#so people searching the actual countries...

[aetherograph]

They did not teach you how to open a book, not after No Child Left Behind. I'm not disagreeing that we have all these things; I myself am a person who does search wikipedia and all that. But it really is so bad here that nobody gets taught to actually INQUIRE or READ; and it's worse for anyone born in the 21st century due to policies enacted by the Bush Administration that cut funding for programs that taught children how to like reading and how to read at all. Public school here ALREADY basically beats curiosity out of people and makes them passive and scared of learning anything that isn't given to them by an authority.

All of that abuse results in adults that get defensive when told they should look something up themselves, that other people in other countries aren't their teachers. Which doesn't excuse it, but I'm just trying to explain why that is so common.

Sources:

How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers | At a Loss for Words | APM Reports

Reading vs. Guessing – Rooted in Language

Reading Tools That Don't Work: Guessing - Lexercise

Why Most Beginning Readers Are Taught To Guess At Words—And How That Holds Them Back

"No Child Left Behind," George Bush Blamed For "Reading Rainbow" End | Larry King Now | Ora TV - YouTube

If You Aren't From the US You Can Stop Reading Here.

The above is not an excuse, my fellow Americans; this is just an explanation. You are an adult and it is your job to undo the abuse the public school gave you. You have to work hard and it sucks to clean up messes inside yourself that other people put there. But you gotta.

The things you need to learn are:

That you are allowed to learn by yourself.

2. That being curious and inquisitive is not bad and sinful, it's good and normal and human.

3. How to find information, and how to check up on whether that information is true. Sometimes college has a course that teaches this, but sometimes you gotta learn it by yourself. Do not search Google for information, go directly to wikipedia and after you're done with the article, go through the sources and read those articles, and look up books at your library or on archive.org.

4. Look up things you THINK you know already, even words you think you know the meaning of. Just habitually check on your knowledge.

5. If you are in your twenties, you probably do not know how to read. That's not your fault so you should not feel shame--the people who should feel shame are the adults that failed you! But you DO need to work on phonics and not simply guess at words. Go to your local library and ask the librarians if they have anything that can help you with literacy. Do not speed read. Take your time and look properly at every word. Reading aloud is normal; silent reading is actually a pretty recent thing. Sound words out. Look them up in the dictionary.

6. Go on google maps and explore the world! Click on stuff, it usually has information and a link to a wikipedia article on that location (if it has one).

7. Your experience of the world--all of it, from what 'good' means to school to weather to how anything works--is not universal.

8. Please ask a librarian or teacher about McGraw-Hill SRA Reading Labs and Hooked on Phonics.

9. Pick up a paper book instead of reading on your phone.

10. Here's a show that can help with reading comprehension, phonics, fear of big words, and more advanced stuff like that. I learned a lot from it as an adult:

we need to legalise learning for adults

[womanofwords]

Audience Participation (Part 2)

Neglected!fourthwall!reader x yandere!batfam.

You read through the comments with curiosity and horror. Some just wanted to say hi, one said that they were a god in your world, and one comment remarked that this (presumably, 'this' was talking to you) was fun. A lot of them called you buddy, which felt comforting.

But two messages from the comments were clear: 1), you needed to get out of Gotham ASAP, and 2), you shouldn't trust weirdos in capes or masks (like Batman and his sidekicks).

Would your family actually look for you, like the comments said they would? You doubted it, but if they were really going to search for you, then they'd call for the Gotham PD, and they'd bring in sniffer dogs.

Question: how do you outrun a nose that strong?

Answer: you don't. You confuse it.

You ventured into a library and logged onto a computer. You typed in the words 'what impedes a sniffer dog' into a search engine and clicked enter. You got results like using coffee grounds, meat smells, and sunscreen to mask smells.

Good. Nobody suspected coffee. Tim drank loads of the stuff, and nobody looked twice at you anyway.

You'd also need a burner phone, and a disguise. You'd have to change your name too. The surname Wayne was too recognisable; you needed something generic. Something like Alex Mass. Alex because it was gender-neutral, and you liked the word Mass. It was a synonym of weight, and in a household where you felt like you were nothing, it was nice to know that you had weight somewhere.

It was also nice to know that you, a singular person, was smarter than an entire comments section.

The next order of business was a place to go. You figured you'd make yourself a disguise later, closer to the actual leaving date. You weren't going to pick Bludhaven, it was too close to Gotham. No Metropolis either, it was far too bright, in a strangely bland way. No, you needed some serious distance.

You settled for Canada. You were pretty good at French, after all, and plenty of people threatened to move to Canada. But just learning French and ditching Gotham wasn't enough. You needed a diversion.

