#three and a half hours average daily

[castielsupernatural]

but could a normal person do THIS??

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

in-school-suspension was honestly so extremely funny because i had undiagnosed Problems Disorder and unironically i LOVED being sent to ISS.

average day of ISS (sent there for 3 days because i was late to a class three times within a 9-week period):

arrive at school and say a silly dramatic farewell to my besties

stop at each of my classrooms to receive makeup work from my teachers which always ends up being some bullshit worksheet or textbook busywork

arrive at ISS portable and go through the daily rigamarole intro of "you are Bad and you should Feel Bad. welcome to Bad Class, a confirmation that you will never make anything of your life, you horrid creature. you are not allowed to speak, eat, or feel joy. no doodling or reading, if you don't have makeup work or homework i will assign busywork to you. fuck you. *spits*"

spend the next 4 hours doing my busywork. it is QUIET. i can CONCENTRATE. the work gets DONE EARLY.

the work only took 2 hours maximum, i spend the other 2 hours writing fanfiction manually in a composition book pretending that I'm doing textbook work. i am having the time of my life.

our lunch time is the 10 minutes between the two lunch periods. there is no line, because there's only ever 5-15 ISS students. i get to EAT instead of STANDING IN A LINE for half an hour and only having 4 minutes to scarf down my garbage.

at the end of lunch, we are led in a big duck line through the school and we each get to stop off at our usual classes and pick up work to do. i already did this in the morning, so i use my time to say hi to my friends and figure out what the homework will be tonight.

for the last 2 hours of the day i do my homework. IT GETS DONE. this is the ONLY time during high school where homework gets done. zero exaggeration. i never did homework unless i was actively in a classroom with no choice but to do homework.

we get the usual outro of "this has been your day in Bad Class, because you're a Bad Child. some of you will be here tomorrow, some of you will not, but i'll see you again in a couple of weeks, because you are Bad and will always be Bad."

the school day is over, i did not encounter any of my bullies, i did not have to 'participate in class'. i got all of my work done and then some. i got to work on my fanfics. i hang out with my friends after school and talk to others on myspace/facebook.

it is the best three days i have in recent memory.

i will be there again, probably on purpose.

[muffinlance]

State of the Muffin Report 2023-24

Happy belated birthday to my fanfics! Little Zuko turned six back in March. <3 

Behold, my annual roundup stats, because you can get fanfic from the math teacher but you can’t get the math out of the fanfic:

[id: Screenshot of an excel spreadsheet showing my 2023-24 word counts. Important info is that over six stories, I wrote 104k words, for a monthly average of 8.6k and a daily of 284 words. End id.]

Fanfic:

After not touching the birthday fic itself since 2019, Little Zuko v the World is finally finished! Woooo.

Otherwise, a slow-but-steady sort of year on the fanfic front.

Serious Face Writing & RL:

Li’s Friends has now raised $4,206.21 USD for wildlife charity, not counting gift matches. <3

Finished the second book in my original fic series, Fox’s Tongue; The Skin Stealer’s Son officially launched yesterday! (Affiliate link, so that if you happen to buy it, Amazon pays me extra money for the privilege.)

I also created a secondary tiny human, and she is a DELIGHT. She was last seen a half hour ago crawling after her brother like a particularly aggressive tripod, Hop on Pop in one hand, and slap-screaming at it until he read it to her. My children. <3

Year Six (2024-25) Goals

Fanfic: 

Gonna finish the new case of Dark Night in Ba Sing Se. Gonna finish it so good. (This is a donation fic for the winner of my Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction and is therefore due by the end of the year, so woo artificial timelines! Ah external motivations, how I missed you from my school days.)

I’m incredibly excited for Blindsiding Badgermoles, and have that same lovely external motivation in the form of my sensitivity reader, so planning to focus on that this year.

Finish the current book of Towards the Sun. We’re currently on the final field trip, so that should be very doable. —I say, using the exact same wording for the third year in a row. Honestly this one’s less a goal than a joke to see how many years it’s actually going to take me. And hey, I’ve been making progress! We now have the delight that is Lady Jun! Third year’s the charm?

Serious Face Writing & RL: 

Get a solid start on Fox’s Tongue Book Three, Face of the Wolf King.

Get out large print editions of the first two books.

Continue raising children.

Special thanks this year goes to First and Secondborn, who blessed me with the ability to still manage over 100k in a year, which is way more than I anticipated at this time last year.

Cheers,

MuffinLance

[bitterrobin]

Either I make multiple housekeeper ocs for my au or at least half of Wayne Manor is kept boarded up indefinitely. Sorry to burst people's bubbles but there is no conceivable way Alfred by himself is cleaning the entire mansion.

I've grown up helping my mother (who otherwise works alone w chronic back pain) clean middle to upper class homes here in SoCal. In very white oriented areas with housewives and large families with dogs and good financial situations. Now, there's a huge difference between large modern homes that have only two maybe three floors and the entire floor plan of a mansion that's at minimum built in the 1800s and has 30 rooms. But fundamentally the problems with upkeep are the same. You need to sweep all the floors, mop, wipe the baseboards, vacuum every carpet. You need to wipe clean windows, fans, HC units, lightbulbs, staircases, every surface used constantly - kitchen countertops, bathroom counters, showers/bathtubs/toilets. You need to do laundry, not only clothes, but towels and bedding used by the owners and the rags you use to clean. Fold that laundry. Make the beds. Take out every full trashbag and haul it out of the house. Wash dishes daily. Put those dishes away. Occasionally remind the owner that maybe a light needs fixing, there's a hole in their daughter's sweater, the dog peed inside, that their son tends to stuff trash under the couch cushions and now they have an ant infestation.

On average, with my help, it takes my mom 4-5 hours for one two-floor house. Takes longer by herself. That's not even getting into the amount of people and pets. If there's kids, you need to clean after their spaces more than the adults. With babies, there's diapers and toys all over. With dogs or cats there's always always fur to pick up. The bigger the family, the busier they are, the messier the house. And thats all for a housekeeper that visits every week and gets paid in numbers ranging from 6$0 to $100. (And often people will forget to pay you and you have to stretch out your budget for weeks and weeks and then they pay you and they forget again next month).

For Alfred, as an official butler and employee, he lives at the manor. There's no cost for him that comes from travel (no car to pay for fuel) or cleaning supplies (Bruce probably pays for them). But everything else? Not to mention the added chaos factor of BEING VIGILANTES. Alfred not only upkeep the house they live in, but prepares food, clothing, scheduling, and cleans the Batcave and feeds the bats, at least two large dogs, and one cat. Theres multiple cars and vehicles, guns, weaponry, technology to watch out for (and I know the average fanon enjoyer doesn't know Harold Allnut should be doing that). He picks Bruce's clothes and dresses him for godssake. Hell, Alfred even operates the Batcomputer when needed every night. He does their medical care (and people forget about Leslie yet again, even regarding her relationship w Bruce, still. still.) That's too much for one old man.

