoting some tenuous bullshit about ‘demonstrating the application of mathematics in Naval Aviation’. But, in reality, it just was an excuse for the University to keep up appearances and ensure the Navy kept providing academic sponsorship funding. Nevertheless, Flick welcomed the respite from lectures. She just wished she hadn’t been left off the email chain. She only found out about the trip when she arrived in the staff room that morning. By the time she had been able to text Jake to warn him of her arrival, his phone was already discarded in his locker for the day.
She was nervous. Her relationship with Jake wasn’t exactly public knowledge just yet. There had been no big reveal, no Facebook status update or grand unveiling at the Hard Deck. The clues were there, for whoever might be looking, but Flick wasn’t sure how much gossip would have been shared among the aviators, especially since the team had spent the last month apart on leave after their mission.
Flick weighed up the variables. Phoenix knew that she and Jake had chemistry. Bradley knew that Flick had searched for Jake in a time of need. Maverick had seen them sharing breakfast. Javy knew that they had spent the last four weeks on the road together, and that Flick had met Jake’s family in Texas. But nobody knew it all, and Flick wasn’t sure that ambushing Jake at work unannounced was the best way for them to find out.
The morning at Top Gun began with a quick tour of the facilities given by some administration staff. Then, Flick and her students were bundled into a vacant classroom with the promise of a presentation from “two of America's finest aviators, fresh off the back of a historic mission.”
Flick’s heart strained, pulled in the polarising directions of wanting to see the man she adored and desperately hoping to avoid embarrassing him in front of his colleagues and her students.
“Please welcome Lieutenant Commanders Natasha ‘Phoenix’ Trace and Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd.”
Flick allowed herself to exhale. She was off the hook. For now.
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After the presentation (in which Phoenix had scared the shit out of the over-confident frat boys and Bob had won the adoration of the shyer, more studious girls), Flick’s students broke off into groups to do activities with the Navy’s community outreach team, and Phoenix and Bob invited Flick to join them in the break room.
The walk along the halls was an anxious journey. Flick jumped at every open door and double-checked for Jake at every turn. She pleaded to the Naval gods that he wouldn't be found in the break room, and thankfully her prayers were answered.
Bob made the three of them some coffee and Phoenix kicked a few fruit & nut bars out of the dodgy vending machine. Flick took it upon herself to guide the conversation, and eventually teased out intel of Jake’s whereabouts: he was up in the air and would be for the rest of the afternoon. She could let her guard down.
“So, how was your summer break?” asked Bob.
Flick couldn’t help but beam bright.
“The best! I went on a road trip to Texas. My mum’s from there, but I’d never been - it was incredible.”
“Did you bump into Hangman?”
Flick spat out her coffee. Did Bob know?
The WSO’s tone sounded innocent enough, but Phoenix’s expression beside him couldn’t be described as anything other than mischievously gleeful. But Phoenix doesn’t know that you and Jake spent the summer together, Flick reminded herself. Or does she? Regardless, the woman was clearly a quick read; Phoenix knew all too well that Flick wouldn’t have reacted so dramatically to Bob’s question without a good reason.
Flick coughed. “Sorry?”
“I just meant - he’s Texan too and he went home for the summer… though obviously, you didn’t, it’s a big state,” Bob stammered.
“One of the biggest,” Phoenix chipped in, using her hands to emphasise size. Flick got the impression Phoenix was enjoying watching her squirm.
Flick put her phone down on the coffee table and gratefully accepted a wad of napkins from Bob to mop up the mess she had made.
“So who – I mean, what did you do in Texas?” Phoenix enquired, oh so sweetly.
Flick opened her mouth to respond but was rudely cut off by the voice of Ryan Tedder. Her phone was ringing, Rescue Me by OneRepublic blaring from its small but mighty speaker. Both Phoenix and Bob looked towards the sound, and Flick realised she had made the rookie mistake of leaving her phone screen side up.
The call was from her health insurance company, which she was all too happy to ignore, but the photo on her lock screen had already captured the pilots’ attention.
Jake. Cross-legged on the grass in front of her mother’s condo, with Kodak, her mother’s puppy, bundled up in his arms. He was wearing a Dallas Cowboys baseball hat, white polo neck, pristine trainers and blue shorts that marked his return to the Cali climate. Flick had taken the photo the day they got back from their trip; Kodak had bounded out of the door and down the steps to greet them both, followed by her mum, whom Jake had immediately charmed.
“Flick, why have you got Hangman on your - Ohhhh.” Bob’s eyes were wide and Flick could almost see him connecting the dots behind the lenses of his glasses.
Phoenix grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Atta girl.”
“You knew?!” Bob accused, rounding on Phoenix.
“I tried to warn her Bob,” she joked, hands up in surrender. “Not my fault if she didn’t listen.”
Flick blushed. “Well, when a fit Top Gun pilot offers to take you on a guided tour of Texas with the promise of his grandmother's pecan pie… you don’t exactly say no.”
She gave them a brief rundown of their trip, deliberately mentioning all the thoughtful and kind and wonderful things that Jake had done to make it special. She enjoyed the varied expressions of surprise and disbelief that flickered across their faces.
“So I suppose you were right Bob,” she concluded with a merry twinkle in her eye. “Hangman and I did ‘bump’ into each other in Texas. Repeatedly.”
Phoenix snorted.
“We’re happy for you both,” Bob said warmly.