Like Spanish books.

Your folks thinking you were heading for Mexico was perfect. They could comb the entire country looking for you, and it would be a complete waste of time because you weren't there.

Things were coming together, but there was still so much to do.

But with a mission in mind, it could actually be fun.

"Hey, chat," you whispered, already feeling like a fool. Here you were, unironically talking to the comments section like a douchey livestreamer. "What should I do next? I'm old enough to get a bank account and I have some savings, but it's only $700 and it's not enough. I need to get more money and fast. Any help?"

First/previous

Taglist: @bunniotomia, @hai-there-how-are-you, @crystal-freak24, @maskedvoyance.

[coffeegnomee]

No I'm just so obsessed with Spoke talking about his time in his second season, how that was the first season he found what completed him, made him feel whole.

How minutes before he said SPOKE: “i wanted to make sure that there was someone that was gonna [end the season]"

His primary goal, core ideology, is world ender.

And it got solidified in his second season.

I've been talking forever about waiting for the new members to get to the end of their first season, that's no mystery. But I've also been sooo excited and delighted watching the s5 additions take on their second full season and thinking back I actually don't think I've ever written about it, whoops.

They were just getting so comfortable with lifesteal and with themselves. And so much of their ideologies just finally came through in the final weeks. Like unironically I've been excited for s7 since like one month into s6: All the s5 adds on their 3rd season, all the s6 adds on their 2nd. That's the kind of shit that made s4 imo.

And to list them out, Minute, obviously, just posted that video and it's looking like his ideology has solidified into basically what he said that one day early season when Zam asked him his goals MINUTE: "I want two things. I want fun. And I want hearts” 

And backing it up with the theme of the whole video of reconciliation with Clown, and Clown having his own growth moment realizing lifesteal without teammates is really lonely. And that both of them loved hanging out in the finale.

Minute isn't one to be perfectly good, but he isn't one to crave after the evil. He wants fun. With hearts. Friendship and redstone machines and some cool fights and small heavy hitting lore moments.

But destroying spawn, using exploits; that's not him.

But he gets blinded with the goal of hearts, loosing sight on the having fun. Oh my goodness seeing the clip again of him killing Rekrap when Rek was so clearly excited, how much time there was between Rek's excitement and when Minute loaded the cannon. Only realizing after that he regretted it. Offt stab me in the heart bro.

And 4c. In January he said “I feel like deep down i don't trust anyone completely, but i feel like to an extent i choose to trust people anyway. Because on lifesteal i feel like i have more joy of putting myself in those positions of trust because by the end of it you get to see people’s real characters”. And he did that with PRISMS, right until the end though it was a bit scuffed with him not being in the country. And he did it with the tunnel rats. But he will always be the player who puts his trust in others just to see what might happen down the line.

And Jumper, settling quite nicely into the role of psychological tormenter. Like need I say more.

By the end of their second season each one has staked a claim in what they are on lifesteal.

And then Wemmbu, since he banned himself off mid season 6, I count that as completing his first season, since he was added mid season 5. so he begins his second in s7.

Pentar was also mid season s5, so he's at 1.5 seasons and I think we're getting a really interesting look into his mind. I mean for goodness sake did anyone else watch the SB mace video and see him offer Ecorridor as his payment for the mace. What the fuck is wrong with him. But like... no, i don't have thoughts haha. I love him. Taking a separate plot point with Zam and presenting it to SB. like he's too ridiculous /pos I'll probably need 3 full seasons before I understand Pentar.

And then there's Squiddo, once again running the ring of a handmade hacked client, searching and testing and finding exploits. And in the end embracing it to cause chaos, but not necessarily the end of the season. She's also at 1.5 seasons, and I'm so intrigued where they'll go. She's definitely more teammate focused (lol) and oriented to silly things over anything else.

But then to go down memory lane, like Spoke was saying, his season 2 had him doing everything for his team but in the end he found himself in ending the server.

Planet was added s2, but only logged on at the end, so s3 was his first full season, and s4 his second. In both you see an embracing of being a chungus, 3ht, girl talk, changing the trajectory of player's lives through talking. There was so much subtle talking, so much passion for content that is effective. That changed s5, until he banned himself in the Abyss, and then changed back in s6.

Bacon was added halfway through s3, and you can see how by halfway through s4, which he talked about earlier this season, was the time when he got really really invested into lifesteal and started caring, like, a lot. Bro got passionate about the wormhole. But then it wasn't until season 5 that we really saw Bacon become Bacon, when he really started being the critiquer of plots and did his first patented do my tasks plots, when he got passionate about players caring about the server and and wanting to log on and putting in so much effort to make it happen.

