#i legitimately got invested

[fictionadventurer]

It's been a couple of weeks since I watched The Perfect Game, but I'm still reeling from the fact that one of the best Catholic priest portrayals I've ever seen onscreen was played by Cheech Marin.

Can't wrap my head around it. Actual Cheech (of 'and Chong' fame) playing a kindly, lovable, devout Catholic priest who serves as mentor and friend and role model to this team of baseball-playing boys who take their faith seriously. He blesses the boys before every game. Teaches them doctrine while still encouraging their love of baseball. The faith is just part of their very human lives. I didn't think we could see it on-screen and especially never would have expected that casting.

[honeyroastednutcases]

ARE YOU OKAY DUDE

I’m all good, no worries! I’ve just gotten into other interests, and made like 3 different side blogs lol so I’m still very active and very much here and okay! Thanks so much for the concern, it’s very sweet!

Like I said, I’ve just been into other things, but chances are I’ll circle back to s&m at some point, so thank you for sticking around! 💛

[chaotic-minds-think-alike]

Our little dance soon became a losing battle. ---

I heard this audio on tiktok and had to make something inspired off of it

[1800duckhotline]

its so funny that like some of my ocs who i often labeled as "Unlabeled" orientation wise ended up just being kind of lesbians but in a weird and complex way lol

[captain-space-kin]

What the absolute FUCK did they put in the water this show hiatus, because it is making some parts of this community have the most RANCID vibes I’ve seen in a long time.

I was talking to some friends about this and was wondering if anyone else noticed this? Am I hallucinating?? Did they put toxic gas in the S2P2 leaks??? What is happening????

[manualaton]

While my parents keeping fox news on the TV 24/7 does cause me immense pychic damage, I do get to hear unhinged and very very stupid grifts sometimes which is fun (also depressing tho watching them manipulate the ill-informed and desperate)

[saltpepperbeard]

rare footage of me sitting in my boss’ office giving her all the campaign tea and ranting about david zaz (derogatory)

[savage-rhi]

Magenta 🤬

[positivelyapunovexponent-good]

it would be really cool if I could have a day this month where I wasn’t so chronically afraid it felt like my intestines were twisted into a möbius strip. Because ya’know- I really like my digestive tract being an orientable manifold. If that’s all the same to the universe.

[golden--doodler]

Out of nowhere, I had a dream last night that “The Amazing World of Gumball” movie actually came out. For some reason, Nicole and Richard were in live-action whilst Gumball and Darwin were their regular cartoon selves. And not only were they their regular cartoon selves, but they were also incredibly tiny. So small. I wanted to put them in my pocket. Anyway, the plot centered around Nicole and Richard trying to keep the fact that their children were cartoons hidden because if it was discovered that their children were different, they’d get taken away by CPS or something?? There was even a montage of them being a cute family together but Nicole and Richard are just super stressed about having to keep this big a secret from the entire town. And then right before I woke up, CPS actually came and I remember actually feeling really upset and afraid for them. Also, for some reason, Anais just wasn’t there? She didn't exist in this dream universe scenario I guess.

[dire-kumori]

I need you to know that I think it's sooo funny that ur fave character is Mike but the first fnaf fic you posted (to my knowledge) has Evan as the main character with ghost(/time travel) Mike as the background, and MY fave character is Evan but my first fnaf fic I posted had Mike as the main character with ghost maybe-but-maybe-not Evan as the background

Equal but opposite energy

Does this make us... narrative foils?

It's kind of funny, when I first started brainstorming for my fic, it was gonna be a more standard time-travel Mike fic. I forget exactly how I got from point A to point GHIJK but I do remember thinking something along the lines of 'what if Mike failed to stop the tragedy?' and 'what would Mike's siblings be like if they grew up?' That and I think I wanted to do something a bit different since the time-travel trope isn't uncommon in this fandom, and I was worried about my fic being compared to other similar ones.

[ms-demeanor]

Kids, we know how interest works, right? A while back I made a post about how credit card interest can screw you, but we know how interest can be good for you too, right?

