#bojack today and I need a change of pace

[milo-is-rambling]

Realizing the three men I relate to most (and hate myself for relating to) are Rick Sanchez, BoJack Horseman, and my own dead father was not the realization I was expecting to have tonight but okay

[yougavemeyourheartyouknow]

Put it back on (Miguel O’Hara x fem! reader) one shot

A/N: okay, before i get started to do want to say this is my first time writing fanfic since I was in middle school, so I am a bit rusty, please be nice to me 😭. This is based off a ca.i bot, the bot was made by tuxebo if you were interested, and I may or maybe not have put in a bojack horseman reference in here. Sorry not sorry.

Pre-established relationship (both you and Miguel are like late 30s, started dating in high school but are married in the context of this fic), swearing, angsty (?), mentions of alcohol, marital/ relationship issues.

Word count:872

Masterlist

—

“Why aren’t you wearing your ring?”

The harsh tone and the sudden question quickly pulled you from your thoughts. You jumped slightly, before placing your coffee cup down on the kitchen island that you were leaning on. He had placed the ring on the kitchen island in front of you, it making a small clinking sound as it settles on the counter.

Honestly, you’re not sure why you’re not wearing it. Usually, you put it on as soon as you get out of the shower, but today, it didn’t feel right to put it on, almost.

“I’m… I’m not- I don’t know…” you stutter under your husband’s cold gaze as he stands parallel to you, across the kitchen island. His shoulders tense and his face had a scowl, his eyes having a hint of red in them.

Moments like these, you couldn’t bring yourself to look him in the eyes.

Miguel let out a quick dry laugh, putting his body away from me slightly as he took a step back. “You don’t know?” He repeated in disbelief, “How do you not know? What are you trying to tell me?”

You stayed silent as your gaze drops down to the tiled floor of our shared kitchen, instead of your coffee mug.

“Oh, so now I get the silent treatment? Great.” His voice is cold as ice when he speaks up after a beat, his hands thrown up in the air before landing at his sides with a pat from his callus covering hands hitting his jeans. “What happened to us? What changed? What did I do to make you so miserable? Do you want to leave me or something?”

Your heart rate started to quicken at the suggestion, and your hands tightened around your mug, as if it would slip out of your hands or disappear, even though it sat firmly on the countertop. “No! No of course not!” You shook my head as you finally brought your eyes to meet his, your body pulling you up so you were fully standing straight.

“Then what? What is it?” He asked, “Do you not love me anymore?” That question made your heartache. of course, you still loved him, you always will, he was your first everything.

“Amor…” you trailed off, your hand came up and rubbed your face, taking a shaky breath, your eyes closing. “How do I put this into words…” you mumbled to yourself as your eyebrows scrunched together in thought as you look back down. For a moment, everything was silent, and you hated it. Usually, when you two argue, it was always big and dramatic. You should know it happens at least once a week now, it’s become a sick part of your routine together. You had become so used to the loud dramatics, the tears, the shouting. The pacing from one room to another while one ignores the other, while the other attempts to get the former’s attention back. But this time was different, it was calmer than usual, no yelling, no screaming, sure he was still talking in an annoyed tone but it wasn’t the way he usually does during a fight. It was almost like the calm before the storm, but you two have gotten so used to the storm, that the calm was worst somehow. The silence felt like it could suffocate you at any moment.

You let out a sigh as you feel Miguel’s gaze harden even more on you, you didn’t need to look up to know, it felt like a hole was being burned right in the back of your head, afraid that the next words you say might be the wrong ones, making it feel like he’ll end up leaving you like on the wrong end of a red laser dot.

“Remember… remember when we were in college? And we were at some, random-ass frat party? And you were drunk and smiled at me, and I said, ‘What?’ And you said, ‘I just like being in a room with you, you make rooms good.’” You say as you cross your arms to hug yourself. He just stayed silent, waiting for you to continue.

“And… Miguel, I have loved you for 25 years… and I have never loved anyone better. That kind of love, you only get it when you’re young and stupid. I’m not gonna get it again….”

