#I don't use reddit

[pastelsugar6w6]

[janmisali]

about tone indicators, what are your opinions on /uj?

not convinced it's a real thing

[brujahinaskirt]

arthur is rude to that one sex worker because the guys are fucking around as they oughtn't be and he actively wants the source of their distraction to go away. that is how he operates through the entire game: deliberate, utilitarian intimidation and strategic unpleasantness to achieve a goal. it is an early game commentary on arthur meant to position him as a big dog that barks. it is not a commentary on his views about women which are clarified many times afterward. you guys realize that right

[renthony]

The term “filler episode” is blatantly misused in fandom spaces and it's really goddamn annoying.

In the book "Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood: The Amazing Rapidly Evolving Relationship Between Hollywood and Japanese Animation, Manga, Television, and Film," by Northrop Davis, Davis explains the that concept of a “filler episode” in animation comes to us from anime adaptations of manga. Anime is frequently produced at a faster rate than manga, which means that anime adaptations of manga often have to come up with their own “filler” stories to slow down the pacing of the main narrative, because the manga isn’t finished yet.

"Filler" does not mean "low-stakes episode that doesn't progress the main plot." Filler does not mean "character moments that you did not like." "Filler" does not mean "anything that isn't breakneck-paced main plot."

It's a specific term and you are misusing it.

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

I love it when women hate men. I love it when women are allowed to vent to each other about how horrible and creepy men are. I love it when women form friendships with and prioritize each other over relationships with men(whether they're attracted to them or not). I love it when women put men dni in their bios and on their nude photos and on posts on their blogs. I love it when women refuse to mollycoddle and accommodate entitled male feelings with "but this doesn't mean I hate all men, I know a few men who are great, I love my father/sons/brothers/uncles/male cousins/guy friends" I love it when women complain about men WITHOUT "not all men" being a disclaimer. I love it when women avoid socializing with/refuse to be around/befriend/get close to men because they know men can't be trusted. I love it when women make "kill all men" jokes. I love it when women offer absolutely no concern or care for men's feelings and if their misandry offends men whatsoever because why should we, men are the oppressor class who have raped and killed and abused us and kept us as subjugated as second-class citizens for millennia, they regularly mistreat us and the women in their own marginalized communities still every single day and make this world so much harder and more awful for us to be in, and if we choose to hate them and not spare them any sympathy then so be it, and I don't just mean "men as a class" either, you can be a woman who doesn't want to have anything to do with any man on an individual basis and completely cuts off men from her personal life too and ykw I will love and fucking support you in that because men deserve absolutely NOTHING from us. If they're so tough and strong then they can handle it just like they can handle being lonely. If you are a woman who hates men, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A LESBIAN AND/OR A TRANS WOMAN, then just know that I love you. I love you, I support you, and you are safe here.

[inkskinned]

it is all chaos and entropy. the thing is that the chaos and entropy make it beautiful and lovely.

yes, it's true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is terrifying. i have lived through some of the unfairness - i got born like this, with my body caving into itself, with this ironic love of dance when i sometimes can't stand up for longer than 15 minutes. i am a poet with hands that are slowly shutting down - i can't hold a pen some days. recently i found a dead bird on our front porch. she had no visible injuries. she had just died, the way things die sometimes.

it is also true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is wonderful. the sheer happenstance that makes rain turn into a rainbow. the impossible coincidence of finding your best friend. i have made so many mistakes and i have let myself down and i have harmed other people by accident. nature moves anyway. on the worst day of my life she delivers me an orange juice sunset, as if she is saying try again tomorrow.

how vast and unknowing the universe! how small we are! isn't that lovely. the universe has given us flowers and harp strings and the shape of clouds. how massive our lives are in comparison to a grasshopper. the world so bright, still undiscovered. even after 30 years of being on this earth, i learned about a new type of animal today: the dhole.

chance echoing in my life like a harmony between two people talking. do you think you and i, living in different worlds but connected through the internet - do you think we've ever seen the same butterfly? they migrate thousands of miles. it's possible, right?

how beautiful the ways we fill the vastness of space. i love that when large amounts of people are applauding in a room, they all start clapping at the same time. i love that the ocean reminds us of our mother's heartbeat. i love that out of all the colors, chlorophyll chose green. i love the coincidences. i love the places where science says i don't know, but it just happens.

"the universe doesn't care about you!" oh, i know. that's okay. i care about the universe. i will put my big stupid heart out into it and watch the universe feast on it. it is not painful. it is strange - the more love you pour into the unfeeling world, the more it feels the world loves you in return. i know it's confirmation bias. i think i'm okay if my proof of kindness is just my own body and my own spirit.

i buried the bird from our porch deep in the woods. that same day, an old friend reaches out to me and says i miss you. wherever you go, no matter how bad it gets - you try to do good.

[asleepinawell]

snake eater theme music playing in the background

[infiniteglitterfall]

OMG, COULD EVERYONE PLEASE STOP IMMEDIATELY BELIEVING AND REPEATING DISINFORMATION?!