“Does he know you’re here?” Phoenix asked.
“No, he left before I woke up. I didn’t find out about this trip until I got to work.”
Phoenix and Bob shared a glance, catching Flick’s mention of Jake sleeping over.
“You want to surprise him?” said Phoenix. “We could go up to the tower and radio in?”
“Is that allowed? I mean, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“We’ll vouch for you,” promised Bob.
“He won’t be too distracted?”
“Oh I didn’t think of that,” Phoenix said, grinning. “All the more reason to give the mighty Bagman a call. Let’s go.”
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“Wow! Is that them out there? Which one is Jake?”
Bob pointed out the jets in the distance, describing the shapes and colours to look out for to keep track of Jake’s F-18.
Phoenix explained that they were test-running common dogfight training exercises, taking turns to be the pursuers and the pursued. In their current round, Jake was acting as wingman to Payback and Fanboy, and Omaha was on the hunt.
Flick felt like a teenager that had been invited backstage at her favourite band’s concert. She did her best not to turn into a squealing fan girl, but couldn’t help reacting animatedly every time Jake’s jet swooped and dived. She gasped when he did a front-ended loop and dropped her jaw completely when he flew in tandem with Omaha, hovering above him with exact synchronicity, yet completely upside down.
Bob fiddled with a few controls and then turned up the speakers. Jake’s voice filled the tower.
“How’s it hanging Omaha?”
“Stealing Maverick’s tricks again I see,” Omaha retorted.
“Just asserting my dominance.”
“Like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant,” Fanboy laughed.
“Dick joke, classy” replied Jake.
Phoenix threw Flick a wink and leaned into the mic. “Bagman please repeat. Your dick is a joke?”
Payback cut in. “You guys are worse than my 9th-grade cousins. Real mature.”
“Chill Payback, Fanboy and Phoenix are just jealous cause mine’s bigger.” Jake hollered. He tipped his jet to the side and did a wrap barrel roll around Omaha, before levelling up and punching the accelerator to outstrip the other planes, leaving Omaha cursing in his wake.
“Reckon Maverick could learn a trick or two from me,” he gloated. “I’m calling that one the noose.”
“God, he’s a prat isn’t he?” Flick laughed.
“Now you know what the rest of us have to put up with,” said Phoenix.
“You have my full sympathy,” Flick replied though she didn’t really mean it. She loved hearing Jake like this; the boyish joy in his voice. This was Jake at his best, doing the thing he loved and excelled at most and revelling in self-confidence. Call it ego, bravado or cockiness (Flick called it pure sex appeal), it was nothing less than pure Jake.
His laughter filled the tower once again. “Sometimes you’ve just got to bow down to the King.”
If Jake was the king of the sky then Flick wanted to be his queen.
Bob signalled for Flick to step up to the mic and showed her which button to press. She leant in.
“Blimey, meeting one Brit is all it takes to turn an American pilot into a monarchist, who knew? We’d better not tell the President.”
“Flick? Is that you?” Jake asked.
“The one and only.”
“Who’s Flick?” Omaha questioned, but Jake cut over him.
“It’s good to hear your voice babe.”
“Babe? Really Hangman? Have some respect,” Payback scolded.
“She likes it,” Jake said. Confident, possessive. Knicker-fucking-dropping.
“Oh shit! You two are a thing!” Fanboy realised.
Flick chuckled. “What can I say, Texan pilots are my kryptonite. Though I appreciate the sentiment Payback.”
“One of us has to keep chivalry alive and kicking.”
“As is your duty as the team’s Dad,” Jake quipped. “I hope you’re enjoying the show darlin’?”
“I certainly am. Though I thought it was strictly callsigns on this thing?” Flick mused.
“Apologies Teacup,” Jake said. Flick could hear the twinkle of delight in his voice.
“Teacup? Who’s Teacup? What the fuck is going on?” Omaha exclaimed, slightly flustered and definitely irritated.
“She’s my secret weapon,” Jake said. “Pulling up Payback. Fanboy, target lock in 20.”
“Roger that.”
“Let’s turn and burn.”
Jake launched his jet straight up into the sky, climbing and climbing until he was barely visible, then twisted mid-flight, soaring across the horizon in a majestic arc. Flick was sure her heart was in the plane with him.
At the same time, Payback was hot on Omaha’s tail, flitting and buzzing around his opponent like a wasp. He wound up Omaha’s frustration and quickly managed to lure him into flying into direct sunlight. It was then that Jake appeared, ending his tour of the heavens and cruising head-on towards Omaha’s F-18. Omaha dove away quickly enough to avoid Jake’s missile tone, but Fanboy and Payback were lying in wait.
“Holy shit that was incredible!” Flick gasped, not realising the comms were still on.
“Target lock - That’s a kill Omaha,” Fanboy said. The wasp always comes back.
“Flick distracted me!”
“You’ve got to be prepared for all eventualities up here in the sky,” Jake gloated. “Teacups, flying saucers…”
Omaha just groaned. Payback laughed heartily.
“Thank you for your service, Felicity.”
“It’s been an honour.”
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Flick watched Jake land and then rushed down to the jet bays to greet him, her kitten heels skipping over the concrete.
Jake jumped down from his jet and gave the metal three knocks, just like he always did with the bonnet of his Mustang. He beamed at the sight of her.