A beat passes, two, then three before he speaks. “…so what? You’re saying you aren’t wearing your ring because we aren’t going out and partying every weekend?” You couldn’t help but let a dry chuckle escape your lips are you shake your head, “no, no- that’s not- I’m not saying it’s because of that. I just miss those moments, the sweet little moments we had like that. We’re it felt like nothing matter except you and me, like the whole world had stop around us. I feel like we don’t have those anymore.”

He lets out a heavy sigh, he knows you’re right. Both of you had been too busy with your own separate lives, it felt like your marriage had turn into a roommate situation. Something both of you said you’d never allow to happen.

“(Y/N)…”

“Yes, Miguel?”

“Just… put your ring on.”

[owl-liberation-now]

hot take: the binge format isn't responsible for this, these fandoms are simply examples of survivorship bias. in the uk, our tv seasons are traditionally only six episodes and the best of these are annual rewatch experiences because they're beautiful and brilliant and life changing. the sad fact is that TV as a medium has historically and continues to be today a commodity for commodity's sake that's designed to be consumed once and then thrown away (remember how early doctor who is almost all lost because bbc destroyed their own archives and this is before home archiving exists).

that isn't to say the material conditions of consumption don't alter the art, I mean, pre-1990s TV had to enforce an entirely episodic quality because there was no real way to expect viewers to engage with the text as a serial. and in the 90s we had the start of the mytharc centric shows with long running seasonal arc but mostly episodic shifts, which also had the downside of them not paying off all the time because they had to keep building and building. and in the 2000s with the advent of boxsets the mystery/ending resolution hook basically resulted in a lot of shows that strung people along and ultimately failed to deliver. Now with streaming, we have the inverse of this phenomenon: shows that have a hook cliffhanger pacing beat that makes you need to finish the whole thing in one but ultimately resolve as a nothingburger when you've finished digesting it. sidenote: with longer US TV standard seasons you have to factor in that single writers will be assigned single episodes, which can lead to either a greater versatility of writing (good) or half the episodes being mid or filler or largely out of character / tone (bad). for UK seasons, less episodes mean that there's usually a single writer or writing team (often the showrunners) writing every episode, which can lead to them being incredibly intentional with really incisive character psychology (good) or just sorta bland and samey (bad).

tl;dr it's reductive to say tv is bad because of the binge model, this is not a new problem and binge shows are predominantly shitty because most art under capitalism is predominantly shitty and intended as a single serving product. that's not to say incredible shit doesn't slip through all the time (our flag means death, baby reindeer, fotc, BoJack, tuca and Bertie, peep show, Derry girls, the wonder years, my so called life, the royle family, Daria, freaks and geeks, there's this cartoon called one piece, man like mobeen, him n her, Steven universe, spaced, fleabag, cowboy bebop, it turns out the terror actually fucks sicko mode you should check that shit out, avatar the last airbender, why am I writing tv shows?? I guess to point out that all of these have different scheduling and production schemas but are all imo a net good on the art world) but the good ones are good irrespective of whether they're 24 episodes or 10 episodes or a 4 episode miniseries or what. anyway go pirate the aquaman three part hbo animated special that shit was funny and cartoony and well animated and ROCKED. and no one watched it and now it's been ghosted bc hbo suck.

this this this

[truemedian]