Sorry, I just. Was just on Twitter, and I snapped.

I literally haven't seen one true statement about Israel on social media in MONTHS.

It's gotten to the point that I'm seriously considering starting a sideblog fact-checking all of it.

PLEASE STOP BEING GARFIELD I AM BEGGING ALL OF YOU

BE NERMAL FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

I've written at least one really long post about fact-checking things before. I have another saved as a draft somewhere.

But all you really have to do at this point is GO LOOK AT AN ACTUAL NEWS SOURCE.

What do I mean by an Actual News Source?

An actual news source will tell you where it's getting its information.

Basically: Wikipedia rules apply at all times. Citation. Fucking. Needed.

Except with news articles, I don't mean a detailed footnote.

I mean, if they say, "Rosco Flubberish reported seeing a pig fly across Whatever Place. 'It was a flying pig,' he said," they're fine.

If they say, "Sources close to the President reported that the Department of Farmland Creatures launched a pig into the air this afternoon," they're fine.

If they say, "There have also been reports that pigs flew," they are purely making shit up.

Just check CNN or something. CNN checks their shit, and they're very quick on the draw.

NBC has been very reliable too, in my experience. So have ABC, Newsweek, the Jerusalem Post, the Guardian, the New York Times, the AP, PBS, the Washington Post, and Reuters.

You can break through most paywalls by putting archive.is or 12ft.io before the https:// of the URL. Or just go to either of those sites and paste the URL in the box.

Nobody is perfect. I've seen some articles from all of the above that were accurate, but left things out that I personally thought were important.

Journalists are humans, humans fuck up.

(Also, NONE OF THIS APPLIES TO OPINION PIECES ON ANY TOPIC. Opinion pieces are exactly that: opinions. They don't seem to be fact-checked anywhere, as far as I can tell. They range from super-accurate and informative to complete nonsense.)

(Surprisingly unreliable sources in my experience: Democracy Now, Jacobin, Workers World Party. The latter two act like news sites but are basically running nothing but opinion pieces; Democracy Now can do important deep dives, but I've also seen news coverage from it that was wildly misinformed in that same way.

On the flip side, Slate and the Atlantic are largely opinion -- the Atlantic more than Slate, maybe -- but they often have really well-researched analysis of political situations. Ditto Teen Vogue, and sometimes Vox.)

You don't have to read CNN or the NYT or whateverfor fun. You don't have to make it one of your news sources.

Just. Do a quick check on Google News before you assume anything is true, and then run it through a bullshit filter as described above.

You are being actively lied to, all the time. So am I. We all are.

And people will believe and repeat literally anything that sounds about right.

That's just human nature.

That is WHY none of us are immune to propaganda.

if you want my personal shortlist of Bad Sources, as in Sources That Consistently Publish Absolute Falsehoods:

Any and all state-owned or state-controlled media. For example:

Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government, and so are a bunch of other news sites.

Mehr News, the Tehran Times, Al-Quds TV, and Al-Alam are owned by the dictatorship of Iran.

Oops. Looks like every form of broadcast Iranian news media is owned by the dictatorship of Iran, which has a monopoly.

Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Palestinian News and Info Agency, and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida are owned by the government of Palestine (the Palestinian Authority)

Al-Aqsa TV and Felesteen are owned by Hamas.

TASS / Russia News Agency, Russia Today, and a fuckton of others are owned by the Russian government.

State Media Monitor seems to do a pretty great job of tracking and listing these things. Check out your own country there!

I specifically listed those ones because some of them (especially Al Jazeera, Mehr News, and TASS) are sites I've seen come up frequently on Tumblr, or in my attempts to fact-check what people are saying here and on Twitter. The rest are just more examples from the same governments.

Al Jazeera deserves special notice because it's become a very popular leftist news source. Believe me, I used to read it all the time too.

It can be reliable and accurate sometimes. But:

It consistently tweets things that are unsourced, never appear anywhere else, and that would be big news you'd expect it to follow up on if they were true. It seems to be following a strategy of "tweet every rumor you hear in case it's true, so you can get the scoop."

It also does this with its liveblogs of the war. And ALL its coverage of the war at this point is liveblogs. So things that are verifiably true will run right next to things that are complete hearsay, but are too long to just tweet.

This is especially dangerous because as far as I can tell, Al Jazeera doesn't delete anything that turns out to be false.

I've also seen regular news articles in Al Jazeera, on multiple topics, that veer from Absolutely True Statements to Wildly Exaggerated Numbers and Speculation. Stuff you wouldn't expect a source on, like statistics or descriptions. And there's no way to tell the difference unless you already know a topic really well, or are fact-checking them while you read.

One especially terrible example, from Gazan activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:

Al Jazeera has never posted or published a correction.

Alkhatib has also blamed it for destabilizing the region, although he's exaggerating about it being Hamas's official propaganda outlet:

TL;DR: If you see a Tumblr post making any kind of factual news statement without a link, at this point you need to assume it is absolutely not true. And either scroll on past, or go check Google News.