Zam's second season was s3. Running from the PrinceZam Empire to Cleansers to the iconic season 3 finale with Spoke. Establishing he's the one who will repair spawn when nobody else does. Accidentally falling into being the hero and never giving up no matter what.

Rek's second season was also s3 which is when his trap escaping and paranoia really kicked off, as well as his willingness to be involved regardless of the moral tilt of his teammates (the cleansing/decimation). He just has a tilt of wholesome chaos that is very rekrap.

ok so eventually we get too into nuance based on player activity and if they skipped a season or not ect ect. but i love this trend. I love thinking about what shaped the lifestealers into what they are now, i love watching them grow and change. Normally in like normal tv/movie content I'm one to love an origin story, whatever the first movie is in a series or the first season of a show. But on lifesteal it genuinely gets better the longer they're online.

[jeres-red-g-string]

ok first of all thank you for interacting with my post yesterday, sliding in my DMs, clearing up things and sharing your opinions. I love seeing everyones perspective on the current situation.

Atp I want to clear up that I wasn‘t talking about the fandom on tumblr but on several other socials (you know which ones) where people again ARE trying to cancel him (I mean do whatever you want do to, I won‘t stop you. But this isn‘t the first time that this happens and I feel like they just search for opportunity to do that. And it‘s getting really tiring).

What I didn‘t say was, that we shouldn‘t hold him accountable for the shitty stuff he‘s doing (which was more than once). People need to learn that they can‘t do whatever they want to do just bc they have a specific social status and I‘m all in for that!

I just wanted to let you know that I'm not one of those people who think everything he does is great and just accept it without questioning anything. even if that's what it seemed like yesterday. I simply made a mistake in my choice of words and wanted to make a joke about a situation I wasn't aware of.🫣

Also, yesterday I didn't know that it's apparently such a big deal in Finland and other countries. In Germany, gambling isn't illegal; it's actually very normalized (which I personally don't support. It ruins lives, and I've experienced (not myself) how quickly that can happen). Still, I was a bit surprised that the situation was escalating so much, since to me it was just a random advertisement. You should know that I generally have a hard time keeping track of what's „normal“ and what isn't, since certain regulations are handled very differently here than, for example, in Finland. But now I know how bad it really is. Thank you for the clarification.

People need to stop idolizing him to the point where it becomes completely ridiculous. He's allowed to make mistakes, he's allowed to act like an asshole, but he should also accept that he'll have to take responsibility because he's in a different situation now. And I thought he'd learned that by now, especially when it comes to things like this.

Nevertheless, he deserves to be treated with respect. There's no need to insult him or anything worse. He's also a human being and I feel like that's sometimes forgotten.

Thank you for reading!

[bats-and-birds-24]

Here me out...

An autistic town located in a gloomy area like Alaska.

Everything's dark and misty, with only the stark green of evergreen trees to cut through the monochrome.

Everyone either works remotely, or works for places like the local library, school, or observatory. Social activities revolve around interests, if you're interested in biology, you join the local environmental group, or help out at the community farm.

Despite being so remote, the little town has many researchers as it actually supports autistic people.

The people of that little town have a reputation as reliable, but eccentric. Other neurodivergents are there too. Adhders work in conservation and for search and rescue. Accessibility is key in the town with an accessible tram system. Higher support needs people are able to live their lives to the fullest.

There is a massive archival library underneath the town, it also has the best mental health resources in the country. Its remote location means that corporations don't have a hold on the area.

People wear cloaks with hoods and masks to keep the chill out. Medium length hairstyles are popular, making it difficult to discern someones gender at first glance. People wear black eyeliner on their bottom eyelid to cut through the bright glare of the snow.

[goldammerchen]

pruaus y pruhun, versión cínica, tóxica, problemática

los rasgos tóxicos de pruaus están al revés 😭, confien en los colores

solo pruaus; solo pruhun; (edit: aushun!)

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[callsigndreadfrost]

Holy fuck this is one of my favorite topics when talking about my OCs!

Trevor: See, he was born in the 1600s in Pennsylvania so given the time I can't really just say that he has a Philadelphia accent. I've tried searching this up and it's a right pain in the fuckin' ass so I just say he has a Philadelphian accent and move on.