Realistically, either Bruce has a full house staff like nobles used to have, or Alfred simply does not do as much as people think. He's old. Forever aging. There's not going to be 20+ plus rooms ready all the time for people to sleep in. At best, the residents of the Manor are Bruce, Tim, and Damian. At best, their bedrooms are kept clean daily. All the other bedrooms are cleaned maybe monthly. The rooms that aren't bedrooms (foyers/attics etc) maybe every other month. Groceries are multiple day events. Same with cooking full meals, dietary plans. Galas and business functions require weeks and months. The pets take days for veterinary care and training. The kids all together take weeks, days individually and together. And they not only look at you as a butler but as family. You are responsible for their wellbeing, emotions whether you like it or not (bc Alfred frankly enables Bruce too much but thats for another day).

Only saving grace he has is that recently not many people live there anymore. Stephanie and Helena and Kate and Barbara shouldn't be living there in the first place. Dick and Jason have their own places. Tim and Cassandra are up in the air but I don't think they spend 100% of their time in the Manor because they're young adults with various circumstances.

[milesluna]

My Favorite Games of 2023.

Hi. Hello. Thanks ever so much for clicking on this page. Happy to have you.

First thing's first: I'm a little freak when it comes to video games. I don't feel the need to beat most games I play. From Software is one of my favorite studios in the industry and I've never finished a single one of their games. This means, fortunately, that I get to play a LOT more games than the average bear.

I've written up some blurbs about my top ten favorite games from 2023, but before that here's the list of every game I remember playing this year that left any sort of lasting impact on me (in no particular order):

Dead Space Remake Resident Evil 4 Remake F-Zero 99 Humanity Dredge Metroid Prime Remastered Anemoiaplois Alan Wake 2 Baldur’s Gate 3 LoZ Tears of the Kingdom Counter Strike 2 Hunt Showdown El Paso Elsewhere Jusant Slay the Princess| Remnant II The Finals Street FIghter 6 Lethal Company BattleBit Remastered Don’t Scream Homebody The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog Pizza Tower World of Horror Super Mario Wonder Mr. Sun’s Hatbox Fifa 23 Sea of Stars (Demo) Half-Life (25th Anniversary Update)

And the games I played that were NOT released in 2023:

Unpacking Persona 4 Golden Picross 7 The Order 1886 Shovel Knight Dig Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Spider-Man: Miles Morales Pac-Man Championship Edition DX Project Zomboid Quake LoZ The Minish Cap Drill Dozer Wario Land 4 Pokemon Pinball Resident Evil Revelations Summer of ‘58 Trackmania TwinCop We Were Here Visage Cursed Halo CE Half-Life 2 (I probably play this once per year) Witch Hunt Red Dead Redemption 2 Cyberpunk 2077 Borderlands 3 Brutal Legend Cultic Slay the Spire PUBG Rez Infinite Batman Arkham City Alan Wake Alan Wake: American Nightmare Max Payne LoZ: Majora’s Mask 3DS Metroid Prime Metroid Prime 2 Tunic Everhood Final Fantasy VII Final Fantasy VII Remake GOODBYE WORLD Yakuza: Like a Dragon Critters for Sale Dome Keeper Phasmophobia Hades Nintendo Switch Sports

Now that you understand the kind of freak you're dealing with…

Let's dive into my top ten favorite games from this objectively fucked up year.

10. El Paso Elsewhere Developed by Texas indie studio Strange Scaffold, El Paso Elsewhere is a Max Payne-clone with vampires, an opinionated narrator, and lots and lots of bullet time. As a small studio punching well above their weight class, Strange Scaffold leans into abstract, PlayStation 1 minimalism when it comes to visuals and pairs them with a soundtrack that will make your hands sweat. The vibes are here and they're ready for the end of the world. I'm personally also a big fan of everything this studio stands for.

9. Mr. Sun's Hatbox I want you to imagine Metal Gear Solid V. Now I want you to imagine that game as a 2D, level-based, slapstick platformer you can play with up to three friends. If you think that sounds stupid, you'd be right. And it's beautiful. As you build up a secret army of soldiers with various skills (and disorders), you'll start to develop *favorites*. This game constantly asks if you're willing to send those favorites on a harrowing mission and risk losing them forever… or if you'd rather send an idiot you recently captured who blinks constantly and can't kill anyone without fainting.

8. Dredge Every year I feel like I find one game that falls into the “just one more round” category, and baby… Dredge was it for 2023. As a weary fisherman in strange waters, you'll make the most out of your 12 measly hours of sunlight only for your daily voyages to inevitably pull you into the darkness of night, and night is when things get weird. Rocks emerge from the fog that you swear weren't there before, your equipment malfunctions, and you're pretty sure you just saw something in the water… something big. Despite only containing a small collection of islands, the world of Dredge manages to feel vast - perhaps vast enough to swallow you whole.

7. Resident Evil 4 Remake I was curious to see what sort of changes would be made to the timeless classic and father of modern 3rd person shooters, Resident Evil 4. I wasn't let down. RE4 Remake takes all the things that didn't age well about the original, tossed them out, and replaced them with only good things. And MORE things! It's campy, fun, and better than a game of bingo.

6. Jusant I really feel like this one didn't get the recognition it deserves. Jusant is a rock climbing game that combines the quiet contemplation of Journey with the mechanical specificity of Death Stranding. Unlike Death Standing, though, there is very little story to interrupt your flow. There are plenty of collectible bits to find for those curious to learn more about what happened before the events of the game, but the environmental storytelling does most of the heavy lifting. For me, the joy of the game comes from how it feels. Right trigger controls your right hand grip, and left trigger controls left hand grip. Plan your route, manage your stamina, and climb high above the clouds in search of answers.

5. F-Zero 99 This. Shit. Slaps. I've never been a big F-Zero guy, but this MADE me one. The “battle royale”, 99 player format is the perfect fit for the ruthless, high octane world of the game. Races last about three minutes, and friend, they are the most intense, white-knuckled three minutes of your life. The decision to make your boost meter the same as your health meter started in F-Zero 64 (I believe), and it is so much more HARROWING in this game when another player could side-swipe you mere meters from the finish line and blow you to bits. Sadly it's only playable via Switch Online, but it made me cheer, laugh, and scream enough this year to earn a spot in my top 5.