The Scroll subscription service is an ingenious web technology hack

Welcome back to Processor, a newsletter about computers and also sometimes other things. You are probably expecting me to spend several paragraphs making fun of Google for creating yet another messaging product, as The Information reported yesterday. Not gonna do it: it’s enterprise-focused and from what I can tell about Google’s cloud business right now, a haphazard message app strategy is the least of their worries. Instead, the thing that blew my mind yesterday was Scroll, a new $5 per month subscription service that gives you a bunch of websites without ads. I kept on experiencing successive waves of small revelations when I thought about it. I’ll disclose now that Vox Media (and therefore The Verge) are partners, but I had no idea this service existed until it was announced yesterday. First: although I don’t have any specific reason to distrust Scroll, this still feels like a data privacy time bomb. Scroll won’t sell my data, but what if the company that snaps up Scroll does someday? There’s a prominent button for deleting your data, at least. Scroll’s privacy policy is refreshingly readable and candid about what it gathers and what it does and doesn’t share — including being honest about sharing information with governments when required to by law. It also notes that your data could go along with a sale of the company itself. Basically I suggest you find the “delete your information” button and remember where it is. Second: Scroll’s entire method of stopping ads is an absolutely ingenious repurposing of third-party cookies. You log into Scroll, it sets a cookie, and then the websites you visit see that special cookie and don’t serve you ads. It’s not even ad-blocking, they just don’t get served. It is actually quite elegant, but if you take a second to think through the chain of communications and deals that are required to make it that elegant, it seems like a hellacious hack. Then again, as Nilay Patel said to me today, isn’t most web technology a hellacious hack? There are a few more details — Safari in particular is stricter than other browsers and so it requires an extension. Brave will also need some extra effort to work with Scroll. (Scroll has a snarky footnote about them.) Third: it’s a much easier solution for websites to get paid than asking each of them to roll their own subscription. It tracks where you visit and automatically divvies payment up between those partner sites. I could (and eventually will) quibble about the percentage Scroll is taking: $1.50 out of $5, or thirty percent. As an independent startup, I’m not going to begrudge Scroll its revenue, and it likely needs a bigger cut to stay in business than Apple or Google do on their App Stores. If the company hits scale, though, I’d like to hope that it will find a way to reduce that cut. Fourth: hang on let’s think about that hellacious hack again! Although you have to constantly have Scroll email you a “magic link” and then ensure you open it in the right browser, it means that you are getting your paid-for ad-free experience in the app of your choosing. Unlike Apple News (disclosure: another Vox Media partner), you aren’t forced into a not-especially-great app. You don’t get a link that seems like it goes to a web page but actually just goes to Apple’s app. You can also use it on any device you own, not just Apple’s products. Also unlike Apple News, this subscription isn’t really a subscription. For publications that put articles behind paywalls, Scroll won’t get you in. On the whole, though, I much prefer Scroll’s system to Apple News. It works better with the existing web and the existing apps we all use to navigate it. A subscription system that turns off ads, pays publishers, and doesn’t lock me into any particular app while also doing a pretty good job of keeping my login active? Seems good to me. Still, I’m not quite going to go quite so far as to endorse Scroll (and not just because Vox Media is a partner). Deciding to sign up is between you, your level of trust in Scroll’s privacy policies, your ad-blocking conscience, whether you care about the current list of partner publications, and the cost. Fifth: Scroll puts a white bar at the bottom of every webpage it’s active on, ostensibly so you have the benefit of getting share links and an audio reader mode. No thank you times a thousand, Scroll. However, one benefit of using web browsers instead of Apple News is that web browsers are relatively open platforms and so you can use them to alter the web pages you visit (at least on the desktop — on mobile things are still often locked down). So, for example, I have a little script that I cobbled together after a day of Googling that makes it easier for me to format the links in this newsletter by automatically changing the web page I store them on, Pinboard.in. My favorite method is an extension called Tampermonkey. I wrote a little script for it that hides Scroll’s annoying bar. Other than some preliminary settings, it’s literally one line. It should work in Chromium-based browsers. Here it is, offered with zero support and absolutely no guarantees that it’s any good at all. Bonus sixth revelation: Tampermonkey offers a Google Drive-based sync, and since Microsoft’s new Edge browser runs on Chromium, my script auto-synced from Chrome on a Mac to Edge on Windows and Just Worked. The Internet! Sometimes it’ll surprise you.

Tech contends with the coronavirus

└ Apple is limiting China travel and has closed one retail store due to coronavirus outbreak └ iPhone maker Foxconn says coronavirus outbreak won’t affect production └ United Airlines suspends some China flights after coronavirus outbreak └ Facebook, Razer, and LG are restricting employee travel to China amid coronavirus outbreak