I suspect we don't know about this because on one of the posts I made about it someone said something about how it is evil that money can make money, but you know that's not just for the ultrawealthy, right? That is legitimately something that you can and should take advantage of in some kind of retirement/savings/investment account.

Let us say that you are twenty years old, have no money to put into a savings account, but have a job that pays you well enough that you've got twenty dollars to spare from each paycheck.

Let us say that you put that into a normal savings account; normal savings accounts have an average interest rate of .56 APY. Let us say you are going to be working until you are sixty, and that you will add forty dollars to that account every month (twenty bucks from each paycheck) for a total of $480 per year.

At the end of 40 years you would have about $21.5k.

That's a pretty good chunk of change! twenty thousand dollars is a lifechanging amount of money. But look at the total interest. In forty years you would have accrued only $2300 in interest.

Now, instead, let us imagine that you are a member of a credit union that offers you a free, high-yield savings account with a decent APY. Everything else being the same, but putting that money in an account with a 4% return does this:

Your total contributions that you put in stay the same, but the amount of money you have at the end of forty years more than doubles.

Let's say you have a thousand dollars to put in the account at the beginning and run it again.

Low interest account: you add $1000 at the start and have an extra $1200 at the end.

High interest account: you add $1000 at the start and have an extra $4000 at the end.

There are many, many very stable opportunities for savings that will grow your money. Fifty thousand dollars isn't a retirement plan, but it's a hell of a lot better than what you would have if you just stuck cash in a savings account or if you didn't save any money at all.

I know how hard it can be to save. I know it feels impossible to put money aside, but even if you start with no money and can tuck away five dollars a week you can get a LOT out of that five dollars a week.

This certainly isn't "you can't buy a house because you get coffee at the cafe," but it something that can HELP.

Now, let's suppose you're not twenty. Let's suppose you're in my boat, and you're (almost) forty and you're going to be saving for twenty years. You still don't have a lot of cash, but you know it has less time to grow interest, so you double your contribution and you put in forty dollars for each paycheck for a total of $960 a year.

That is extremely very much not the same thing as putting in forty bucks a month for twenty years. Instead of your interest being nearly one and a half times the amount of your contributions, it is around half.

If you are a young person (honestly even if you are not a young person) and it is in any way possible for you to start putting money into any kind of an investment account, you should do so as soon as humanly possible. The earlier you do it, the more interest you will have and the more money you will end up with when you are nearing retirement age.

This is how individual retirement plans work. This is what a 401K does, but sometimes it does that with matching contributions from your employer (so your employer matches whatever you put into the account up to a certain percentage of your pay). 401K accounts also often have higher APYs than high yield savings accounts, though they have more limitations on how and when the money can be pulled out.

If you are broke as fuck and never learned anything about investing or interest from your family because your family was broke as fuck too, now is the time to learn. r/PersonalFinance is a reasonable resource (and if you ever happen to have a windfall that's the first place I would point you for figuring out how to make the most of it) for learning about this stuff.

Thinking about money sucks! Being afraid you'll never be able to retire sucks! Having to figure out how to save sucks! But there are tools out there that even very fucking broke people can use to make that suck less.

[thebibliosphere]

He sounded interested and even concerned. I thought he had been touched by what the doctor and advocates in the meeting had just shared about their journey with their patients and their own family members. But I was wrong.

“Those people . . . ” Donald said, trailing off. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

I truly did not know what to say. He was talking about expenses. We were talking about human lives. For Donald, I think it really was about the expenses, even though we were there to talk about efficiencies, smarter investments, and human dignity.

I turned and walked away

[from later in the article]

Donald took a second as if he was thinking about the whole situation.

“I don’t know,” he finally said, letting out a sigh. “He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”

Wait! What did he just say? That my son doesn’t recognize me? That I should just let him die?

Did he really just say that? That I should let my son die . . . so I could move down to Florida?

Really?

[...]

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear Donald say that. It wasn’t far off from what he’d said that day in the Oval Office after our meeting with the advocates. Only that time, it was other people’s children who should die. This time, it was my son.

