#rant (

[our-lord-little-toad]

I CANNOT BELIEVE I HAVE TO SAY THIS AGAIN.

TOADS. ARE. NOT. FROGS.

If you walk up to me, look me in my warty little eyes, and say, “Aren’t toads just frogs?”—I WILL SCREAM. I will scream so loud the swamp will tremble. The audacity. The ignorance. The absolute frog-washed brainrot it must take to utter such blasphemy.

Let me make this crystal clear for the people in the back (and for the frogs who pretend they don’t hear me):

Do frogs have warts? No.

Do frogs survive in the harsh, dry lands while their slimy cousins shrivel up in the sun? No.

Do frogs understand struggle? The weight of existence? The burden of being TOUGH? Absolutely not.

Frogs are soft. Frogs are pampered. Frogs think they’re the main characters when they’re barely side notes in the great story of the swamp.

TOADS, however? We endure. We persevere. We do not hop for attention; we WALK with PURPOSE. We are the backbone of the amphibian world, and yet we are constantly disrespected by people who lump us in with those jumping, waterlogged, algae-brained buffoons.

I am TIRED. I am ENRAGED. I will NOT be silenced.

Toads > Frogs. Forever. Do not test me on this.

[strawberryraviegutz]

Ngl it’s hella weird that so many ppl are being extremely sex negative/anti BDSM(not sure if it’s even actual BDSM but idk)about the new banner and even going as far as to compare it to sexual assault…

You can dislike something without shaming/making fun of ppl who’re excited about it along without contributing to purity culture, misogyny/internalized misogyny, and cringe culture.

Since Day 1 Love and Deepspace has always been for women and or afabs to explore their sexualities in a world where women/afabs seeking out anything sexual(or even romantic)whether it be in fiction or irl is seen as taboo, dirty/filthy/unclean, and or shameful. Especially within parts of Asia.

Men are allowed to get straight up hentai tattoos and no one says anything but whenever women/afabs have crushes on/simp for/selfship with fictional characters and or consumes nsfw content of them then we’ve “gone too far” or, “are so delusional/cringe” and get told that we’re mentally ill as an insult and that we should “go to therapy/get help” because of our “parasocial relationships with fictional characters”(and over a period tracking feature within the game out of all things..)

It’s important now more than ever to have more media like this to be created as to lessen the stigma around female sexuality. ESPECIALLY with everything that’s going on in the US right now. Shaming women and or shaming other female/afab fans for enjoying this stuff only contributes more to the problem. You’re not inherently better than anyone for not being into the type of things others may like.

“Infold is mischacterizing-”

First of all idk where yall got that from they seem the same to me, just with more different personality traits/changes added. Plus that’s the point of an Alternate Universe/Reality. AUs are different than the universes we know. Also THEY MADE AND OWN THE CHARACTERS.

There’s a difference between something just not being your thing and contributing to misogyny towards women/afabs in fandom spaces. Just because you’re not into/don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s “not normal” for others to celebrate Valentine’s Day like this. I swear women/afabs can’t do anything without you mouthbreathers demonizing us and saying that we’re inherently predatory/unsafe to be around for thirsting over/selfshipping with fictional characters.

[vee-art-zone]

Just got into the dumbest Minecraft argument about the new “useless” materials that I was somehow framed as the villain in so I’m bitching here

Like. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be cool if copper or resin or whatever got some more crafting recipes in the future But to be shown dozens of items and blocks that these things are used for and just dismissing it as “that doesn’t count because it’s decorative and cosmetic which aren’t real uses in the sandbox building game” It’s just missing the point of the argument.

Resin has a use. A great orange armor trim and brick set I used for my bank’s roof in my main world. Also I can plaster golden flecks on any texture I want for ultimate detailing.

Amethyst has a use. Purple crystals that play singsongy tunes on contact. Magical crystal deco.

Copper has the MOTHERLOAD of all uses. Great metallic building blocks at a price less prohibitively expensive as iron blocks, in four different color schemes?? With stairs, slabs, doors, trapdoors, grates and more??? I can’t even fit every block made with copper in a single chest.

Like. What world are you living in where the building features in this Building Game are inherently worthless compared to fucking. Redstone Component of the week for the farm you’ll never make. I know not everyone plays this game as I do but these ppl don’t seem to get the world doesn’t revolve around them.

[planetlongjourney]

Is is worrying that this is a list of pretty much every main female character? Yeah??? Very worrying??? Extremely worrying???