“Very impressive Lieutenant Seresin,” Flick said, nodding to the decal of his name along the plane’s nose.
“It’s Lieutenant Commander now, actually,” he said, puffing up his chest. “If we’re being pedantic.”
Flick gawked at him. “You’ve been promoted?!”
“Got told this morning. I guess saving lives was all worth it for the fancy title,” he winked.
“Oh, Jake that’s amazing! I’m so happy for you!” Flick half-bounced forwards with the intention of giving him a hug but caught and stopped herself a split second later, remembering where she was. Jake chuckled and she blushed, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Well, congratulations Lieutenant Commander.”
Jake stepped closer and Flick noticed his eyes drop to her lips. “Sounds pretty damn good when you say it.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “Sounds fucking hot actually.”
She felt her eyebrows disappear into her hairline. Was he saying what she thought (and prayed) he was saying? Did Jake Seresin have a rank kink? And, if he did, then perhaps he might enjoy living up to his new title in the bedroom as well as the sky…
“Good to know,” she said, reaching out to adjust a twisted strap on his flight suit. “Does this mean you get to tell the others what to do?” She enquired, her voice lilting from attempting to sound nonchalant.
Jake shook his head. “I wish. Those guys wouldn’t do what I asked even if I paid them.”
“That’s a shame.” Flick took a breath. “Maybe I’ll let you take control tonight, to make up for it? Do you think you would be into that?”
Realisation dawned on Jake’s features slowly. Once the dominoes eventually fell into place, his mouth was left agape. He groaned.
“Babe, you have no idea how badly I want to kiss you right now.”
The sound of approaching footsteps caused them to spring apart to a more professional distance. A few ground support staff crossed in front of the plane’s nose and glanced their way.
“So! This is my jet,” Jake said sunnily, in case someone was listening in.
“Really? I thought it was a double-decker bus.”
Jake rolled his eyes and laughed. He began showing her around the plane, talking about speed, power and thrust. He explained how it was the pinnacle of American naval engineering, and how only a select few men and women were deemed good enough to fly the model.
It was so clear to Flick that aviation was Jake’s true vocation. His jet was his pride and joy, flying was his freedom. Every accolade was hard-earned and well-deserved. He was a pilot through and through; Flick couldn’t imagine him being anything else.
“Would you believe me if I said sometimes I feel safer up in the sky than I do on the ground?”
She could understand that too. In his F-18, Jake was in total control, he only had himself to rely on and trust. And when you know you’re the best of the best, that’s pretty easy to do.
Flick was desperate to kiss him. She was so high on lust and admiration at the same time. But she knew she couldn’t, not while he was in uniform, not at his place of work. She would never do anything to jeopardise his position. It was Jake who let his fingers dance across hers occasionally, who dared to stand a little too close. But she wondered if eventually the hedonistic need to strip him out of his flight suit would become too strong to fight off.
Already her imagination was running away with itself. Dreaming of how his big warm hands might grip at her lingerie or press against her neck, stealing her breath as he fucked into her, thick and deep, telling her how pretty she looked, what a good girl she was, taking her Commander’s cock so well, then rewarding her with a press of her vibrator until she practically passed out.
Flick could feel the blood rush to her cheeks and an ache deepened between her legs. She wanted Jake to take her, own her, possess her.
“Professor March?”
Flick snapped out of her reverie and spun around to find one of her students shuffling nervously on their feet.
“I was told to let you know that the bus leaves in 15 minutes.”
Flick looked across the airstrip to see that her fellow professors and the rest of the class congregated by the fence.
“Of course - I’ll be right over.”
The student hovered, hesitating, looking between them, not sure if Flick was going to follow.
Flick switched to Professor mode and turned to Jake, hand outstretched. “Thank you for showing me around the jets, Lieutenant Commander Seresin. It’s been very informative, I can certainly see how all of this can tie into my lectures.”
Jake smiled knowingly and shook her hand. “My pleasure, Professor March.”
“My flat at 8?” she said, dropping her voice once her student was out of earshot. “I might have an idea for how we can celebrate your promotion.”
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Part 2
As always, reblogs and comments are deeply appreciated!
Masterlist
Taglist: @emma8895eb @shanimallina87 @potato-girl99981
Also tagging people who interacted with my previous fic: @themusingofagothicsoul @entertainmentgal8 @the-philthepill13 @ssprayberrythings @lovelyglitterymoon
Please let me know if you would like to be added/removed!
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What the fediverse (does/n't) solve
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No matter how benevolent a dictatorship is, it’s still a dictatorship, and subject to the dictator’s whims. We must demand that the owners and leaders of tech platforms be fair and good — but we must also be prepared for them to fail at this, sometimes catastrophically.
That is, even if you trust Tim Cook to decide what apps you are and aren’t allowed to install — including whether you are allowed to install apps that block Apple’s own extensive, nonconsensual, continuous commercial surveillance of its customers — you should also be prepared for Cook to get hit by a bus and replaced by some alt-right dingleberry.
What happens next is a matter of technology and law. It’s a matter of whether you have to give up your media and your apps and your data to escape the no-longer-benevolent dictatorship. It depends on whether the technology is designed to let you move those things, and whether the law protects you from tech companies, or whether it protects tech companies from *you, by criminalizing jailbreaking, reverse engineering, scraping, etc.
