#quality isn't the best but it is what it is

[rhube]

Listen, having worked in university marketing, I am here to tell you that not all ads are evil or trying to deceive you. People work really hard at conveying precisely the information you need that will tell you if a product is for you.

There are people in advertising and marketing who are well aware of the laws about not deceiving customers and who think constantly about what they can provide evidence to claim, not making stuff up.

And yeah, they're trying to persuade you, but that doesn't automatically mean 'buy this piece of shit we're telling you is solid gold'. It means, 'we really believe in this, we have evidence that it's good and could be a great thing for you, but we need to find a way to tell you that and make you trust us' which takes a lot of thought.

And as a consumer there's a lot of stuff I just wouldn't know about if not for advertising. We need advertising to tell people there are solutions to problems, quality products, and fun things to get excited about.

Advertising isn't inherently BAD. And it's one of the few industries in which creative people can make a liveable wage with their art or writing.

The problem we have at the moment is that a lot of people with no training in making good ads, people who don't care about laws, or are based somewhere with less regulation, who are churning out annoying, misleading, not-accesdible garbage.

And these people aren't researching their audience and tailoring the content to people for whom its relevant. Instead a whole tech industry has grown up where people who know fuck all about marketing have companies that scrape and aggregate your data, who sell it to other tech companies that sell advertising space, which is bought up by yet another automated service that has been trained to get 'the best deal' for the company that wants to sell a product.

That's not how it works when you wanna make a useful ad. You should be doing customer research with your actual customers. Analysing the data you get to tailor both the advert and the advertising space.

But these automated systems talking to other automated systems don't do that.

Like, first off, the data is SHIT. It may not even differentiate content you noped out of from stuff you looked at for half an hour. And if it does, it treats all the content on the page equally. All the stuff you're ignoring is tagged as 'on sites this user spends a lot of time on'. Whereas human customer research, for which customers consent and usually receive some kind of reward, involves tracking eye movements, mouse movements, clicks, and an interview afterwards to ask what they were thinking about and why they stayed on one page over another. This is so much more helpful! It helps make content more useful to users and prevents wasted marketing effort.

But almost no one does it these days because, well, it's expensive. You gotta compensate the consumers you do your research with, design sensible things for them to test, have someone monitor and analyse what they do, and interview them after. That's very expensive compared to a bunch of lightning fast calculations that can all be automated. So companies don't pay to do it properly, and they don't actually tailor their ads to you, and they're not trying to be informative.

At best (and I can't stress enough how rare this is) ads that are based on this data and algorithms and/or machine learning deliver what will get you to look at the ad for longer or click the ad to go to a website. But if that means bright flashing colours and the world's tiniest 'x' so you can't actually close the ad without clicking through, these automated systems are designed to get you to do THAT, not buy the product.

Honestly, I know it sounds like I'm asking for sympathy for the devil, but I have seen this from the tech side, the marketing side, the researcher side, and the user doing the test. I have taken a course on content strategy and heard what academics in this field have to say, and it's honestly not evil. They're trying to adapt to an environment where you're constantly barraged with demands on your attention, so it is in the advertiser's best interest to be clear and tailored and not waste your time.

But unfortunately an awful lot of people have been sold on the idea that these automated systems ARE targeting people who would be interested with stuff that's relevant to them, and they're just NOT.

You can see it if you compare an entertaining TV ad by an established brand who can pay for the research to the vast majority of internet ads. They can be funny, entertaining, informative, even insightful. They can also be stereotyped and annoying of course, but on the whole they're much less of a headache than the nonsense funnel we get exposed to constantly online and in mobile games.

Tbh, advertisers, producers, and consumers have all been screwed over by VC-owned companies that are being squeezed from on high for every last drop of short term capital. And that means automating things because it's cheaper and quicker than human analysis, even if it means the whole thing becomes annoying, unhelpful garbage.

But scale it back and think about your artist friend. Your creator with a small etsy business. Your self-published author. Your inventor with a neat accessibility tool. They aren't producing groceries, but if they don't advertise, literally no one will know their products exist.