If there IS a link, you need to click through to see what it's from and what it actually says.

(Honestly, you need to do that with Wikipedia too. I've repeatedly clicked through on citations that absolutely did not say what the article implied they did.)

And pro tip: on mobile, you can just smack a button to sort Google's news results by most recent, and it helps A LOT. There's gotta be a way to do the same on desktop, but if there is, it's not immediately visible, which sucks.

[tategaminu]

I keep wondering how Reddit will react at future rayllum children like we know their view on female characters so Rayla having kids will make her even worse but what about Callum? Will they be happy because he got laid or jealous because they will never get laid themselves?

[pseudophan]

sitting here with my new phone faced with the reality that i have no fucking idea what half my logins are

[beagan-gaidhlig]

Duolingo’s decision to lay off thousands of human translators and replace them with AI has sparked a heated controversy. Critics argue that this move disregards the value and expertise that human translators bring to the table.

edit: Additional link (posted Jan 8th, 2024) - "About 10% of contractors were “offboarded,” a company spokesperson said Monday. “We just no longer need as many people to do the type of work some of these contractors were doing. Part of that could be attributed to AI,” the spokesperson said.

Chief Executive Officer Luis von Ahn said in a November letter to shareholders that the company is using generative AI — a technology that lets users more quickly create text, speech and images — to produce “new content dramatically faster,” such as the scripts to shows that help teach languages. The company also uses AI to generate voices within the app and has introduced a premium tier, Duolingo Max, with AI-generated feedback and conversations in other languages."

[coochiequeens]

Disabled men can know how to use their disability to be controlling

[wellfine]

Hey I found ur art uncredited on tik Tok

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMreQSnaw/

They said they "found it on Reddit" so they just decided to steal it and post it ig?? Ugh!!

Wow, that's a whole other repost to the one I thought it was going to be, lol. It's been reposted to TikTok once before, and I'm also not surprised this person got it from Reddit, where I doubt I was credited either.

At the end of the day I appreciate the heads up but there's nothing I can really do about it. The most helpful thing anyone can do is to leave comments on the reposts to provide credit,* because if artists ever try and comment then we pretty invariably get attacked. Don't be mean or aggressive, that just builds their animosity towards the artists, but I do think people respond positively to outside pressure to do the right thing 🤷

*Remember to make sure there's enough context - eg. something like "art by @ landegart on Twitter" is more searchable/useful than "artist is Landeg" to someone on TikTok who has no idea who I am haha

[fanvoidkeith]

i'm kinda debating on whether or not to take testosterone. like, if i could afford it and convince doctors that i really do want to take it

since my body isn't... masculine, and i hate having my period because it makes me want to stop existing, and i don't like having boobs, and i have dysphoria about my voice being so high pitched (my voice is usually the reason that people misgender me), i probably would feel better if i went on t. but i also don't like change (autism & anxiety), and i'd rather have no genitalia at all than... uh, different genitalia. i'd rather have None Junk than Different Junk, but i don't think that's humanly possible, which sucks.

it makes me feel confused. plenty of transmasc people have gone on t- i know at least one person irl who is on t, and he's happy with the changes. but even though i don't really like my current body, i don't know if transitioning would make me happier.

i know it's my body and therefore my decision, but i'm really struggling to figure out if i would actually feel better about myself if i made the decision to go on testosterone. i feel happy when people gender me as a man (transmasc), but i also feel happy when people gender me as a person (nonbinary).

does anyone... have advice, on this? i just feel really lost right now about this stuff. and i don't know a lot of people who have transitioned/are transitioning, and asking people i know about their personal experiences with transitioning seems way too personal, because i don't know them very well and feel awkward about asking them things. and though several of my closer friends are also nonbinary, none of them have hormonally/physically transitioned, so i can't ask them about this stuff.

it's just something i think about a lot, in the back of my head, and i wonder if it's... the right decision, for me.

[mdzs-is-rotting-my-brain]

Battle on a Hill.

Being in fandom is so hard and frustrating sometimes. People can post the the simplest of posts sharing their opinion about a character only to get bullied by blogs and users with "I took out the trash in X-characters tag so you didn't have to" into apologizing.

People aren't allowed to have different likes and dislikes anymore? We all have to like the characters in the way you say we do? Why do you feel you have the right to control the conversation? Why do you feel entitled to control the entire narrative.

Some days it makes me wanna stop engaging in the fandom and just keep my own corner of the internet.

Some days I wanna be a bitch in the tags and reclaim some of the space we're allowed to have.

We're all allowed to have different views and opinions about characters. You are not the author. You have no right to control the conversation about anything.

Accept the fact that people look, think, feel, and believe differently than you and learn to be okay with that.

[thecultoflove]

DONT HUG ME IM MESMERIZED ??? RESTRUANT STYLE HYPNOSIS ??