4. Alan Wake 2 Remedy makes weird games that also manage to exist in the AAA space and for that I will forever love them. Although Alan Wake 2 resembles a 3rd person shooter survival horror, I'd honestly say it's more of a narrative game than anything else. There's sidequests, there's puzzles, there's upgradeable skills, but at the end of the day the characters, world, and story are what kept me playing. If you haven't checked them out recently, you should definitely watch a story recap of the original games before diving into this sequel, but the wild swings for the fences this game takes are well worth that small price of admission. There's a god damn musical number, for Christ's sake.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom I've really got nothing to say about this game that most people don't already know. It's incredible. The fact that Nintendo made a game that redefined an entire genre and then made a SEQUEL to it that ups the ante is remarkable. To be honest, I've only cleared the Rito, Zora, and Goron cities. I got a bit tired of exploring the depths and guiding Koroks to their friends, but I can't deny the sheer level of complexity and polish on display here. I saw someone on TikTok build a functioning Mecha Godzilla in this game. Good God. I've heard that the ending of this game is one of the best in the franchise, and if I'd seen it this year then it may have wound up higher on my list, but for the time being I'll continue picking up this masterpiece from time to time, chipping away at it until the day comes that I can finally smack the tits off thicc Ganondorf.

2. Half-Life (25th Anniversary Update) I know I'm gonna get shit for this, but I don't care. This year was the 25th anniversary of Half-Life and Valve released an update that made playing it (and it's online Death Match) much more accessible. I threw it on my Steam Deck out of curiosity, expecting to play for 20 minutes. I could not put it down. It is unbelievable how modern this game still feels. I simply had so much fun sprinting through the corridors of Black Mesa with a dozen weapons strapped to my back, blasting aliens and military Spec-Op chumps as a 24(?!) year old theoretical physicist.

1. Baldur's Gate III This game is fucked up, man. The sheer amount of writing in this game scares me. We can all talk about how BIG this game is, it deserves it, but the thing BG3 does better than any other role playing game I have ever experienced is actually encourage roleplaying. I've played through Act I four times now, with four different groups of friends, and it has felt fresh every time. I have seen the same events play out in so many different ways that it boggles the mind, but in every one of those play sessions I see players asking themselves “What would my lil guy do here?” rather than "what is the best thing to do here?" The game rewards players constantly for just trying shit and the D&D 5e rule set means playing like the character you said you were from the start leads to frequent Points of Inspiration. Maybe one day I'll see the end of this story (probably not), but I don't have to in order to feel a connection with BG3's world, characters, and most impressively, the characters I made myself.

Honorable Mentions for 2023

5. Dave the Diver 4. Homebody 3. Sea of Stars 2. Humanity 1. Super Mario Wonder

Top 5 Favorites NOT from 2023

5. Metroid Prime 4. Final Fantasy VII Remake 3. Cursed Halo (Halo CE Mod) 2. Red Dead Redemption 2 1. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (3DS)

Games I didn't have a chance to play from 2023 but still want to when I find more time...

Viewfinder Venba Chants of Sennaar Thirsty Suitors Hi-Fi Rush Moonring Armored Core VI Laika Aged Through Blood Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

OKAY THANKS BYE!

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Wednesday SpaceTime 20240918 Series 27 Episode 113

Recent volcanism on discovered on the Moon

Scientists have discovered evidence of volcanism on the lunar surface as recently as 125 million years ago.

The Strange phenomena people will see at Moon's south pole

When astronauts return to the Moon’s surface as part of the Artemis 3 mission to the Lunar south pole, they’ll experience a very different environment to that which the Apollo astronauts witnessed more than half a century ago.

A new crew arrives at the International Space Station

The Russian Soyuz MS-26 capsule has successfully docked with the International Space station just three hours after its launch aboard a Soyuz 2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in in the central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.

The Science Report

Study shows up to 19% of dementia cases could be linked to vision problems.

Over 52 million tonnes of plastic dumped into the environment every year.

The growing amount of incorrect AI generated data being generated.

Alex on Tech: are the new iPhone 16s worth it? 

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. Gary’s radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

[kidlit-queen-competition]

Train fact: the longest* train ever

like all things to do with railways, you can get pretty granular and pedantic with this one, so this is likely to also be the longest post ever. Sorry, but actual facts (and pretty pictures) under the cut!

The longest passenger train in regular service is Australia's 'Ghan, a luxury tourist train that runs between Adelaide and Darwin, and averages 774 m/2,539ft in length. that's twice as long as the Empire State building is tall.

(id in alt)

The reason I say "in regular service" is because the longest passenger train EVER was run by the Rhaetian Railway in Switzerland, to celebrate 175 years of Swiss railways, and that was more than twice that long at 1,910m/6266.4ft. Almost an entire Kentucky Derby worth of train! It had to go incredibly slowly, maxing out at 35km/h, to avoid overloading the electric systems of the railway and local power grids.

[Video desc: a youtube video from CBS news of the recordbreaking passenger train. The train is made up of several red electric trains coupled together, and moves through alpine landscapes of mountainds and coniferous forest. It is so long that it is visible only in coils, like a snake. Some shots show the train leaving one tunnel while entering another, or driving under a viaduct while the tail end crosses it, and several shots show people watching and taking photographs.]

But, the thing with passenger trains is that they have a lot of rules and regulations applied to them that freight doesn't have to follow. So freight trains get HYUGE.

The average American freight train (I consider the USA to be freight trains' natural habitat because there is a whole bunch of wide open space for for them to crawl around) is 5400 feet long, and the standard in Europe is around 3000ft. That's a 10-20 minute walk at average adult walking speed, just to go from end to end. You know when you stop at a level crossing, and a train goes by, and it seems like it's going by forever? That was probably one of these.

But the average frieght train is peanuts to mining trains. Trains came from the mines, and they still dominate there. The biggest trains in the world are consists of ore and coal, run by tiny crews from extraction point to export. This has always been true.

For example, the Datong–Qinhuangdao railway in China runs coal trains daily that are 2.614 km/8576 ft long. That's more than 1.5 miles, or three times as long as the burj khalifa is tall. And that's the standard for that line.

(id in alt)

But that doesn't break any records.

The longest production train, running regularly, is the Sishen–Saldanha railway line's maganese/iron ore train. These trains are four kilometers long. 4,000 meters, almost half the height of the highest peak on earth, in wagons full of metals. Too long to be seen in a single photograph- the one below was stitched together from four separate pictures, taken from the air:

(id in alt)

and that's still not the record!