Advertising DOES have a good and important role. Under-regulated advertising in a toxic system not aimed at serving producers OR customers is hamstrung and cannot perform that role.

The only acceptable ads should be shit like "groceries on sale" and "free event at the local library"

[sashayed]

I haven't said as much about electoral politics this year as I have in previous cycles, because I am exhausted like everyone else and have nothing new or helpful to add. That is still true, so caveat lector I guess lmao!!! Happy American Election Day Fellow Sufferers!!

I have been experiencing an internal backlash the last few years to my extremely Sorkinpilled D.C. private school upbringing -- my childhood spent as a kind of convent schoolgirl in the faith of The System Is Good If We All Participate, which of course has a uhhh let's say generously a minimal engagement with the ways in which many of us are by design shut out of participating. I don't think idealism is necessarily childish, but I think MY idealism certainly has childish qualities, an undergirding of 90s feel-goodism, of civic participation as a subtle ego stroke and of voting -- although I would never have consciously put it this way -- as a way to feel superior to people who don't vote.

Lately there has bubbled up in me a sludgy, adolescent fury at this whole stupid country that has made it very very hard to feel like I should do even the bare minimum. For these people? AMERICANS? The ones that not only want Donald Trump to be president but saw what happened the first time and were like, We love this, do it again but worse? Whatever, fuckos. "I hope you people get your dearest wish and it chews you to death slowly," I may have thought.

I have also thought: why is it so controversial to ask elected officials to stop funding a genocide? Why are we treating people who make that ask, who are watching the current administration directly fund death on a mass scale and objecting to that choice, as if they are being babies and just need to get over it? How are they supposed to get over it? Why is anybody over it?

Anyway all this means that I, a known chipper door-knocker and caller of congresspeople, have been pretty low-key this current cycle. I think that is OK. I don't want to make this a big dramatic confessional about how I didn't write enough postcards or whatever. We all get exhausted and this was my turn.

But it has also been an illuminating cycle in that it's made it clear to me how much at my big age I still want politics to make me feel good, and when they don't, I still have the urge to throw a lil tantrum about it! I can get very superior and intellectual about how right-wing operatives manipulate their voters emotionally WITHOUT EVEN NOTICING that I too have been manipulated, in my case into the feeling that nonparticipation is a kind of revolutionary act.* Just absolute "I threw it on the GROUND" logic happening inside my head. "Maybe if I don't vote I will be doing Quiet Quitting, which is uhhhhh anticapitalist." I'm not a part of your system!!!

Anyway, I am trying to have self-compassion about it, and one way for me to do that is to project my internal experience onto a theoretical reader. That would be you, my imaginary friend who clicked on this post for some reason even though you have already decided not to vote! I just want to tell you that I am more sympathetic to your point of view than I have ever been in my whole life, and I'm sorry I have historically been a glib, holier-than-thou asshole about it in ways that may actually have made you MORE resistant to civic participation.

And you're right: it doesn't make that big a difference whether I personally vote or not, or whether you do. But if there are hundreds of us, and I think there are, then each of those people individually do starts to matter.

I guess I would humbly request that you and I both pay attention to what people who need help are actually asking for. I would ask that we both notice who wins when we abdicate this single responsibility. I would remind us both that participating in the electoral process is not some kind of weird either-or with participating in decentralized community building and mutual aid, and the best people we know do both. Isn't it interesting that somehow, insidiously, without even consciously becoming aware of this belief, we have started to think that you can only do one or the other? Who is telling us that story? Who does it serve?

Anyway. I took the stupid 90 minute round trip to my polling place which was VERY hot for some reason and I stood in the stupid line and some babies waved at me and I cast my vote for Kamala Harris and I'm glad I did it in the same way I'm glad after I do the dishes or take a stupid shower. Doing work doesn't always feel like anything. I also saw a really wonderful small black and white dog that I thought was a cat on a leash. I would not have seen that dog if I hadn't gone to vote. So politics can still make you feel good!!!