As thorny as this is, it’s even harder when we’re talking about social media, because it’s social. Sociability adds a new and pernicious switching cost, when we hold each other hostage because we can’t agree on when/whether to go, and if we do, where to go next. When the management of your community goes septic, it can be hard to leave, because you have to leave behind the people who matter to you if you do.
We’ve all been there: do you quit your writers’ circle because one guy is being a jerk? Do you stop going to a con because the concom tolerates a predator? Do you stop going to family Thanksgiving because your racist Facebook uncle keeps trying to pick a fight with you? Do you accompany your friends to dinner at a restaurant whose owners are major donors to politicians who want to deport you?
This collective action problem makes calamity of so long life. At the outer extreme, you have the families who stay put even as their governments slide into tyranny, risking imprisonment or even death, because they can’t bear to be parted from one another, and they all have different views of how bad the situation really is:
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/12/the-oppermanns-book-holocaust-nazi-fascism/672505/
The corporate person is a selfish narcissist, a paperclip-maximizing artificial lifeform forever questing after its own advantage. It is an abuser. Like all abusers, it is keenly attuned to any social dynamic that it can use to manipulate its victims, and so social media is highly prized by these immortal colony-organisms.
You can visit all manner of abuses upon a social network and it will remain intact, glued together by the interpersonal bonds of its constituent members. Like a kidnapper who takes your family hostage, abusers weaponize our love of one another and use it to make us do things that are contrary to our own interests.
In “Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media,” Cat Valente is characteristically brilliant about this subject. It is one of the best essays you’ll read this month:
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
Valente is on the leading edge of creators who were born digital — whose social life was always online, and whose writing career grew out of that social life. In 2009, she posted her debut novel, “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making” to the web for free. Two years, and many awards, later, Macmillan brought it out in hardcover:
https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/10/valentes-girl-who-circumnavigated-fairyland-sweet-fairytale-shot-through-with-salty-tears-magic/
“Stop Talking to Each Other” is a memoir wrapped around a trenchant, take-no-prisoners critique of all the robber-barons who’ve made us prisoners to one another and fashioned whips out of our own affection for one another and the small pleasures we give each other.
It begins with Valente’s girlhood in the early 1990s, where Prodigy formed a lifeline for her lonely, isolated existence. Valente — a precocious writer — made penpals with other Prodigy users, including older adults who assumed they were talking to a young adult. These relationships expanded her world, uplifting and enriching her.
Then, one day, she spotted a story about Prodigy in her dad’s newspaper: “PRODIGY SAYS: STOP TALKING TO EACH OTHER AND START BUYING THINGS.” The headline floored her. Even if Valente wanted to buy the weird grab-bag of crap for sale at Prodigy in 1991, she was a 12 year old and had no way to send internet money to Prodigy. Also, she had no money of any sort.
For her, the revelation that the owners of Prodigy would take away “this one solitary place where I felt like I mattered” if she “didn’t figure out how to buy things from the screen” was shocking and frightening. It was also true. Prodigy went away, and took with it all those human connections a young Cat Valente relied on.
This set the pattern for every online community that followed: “Stop talking to each other and start buying things. Stop providing content for free and start paying us for the privilege. Stop shining sunlight on horrors and start advocating for more of them. Stop making communities and start weaponizing misinformation to benefit your betters.”
Or, more trenchantly: “Stop benefitting from the internet, it’s not for you to enjoy, it’s for us to use to extract money from you. Stop finding beauty and connection in the world, loneliness is more profitable and easier to control. Stop being human. A mindless bot who makes regular purchases is all that’s really needed.”
Valente traces this pathology through multiple successive generations of online community, lingering on Livejournal, whose large community of Russian dissidents attracted Russian state-affiliated investors who scooped up the community and then began turning the screws on it, transforming it into a surveillance and control system for terrorizing the mutual hostages of the Russian opposition.
Valente and her friends on the service were collateral damage in the deliberate enshittification of LJ, band the Russian dissidents had it worse than they did, but it was still a painful experience. LJ was home to innumerable creators who “grew audiences through connections and meta-connections you already trusted.”
Most importantly, the poisoning of LJ formed a template, for how to “[take] apart a minor but culturally influential community and develop techniques to do it again, more efficiently, more quickly, with less attention.”
It’s a template that has been perfected by the alt-right, by the Sad Puppies and the Gamergaters and their successor movements. These trolls aren’t motivated by the same profit-seeking sociopathy of the corporate person, but they are symbiotic with it.
Valente lays out the corporate community’s lifecycle:
Be excited about the internet, make a website!
Discover that users are uninterested in your storefront, add social features.
Add loss-leaders to “let users make their own reasons to use the site” (chat, blogs, messaging, etc), and moderate them “to make non-monster humans feel safe expressing themselves and feel nice about site.”
The site works, and people “[use] free tools to connect with each other and learn and not be lonely and maybe even make a name for themselves sometimes.”
The owners demand that users “stop talking and start buying things.”
Users grow disillusioned with a site whose sociability is an afterthought to the revenue-generation that is supposed to extract all surplus value from the community they themselves created.
The owners get angry, insult users, blanket the site with ads, fire moderators, stoke controversy that creates “engagement” for the ads. They sell user data. They purge marginalized community that advertisers don’t like. They raise capital, put the community features behind a paywall, and focus so hard on extraction that they miss the oncoming trends.
“Everyone is mad.”