The record for longest frieght train is held by BHP, an Australian mining company. It was made for the record, but the capacity is still there. This train ran on june 21st 2011, and was 682 wagons long, over seven kilometers. Almost twice the length of the Sishen–Saldanha's, and a quarter the height of Olympus mons. If you stood this train on its end, it would be taller than Mt Denali. If you started at the front of the lead locomotive, and ran as fast as you physically could, you wouldn't reach the last wagon for an hour.

There are entire branch lines shorter than this train.

Unfortunately, there are no good photos, because nobody in space had time for railfanning that day, but there are plenty of pictures of other BHP trains!

(id in alt)

[shmowder]

Termites + Clara and getting a toy with their meal

Sticky would pretend he's above it, that he doesn't care about kiddie toys. He'll order whatever Artemy orders to try and feel included with the adults. Except that his tastebuds are still of a 12y overdosing on nuggets daily, and he can not handle anything more spicy than ketchup. He managea three bites before his eyes start watering as he battles the spiciness while Artemy watches unimpressed.

Capella actually doesn't want a toy, but she still orders a meal with one anyway. It was to take home with her and keep as a souvenir of this outing. She's the one being addressed by the waiters and the person who goes to the cashier to correct an error in the order if Artemy wasn't around. While the fast food meal isn't what she usually eats, she finds herself intrigued by the simplicity of the flavours. She enjoys the sugary soda more than she'll ever like to admit, although Notkin clearly shares the sentiment and offers her his cup later as they leave.

Notkin immediately orders a toy meal along with Clara. The both of them end up having a blast using their mini figure toys to stage a fight on the table, using ketchup as fake blood and doing sound effects with their own voices. It's a theatrics show, and they use stale fries as woobly swords for their toys. He doesn't end up eating much but takes advantage of the free soda refills to stock up on 4 or 5 cups when no one in the staff is looking. He ends up "winning" the mini figure fight after tricking Clara into a trap with a paper crown. Taya is over the moon impressed. He soaks up her praise like a sponge and retells her the fight she just watched when they leave the diner... but more dramatically.

Khan actually enjoys the "grown-up" food courtesy to his family's eccentric tastes. His taste buds pretty much got used to most things other kids wouldn't even try. He tries not to say anything when he feels Sticky glaring at him from the other side of the table, half finished glass milk in hand. He absolutely hates the soda and can't understand why anyone would like something so sugary. He orders an average meal and splits it with Grace, insisting she's doing him a favour. Ends up criticising the food within earshot of the waiter multiple times. Makes everyone–Clara and Notkin especially– Clean the food mess they threw on the floor while playing around before leaving.

Taya didn't just ask for a toy. She asked for all the toys there in the whole diner! Although with Haruspex's current lack of stable income, she was content with just one toy and a meal. Immediately giving her toy a name and showing it off to everyone who would make eye contact with her for a split second, even telling the strangers sitting on the other tables about her beloved awesome toy... Only to become bored of it midway through the meal and move on to observe the entertaining fight show that Clara and Notkin are improvising. Her happiness is contagious and other adults ends up giving her some of their desserts just for being adorable. Artemy has to run after her and take her back to their original table after she enhaled half the cake from a stranger kid's birthday table.

Murky clearly wanted a meal with a toy. Not only was it blatantly obvious, but she was very bad at hiding it. Shaking her head when asked about it by the cashier and hiding between Artemy's legs. She didn't budge when questioned and refused to admit that she wanted a toy. At least Sticky was there to pick her food order for her, pancakes with syrup and strawberries. Even if the restaurant stopped serving the breakfast menu by this hour, him and Capella made a valid argument for an exception. Thankfully, it did work, and Clara's plan B of breaking into the kitchen and using her magic on the cook didn't have to come into action... today. Before leaving, Taya entrusted her toy to Murky and told her to keep it and take care of it, especially after Murky gave her one of the strawberries.

Clara immediately goes for the dollar kids menu, absolute zero shame. She briefly glances over the laminated paper menu to look at Artemy and make sure that he is the one paying, correct? Before picking the most expensive dish on the kids' menu, Behold! a three dollars meal, with a complimentary toy. She's the one having the most fun out of the rest of the kids during this outing and being playful in general. Making Grace throw M&M at her to see how many can she catch midair with just her mouth. Turns out... 25 out of 56. Not bad, not bad. She ends up leaving the diner with the paper crown still atop her head.

Grace didn't want to burden the haruspex. She was already grateful for just being invited, really. So she picked the cheapest thing on the menu, small fries. Smiling at Artemy's concerned gaze as he decided to just let her be. She sat content on her side of the table, watching Clara and Notkin playing together. She indulged Clara's games and was pleasantly surprised by how delicious the M&Ms were when Clara insisted that they switch roles and Grace should try catching them instead. Then the M&Ms turned into fries, salad pieces, and finally, chicken nuggets as it became clear that Clara just started the game as an excuse to share her food with Grace. Which counterproductivly ended up with two-thirds of it on the ground instead, courtesy to both of their bad aims.

[mrsrookhunt]

I’ve been waiting for Ango 😈😈

Anyway, can you please do Ango (and any other bsd guy) with a s/o that’s REALLY and I mean REALLY tall, like 6’10.

If you don’t think that’s a good idea or it’s not interesting just disregard this. Have a good day/night! <3

Oh my god I came here to write the bsd men in bed but sOMEONE HAD TO GIVE ME NEW INSPIRATION AHAHAHAAHAH

Absolutely.

As a short bitch myself... I'm so happy to imagine being tall.

A Small Problem

Ango Sakaguchi X Reader

Ango, in his infinite wisdom, had fallen for you, his darling, his other half...

But that was only apparent to you and him. The near daily comments on your 1-whole-foot height difference made him more than insecure.

Ango had never considered himself tall nor short to begin with, being at a good, solid height of 5'10.

He was tall to most women, and average to most men. It was a good balance.

When he met you, it was online. You spoke, sometimes for hours, into the early morning after he finally got off of work. After three months of dating, he was certain, with one-hundred percent of his soul, that you were the one.

Within the next month, he'd emptied out his savings into buying a ring for you, a suitable house, and redecorating said home into a cozy place fit for both you and the possibility of a small family (or pets, let's be real).

Finally, in your sixth month of dating, you'd gotten the unexpected funds to fly and see him for the first time.

Overwhelmed with joy, Ango had absolutely no reservations about finally meeting you, overjoyed that he would finally get to put that ring and that house to use.

When he met you, he was dumbfounded, jaw slack with shock for just a moment. He couldn't believe you were so... tall.