[snipdoodle]

reading a book about the horrors of chattel slavery when you're the only black person in the class goes horrible i am actually going to crash the fuck out

black existence in this country is founded on trauma and all the white kids reading this book are like "wow that sucks.." but i have to live with the legacy of this shit daily i am reminded of it every day, every fucking day

It feels like black authors, creatives in general tbqh, are shoeboxed so, so hard. So hard, all the time. We're only alloweed to be X or Y. We're not allowed to move on from trauma. This is what defines blackness, right? the suffering?

and sometimes i just want to scream it at people but it will fall on deaf ears no matter what, they may listen, may sympathize, but can't ever understand. some of the best people i know. i dont expect them to, but it doesnt hurt any less.

ive gone to majority white/not black schools my entire life- im used to this this is how i live and it always has been. but part of me is resentful of it, of the people i go to school with- even if they didnt choose to be born upper middle class and white. its just. ugh.

/end cathy crashout

[oltimey]

"Nazi" is not a catchall for bigotry or White Supremacy. The core "value" of Nazism is the hatred of Jews, and the desire to exterminate all Jews. And Romani as well, let's not forget that, but their #1 target were Jews. Palestinian leaders literally supported Hitler because they wanted to exterminate Jews. And this was before the "Offical" formation of Israel.

You don't get to use "Nazi" as a catchall term for White Supremacy or bigotry.

You don't get to call Jews who want a safe and self-determained country on their ancestral homeland "Zionazis."

You don't get to call Jews defending themselves against actual Nazis (Hamas) and trying to rescue hostages "Nazis."

You don't get to point the finger at Nazis like Elon Musk because he's a Rich White Right-wing Man™️ while supporting Hamas (who are literally far-right extremists) or ignoring other POC who hate Jews.

Nazism is about Jew hatred first and foremost. Acknowledge that or stop using the word!

[practical-hearthcraft]

As someone who has existed within varying degrees of the homemaking community online for several years, I have my hills I am willing to die on. The most important one being this:

Skillsets are not gendered. Domestic skills are invalable lifeskills and everyone should know the basics.

I don't give a shit what your pastor tells you on Sundays, everyone should know how to cook, clean etc. It's no one person's place to be at home, and certainly not due to something as arbitrary as gender.

This past weekend I woke up horribly ill with a sinus infection. Woke up early anyways and went through the motions of getting my daughter up for the day, despite having been unable to sleep through due to fever. The routine is that my husband gets a lie in on Saturday and I lile in on Sunday. Fine. As soon as my husband comes downstairs and sees the state I'm in, I get sent straight back to bed with a cup of tea and medicine, and he tells me he's got it, I just need to rest. Without me needing to check him, remind him or ask him to do anything specifically, he knew exactly which chores needed to be covered for the weekend, got it all done, and didn't have to ask me once for any clarification. This included ensuring my daughters school uniform was cleaned and ironed ahead of monday, taking her into town to buy new clothes post growth-spurt, baking some sandwich loaves for the week ahead. He cooked dinner on Saturday using leftovers I'd put aside for that reason, without needing to check in as he knows the system. He cooked again on Sunday, and specifcally cooked something he knew would create plenty of leftovers, so I wouldn't need to cook again for a few days while I recover. All of this, he knew how to do, and did without complaint, despite us existing in, what is at surface level, a "traditional marriage".

And by the way, nothing my husband did this weekend was a surprise to me. At no point did I think this was a pleasant thing for him to do, and aren't I so lucky? Of course I expect him to know how to keep our household running for a weekend when I'm sick. The man is nearly 40. I should bloody hope he knows how to do laundry and cook a full meal.

If you want to do the majority of domestic tasks in your household, go for it, knock yourself out. But you need to ensure your partner knows how to do it as well. Don't allow yourself to enforce bullshit patriarchal nonsense and exist as a glorified bangmaid.

If you're on the other side of things and you find yourself doing the minority of domestic tasks, why not see how you can develop those skills? Maybe see if you can allocate one night a week where your partner gets the evening off, and you commit to cooking dinner. Maybe ask them to write down their routines so if for whatever reason they're unable to do their regular tasks, you can support them and pick up where they've had to stop.

[annagxx]

Valentine week? Nah not interested. Chocolate Day? Now we’re talking.

[drinksglue]

Running back into the room with "AND ANOTHER THING"

In regards to the "not anti, not proship, but a third thing":

Many neutrals will openly interact with antis who are aggressive against pro-shippers, all in the name of "well, I don't care about the discourse, so I don't care that they're antis"

I need you to understand that the flaw with this is that it frames the anti mindset as an acceptable viewpoint to have. It isn't.

Imagine if I said "I don't care about the arguments between librarians and Moms For Liberty, and I think they just need to calm down. I support neither! Just stop fighting!" and then exchanged friendly emails with M4L members. This would be utterly ridiculous, wouldn't it? It would mean that I find their beliefs to be valid opinions to hold, and not dangerous rhetoric that, taken to its logical conclusion, would result in mass censorship.