“Sell the people you brought together on purpose to large corporation, trash billionaire, or despotic government entity who hates that the site’s community used those connective tools to do a revolution.”
The people who “invested their time, heart, labor, love, businesses and relationships” are scattered to the winds. Corporate shareholders don’t care.
Years later, the true story of how the site disintegrated under commercial pressures comes out. No one cares.
The people who cashed out by smashing the community that created their asset are now wealthy, and they spend that wealth on “weird right-wing shit…because right-wing shit says no taxes and new money hates taxes.”
This pattern recurs on innumerable platforms. Valente’s partial list includes “Prodigy, Geocities, collegeclub.com, MySpace, Friendster, Livejournal, Tumblr,” and, of course, Twitter.
Twitter, though, is different. First, it is the largest and most structurally important platform to be enshittified. Second, because it was enshittified so much more quickly than the smaller platforms that preceded it.
But third, and most importantly, because Twitter’s enshittification is not solely about profit. Whereas the normal course of a platform’s decline involves a symbiosis between corporate extraction and trollish cruelty, the enshittification of Twitter is being driven by an owner who is both a sociopathic helmsan for a corporate extraction machine and a malignant, vicious narcissist.
Valente describes Musk’s non-commercial imperatives: “the yawning, salivating need to control and hurt. To express power not by what you can give, but by what you can take away…[the] viral solipsism that cannot bear the presence of anything other than its own undifferentiated self, propagating not by convincing or seduction or debate, but by the eradication of any other option.”
Not every platform has been degraded this way. Valente singles out Diaryland, whose owner, Andrew, has never sold out his community of millions of users, not in all the years since he created it in 1999, when he was a Canadian kid who “just like[d] making little things.” Andrew charges you $2/month to keep the lights on.
https://diaryland.com/
Valente is right to lionize Diaryland and Andrew. In fact, she’s right about everything in this essay. Or, nearly everything. “Almost,” because at the end, she says, “the minute the jackals arrive is the same minute we put down the first new chairs in the next oasis.”
That’s where I think she goes wrong. Or at least, is incomplete. Because the story of the web’s early diversity and its focus on its users and their communities isn’t just about a natural cycle whereby our communities became commodities to be tormented to ruination and sold off for parts.
The early web’s strength was in its interoperability. The early web wasn’t just a successor to Prodigy, AOL and other walled gardens — it was a fundamental transformation. The early web was made up of thousands of small firms, hobbyists, and user groups that all used the same standard protocols, which let them set up their own little corners of the internet — but also connected those communities through semi-permeable membranes that joined everything, but not in every way.
The early web let anything link to anything, but not always, which meant that you could leave a community but still keep tabs on it (say, by subscribing to the RSS feeds of the people who stayed behind), but it also meant that individuals and communities could also shield themselves from bad actors.
The right of exit and the freedom of reach (the principle that anyone can talk to anyone who wants to talk to them) are both key to technological self-determination. They are both imperfect and incomplete, but together, they are stronger, and form a powerful check on both greed and cruelty-based predation:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go
Small wonder that, from the beginning, the internet has been a fight between those who want to build a commons and those who wish to enclose it. Remember when we were all angry that the web was disappearing into Flash, the unlinkable proprietary blobs that you couldn’t ad-block or mute or even pause unless they gave you permission?
Remember when Microsoft tried, over and over again, to enclose the internet, first as a dial-up service, then as a series of garbage Windows-based Flash-alikes. Remember Blackbird?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(online_platform)
But standard protocols exert powerful network effects on corporations. When everyone is adhering to a standard, when everything can talk to everything else, then it’s hard to lure users into a walled garden. Microsoft coerced users into it by striking bargains with buyers at large companies to force its products on all their employees, and then by breaking compatibility with rival products, which made it hard for those employees to use another vendor’s products in their personal lives. Not being able to access your company email or edit your company documents on your personal device is a powerful incentive to use the same product your company uses.
Apple, meanwhile, seduced users into its walled garden, promising that it would keep them safe and that everything would just work, and then using its power over those customers to gouge them on dongles and parts and repair and apps.
Both companies — like all corporations — are ferocious rent-seekers, but both eventually capitulated to the internet — bundling TCP and, eventually, browsers with their OSes. They never quit trying to enclose the web, via proprietary browser extensions and dirty tricks (Microsoft) or mobile lock-in and dirty tricks (Apple). But for many years, the web was a truly open platform.
The enclosure of online communities can’t be understood without also understanding the policy choices that led to the enclosure of tech more broadly. The decision to stop enforcing antitrust law (especially GWB’s decision not to appeal in the Microsoft antitrust case) let the underlying platforms grow without limits, by buying any serious rival, or by starving it out of existence by selling competing products below cost, cross-subidizing them with rents extracted from their other monopoly lines.
These same policies let a few new corporate enclosers enter the arena, like Google, which is virtually incapable of making a successful product in-house, but which was able to buy others’ successes and cement its web dominance: mobile, video, server management, ad-tech, etc.
These firms provide the substrate for community abusers: apps, operating systems and browser “standards” that can’t be legally reverse-engineered, and lobbying that strengthens and expands those “Felony Contempt of Business Model” policies:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership
Without these laws and technologies, corporations wouldn’t be able to block freedom of exit and freedom of reach. These laws and technologies let these corporations demand that the state obliterate anyone who gives users the tools to set their own terms for the communities they built.
