#like its headline news

[lurkinginnernarrator]

cang qiong band au.

Yue Qingyuan is the bass player, Shang Qinghua is the MD, Liu Qingge on drums(naturally), Mu Qingfang on keys, Shen Qingqiu as the electric guitarist and a vocalist(tenor) and Qi Qingqi as the lead(mezzo-soprano) and Wei Qingwei as synth and baritone when it's necessary.

[ninjasmudge]

...

lot of people smarter than me have phrased the nuances around this whole situation better than i could, but sometimes i feel like stuff like this kind of speaks for itself

[marsixm]

ive been feeling guilty about being politically disengaged and then i realized im quite literally not lol

[elprupneerg]

oh damn, the terrors have kicked in

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

in other news,,

[lunatic-fandom-space]

merry us-election to those who celebrate, lets hope that third assassination attempt is actually sucessful eh

[thetangibleghost]

I've always wanted to wake up from a dream laughing and I just did but I realized after I woke up that I have missed a million social cues :((((((((((((((((( it wasn't even funny idk why I couldn't stop giggling. I dont even giggle irl.

[thelaughingmerman]

I do think we need to be critical of the media we consume but I also feel like a lot of people tend to just. Parrot opinions and sentiments from other people. Or base their entire outlook on a single out of context clip of a show. I think people rarely watch something a substantial enough amount to formulate their own opinion.

And this goes for problematic media like adult cartoons AND things that are considered just low tier, like the Disney live action remakes.

I think a lot of it is the popularity effect. Just like kids in high school who want to be popular we formulate opinions online based on what everyone else is doing. If that makes sense. And in the terms of popular problematic media we tend to downplay enjoyment or engagement with it for the sake of staying within lines of what people deem acceptable and remaining "uncancellable". I don't know man.

[agenderakali]

If you’re a progressive living in a blue state and you see a minority in the southern US lamenting their situation, if you respond to them with “well you guys voted for it” you sound exactly as callous and cruel as the republicans who enacted this legislation against us. And you aren’t actually progressive.

[didhewinkback]

t swift making feminism part of her brand and always leaning on the "you would never say this if i were a man" line of white women feminism while simultaneously doing everything in her power to block any pop girl from passing her on the charts to get the number one spot is soooooooooooooo

"theres a special place in hell for women who dont help other women" unless the woman is trying to maintain her number one chart position and then she can do whatever she wants and screw over those less successful girls i guess

[1nm806]

jackie did i ever talk to you abt my sprace musician fic

im sure i have at some point

uve told me about the spot is in a band and race comes to see it one?

[gender-euphowrya]

a pet peeve i have is when articles about video games have headlines like "this game is like [popular game] and [other popular game] combined !" like do you have any idea how little that tells me besides "we want clicks from fans of Those games"

[doomdoomofdoom]

Not that I understand economics to begin with, but I feel like trying to beef with everyone simultaneously isn't a very good business idea these days.

Like aside from the fact that basically any economy in our globalized world depends on importing and exporting stuff, you do realize that if you make trades with your country unappealing for everyone,,, then everyones just gonna trade with each other and not you. right?

it's kinda funny reading posts about Trump trying to put tarrifs on Canada because the Canadians are like genuinely mad about this. They're booing the Star Spangled Banner at basketball games, cancelling their vacations to the U.S., taking American liquor off the shelves at LCBO stores, talking about how much genuine hate they have for the American people for ruining our longstanding alliance. Like even without the tarrifs going into effect this is a Category 5 Diplomatic Incident up north.

Meanwhile the Americans are just looking around like John Travolta in pulp fiction like "wait why are we beefing with Canada?"

[whereserpentswalk]

In the late 1970s a glowing orb appeared in the sky. Every day at about 5:00 Greenwich standard time, the orb would go somewhere new, shoot out something similar to a laser, and kill one person. Every day, always at the same time, always exactly one person.

The person killed by the orb seemed completely random, with almost fifty years of studying it we've been able to find no rhythm or reason to who it kills. It kills the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the urban, the rural, anyone. Every human on earth seems to have an equal chance of being killed by the orb. It's a headline the few times someone of note is killed by the orb: Britain famously lost a Parliament member to the orb, Brazil to this day remains the only country where a head of state was killed by the orb while in office, there was a short lived sitcom in the 1990s called Friends that ended halfway through its first season due to the orb killing one of the main actors on set. However, these are outliers, on any given day the person who dies via orb is very likely to be someone you never heard of. There are billions of people on earth, and only one is killed by the orb every day. In almost fifty years only a little over 18000 have died because of the orb, which is nothing in the face of the sheer amount of humans that exist.

When the orb first appeared people were horrified. Both the US and USSR thought it was a weapon from the other side. Almost every religion made some claim of it being proof of their beliefs, oftentimes claiming it was divine punishment. Atheists claimed it was proof no loving God could exist. People were so very apocalyptic and horrified by it, they thought of it as part of the end times, because when it was new that's really how it looked.

However, it's been long enough so that's changed. Most people have lived their entire lives in a world where the orb exists. The orb isn't that scary a concept. People know their odds of being killed by it are low and that it's not going to end the world or anything. The orb has become normal, and we've accepted that the orb is just something that kills people the same way cancer, or heart attacks, or natrual disasters, or car crashes kill people. In the nineteen eighties there were efforts to find a way to stop the orb, but it's since proven to be extremely difficult, and it's as distant and nebulous as finding a cure for cancer. When a community is struck by the orb you'll see that community in mourning, but it's not a global thing anymore.

So people grow up learning about the orb, as part of science, like anything else. A lot of gen z remembers learning about the orb from Magic School Bus. It's just something normal. There are a few people with an orb hyperfixation, and a few cults that give the orb importance but it's not most people's concern. The orb is how we first confirmed that interdimensional objects existed and are possible. A lot of people theorize dimensional studies wouldn't exist without it, meaning without the orb we might not have thermitizers or grand drives, we might not even have a moon base without the orb. Some have even rather tastelessly claimed that the orb has saved more lives at this point than its taken with all the knowledge it's given us.

Which is why I regret to inform you, that just last week, without warning, the orb killed two people in one day. And for the past seven days it's been killing two people instead of just one. Nobody knows why.

[inkskinned]

i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.

he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."

[salemontrial]

Getting panicked about yaelokres new song being called my farewells to the field what do you mean farewells you havent released hearken. Get back here. That better be a narrative farewell.