For a moment, you worried that he found you unattractive, but those worries washed away as the most delighted, sweetest young lover's smile broke onto his face, like six months of pure love expressed in one fleeting moment.

His biggest worry at the time was, how was he supposed to be the big spoon?

He wasn't embarrassed to take you around town, showing you off to everyone he knew.

You never took him as someone into PDA, but he regularly rested his head on your shoulder.

While he may not have judged you for your height, others did. Many of his coworkers laughed with what he was certain was envy of his catch, but hurt him deeply nonetheless.

When you accepted his proposal, he was monumentously happy, putting himself through hell and back to arrange a wedding as soon as possible.

However, through all of this happiness, you saw that something dampened his spirits, just slightly, as well.

After discovering that he was treated poorly because of you, it nearly broke your heart. You knew you had to help him in some way, making a point to give him extra snuggles and kisses, knowing he wasn't quite ready to open up about it.

There were times when he did cry with you. He wasn't used to being made fun of, and even more than that, he felt powerless over the situation. He loved you more than the world itself, but he also couldn't leave his work, and who's to say his coworkers at another job would treat him any better?

You start making jokes about his coworker bullies as if he were a small child needing reassurance, likening them to small children who couldn't handle a man and his partner.

It makes Ango feel tremendously better to have you on his side, comforting him. There was a time when he wondered if you saw him the same way, as weak and small in comparison to yourself. But you? You treated him like an equal. And that's all that matters.

Keep joking with him, keep loving him, and you won't have a problem.

"I've got a small problem, my love."

"Oh? And what's that honey?"

"You." ♡♡♡

[skratchytheclown]

How long do some characters bathe for? (I imagine some people enjoy taking three hour long showers for peak perfection while some people might barely stay in for five minutes) and some characters might not even bathe at all(?)

MT definitely loves to bathe no matter how much it hurts. MT's appearance and classy reputation are both very important to him. Unfortunately he cant get rid of his foul smell no matter how hard he tries. He usually spends around an hour in the shower trying to get rid of that smell.

Hariet and Emar don't shower. Maybe sometimes MT forces Hariet to shower, but Emar can't shower. For obvious reasons.

Stewart is not a showerin' type of guy. He's the guy who just doesn't shower if he doesn't have to leave the house. If he's in the house for a while he might wait a week and a half to finally shower. MT and Roy don't appreciate this. When he does shower, he uses all the hot water because he likes the warmth too much to get out of the shower.

Larry doesn't like to shower, but he still showers regularly to keep his hair well cared for. He doesn't shower on weekends unless he needs to be in public or a friend is visiting. Fortunately for the rest of the Koopalings, he takes quickish showers (around 15-30 minutes).

Morton showers regularly. He takes way too long but he's just trying his best.

Wendy is one of those freaks who takes lukewarm and cold showers. She stays in there for an average amount of time, but she showers almost every day. She wants to stay clean and not waste warm water.

Iggy doesn't mind showers, but sometimes he straight-up refuses just to troll everyone around him. When he's not doing that, he showers every other day on average. Sometimes he takes 5 minute showers and other times he takes up all the hot water and still stays in there for another 30 minutes.

Lemmy likes to take baths instead of showering. It is easier and much more fun! He has a couple of bath toys to play with while he's in there. Sometimes it is more convenient to shower, so he just does that. He takes around 50 minutes in there. Most of that time is spent trying to reach the shampoo.

Ludwig is like Wendy where he showers frequently, although he hates cold showers. He stays in there for a while, probably around the same length as Lemmy. He wants to look as good as possible.

Bowser Jr. refuses to shower. ONLY BATHS. He's pretty picky about his baths too. A lot of the time, Kamek is the one who bathes him. Other times, it's high-ranking minions. Occasionally, Bowser is the one who bathes him. Bowser Jr. mostly just plays around in the bath until he gets bored, which is when he finally gets out. The amount of time he's in there varies a lot, but it is usually an hour or more.

Bowser prefers baths himself, but not to play like Lemmy and Junior. He enjoys just sitting in the tub and relaxing. Sometimes he has a beverage while in the tub. After a while, he finally decides to clean himself and rinse off. He doesn't stay in there as long as Junior does. Probably only 30 minutes to an hour. Like Lemmy, Bowser knows that showers are more convenient sometimes, so he just gets them over with. He only stays in there for around 15 minutes.

Silvea always bathes after work, but when she's doing nothing, she is a bit more like Stewart where she waits days until she showers (she doesn't wait for as long as Stewart does though). She takes pretty long showers, but sometimes they are even longer if she has a lot of dirt or grime to wash off that day.

Dieter showers daily. He's only in there for 15 minutes. Like Bowser, he mostly just wants to get them over with.

Carmen mostly showers every day, but sometimes skips a couple of days when she doesn't have to go in for work. She stays in there for about 40 minutes.

[suzieb-fit]

Essay time.....

So this is a bit frustrating....

I never get hungry.

And I was already very careful with my diet before starting this programme.

Fasting 15hrs daily, on average. Fasted walking/training. No refined carbs of any kind. No bread, potatoes, pasta, rice etc. No probs.

Yes, I was eating more frequently, but only by one more meal the vast majority of the time.

Then into the HBD thing. Two days of nothing but veg. No problem at all. Not hungry.

First week of phase two.....Adding protein and a bit of fruit. Three meals, five hours apart. Not hungry.

Yesterday, which marked 13 days since I started this programme, I was hungry not long after a big dinner of beef, a pile of veggies and avocado with grapes.

Fine waking up this morning.

Breakfast at 7am. By 10am and I was hungry again.

This is not at all normal for me!

Anyway, not a huge problem.

Oh, and last night I found out that pimento seeds are in the nightshades catagory! So they gone now, along with tomatoes and peppers. Really hoping it helps relieve the mucus thing.

Anyway, on to today.

Half an hour early walk. Pretty dull and drizzly, but the weather doesn't stop me.

Breakfast back at home.

Grapes with my walnuts for a change. And cream in my coffee!! I've honestly been counting the days! What a lovely coffee that was 🤩.

Then a resistance band workout from Fiton. More towards the cardio side this time. Plenty of strength work too.

Then another little walk before lunch.

Plain omelette with salad, avocado and more grapes. Mixed herbs, salt and pepper. Should have had my daily apple rather than grapes again, but I was on autopilot, and the grapes were right there, lol.

Dinner will be chicken, the rest of the avocado and a pile of veggies. Dried basil. Hold the pimento!!

That's my Sunday!