These are the laws and technologies that transform network effects from a tool for openness — where even the largest, most vicious corporations must seek to pervert, rather than ignore, standards — into a tool for enclosure, where we are all under mounting pressure to move inside a walled garden.
This digital feudalism is cloaked in the language of care and safety. The owners of these walled gardens insist that they are benevolent patriarchs who have built fortresses to defend us from external threats, but inevitably they are revealed as warlords who have built prisons to keep us from escaping from them:
https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/
Which brings me to the Fediverse. The Fediverse’s foundation is a standard called ActivityPub, which was designed by weirdos who wanted to make a durably open, interoperable substrate that could support nearly any application. This was something that large corporations were both uninterested in building and which they arrogantly dismissed as a pipe dream. This means that Activitypub is actually as good as its architects could make it, free from boobytraps laid by scheming monopolists.
The best-known Fediverse application is Mastodon, which has experienced explosive growth from people who found Musk’s twin imperatives to cruelty and extraction sufficiently alarming that they have taken their leave of Twitter and the people they cared about there. This is not an easy decision, and Musk is bent on making it harder by sabotaging ex-Twitter users’ ability to find one another elsewhere. He wants the experience of leaving Twitter to be like the final scene of Fiddler On the Roof, where the villagers of Anatevka are torn from one another forever:
https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf
With Mastodon’s newfound fame comes new scrutiny, and a renewed debate over the benefits and drawbacks of decentralized, federated systems. For example, there’s an ongoing discussion about the role of quote-tweeting, which Mastodon’s core devs have eschewed as conducive to antisocial dunks, but which some parts of Black Twitter describe as key to a healthy discourse:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/12/21/Mastodon-Ethics
But quote tweeting wasn’t initially a part of Twitter. Instead, users kludged it, pasting in text and URLs for others’ tweets to make it work. Eventually, Twitter saw the utility of quote-tweeting and adopted it, making it an official feature.
There is a possibility that Mastodon’s core devs will do the same, adding quote-tweet to the core codebase for Mastodon. But if they don’t, the story isn’t over. Because Mastodon is free software, and because it is built on an open standard, anyone can add this feature to their Mastodon instance. You can do this yourself, or you can hire someone else to do it for you.
Now, not everyone has money or coding skills — but also, not everyone has the social clout to convince a monolithic, for-profit corporation to re-engineer its services to better suit their needs. And while there is a lot of overlap between “people who can code,” and “people who can afford to pay coders” and “people whom a tech company listens to,” these are not the same population.
In other words: Twitter is a place where you get quote-tweeting if the corporation decides you need it, and Mastodon is a place where you get quote-tweeting if the core devs decide you need it, or if you have the skills or resources to add it yourself.
What’s more, if Mastodon’s core devs decide to take away a feature you like, you and your friends can stand up your own Mastodon server that retains that feature. This is harder than using someone else’s server — but it’s way, way easier than convincing Twitter it was wrong to take away the thing you loved.
The perils of running your own Mastodon server have also become a hot topic of debate. To hear the critics warn of it, anyone who runs a server that’s open to the public is painting a huge target on their back and will shortly be buried under civil litigation and angry phone-calls from the FBI.
This is: Just. Not. True. The US actually has pretty good laws limiting intermediary liability (that is, the responsibility you bear for what your users do). You know all that stuff about how CDA230 is “a giveaway to Big Tech?” That’s only true if the internet consists solely of Big Tech companies. However, if you decide to spend $5/month hosting a Mastodon instance for you and your community, that same law protects you.
Indeed, while running a server that’s open to the public does involve some risk, most of that risk can be contained by engaging in a relatively small, relatively easy set of legal compliance practices, which EFF’s Corynne McSherry lays out in this very easy-to-grasp explainer:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer
Finally, there’s the ongoing debate over whether Mastodon can (and should) replace Twitter. This week on the Canadaland Short Cuts podcast, Jesse Brown neatly summarized (and supported, alas) the incorrect idea that using Mastodon was no different from using Gab or Parler or Post.
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/843-god-save-the-tweets/
This is very, very wrong. The thing is, even if you like and trust the people who run Gab or Parler or Post, you face exactly the same risk you face with Twitter or Facebook: that the leadership will change, or have a change of heart, and begin to enshittify your community there. When they do, your only remedy will be the one that Valente describes, to scatter to the winds and try and reform your community somewhere else.
But that’s not true of the Fediverse. On Mastodon, you can export all your followers, and all the people who follow you, with two clicks. Then you can create an account on another server and again, with just two clicks, you can import those follows and followers and be back up and running, your community intact, without being under the thumb of the server manager who decided to sell your community down the river (you can also export the posts you made).
https://codingitwrong.com/2022/10/10/migrating-a-mastodon-account.html
Now, it’s also true that a particularly vindictive Mastodon server owner could summarily kick you off the server without giving you a chance to export your data. Doing so would arguably run afoul of the GDPR and state laws like the CCPA.
Strengthening these privacy laws would actually improve user rights — unlike abolishing CDA 230, which would simultaneously make the corporate owners of big services more trigger-happy when it comes to censoring content from marginalized groups, and make it all but impossible for those groups to safely run their own servers to decamp to when this happens.
Letting people set up their own communities, responsible to one another, is the tonic for Valente’s despair that the cycle of corporate predation and enshittification is eternal, and that people who care for one another and their communities are doomed to be evicted again and again and again and again.