*I mean all this analysis is cute and everything BUT ALSO i did switch antidepressants twice in the last year, an astonishingly grueling process that almost made me [affect the trout population]. Could these things be related? hmmmmmmm, don't understand the question, won't respond to it.

[b5withextrachicken]

FALLING IN LOVE? - JAMAL MUSIALA

pairings: jamal musiala x fem!reader

summary: they were seen kissing at a party but she can't quite remember. now she wants to find out if does.

(i hate this and also english isn't my first language.)

(pictures are not mine)

______________________________________________________

Perfection. Pure perfection. That was probably the only word that could describe his performance today.

My eyes were practically glued to the pitch as my gaze followed his every move. He was at his best today, making his way through the defenders, dribbling out every single one of them. That man was sickeningly good on the field, I had to admit as I watched from the stands. The atmosphere was loud, cheering and addicting. Not where I usually spent a friday night but I could get used to it. Especially when the view was this good.

At a party several weeks ago I had befriended another peer group of athletes, temporarly increasing my number of close friends from 2 to 7. Normal, right? Well, no, because when I woke up with a headache the next morning and checked my way-too-bright phone on the nightstand, it was blown up with messages. Whatsapp, Insta, TikTok... even Facebook. Photos, low-quality videos, theories. There were strangers on the internet speculating about me and a boy. That boy. The boy i later found out was Jamal Musiala. The pictures clearly showed me and him. Way too close. But the worst thing was: I couldn't remember what happened that night.

And that's what brought me here today, to the front row of the Allianz Arena. Because since that night, I couldn't help but wonder if he remembered me or anything that happened. I needed to see him.

The game was heated, the tension could've been cut by a knife. A winner wasn't yet clear when the ball made its way to Jamals feet again. Even from across the pitch I could see his expression fall into concentration as he skillfully turned and sprinted through the opposition towards their goal. It was like the whole stadium went quiet as the fans and rivals realised his chance. He moved to a perfect position to aim. Shot. Scored.

The south curve went wild. Fans spilled their beer. Plastic cups flew. Bayern took the lead in the 87th minute, now so close to a home win. The scorer wearing the number 42 on his back ran over to them to celebrate his goal. He was ecstatic, smiling as he got closer to the barricade.

That's when his gaze met mine.

It was sudden. Fast. But for that minuscule second I could see his eyes light up. A telling spark. Was it recognition? Our momentary connection was severed when his team mates finally caught up to him, engulfing him in a wild hug almost sending the young man to the floor. I smiled, deciding to push the heavy thoughts to the back of my mind for now and embrace the warm atmosphere.

..........

The game was over, proudly ending in a 2:1 for Bayern Munich. The masses hurried to the exits, hoping to avoid the cramped traffic after the win. I lingered around, taking my time to collect my things and also to circumvent the crowded halls of the stadium for a little longer. My mind was racing as the stands cleared out, only leaving trash and spilled beer behind. I was about to sip up my jacket when-

"Y/N?"

I practically whirled around at the sudden voice and my gaze (once again) was met by those chocolate brown eyes that belonged to no other than Jamal. He took a small step back startled by my movement and send me an apologetic look for the scare. Now there was a litte more than an arms-length between us.

"Uh-hey!" I answered nervously, a shaky smile painting my lips. This wasn't at all how I imagined our encounter. My eyes scanned his appearance, he wore a baggy tracksuit jacket over his kit, the grass residues on his shorts still evident from the many fouls he had to endure. He hadn't even made it to the locker room. My gaze lingered on his lips before locking with his eyes again.

His mouth stretched into a sweet smile "Hey..."

Awkward silence. A few beats passed. I looked around nervously, my eyes now darting to anywhere but him. What was I supposed to talk about now? The weather?

Jamal also shuffled around nervously, looking down at his cleats. It was clear we both beat around the bush. He looked back up at me, his gaze resembling that of a deer. "So...Why-I mean, what brought you here, I didn't think I'd see you again..." he asked carefully. A blush tainted my cheeks "Uhm, I just... wanted to see you." I started, embarassed "You know, after the party." pausing for a moment, I thought back to the pictures of us kissing, contemplating if I should ask the question and just get it of my chest. Yeah. Best option.