[centrally-unplanned]

RIP: Board Game Geek’s Game of Thrones Play-by-Forum

Due to a discussion about setting up an online Game of Thrones Board Game match (h/t @bookworm-blackshoe & @k-simplex ), I dug up the old tools for asynchronous play that everyone used for Board Game Geek Play-by-Forum games. It was a really big and active community; over 500 games were played it looks like, they developed custom maps for easy play, custom variants of the game for balance, and all that. The most successful was the Five Kings and a Prince variant, which had a tweaked map, new house cards, and unique ‘crisis’ cards instead of just wilding attacks over and over:

I played a few games like 5 years ago or so, but more often what I did was read the games; because it was Play-by-Forum and most had a ‘No Ravens’ rule where all diplomacy had to be done publically, the entire narrative of the game is written out for you. Some roleplay, others chat about their lives as they play, etc. I still remember some of the epic plays or in particular the yelling-at-screen blunders you saw in these games. 

Something that is really cool about this is that the ‘meta’ is essentially recorded-over-time through these games. Greyjoy’s overpoweredness is apparent early on; Lannister in particular develop key strategies to mitigate this, like a first turn CP-muster on Lannisport becomes really common. “Openers” like the Greyjoy 4-Castle Riverun play or the Stark Turn-2 Eyrie Snipe become known and named, etc. The history of the game on this forum is preserved at 100% resolution in this way, which is really great.

The forum is dead now of course - the last game, #518, had its last post in March 2022, and it was essentially dead by 2021. I was reading through the last 5KaaP variant game, and its last three turns took over a year to finish as players dropped out and the hunt for replacements got more and more difficult. Everyone knows its the last game of the forum, its the only reason they pushed through - and they finished, in a really close 3-way tie finale (tiebreaker mechanics gave the win to House Baratheon). Very happy they did, it should end that way.

Why the forum died is probably obvious. Its a forum, forums overall are dying slow deaths even if this one had its heyday way later than most. Apparently the Game of Thrones Board Game had a Steam release? I didn’t know that - it has ~50 daily active players, which is not stunning but honestly the forum never had much more than that, its a fine player base and likely cannibalized some of the forum population, even if its primarily synchronous as opposed to asynchronous play. VASSAL as a board game engine exists and has a GoTBG module, maybe it has players?

Bigger culprits are like time itself - we are at the tail end of the Golden Age of Board Games right now, and A Game of Thrones was a pretty early entry into that era. It is an extremely complex game with tons of edge cases and bespoke rules clarifications, it takes 4 hours to play in person, all of that. It is thoroughly modern in its design, for sure, but the past ten years of game design have really pushed towards simpler design philosophies and less demanding playtimes, GOTBG isn’t as much in step with the market now. Additionally, communities like these have ‘anchor’ members - the people who made these mods & tools, people who served as moderators and drummed up players, etc. When a few of them leave the community becomes adrift and fades away faster, and that definitely happened here.

Meanwhile the franchise of a Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire itself has of course declined quite markedly - primarily through the organic passing of time, but less organically through the ritual suicide of the latter half of the televion show and George RR Martin’s tease-and-denial fetish when it comes to his book publishing schedule. I think those intersect too - Game of Thrones fans are nowadays normally older, and the older you are, on average, the less time you have for months-long play-by-forum overly complex board games. Apparently the default mode for the Steam version is for a game to be 6 turns long instead of 10, I think that reflects the changing demo. 

Anyway, goodbye to the Board Game Geeks Game of Thrones Play-by-Forum community. May this post serve as a stone in your cairn, and hopefully a reminder of its existence to anyone out there who was also a member and stumbles across it.

[eldritchwhispersofficial]

Cheesecake but make it DEPRESSING AS FUCK AND MAKE YOU CRY ABOUT TIM AGAIN (AKA have my personal headcanon about WHY Tim likes cheesecake that has nothing to do with canon at all)

The whole "Tim likes cheesecake" thing started off as a fatphobic cheap shot at Tim Sutton (possibly, although I'm fairly certain he debunked that claim) and then became a meme and now the MH community is trying to distance themselves from it But... What if we didn't? What if we fixed it instead? And yes, we CAN fix it. Lets take a look at my headcanon, shall we?

First of all, eating an entire cheesecake in one sitting is such... a Tim Wright thing to do. No, no, no. Stick with me. Look at Tim. Do you fucking think that man has eaten an actual meal in the past 72 hours? Please, he's probably had like six cups of coffee, an apple he grabbed on the way out the door, a bag of peanuts he found in Jay's car, and half of Jay's hamburger and the rest of his fries which Jay forced him to eat out of guilt because "Tim, c'mon. Have you eaten at all today?"

Not to mention, he's running off of exactly 3.5 hours of sleep at any given time, and all the 5 hour energies and cups of horrible gas station coffee in the world ain't keeping him conscious. And you know that man hasn't consumed more than 500 calories PERIOD over the past 3 days.

I'd have to channel my inner MatPat and reverse engineer Tim's height and age to figure out his weight and thus his needed caloric intake per day (which I did, assuming he's in his early 20s and knowing his height is 5'7, the average weight would be around 155 pounds. Knowing that he's both a heavy smoker and an alcoholic, both factors that are known to contribute to body weight, not to mention his stockier build I would put him closer to 180 pounds, giving us a basal metabolic rate of 1,760 calories. Considering the fact that he probably has to run away from various threats such as the Operator and Alex, and also probably has to run after Jay to stop him from doing stupid shit, I'd say he gets exercise 4-5 times a week, bringing his total daily calories needed up to 2,580), but it's safe to say that however many calories he needs? He ain't fucking getting them. Not to mention, he probably hasn't slept either. He's running on less than empty. So he eats an entire cheesecake in one sitting while relaxing on the hood of Jay's car. He needs food in his stomach to keep him going, and he needs the temporary sugar boost to keep him awake for at least another hour and a half. Why cheesecake? Here comes headcanon #2: Tim associates cheesecake with freedom. Tim spent most of his life in a mental hospital. Meaning he spent most of his life eating hospital food. As someone who briefly lived in a hospital (not a mental one, but still a hospital) I can tell you first hand that the food there (at least in the US) is SHITTY. Like, only slightly better than cafeteria food. Imagine eating cafeteria food for three meals a day, every day. The most sweets you get are probably a cookie or maybe Jell-O. Maybe pumpkin pie during the holidays or a cupcake on your birthday. That's it. You sure as HELL aren't getting cheesecake, unless someone buys it for you- and lets be honest. Who's out here buying little Tim cheesecake in the mental hospital? No one. So Tim sees commercials for cheesecake on TV. Probably Philadelphia Cream Cheese or Cheesecake Factory commercials. Doesn't matter. The point is, it's not the food- it's the freedom. The family. The being somewhere other than a fucking hospital. THAT is what Tim really wants. It's all he ever wanted. So when he finally gets the hell out of the hospital and gets a job and a place to live, maybe he's going to try cheesecake, right? That boy's *never* had it in his life. And so it suddenly becomes his comfort food. He always associated it with freedom, and now that he is free, the association becomes even stronger. And he eats an entire cheesecake. Why? Because he can. He may be constantly on the run, he may be afraid for his life, but he's still free. He's not trapped in the mental hospital, alone with no one who cares about him. He's free. He's an adult. He can do whatever he wants. He can eat an entire cheesecake if he feels like it- and no one's going to stop him. Not the Operator, not ToTheArk, not Alex- NO ONE. It is an act of defiance- an act of freedom in the midst of captivity. *MatPat voice* BUT HEY, THAT'S JUST A THEORY- A "FEEL DEPRESSED ABOUT TIM WRIGHT'S HORRIBLE LIFE" THEORY

