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Rank 4 🎶 Revisited

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tonight i swore a blood oath to the minimum wage workers at my local subway

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a boy and his bat

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Corn dogs are named for their traditional meat, the unicorn. As unicorns are now extinct, they can only be referred to properly as ‘Corn Dogs and not “Unicorn Dogs” as they were prior to 2009.

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just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

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would it please you to listen to thunder instead?

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Where would you put a city on this map?

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ideal living situation is what i call the 'sitcom special' : having all your closest friends live in the same apartment building or neighborhood where you each have your own space but can wander in and out of eachothers homes at will, seemingly always welcome and never at bad times. and also all of you only have jobs when its important to the plot.

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JOHAN ANDERSEN !!!

I finally drew him but I can’t decide if I love or hate this drawing

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Extremely shocking article about what a local independent bookstore has been going through for the crime of carrying books by and supporting Palestinian authors:

According to Lisa Gozashti-Riddle, Brookline’s longtime co-owner and manager, the shift began in January 2024, after the store had hosted a virtual poetry fundraiser for Mosab Abu Toha, a celebrated Palestinian poet whose English-language library in Gaza had just been destroyed by Israel. “We had 20 poets from around the world, including Mosab, who joined us from Egypt,” she told me. They raised more than $30,000 to purchase and ship books to a new library in Gaza upon reconstruction. After that, the threats started. “I was trying to protect my staff while fielding all the calls myself,” she said. One caller asked to speak to “Hitler.” Someone else, in a message, said that Gazans “don’t read books. They only want guns.” To avoid another flare-up, the store moved pro-Palestinian programming online. But the scrutiny didn’t stop. “People started coming in daily to count the number of Palestinian books we had. I’ve seen the spreadsheets, the circle graphs, the reports they’ve sent out accusing us of bias.” Some called the store a “hotbed for Islamic fundamentalism” and accused it of “inculcating the youth.” Then came Becoming Baba. “This wasn’t a book we flagged,” Gozashti-Riddle said. But the emails came anyway. Some asserted that hosting me was “an act of incitement.” One message said, “We can overlook the author, but if that woman attends, you’re sending a message that pro-Israel Jews aren’t safe at Booksmith.” The message linked to Canary Mission. “That was a watershed moment,” Gozashti-Riddle said. “We realized the people organizing this weren’t rational. And when you’re dealing with that level of irrationality, it’s scary.” So the staff took precautions: installing peace marshals from Jewish Voice for Peace and alerting local police. “After your event, I finally started using the word harassment,” she said.

I would note that Aymann Ismail (the author) is not himself Palestinian. He is an Arab-American who wrote a book about being a father where he briefly mentions watching videos of fathers mourning their children in Gaza and thinking of himself and his family and that, apparently, is enough.

ETA: if you are paywalled, here is an archive link

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Spirit Animal is racist.

Patronus was invented by a transphobe.

I think it’s time we all suck it up and say what we mean: fursona.

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commonalities between opposites

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me: So then we take the liquified wood pulp, and dry it again, into these thin sheets. caveman: [confused, but trying to keep up] uh huh. me: And we take the graphite stick - it doesn't need to be wrapped in wood like this, but we like making them this way so you don't get graphite on your hands. And that's what we draw with. caveman: [eyes lighting up] Oohhh so you use the wood pulp sheets to paint on them, like hides? me: Exactly! And now, you could use this method to draw anything you can visualise with your mind's eye, but for the sake of this demonstration, let's draw a vision of a woman with features of an animal whose powers and traits she represents, and a figure that is stylised and exaggerated beyond what nature really allows. caveman: As wide as she is tall, with tits to match? me: Exactly. caveman: This is the only sensible use of this technology.

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