And *federating these communities — creating semi-permeable membranes between them, blocking the servers for people who would destroy you, welcoming messages from the like-minded, and taking intermediate steps for uneasy allies — answers Brown’s concern that Twitter is the only way we can have “one big conversation.”
This “one conversation” point is part of Brown’s category error in conflating federated media with standalone alternatives to Twitter like Post. Federated media is one big conversation, but smeared out, without the weak signal amplification of algorithms that substitute the speech of the people you’ve asked to hear from with people who’ve paid to intrude on your conversation, or whom the algorithm has decided to insert in it.
Federation is an attractive compromise for people like Valente, who are justly angry at and exhausted by the endless cycle of “entrepreneurs” building value off of a community’s labor and then extracting that value and leaving the community as a dried-out husk.
It’s also a promising development for antitrust advocates like me, who are suspicious of corporate power overall. But federation should also please small-government libertarian types. Even if you think the only job of the state is to enforce contracts, you still need a state that is large and powerful enough to actually fulfill that role. The state can’t hold a corporation to its promises if it is dwarfed by that corporation — the bigger the companies, the bigger the state has to be to keep them honest.
The stakes are high. As Valente writes, the digital communities that flourished online, only to be eradicated by cruelty and extraction, were wonderful oases of care and passion. As she says, “Love things. Love people. Love the small and the weird and the new.”
“Be each other’s pen pals. Talk. Share. Welcome. Care. And just keep moving. Stay nimble. Maybe we have to roll the internet back a little and go back to blogs and decentralized groups and techy fiddling and real-life conventions and idealists with servers in their closets.”
“Protect the vulnerable. Make little things. Wear electric blue eyeshadow. Take a picture of your breakfast. Overthink Twin Peaks. Get angry. Do revolutions. Find out what Buffy character you are. Don’t get cynical. Don’t lose joy. Be us. Because us is what keeps the light on when the night comes closing in.”
Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Heisenberg Media (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_-_The_Summit_2013.jpg
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
[Moses confronting the Pharaoh, demanding that he release the Hebrews. Pharaoh's face has been replaced with Elon Musk's. Moses holds a Twitter logo in his outstretched hand. Moses's head has been replaced with the head of Tusky, the Mastodon mascot. The faces embossed in the columns of Pharaoh's audience hall have been replaced with the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The wall over Pharaoh's head has been replaced with a Matrix 'code waterfall' effect.]
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jgroffdaily · 4 months
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Jonathan’s mother Julie attended last Saturday’s matinee and brought a group of locals from Lancaster, including LNP/Lancaster Online writer Mary Ellen Wright. Jonathan met the bus when it arrived in New York.
During the show Jonathan wrote ‘My mom is here’ on the piece of paper which Daniel later read out when it was auctioned for BCEFA. Julie stood up and waved when it was read out and mentioned the Lancaster group. From Facebook and Reddit.
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braceletstea · 1 month
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someone liked an ancient post (on my main blog) with the photo on the left and I thought maybe I could show off how much I've grown. The alt text describes it in more detail but I primarily want to draw your attention to the fact that I cropped off the tails and loops in the older photo because they looked bad and I knew they looked bad-- I hadn't learned yet that there was another way to start and finish my bracelets.
I was also using cheap string that I got for free off Facebook marketplace-- not that DMC embroidery floss is particularly fancy, but in 2018 I was mostly looking for a hobby that I could do on the bus and between classes.
I'm really proud of the fact that I've been making bracelets for so much of my life, and that I'm still learning new techniques and improving my craft.
At the same time, I'm really embarrassed that I let people pay me actual money for my bracelets back then.
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Chortle headlines.
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Some of these are interesting. I don't know if it bodes well if Paddy Young is the absolute best rookie comedians in all of Britain, but he definitely had a good show last year (that got streamed on NextUp from Edinburgh). I have trouble believing anyone wrote a show that's better than both Paul Foot's Dissolve and Ahir Shah's Ends, but to be fair, I haven't seen John Kearns' show and he is very fucking good at these things, makes me hope even more that he'll be doing something in Edinburgh while I'm there. Alex Horne got an award for Taskmaster being an outstanding achievement, not quite sure what that means but I think it's accurate. I think if you look up the definition of "breakthrough act" you'll just find a note that says "see Sam Campbell's career throughout 2023", so that couldn't really have gone any other way. I've heard Kiri Pritchard-McLean compere a bunch on NextUp things, she is in fact very good at clubs. I haven't seen any of the other nominees but I'm still sure that James Acaster deserved to win that best tour one. I couldn't stomach the amount of Celebrity Glamour in Joe Lycett's new show but he is a great comedian and he is definitely made to be a TV comedian, which in some ways could be an insult but I really mean it as a compliment, he's great at that, good for him. Munya Chawawa posts highly amusing song parodies on YouTube. Fern Brady's is one of the best comedian books I've read. Three Bean Salad I was unable to get into, but maybe I'll give it another shot sometimes, after I finish with the winners of that radio award, John and Elis - well done to them for getting over ten years and not completely falling apart. I usually find it hard to get into sketch comedy (or anything that isn't straight stand-up) but Lorna Rose Treen made me laugh with character things last summer, so she probably deserves that one.
Those are my unsolicited opinions on that. The existence of Taskmaster is definitely an outstanding achievement for all involved.