"Do you remember anything about that night? Like what happened exactly? Did we... do something?"

It tumbled out of my mouth, one ask fused to another. I watched as his posture shifted, his eyes slightly widening. "What? No,no,no." he shook his head. A small wave of relief washed over me but it couldn't tame the burning lack of knowledge about that night. "Then what happened, the only thing I know is that I woke up with a headache.". He took a step back, processing my words before answering. "We had a good night you know, dancing, drinking...kissing. It went well until some drunk incel pushed you and you hit your head on a door frame..." the man paused, anger flashing in his eyes for a second. "He knocked you out. I drove you to the hospital. Your friends picked you up."

My mouth opened to reply, but quickly closed when no good answer formed on my tongue. It wasn't what I expected, but I still didn't know what to think about it.

"You waited at the hospital?" I asked, now completely catching up to what he said.

"Yeah." Jamal looked down to the floor again, hiding the faint red that now tinted his cheeks. "I wanted to ask for your number but... after everything happened I didn't think it was appropriate..." He trailed off.

"Oh-OH..well..." I was taken aback. Caught off-guard. Then I suddenly felt confidence seep through my body.

"You could ask me now."

He looked at me, a beat passed, then his face lit up. He took his phone out of his pocket and handed it to me, ready to enter the digits. As I was about to give him the phone back, he cleared his throat.

"Are you free next friday? It's my free day and maybe we could meet up at a café?" He asked, also growing more confident now. I blushed, and nodded, still a little overwhelmed by what just happened. "Yes, yes I'd love to. 5pm? Hopefully this time I'll remember..." I chuckled and Jamal quickly joined in. The situation now blurred into a sweet moment as we stood in the stadium that was completely empty. I smiled as I looked up at him. His eyes drifted to my lips before they met mine again.

"You better stay away from the door frames."

________________________________________________________

my first piece on here, yayyy ig

[livefinn]

the manga isn't giving me any new panels so i've defected to the anime to find the old ones

[cherryblossomshadow]

[Image ID and source: Tweet from Velodus✨ (@/velodus) reading

The single worst thing about Trump to me will always be how much he's changed people. I've watched friends and relatives become entirely new, worse people in the wake of his political rise. Like it's not merely that he's a terrible guy, it's that he's ruined people.

/end ID]

.

Further tweets from the thread:

qiwave (@/qiwave1)

Another chance for me to quote Pete Buttigieg. “My faith teaches me that the world isn’t made of good and bad people, but rather that each of us is capable of good and bad things,” he said. “And I believe leaders matter because of what they bring out in each of us: the good or the bad.”

.

Mat Douglas (@/MatPDouglas)

I think he just gave them license to be the awful people they always were, but were hiding before

Velodus✨ (@/velodus) replied:

The seeds were obviously there the whole time for them all, which sucks because it'd be easier to process if he had 100% brainwashed them instead of them choosing to like him. But I also will never ever forgive him for giving ppl that permission structure.

.

You can obviously disagree with me. But I ascribe to the notion of "No such thing as monsters," which acknowledges that every human has the capability to be "good" or "bad." "Monstrosity" is not an inherent quality of a person, but an action. This action can be varying degrees of "their choice," depending on the context of the situation.

But if we say that we judge people on actions, then yes, Trump made them worse. Maybe they would have wanted to say that slur before, but Trump emboldened them to actually do it. Trump gave people permission to care for themselves more than others, and I think that made them worse people than they would be otherwise.

My utopia isn't a society filled with Good Humans, bc I don't believe they exist. My utopia would be a flexible, supportive society that is able to react and adjust to the needs of the humans that comprise it (not the humans living "under it" or "in it," but the humans making up the fabric of the society) and encourages the humans to be their best selves.

Is this feasible? Experience tells me no. But it's a much better goal than "get rid of all the Bad Evil Humans."