Angelus: His is so freaking hard to describe. Because of his circumstances the little speech he'd developed was just gone by age 5. He just didn't know how to talk. The people in the mansion had heavy Scottish accents and that's what he heard everyday. But at age 13 when he was finally removed from those people he was moved to the compound where people from all cultures and countries were gathered and he heard so many accents. His grandfather having lived in Russia for so many centuries actually developed a Russian accent so when he was teaching Angelus to talk he would do so with a Russian accent. Loke and Jelani would also help out in this and they have their own accent. Trevor would help too and he had his own and so on. He learned to talk from so many different sources that it created this really strange sound until Aleksey got private tutors and he learned on a more advanced scale though it took him a long time to drop certain pronunciations. It's very, very, subtle but sometimes you catch an odd accentuation of a few words here and there. However, since the tutors were from late-ish 1700s Virginia he grabbed a hold of their accent. So I kinda have the same ordeal with him that I have with Trevor. I just say Virginian accent with a tiny twist. And no, because of what happened he wants ZERO to do with his Scottish side, in fact, he never even brings it up and denies it completely. He can do an immaculate Russian accent that sounds like he's been living in Russia his whole life.

Loke and Jelani: Them last because this is just too fucking funny to me. They both have Norwegian accents, specifically from the north. Yes, they've been living in the U.S. for a very, very long time now but they haven't lost the accent, it's just not as thick as it once was. To be honest they're a little easier to understand now...unless they're mad in which case you get this loud and angry botched and fast English with a heavy accent and every two sentences they say it in Norwegian making them harder to understand until they just drop the English altogether and keep yelling in Norwegian.

Funniest part is how they just always butcher the W sound in words. Like they just can't really pronounce it well even after all these years.

What Loke and Jelani said: "Well, yeah, that's a pretty welcome change."

What everyone else heard: VEHLL, ywah, dat's a prettIE VEHLcome change."

Look, to be honest neither sibling cares about "fixing" it, much less working to get rid of their accents. As long as people understand them they don't give a shit. Also when talking among themselves they always do so in Norwegian, when they talk to their parents they do it in Norwegian. Their phones, laptops and personal items are switched to Norwegian. They also frequently go back home to visit their family and being in the country means that they're speaking the language and hearing it 24/7 on tv, the radio and the people around them so every time they come back to Maine their accents revert to a thicker and heavier version.

First time I heard this accent years ago I nearly threw up from laughing so much. It was a mix of "this is too fucking funny and aw this is what my two babies sound like". It's adorable to me.

Does your OC have an accent? What does it sound like?

[storm-of-feathers]

my stance on israel was once very clear but i stopped answering bc im sick and tired of "hey are you a BAD JEW or a GOOD JEW?"

like. are you asking christians their opinions on proselytizing colonialism? are you asking muslims their opinions on 9/11? are you asking lesbians about TERFism? are you asking belgians about DRC? are you asking russians about ukraine? are you asking white people about.... anything?

if the answer is no, why the fuck are you singling out jews?

unless youre giving these litmus tests of ideologies to everyone, ever, its antisemitism. unless you literally lead every conversation with "denounce this shitty thing that people Like You think right now" it's antisemitism. If you are only doing this to jews is antisemitism. It's all antisemitism.

[spock-adoodledoo]

sometimes I wonder if characters who share names with/are inspired by/based off of a historical figure make that person roll around in their grave. cant imagine if you're like 2000 to 1000 years dead, a pretty accomplished intellectual back in your day, you google search your name, and get a bunch of anime drawings instead

[magical-girl-coral]

Okay, what is the Internet's brilliant idea of how to stop the I/p conflict

*checks notes*

You people are planning on boycotting an entire fucking country?

[actual-corpse]

Kentucky Gov Beshear says bill threatens ‘supreme authority’ | Lexington Herald Leader

https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article303330361.html

I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but a "libertarian-leaning" group (Americans for Prosperity, which has affiliated with a billionaire) is behind a lot of bullshit in many states and is currently stoking the flame war that is our Dem. Governor vs. our majority Rep. Legislature.

Like... This shit is frightening... Especially when Reps reveal just how stupid they think we are.

In a different article on the same subject, the director of AfP (a woman*) said, ". . . We await Beshear's resignation so that he may run for General Assembly in 2026"... which is really giving 'haha you're so triggered right now, haha did I offend you boohoo.' Like... They are trying to run this guy out of office by being as obtuse as possible.

*Republicans strongly believe that women should only ever exist and work in the house tending children. I experience schadenfreude every time a Republican woman gets fired for being a "DEI" hire... It's so stupid it could be funny if not for the entire world being at stake.

[medicinemane]

Ah... I've figured it out!