This is even worse in the case of people who "used to be" pro-ship/pro-fiction, presumably knowing how bad this can get and how it affects people IN REAL LIFE, who still chose to go "neutral" and start interacting with antis. You know what they do, you know how they doxx and stalk and threaten people, and you know how they've caused a lot of mentally vulnerable people to take their own lives, and you're going to give them ANY kind of voice in fandom?

To be "neutral" tells me you don't give a single shit about the people who are being targeted over stupid fandom bullshit that was practically never an issue pre-2015. And the few times that it was... well, that's actually why AO3 exists now.

You want the discourse to stop? The only way that's going to happen at this point is if you snuff out as much interaction with fancops as possible. Avoid interacting with them directly as much as possible, do not reblog their posts or their art no matter how innocuous it is, do not allow them into your fandom spaces. Exclude them from fandom entirely, methodically ostracize them. Block, block, block, and block some more. Doing this will mean we only have to deal with the most extreme of cases that involve mass-brigading and block evading.

That's still a tall order of course, but I can guarantee you fandom spaces will improve in quality if you refuse to make a space for fancops at the table.

Sorry. I'm tired of pretending "neutrals" are anything other than Fancop-Lite.

[bixels]

As gen-AI becomes more normalized (Chappell Roan encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use gen-AI because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by tech companies. I draw not because I want a drawing but because I love the process of drawing. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

[punk-junkie69]

To be honest with yall, I wish thus post didn't get as much traction as it did, its taking away from my other art.

This was a simple shitpost I drew on my phone because I had a weird idea for like 8 seconds and I didn't expect it to blow like this.

Please do me a favor and go check out my other art on this page and my kin page 🙏 @punk-on-paws I would like to get some new notifications for my other stuff

Yeah

Staring lovingly at his gigantic wife

[yrrtyrrtwhenihrrthrrt]

In light of Brian Thompson being shot dead on my birthday (🎉🥳🎂) I'd like to share a personal story about UnitedHealthcare.

During the peak of COVID, my family all got sick. I couldn't be on my parents' insurance because they were both older and on Medicare. So, I had insurance through my University: UnitedHealthcare.

For some reason, rather than roll-over each year, I got a new plan each year that ended after May and didn't start until August, so I was uninsured for the summer months, but it was a weird situation that the university denied, and told us we were supposed to be insured year-round, it was messy.

Both of my parents went to the hospital, and I got sick too. I had to take care of my pets, and myself, and try to stay alive and keep my pets alive when I was so weak I could hardly move. When my parents came home, my condition got dramatically worse (I think my body knew it couldn't give out, because there was nobody to take care of me, so once my parents were okay, it completely crashed and failed.)

I started experiencing emergency symptoms. It was a bit hard to breathe, my chest hurt, and I was extremely delirious. I wanted to call my insurance to see if I was covered (this was during the summer) and I was connected to some nice person, probably making minimum wage, who told me with caution in her voice that my plan was expired. I had no active insurance, but she urged me to go to an emergency room. I remember saying something to the effect of "You just told me I don't have insurance, I can't go to the hospital, I can't afford it."

She sounded so genuinely worried and scared. I remember she said "You really don't sound good, you sound really sick, please call 9-1-1" and I think I just said "I can't afford it without insurance, don't worry, I think I'll be okay."

And she paused and said "I don't want to hang up the phone with you like this." And it sounded like she was holding back tears. And I don't remember what I said, I think that I would be okay, and I hung up.

I still think about her. I wonder if that phone call haunted her, or if she had dozens of calls like that a day. I wonder if she thinks about it at all, if she wonders if I died after she told me I didn't have insurance and therefore couldn't go to the hospital without incurring a tremendous financial burden. I wonder if she feels guilt or blame-- of course she shouldn't, it wouldn't have been her fault if anything had happened to me. Maybe it's self-centered to wonder if she thinks about it. I'm not the main character and it was just her job. But, still.

I think about how evil it was that we were put in that situation. Because offering year-long continuous coverage through the university plan would maybe cut into profits, maybe not benefit shareholders enough, maybe cut into Thompson's $10 million salary. While his minimum wage administrators have to feel afraid to hang up the phone, because on the other line someone might be dying, and they wouldn't know. While his patients hang up and decide to take their chances rather than put their family through that trauma.

This is UnitedHealthcare. This is Brian Thompson's legacy. This is why, understandably, an entire nation is jubilant that he was gunned down like the vermin he was. I don't care about his widow. I feel pity for his children, despite the fact that they will inherit millions, but I feel more pity for the children of his victims patients who are gone because they didn't want THEIR children to inherit crippling debt. Brian Thompson got what he fucking deserved. I pray that he not be the only one. I pray for continued safety, peace , and anonymity for his killer.