[fiepige]

Compilation of EVERY single time they changed Hobie's filter in the digital version:

Left: Theatrical release Right: Digital release

You might have to click on some of them to get a better look at Hobie, sadly I don't have a video editor that allows me to make better edits than these :')

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

wanted to try my hand at a fake screenshot thing with a scene from one of the bttf fics of all time, Time Is a Flat Circle by @fourth-dimensional-thinker! i set in to draw only the "little canary" line but. as you can tell. my hand slipped and fell down a 6 story building

if you haven't read it already please check it out PLEASEEE it's very good. i read the whole thing in basically one sitting. the vibes are perfect for the spooky season too!

versions without the filter/subtitles under the cut:

[pigeon-butch]

I certainly have my own concerns about the treatment of moo deng but um. well i think some of you may just be racist

[paimonial-rage]

16 - thoma, lisa (idk i'm in love with this woman no matter how sus everyone thinks she is), diluc

[Character Analysis Ask Meme]

What’s the best way to win Thoma’s heart?

Unlike most others, there is not a simple and clean-cut way to winning Thoma’s heart. Thoma is the type to fall for the whole of a person, not just for a select few qualities. Like a seed that needs to be consistently watered in order to grow, Thoma needs time and consistency. He needs time to truly see you as someone he can fall for. That being said, even if he falls, don’t expect his heart to belong to you. As it is, there is something that already owns the whole of Thoma’s loyalties and attention. He is not in a place where he can give away his heart freely. What would make him willing to give it up? It’s hard to say. 

What’s the best way to win Lisa’s heart?

Lisa, at her core, is a simple person. She is the person she presents to the world, and if there’s one thing she’s never hidden, it’s her love for cute people. It’s not surprising, then, that it’s cute people that she finds herself particularly attracted to. But it’s best to keep in mind that cuteness is not confined merely to physical appearances. It is a state of being. Even the most burly of people can be the cutest things in the world.

If you don’t consider yourself the cutest, it always helps being interested in her first. Why? Well, you can’t expect her not to notice and leave you be. Expect attempts to fluster you while acting coy. There’s nothing cuter than a blushing and flustered expression caused solely by her, after all. And if there’s one thing she loves, it’s cute people.

What’s the best way to win Diluc’s heart?

What puts Diluc at a higher difficulty than most is his reclusion from others. While Diluc treats his workers with gratitude and respect, well… it’s safe to say that he doesn’t exactly have the most friends. Those that know him well that it’s not due to his personality, but because of personal choice. Thus, if there’s anything that you need to be to win this man’s heart, it’s persistence. Even when he pushes you away, you will need to stand your ground and enforce yourself as a constant in his life, as a friend. Once you’re able to get past that first hurdle, the path to his heart really will not be too far away. 

[rhaegxr]

"There is more of Rhaegar in you." ↳ Dany & Rhaegar parallels.

[mad-hunts]

so, i'm sorry in advance for the cursed images again, y'all. BUT i was thinking about it, and honestly... this is the most accurate description that i could give y'all as to what barton is like around people who he's in love with versus almost everyone else (besides those in his family and his friends + POSSIBLY others... though, even then, he might just act this way towards them 💀)

barton around his love interests:

barton around almost everyone else (at least about 50% of the time):

[wolframpant]

10 October 19 AD: Germanicus dies in Antioch. Here are some of his portrayals on screen:

Eric Flynn in The Caesars (1968) David Robb in I, Claudius (1976) Alessandro Fella in Barbarians Season 2 (2022)

[angelsdean]

Jack: Yeah, he-he wasn't all bad, my dad. Uh, that's what makes our parents loom so large in our heads, I think. They're… a million things to us all at once.

And even after they're long gone, we're stuck with them. Can't help it. They're inside of us. You know, my whole life, I promised myself I'd be nothing like him, but…I ended up just like him.

Kevin: No, Dad. You're way better than him.

Jack: Thank you, my son. And you're gonna be way better than me.