My brain's been treating Caucasus and Carpathian as the same word and that's why it's been so confusing why this mountain range seems to jump around by a pretty wide margin

Dyslexia did the same thing with Austria and Australia where just like here I knew they were different, but just didn't quite process it, which ended up with me thinking things like "Wow, I wonder why Falco's German is so spot on, like that's pretty impressive for an Australian"

Like my dyslexia just says "These two words are similar size and shape... I think they're probably more or less the same word, I'll file them away in the same spot, especially cause they're the same type of thing"

But I finally caught it seeing Carpathians mentioned being in Ukraine, and me being like "I really did think they were more over towards Georgia... maybe they go under the black se... wait a minute, I finally figured out why I'm confused"

Also see the Balkans and the Baltic where I 100% know the difference and know which one I'm talking about but very much may say the wrong one (and my dad's been like "oh you see, you just need to remember that..." and it's like dude it's dyslexia... also with GK Chesterton I'll often say "J" and my dad'll say similar stuff and it's like dude... there's no mnemonic here, J and G just sound and look similar enough my brain sometimes swaps them in behind my back)

Anyway, finally caught it in the act, finally understand why it seemed like these mountains jumped across a large body of water and no one ever commented on it... it's cause it was my dyslexia filing them away as both mountain ranges starting with C so... basically the same thing... yeah... yeah that's the same thing

[trafficpan-ic]

It's all really about finding a sport or type of exercise that you enjoy and that doesn't require so much effort bcs of that!!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

what’s the story about the generative power model and water consumption? /gen

There's this myth going around about generative AI consuming truly ridiculous amount of power and water. You'll see people say shit like "generating one image is like just pouring a whole cup of water out into the Sahara!" and bullshit like that, and it's just... not true. The actual truth is that supercomputers, which do a lot of stuff, use a lot of power, and at one point someone released an estimate of how much power some supercomputers were using and people went "oh, that supercomputer must only do AI! All generative AI uses this much power!" and then just... made shit up re: how making an image sucks up a huge chunk of the power grid or something. Which makes no sense because I'm given to understand that many of these models can run on your home computer. (I don't use them so I don't know the details, but I'm told by users that you can download them and generate images locally.) Using these models uses far less power than, say, online gaming. Or using Tumblr. But nobody ever talks about how evil those things are because of their power generation. I wonder why.

To be clear, I don't like generative AI. I'm sure it's got uses in research and stuff but on the consumer side, every effect I've seen of it is bad. Its implementation in products that I use has always made those products worse. The books it writes and flood the market with are incoherent nonsense at best and dangerous at worst (let's not forget that mushroom foraging guide). It's turned the usability of search engines from "rapidly declining, but still usable if you can get past the ads" into "almost one hundred per cent useless now, actually not worth the effort to de-bullshittify your search results", especially if you're looking for images. It's a tool for doing bullshit that people were already doing much easier and faster, thus massively increasing the amount of bullshit. The only consumer-useful uses I've seen of it as a consumer are niche art projects, usually projects that explore the limits of the tool itself like that one poetry book or the Infinite Art Machine; overall I'd say its impact at the Casual Random Person (me) level has been overwhelmingly negative. Also, the fact that so much AI turns out to be underpaid people in a warehouse in some country with no minimum wage and terrible labour protections is... not great. And the fact that it's often used as an excuse to try to find ways to underpay professionals ("you don't have to write it, just clean up what the AI came up with!") is also not great.

But there are real labour and product quality concerns with generative AI, and there's hysterical bullshit. And the whole "AI is magically destroying the planet via climate change but my four hour twitch streaming sesh isn't" thing is hysterical bullshit. The instant I see somebody make this stupid claim I put them in the same mental bucket as somebody complaining about AI not being "real art" -- a hatemobber hopping on the hype train of a new thing to hate and feel like an enlightened activist about when they haven't bothered to learn a fucking thing about the issue. And I just count my blessings that they fell in with this group instead of becoming a flat earther or something.

[peachybeesplease]

this page is SO MUCH to me

just like. the bed is a whole acre. two people could sit on opposite corners of that bed and they'd have to raise their voices to have a conversation. there's enough of that bed that you'd have to call a search party for a stuffed animal.

AND YET. remy has bundled himself to the very Very edge of this bed that is larger than most studio apartments to be close to jamis. sometime in the night he took one of the pillows on the cross-country journey from the middle to the end of the bed to be as close to jamis as is physically possible without actually rolling off. and he did it SUBCONSCIOUSLYYYY like I know he turned down the whole "there was only one bed" immediately but if I'm being honest with you all I think what they have going on is gayer than that