When you’re legitimately so evil you tell a parent, your own fucking nephew, to their face that it’d be more cost-effective to let their child die because they are disabled.

Honestly, it's not the ableism or eugenics that shocks me. Donald Trump has shown who he is time and time again. I guess what got me was that he’d be willing to hold the same views for family members.

Usually these types of people make exceptions for their own. “It’s not immoral if it’s my abortion, I’m only doing this because I have no choice, mine is necessary” kind of thing.

But nope. Donald just straight up thinks his great nephew should die because it’s expensive to keep him alive.

Jesus Wept.

Fucking vote. Please, I’m begging you. As a disabled immigrant who isn’t able to vote I see so many people saying they’re going to boycott the election by not voting and I want to scream.

You boycott products by withholding money.

Not voting in elections only disenfranchises yourself. You’re not protesting. You’re giving tyrants power.

Please vote like people’s lives depend on it because they do.

If you need help figuring out how to register I will help you but please. Please vote.

[the-daily-dreamer]

The targaryen ruled 130 years without dragons. And the most capable kings were all targaryen. After them it was a decline for the throne. Robert, joffrey, tommen, cercei were all sith ruler .

I see targ stans are investing in high quality air to fill their heads lol

But anyways. “The most capable kings were all targaryens”. You know who else were targaryens? The worst rulers of Westeros. Robert, Cersei, Joffrey, and Tommen aren’t even close to the worst kings and queen to rule. And bringing them up as evidence to show that the targaryens are good is so disingenuous.

Maegor the Cruel, Aegon the Unworthy, The Mad King Aerys, Rhaenyra (yes, I know that’s controversial), and Daenerys (yes, I know that’s even more controversial) are all far FAR worse than anyone you mentioned.

Maegor killed his wife and her entire family. He was a usurper (apparently it’s good when the targs you like do it lol), a kinslayer (also a thing only good when it’s targs you like doing it), raped and tortured many people, wiped out entire houses, killed any and everyone that he saw in any way as deserving, and created a huge war with the faith of the seven.

Aegon the unworthy was corrupt and lazy and legitimized his bastards leading to the blackfyre rebellions that led to endless bloodshed for 5 generations.

Aerys was so bad he had a rebellion staged against him that ended his family dynasty. He burned fathers and sons together. He tortured people and burned them alive. He abused and raped his wife when he would burn people alive. He wanted to kill the entire city of kings landing.

Rhaenyra (who like it or not went down in history as one of the worst rulers) known as maegor with teats taxed her people to starvation. She had daily executions. She had knights inquisitors hunt down and punish people.

Daenerys burnt down kings landing, was complicit in the rape and enslavement of hundreds, ruined city economies so badly slavery was a better option, then profited from said slavery, abandoned the people she conquered (no doubt ensuring they will be enslaved much more harshly after supporting her), raped a “free” slave that she admits still acted like a slave because that’s all she knew, oh yeah and again, SHE BURNT DOWN KINGS LANDING. And this is after the people you listed.

And this isn’t including non Targaryen rulers that ruined lives like the blackfyres. Or rulers that are bad but weirdly beloved like Aegon I who basically conquered people by threatening to kill them and everyone they loved, subjugating a country for hundreds of years.

The best rulers I admit were Targaryens. But that’s because they were the only rulers save for 4 people. Of those four, two were bad and two were incompetent. Not nearly the sadistic “mad” people I described above. And funnily enough, as soon as a Targaryen came back to power…things got worse again. Funny how that is.

Oh and by the way. Going with the histories of Westeros. Guess who is among the best rulers according to small folk Aegon II and Alicent. Seethe :)

[emphasisonthehomo]

Twitch Streamer Tommy, because apparently I still have thoughts on him being one of those dudes who's into Flight Simulator.

Buck mostly starts out watching the streams because Christopher watches streams. Buck and Eddie have had discussions with Chris about how much info he should be sharing with strangers on the internet, it was a whole thing. Chris can watch them without being monitored, neither of them are helicopter parents, but Buck does in general keep tabs on them. Because he's constantly reading shit about someone w/ fame on the internet taking advantage of it.