[omegaremix]

Pandemic Blues (Spring).

When Dad passed away, I knew it was a new era. No more of his presence meant things would change on the inside and out, for better or worse. He almost had hit the U.S. average of male life expectancy by a pinch (78.54 years to his 78.19) so he’s had about his money’s worth. God couldn’t have cashed him out at a better time.

To start 2020, I took two weeks off from work for the first time in the six-plus years I’ve been with the company. I’ve met friends I haven’t seen in ages. I’ve abandoned non-successful projects in the name of self-care. I’ve re-wrote my diet for the better now that Dad wasn’t pumping me with free food ‘round the clock. I’ve also become the store champion in revenue for the year once again, and learned how not to get stress get the best of me. I had only one sunny day out of the twelve off in February which was extremely disappointing. As all you devils know, heading to New York City never leaves my mind. I promised myself that I’d make a visit to both Modern Pinball and Sunshine Laundromat, visits I’ve been waiting three years for. I came close. I did visit the city in early March for a check-up and visited Central Park as I called up my Godmother Laura to make Easter plans, leaving only after a half-an-hour when it started to get dark. By then I’d started to receive inklings of pending changes. The coronavirus was only in the back of my mind, and you normally don’t think of these things unless it pertains to you. I dialed up my aunt Theresa and she told me that the city schools and offices were contemplating closing down. I brushed it off like it was nothing, until…

It was a weekend at work like any other. A regular Sunday. Then it started. A customer asked me for nine mid-range laptops for himself and his co-workers to work from home. I sold them all to him. That’s a $3,100+ ticket. Another older man came in looking for five printers and ten monitors for his business. I could’ve hit the jackpot if only we had enough but we didn’t, but we piece-mealed whatever we could from other stores and that was another $1,500+. More customers and business owners came in to buy buy buy whatever they could to work at home with no limit and we now had a weekend clearance sale we never planned for. Every man and woman for themselves rushed in to save their jobs and tried grabbing whatever they can. When the weekend was over, they wiped us out of all our essential stock. Webcams, budget laptops, and monitors went clean off the shelves. We were fucking bewildered.

One outstanding memory I had of last year’s outbreak was seeing someone eye-ing over all-in-ones. After twenty minutes of no one asking him for assistance, I finally got him. He already had as much time under his belt deciding which way to go: Windows or Mac? He had lots of questions for me, and took me on a world tour of my own department to see which of three units he wanted to take home with him. Fine by me, because being in the presence of his brown-eyed peanut-butter haired daughter was all that mattered. Imagine Jessica Chastain in her late twenties and neck-length hair wearing a green St. Patrick’s Day shirt with a beige clover on it and blue jeans. Somewhat conservative and reserved but she was nice 100% all throughout. That’s more I could say than most people on the island or in my life I’ve met. An hour later, her dad finally decided on a high-end unit. “Wrap it up” he said. “Thank you for your time and purchase” I say, and it’d be the only time I would ever see her. Eventually, I noticed more customers coming in wearing masks. A different father-and-daughter pairing didn’t get it right wearing theirs under their chins, a half-assed way to at least fend themselves from the poison going on. Later on, two young female best-friends asked me for a Nintendo Switch. When they saw I had the Animal Crossing version, they suddenly asked for two more. Done. Knock yourselves out.

Within one week our store changed operations on a near-daily basis. We shortened our hours, then limited our total number of occupants to appointments only. By mid-week our store was closed to the public and it was all phone-orders and curbside pick-ups. Salespeople became impromptu warehouse and back-end runners. We couldn’t believe what we were experiencing. We were literally witnessing the slow gradual death of our traditional operating model. Corona- finally arrived and everyone was on edge not knowing what was coming next. Then we got the call from corporate: “all New York stores to be shut down indefinitely until further notice. Pack it up and go home. Expect a call from us in a few weeks”.

This was unreal! Our positions were in limbo. It felt like we were let go yet still employed otherwise. Meaning: furlough. We’d be fortunate enough to hold our titles and be kept on the payroll while we were mandated to stay home. Later as I learned, the ‘essentials’ as deemed, still had to work on through as a necessity to others; pegged to deal with the public who had no foresight as to how serious it would be. Before heading home indefinitely, I walked next door to the market. Never had I seen meat and paper shortages. Bare shelves of canned goods, frozen vegetables, pasta, and rice like the world was ending. There was no timetable for lockdown or how it’d last. I was now in competition with everyone else to stay alive. Count my high cards that an long-term food shortage was not the case.

27, 47, 81.

If only Dad would’ve lived long enough to see this unfold. He’d be forceful enough for me to stay home with him like some early exits from my location did. I can imagine that even if my bro- didn’t yell at him to stay home, Dad would say “hey, fuck you!” and drive out to see his friends. He literally fell of heart failure, and if that didn’t get him, would the -virus? Could he survive it with his expiring health and the spectre of death on impatient delay? Since Dad fed me almost daily, he’d feel very sad and broken if he couldn’t bring food home for me. He’s not here on this Earth anymore to do that, so it was time to change it up. The haunt of immuno-compromization had me thinking to cut the crap and go healthy.

245, 332, 417.