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This a special feature that happens every once in a while, called "Chortle publishes the contents of Daniel Kitson's mailing list". I find it gets funnier the less it sounds like Steve Bennett knows about the news items beyond the contents of the mailing list email, and in this case, that is clearly fuck all. But anyway, it's a great show and exciting announcement, anyone who has the opportunity should go see this tour. He said in the email that he might try to get something going in NYC later this year, which would be incredibly logistically difficult for me to get to (8.5-hour drive each way if I can borrow a car from someone, which would be tough, 14 hours on the bus otherwise, I've been told I can't take any more vacation days in 2024 because I used them on the London/Edinburgh trip), but still, I have found myself wondering how I might be able to make that work if he actually announces it.
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Fucking hell. I can't believe this. My local comedian Facebook group is going pretty wild in response to this news. That's fucking huge, a massive amount of stuff is centred around this. To be honest I'm still not clear on the scope of this news so I won't go into it too much, I'll just say, fucking hell. Truly shocking. That's like a sport just canceling its national championships halfway through the season.
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Excellent. Everyone should read this. His 2023 show (which I think he's still touring) is one of my favourite comedy shows ever. And the one before that, which inspired this book, is also very fucking funny, though not as good as his latest one.
Also, I am up for a trend of one comedian per year writing a book about their relatively recent autism diagnosis. Who do we think it'll be in 2025? I have approximately four to five suggestions.
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aprillikesthings · 7 months
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OKay so what I came here to post about is that while ONE trip to another country is just going to that country, now that I've done TWO international trips everyone (including myself) sees me as A Person Who Travels and I keep getting asked where I'm going next
And on the one hand it's a weird question, because both previous trips were just--
Iceland: Icelandair advertised a huge discount on direct flights on my facebook wall and made a thirty-year dream suddenly seem possible
Spain: I saw like an article? somewhere? about the Camino, read one memoir, then suddenly had a new hyperfixation and I proceeded to read fifteen more (barely exaggerated y'all) and watched a bunch of youtube videos and then asked for the time off and started training
So in neither case was it like, "oh where do I want to travel," it was like "the need to go to this specific place is suddenly consuming my life"
But on the other hand, I mean, I'm kinda thinking England a year from now? But those plans are REALLY hazy past like, "lol the British Museum has an Ea Nasir tablet gotta get a selfie with it" and "I hear Durham cathedral is gorgeous" and "Norwich is a short train ride from London and then I can visit sites associated with Julian of Norwich!!--what do you MEAN there's a three-day pilgrimage route to Walsingham??? 👀" (what can I say I'm a sucker for pilgrimages now)
TBH I just want someone else to arrange one of those multi-day bus tours of churches/cathedrals in England but for LGBT+ Anglicans!! Someone get on this!! (Jay Hulme has other things to do or he'd be perfect for it. God knows some of the churches on my list are because of his photos.)
Anyway.
I have to keep reminding myself that Spain is a huge outlier in Europe for being so inexpensive on a daily basis, plus being a pilgrim means my daily costs were literally food/bed in a hostel/a few euro for church donation boxes.
And I get that Iceland is well-known to be on the opposite end of that scale, but it still boggles the mind to compare them (all approximate):
Iceland for eight days
Flight: $500 Guesthouse room: $700 A few bus day tours + Blue Lagoon + bus to and from airport: uhhhh I think like $400 added up? Daily expenses of food/museums/souvenirs for eight days: $50/day on average, so another $400?
Total: $2,000
Spain:
Flight (into Paris, out of Lisbon) + insurance: $800 Daily cost, including hostels, food, souvenirs, sightseeing: averaged about $50 a day for 42 days total, so about $2100 Add another $100 for train/bus tickets (...I think it was more than that)
Total: $3,000
NINE DAYS in Iceland versus FORTY TWO days in (mostly) Spain.
(Okay, this is admittedly ignoring the fact that 1. I had to buy things I didn't already own for my Camino, like a backpacking backpack and a summer weight sleeping bag and TWO pairs of pricey hiking boots; OR 2. that I absolutely spent like $1,000 on physical therapy while training for the trip.)
They are just such wildly different countries. Museums in Iceland were all (US) $15-25. The cathedral's museum in Santiago (where I spent at least as much time as any of the museums in Iceland) was normally €7 but I got a discount for being a pilgrim. I think I paid €4, which is like $4.30.
Anyway none of this is about whether or not England is expensive, but I do assume it's closer to the Iceland end of things.
Especially since it's one thing to stay in hostels the whole time when you're on pilgrimage and everyone else at the hostel is too and everyone is in bed by 10pm because you're all exhausted. (Also because that's when they all lock their doors. No, really.) It's another thing to stay in a hostel in like...London. But the alternatives escalate in cost rather rapidly, especially when you're traveling alone. Oof.
ANYWAY ALSO the fact that I can afford to travel AT ALL is like 90% due to my having cheap-ass rent, no car, no kids, no student loans, and all my healthcare issues being relatively inexpensive. I've worked the same meh-paying job long enough for my hourly wage to double and to have fuck-tons of PTO. I'm 43 and I live in a run-down townhouse with three other adults and most of my furniture is all ten-year-old Ikea and I don't eat at restaurants hardly ever.
Any one part of my life could change and I would never be able to afford to do this kind of shit again.
Which is why I'm doing it now.
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