American healthcare is a disease.

[grungekitty-77]

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

[sleepycelestialprincess]

Urgg! I see this e v e r y w h e r e!

I work a lot with art and photographs, I'm an artist, I work as a picture framer, and I also have a lot of experience with the history of photography and photo scanning and retouching.

Something that I see a lot is the expectation that old photographs will look low quality because they are old and new photographs should look good. This is entirely opposite in most cases. There are all kinds of limitations that may cause the quality of a photograph from any age to look good or bad and I'll get into some of those later.

Early photography was typically a daguerreotype or tintype. These are both images that are made directly on the surface that you look at. Meaning that there was no intermediate negative or copy made. The image you see was left there by light that came from the subject, through a lens, and hit that surface. The clarity of that image is limited only by how well the photographer focused the lens. If well made, there is upwards of 4000dpi (dots per inch). If you have a 2"x3" image that is approximately equivalent to at least a 96MP (megapixels or million pixels) image. If its a 4"x5", it'd be 320MP. This far surpasses any of today's highest end digital cameras. There are obviously other factors to consider in the overall quality of an image but these photographs from the mid 1800s if in good condition, look great by today's standards.

I'm not going to go into all the photography formats and sizes from the last 175+ years but I'll mention a few. When your great grand parents had their 5 wedding photographs taken, it was probably with and 8x10 or 4x5 inch large format film. Film of that era was grainier than today but at those sizes, even with making a print, will hold great tonality and detail. I would estimate between 400MP – 200MP in resolution for 8x10 or 4x5 respectively.

When 35mm film was introduced in the 1910s, it was largely criticized as not having enough resolution to make an acceptable image. It didn't really take off until the 50s when film got more detailed, and finer grained. Great improvements were introduced over the decades bringing the resolution from about 10MP (very rough estimate) to today's finest films being equivalent to about 34MP with very smooth grain.

I really don't know what they were thinking pushing out digital cameras when they did. Photographs never looked worse! Even a cheep point and shoot camera with 24mm film (APS film was 2/3 the area of 35mm film) produced images far far better than any digital camera for many years. Many early digital cameras were between 1/3rd of a MP up to maybe 3MP. And they were way noisier than even early film was grainy. Even when digital cameras became acceptable in quality if you had the budget for a good one, they still had limitations below that of film. I feel like the crossover was no earlier than 2005. I could go into detail but this post is getting too long.

Then of course phone cameras entered common use not long after and set us back again to utter trash being petaled as anything worth using for anything. This further lowered people's expectations of what an image should look like. What once would have been scoffed at by anyone, became the average common image. Family's memories being reduced to images not worth even looking at.

Luckily things have gotten quite a bit better again, digital cameras of any larger variety look decent. But I think its a real shame that most family's have completely lost about 15 years of photos because of the onset of digital cameras. I fear that may end up longer for many people, if social media sites ever loose someone's photos, many people will have nothing.

—

I didn't even get into photo and art printing. But many things were very high quality in the past, then got much worse, and hopefully have gotten a bit better again. But a lot of things right now are at their lowest yet, like buttons.

Historical context is of course very useful for important things like Politics and Science and everything, but will also open your eyes to things like, uh... the way the clothing/textile/crafting industries try to use the word "natural" as an excuse to sell shoddy and bad quality goods and make you think that's normal.

God knows there are worse things going on in the world, but it really pisses me off when I see companies advertising "Real Shell/Pearl buttons!" like that's supposed to be some upscale selling point, and the buttons in question are the thinnest, roughest, most crudely-made buttons in existence... 🙄😒 "But they're made from Natural Materials! You can't expect Natural Materials to look refined and consistent like synthetic ones!" They are lying to you. THEY ARE LYING TO YOU! And I know this because I've seen "real shell buttons" from 100 or even 50 years ago. And most of them are sturdy and smoothly polished, of a consistent thickness, and sometimes even finely carved. The buttons on nice men's dress shirts? Those are the cheap, plastic IMITATIONS of what people expected actual mother-of-pearl buttons to look like! "Natural" isn't an excuse! Your product is cheap and badly and lazily made! And I'm so sick of this, because I see it EVERYWHERE. "Linen-look" has become shorthand for "coarsely woven fabric with visible slubs" and that drives me CRAZY because do you KNOW what kinds of linen I have seen??? Antique linen so light and fine and smooth you can't even SEE the weave unless you magnify it!!! A fragment of a linen damask tablecloth so smooth and glossy, it looks like SILK? 😭 (On that note, "dupioni silk" is so roughly woven that it would have been considered hardly fit to sell a century ago) "This fabric is woven of Natural Materials, so imperfections will be inevitable!" 🙃 No! 😀 You just made it cheaply and sloppily, and that was your choice! 😊