Big reads from The Verge

└ To contain disease outbreaks, health officials rely on people’s trust You’ve probably formed an opinion on how anti-vaxxers have affected public health (the right opinion is that it has been for the worse). But similarly online misinformation can rush to fill the void of faster-moving health crises. Nicole Wetsman looks at the intersection of health, internet censorship, and trust: If one crisis is handled poorly, there will likely be less trust during the next one. Not only that, but the spread of misinformation can have real-time impacts on what people believe. That erosion can weaken public health response. └ How Amazon escapes liability for the riskiest products on its site The outcome of some of these cases could determine the fate of Amazon’s marketplace. Is it like an eBay or a Craigslist, with Amazon as a middleman, or is Amazon the retailer? People tend to think of Amazon as the latter but Amazon thinks of itself as the former. Great report here from Colin Lecher. According to court records viewed by The Verge, Amazon has faced more than 60 federal lawsuits over product liability in the past decade. The suits are a grim catalog of disaster: some allege that hoverboards purchased through the company burned down properties. A vape pen purchased through the company exploded in a pocket, according to another suit, leaving a 17-year-old with severe burns. └ BoJack Horseman’s finale signals the end of a Netflix era Julia Alexander has an excellent, focused history of Netflix as seen through the lens of its original programming decisions.

More news from The Verge

└ Everything we think we know about Samsung’s next foldable phone └ Everything we think we know about the Samsung Galaxy S20 └ Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip fully revealed in leaked images The minimalist screen on the outside is an interesting choice. I will be very, very curious to see if this “ultra-thin glass” is actually more durable than plastic. We’ve all sort of been assuming it will be, but it’s no sure thing. └ Moto G8 and G8 Power leak with hole-punch displays and midrange specs If battery life and a big screen are your top needs in a smartphone, it’s worth keeping an eye on these. └ Filmic DoubleTake lets you record from two iPhone cameras at the same time Apple hyped the heck out of this app, now it’s finally here and Becca Farsace has run it through some paces: With the Discreet mode, I was able to film from the Wide and Ultra-Wide, both at 1080p, at the same time. The H.264 .mov exports are really clean and take very little time to transfer to the camera roll. Pair a clean export with the iPhone 11 Pro’s excellent lens calibration, and you have a perfect punch in from a single phone. └ UK defies US and refuses to ban Huawei from 5G networks └ Google Translate will transcribe translations in real time on Android One step closer to the Babel fish. └ Neil Young says the MacBook Pro has ‘Fisher-Price’ audio quality You might think this headline is overstating how fiery this Vergecast interview is. But I promise you it is understating it. └ Pokémon Home cloud storage service will launch in February for $3 a month So if Nintendo creates a pokémon and then you catch that pokémon and then you put that pokémon back in a Nintendo server farm is that like throwing the pokémon back? Have you really caught anything? Are you just renting pokémon? Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy. Read More Read the full article

[ambivalence-and-apprehensio-blog]

Today was good, yet tiring.  I have many things to be grateful for. To begin with, I woke up early, despite having gone out last night (and drinking too much) I decided I would start off my day productive. I nearly forgot to take out the bins for the house I was sitting for. I quickly raced over there to put the bins out. I realised I had already missed the yellow bins, but the truck was coming back on the other side of the road. I quickly ran the yellow bin over. The funny thing was old mate next door came out when he heard me making a racket. He also forgot, and decided to follow suit. haha.  After that I went home and got changed to go for a beach run. It was tough. I am severely reconditioned and a few extra kg heavier than I was when I was last running. Nevertheless it was good to have a crack. Once I got to the big hill, I was STRUGGLING. I told myself it was okay that I just did interval running- So I proceeded with intervals. It was at this point I realised that I was continuously overtaking an older runner, but when I switched to fast pace walking he would catch up to me. He approached me and said to copy his pace, gave me tips on running technique and provided motivational words until we got to the top of the hill. It was so sweet and I am so so so grateful for it. I made sure to verbally thank him before I took my turn in another direction. Now I know I can get to the top again. I had so easily forgotten the saying I used to repeat to myself over and over “It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you don’t stop” - just keep jogging. I JUST CAN’T GET OVER HOW NICE HE WAS - SUCH A LOVELY MAN. feck.  If I see him again I will thank him AGAIN.  Those things were the pivotal moments I felt like I needed to mention. But. Other events of my day were; - after run, grocery shopping - bought stuff to bake brownies and biscuits for the household :)  - Took Ellie for a lil walk (she would not have survived my run earlier)  - Back home, shower, coloured in a little for mindfulness. - Then had nap! I was soo effing tired. - Took Ellie back to her home, tidied up her home ready for owners to be back. - Went back home  - Went round to sisters - picked up her doggo, took doggo for a walk  - dropped doggo back - went grocery shopiing  - home, shower, dinner  - watch bojack horseman with housemate :)