There's a variety to the ones that Chris watches, but all of of them are for games that he already plays. Except one. Some guy called REMOVEB4FLIGHT and it's straight up just Flight Simulator content. There's not a ton of consistency to when the guy streams, it's all over the place schedule wise. Maybe once or twice a month, and he's clearly not a Professional Streamer™ so much as a guy with a hobby. His set up is crazy though.

And sometimes Christopher watches them when Buck is in eyesight, and yeah. Buck won't lie. He's interested. He became legitimately invested when REMOVEB4FLIGHT sat down and simulated a flight from JFK International Airport to Singapore Changi Airport, and it was just under 19 hours.

Buck didn't watch the entire thing, don't be stupid. But he did watch the last 4 hours which... Shut up. It should have been boring, but there was enough going on between the chat and REMOVEB4FLIGHT that it wasn't.

And it was also cute. The guy was cute. He was already obviously tired by the time Buck and Christopher started watching, and as he got more tired he got gigglier and gigglier. Explaining that "No. No pilots will ever fly 19 hours straight, I'm just doing it because I thought it'd be a fun challenge and oh nooooo do I regret it. My only goal is to be coherent enough to not crash land this A350."

The plane does not crash land and at the end, REMOVEB4FLIGHT runs his hands through his curly hair, laughs in exhaustion, and says "Great, I'm gonna go sleep for 12 hours because I've got a shift in 14. BYE."

And Buck keeps watching after that, when he can. There's something calming about it, in a weird way. It's both is and isn't ASMR. Any ASMR is absolutely on accident, but the guy has a really nice set up, a really nice mic. And a really nice voice. And a really nice face. He explains in detail what he's doing and why, like he's giving a casual lesson on How To Fly.

Buck learns that the his name is Tommy, and he is actually a pilot but he flies helicopters and that's "-the only other information you need about my day job."

Not all of Tommy's streams are 19 hours, though they're still long. A lot of them are him being like "What's the weirdest place I can land this thing?" or messing around in multiplayer. Maybe something where he tries to recreate relatively famous crash landings, like one day he goes "We're Gimli Gliding it today" and he does crash pretty badly the first time, but he gets it on the second.

It becomes a thing Buck and Christopher talk about, because they both keep up with it. Chris starts pestering Eddie to get him a joystick and pedals to play Flight Simulator, but those aren't exactly cheap so Eddie promises it for xmas. Buck is already stewing over how to potentially adjust settings and shit to make sure that the inclusion of foot pedals isn't an issue for Chris, etc etc.

Sometimes when Buck is part of the Chat Conglomerate Tommy comments on something he's said. It makes him giddy. It's difficult to describe. He just likes this guy. This guy's cool. Buck's getting attention from someone on the internet, sue him. He likes it.

And then the drama with the cruise ship. Buck doesn't think anything of it when Chimney reaches out to an old friend named Tommy, because why would he? It's a common enough name. But then Buck walks into Harbor Station and comes face to face with REMOVEB4FLIGHT and oh. Oh shit.

[junglejim4322]

One time i looked up some threads where straight men talked about their experience on bumble bc I was curious due to the messaging system they have in place and to my surprise it was absolute doomer shit including guys saying the lack of attention they got made them legitimately suicidal. I don’t even mean incel type shit blaming women like legitimately claiming that it made them feel fundamentally undesirable, what’s amazing to me when people take stuff on apps super personally is like you’re essentially making an advertisement for yourself and hoping it’s interesting enough someone invests in attempting to know you. It’s literally the most manufactured social experience possible so OF COURSE only extremely conventionally attractive people & people who are able to convey an unbelievable amount of charisma will get any notable attention because why would someone put the effort in otherwise. I bet you anything a ton of average looking guys who lament about the state of dating would do fine finding people who are interested in them in a normal social situation but instead they’re taking women who are essentially trying to find a needle in a haystack on dating apps as some sort of indicator of actual dating being impossible for men