— 5x07, This Is Us

[magentagalaxies]

vent incoming:

got my grades back for my courses last semester and most of it was to be expected, mostly A's, maybe an A-, etc. but i honestly can't get over the fact that my independent study (the buddy cole documentary) was for some reason given a B. like sure getting a B isn't bad per se, I usually get at least one B every semester and i honestly don't really care about what my exact gpa is as long as i can graduate, but come on. this school put me through months of psychological torment over this project and didn't even have the nerve to give me a B+??? i'm still coping with the self-doubt they forced on me and this bullshit is not helping!!

[britneyshakespeare]

i am at the looking-at-dolls-as-self-soothing part of the night. i definitely wanna beef up my bratz collection since unboxing my alwayz bratz yasmin was just like... oh... oh man... and... and i didn't think it'd be like that for me man i didn't think i had as much nostalgia for bratz as i actually do not just buy owning some but by touching them and playing w their clothes and their hair.

and one of my issues of course is that i'm a redhead and as a redhead my Default Lookalike Doll is meygan (not that having a doll that looks like you is the most important part of bratz, but it is so much of the fun right? the fact that there's a character out there for just about everyone?). and i like meygan as a character well enough, that's not the issue. but of the meygan dolls that have been reproduced, there's none of them that are like, hardcore needs for me except for sweetheart meygan. and i did not buy sweetheart meygan in time. i was not really collecting at that point. that was like 2022. i had a few... na na na surprise dolls at that time. which is funny bc i have four of those that i got all either on clearance or w giftcards and i do really like them even though a lot of doll collectors thought they were kinda dumb, and they were. i just liked the gimmick of the fabric bodies and there were just enough dolls i thought were really cute that i kinda caved at one point. i also knew it was a brand i wouldn't go overboard with. anyway. we were talking about meygan...

sorry meygan back to you girl. i know original 2000s bratz that have not yet been reproduced at crazy expensive on the secondhand market and it's genuinely out of control. but sweet heart meygan, both the repro and the original, are selling for triple digits on mercari, ebay, what have you. that's just ridiculous. frankly. i'm not buying her at that. i don't even like her enough to hunt for her regularly, if that's how it's gonna be. there are plenty of more readily-available bratz dolls that are either regular retail price or clearancing online andin stores. did you guys know alwayz bratz jade is going for 15 bucks on amazon right now? that's crazy. the other always bratz dolls aren't going for that low if they're even marked down yet. that release wasn't even that long ago. anyway i'm thinking of getting jade from that line bc i know some ppl thought that alwayz jade was a let-down, but i thought she was cute. yasmin was my favorite from that line and that's why i got her but jade was my second fave there easily.

i also wanna get the kumi they reproduced sometime and maybe girls nite out cloe since i see she's still available. it's funny there aren't that many core girls i've wanted from the repros but if i go for any of the cloes, new or old, it's gotta be girls nite out. cloe isn't even usually my favorite character no offense blondes she's just kinda. she's just kinda cloe to me. idk i love her but i'm not gagged over her most of the time. these are still bratz standardz we're talking about here so obviously i love her.

there's nothing going on in the world right now other than my bratz dolls. and if someone we won't mention wins the election, i'm definitely going doll crazy. i'm gonna be buying dolls after this anyway, but i'm gonna justify spending an unusual, nearly-irresponsible amount of money. you know. bc i'm an adult and i can.

hey also and of all the lines they could've reproduced why is their most recent slumber party? why? why? when the poll posted by mga had tokyo a go go WINNING? bc tokyo a go go is the correct option? i mean the slumber party line is cute and i like the base dolls and the accessories especially the stuffed animals are cute. but. everyone knows the bratz audience these days is adult collectors. which adult collectors are losing their minds over dolls in pajamas and bathrobes? again they're CUTE. but why. also why did they reproduce bratz babyz when those things were nightmare fuel

[th3-0bjectivist]

“Sunspot City” - Animated painting

Original acrylic painting currently on sale at Poshmark at https://poshmark.com/closet/galleryofluke