My ex- Yenny, the most cautious person in the world, sent me directions on how to make my own mask which I did out of old worn-out tees. Welcome to the new real dystopia. The first aesthetic of the pandemic was in the form of this makeshift cloth mask dampened with my own carbon-monoxide emanating the smell of damp stale cotton. Back to the neighborhood Chop N’ Drop I go. I stockpiled on fruits, vegetables, broth, anti-oxidants, juices, dark chocolates, nuts, and seltzer water. The moment of spending money on real food was the moment I started making real meals; the mixture of Idaho and sweet potatoes, celery, carrots, and vegetable broth aerated a distinct spring of fumes forever tied to these months in isolation. A daily carousel of apricots, oranges, cauliflower, tomatoes, and green peppers were a wonderful much-needed addition I had to have from now on. Visits to Bullseye had plenty of food, albeit the shelves were disorganized and the essential workers were overwhelmed. Idolatry was only steps away and to stock up on whatever non-perishables I could find, then threw them on the belt where the young silent Spanish girl who didn’t feel like being there was waiting for me at the register.

I noticed all around me that things were a little…different. Most of us were given things we never imagined. You’d never think of being home for months to have the opportunity to catch up on a life they once had no time for. People finally caught up on cleaning, pursing through personal belongings, old photos and memorabilia, reading lists and vinyl records that piled up. Imagine all the things said about not having to travel to work, or staying home to work, or not working at all. They were right. No such thing as stress. No managers shoving daily quotas or finding faults down your throat. No awkward moments, lack of courtesy, rudeness, or interruptions. No immature adults turning into bus-ride children competing for your attention or older women stamping their feet when being reminded of how out of line they were. It was total bliss.

486, 548, 753, 819. 

Most of us had all the time in the world to shit ourselves in our front-row seats for what we were seeing. It’s all happening next door in New York City, fatally crowned the epicenter of the worst pandemic of our lifetimes. We were The Death Nation. The deaths came at such an expedient rate that literal dead bodies were lined up outside the city’s funeral parlors. By then, restaurants closed. Businesses closed. Stadiums, theaters, arcades, bars closed. Schools and universities were canceled. Even Easter, the next social holiday in line…closed. The nation’s unemployment rate spiked high as 15% as people pounded on the doors on a broken system to have their unemployment benefits or loans in hand as soon as possible. No meta-game suffered distinctly than the music and venue industry. Artists, operators, and promoters had their livelihoods taken away from them in an instant; forced to make a living improvising on live-streaming. They just lost their selves overnight. Now, they held on tight for their own stability and sanity; hoping to reach for that brass ring while riding on a lagging carousel engulfed in flames. 

Over at WUSB, the show still had to go on. Our general manager disallowed any further staff to enter the studios. As most planned to live-stream from their homes, I opted to send my shows in. For the entirety of spring (and summer) I’d hand my shows in our engineer’s at-home automation for broadcast. Saturday 10:00PM Eastern Standard Time on the dot, no error. I had all the time in the world to post on Ω+, my portfolio VMFX, and get Our Lady Omega finally up to speed without worry of deadlines, distraction, or needless interruption. It was when I rifled through many auditions burning on the hard drive. Cleaners From Venus’ “The Jangling Man” couldn’t have come at a better time, signifying a cancelled Easter intended to be spent with my Godmother now at home. I never heard it ever but it yet it sounded familiar before. The cassette fidelities and a certain ‘89-’90 recorded feeling that took me back to my Nintendo youth becomes a new forever memory. Shoegaze and post-punk cuts such as Ing’s “Closet”, Milly’s “Talking Secret”, Es’ “Hidden Track”, and Miserable’s “Loverboy”, to name a few, have indisputably defined the pandemic era’s soul.

But enough of that for today. Down comes Mario, my five year-old nephew who’s yearning to play. Dad / Pop is no longer here, so it’s me he’s looking forward to seeing every day to try and win me on Uno or Candy Land while ginger-superior Madelaine Petsch / Cherry Blossom or Hayley Orrantia were on the flat-screen. We had nights where he’d chose a deck from my collection and we’d make separate piles out of suits. He’d play some good ones, too: the “Junior” of Hearts, the “Mom” of Diamonds, and the “Dad” of Spades he calls them. Aces were “sooper!” and the jokers had their own narrative: a clown on the unicycle was riding to 7-11 to get some Slurpees for us. (Once in a while, a horse-head or the word “MAVERICK” in cowboy caps- for those wild ones.) What kind of an imagination is this? And he loved Monopoly, too. We played so much that it inspired another aesthetic forever tied to the pandemic. Solid oranges and sky blues against the CRT’s, and Monopoly symbols of trains and utilities helped create sets of icons for a series of graphics templates I’ve made.

800, 814, 1036.

Red bottles with blue and red labels of now-discontinued blue liquid soap. Blocks of green and white cleanser cubes cased in plastic. Bulbs of blue and purple diffusing liquid. Cucumber sanitizer. They’re all symbols of cleanliness. All the time in the world posting, sound-editing, and layouts prove exhaustive at times. It’s 1AM Eastern Standard Time in New York City / Long Island and an open window allows the smoky cold chill of a 50°April breeze to vacate downstairs. It’s an invitation to step outside and admire the clear moonless skies. No clouds, only the stars above. I sit in my backyard to hear near-total silence emanating from the expressway. The asphalt rushes were a bare minimum because no one had a reason to travel. The utmost quiet was enough for the nostalgia to vacate right in. The cold, clear, quiet spring Saturday and Sunday nights spent with my Plainview circle of friends. We’d talk shit about everyone we knew, what our favorite Green Day, The Offspring, Collective Soul, or Nine Inch Nails songs were, and matching up with the alternative girls I never met before. The post-dinner April starlights spent shivering with Cath- off the busy Sunrise Highway admitting how much I missed her and how it felt when she succumbed to the heroin demon, the drives down random gas stations to save her ass, or the rare night rides from campus to take her home after my Wednesday radio stint. The temperatures also matched the experience of visiting Central Park for the very first time while an essential contact was in the back of my mind, her text asking how my day in New York City waited for me when I arrived home. It kills me that these are rare moments I’ll never have back. To this day that I’m still paying emotional interest on them.

142, 103, 101.

Rinse, repeat. For two months there was no place to go. No work shifts, classes, ballgames, weekend traffic, or Sunday dinners demarcating the days of the week. Saturdays were Tuesdays. Sundays were Mondays. No one ever humanly experienced a blur of time where every day was literally the same. Then a phone call. “Operations are re-opening. Be here Sunday and ready to start packing.” What my manager should’ve said to me: “be ready to be crucified”. I told myself it’s the last week of May. Three days to get back into it. The spoils of staying home from work once again with financial security and benefits intact will end. Slowly but surely things will pick up again. The floodgates will soon open and here come the entitled Karens, ugly kniving fishwives, dumbshit Tony’s From Brooklyn, and whatever unkempt messes who somehow still manage to breathe will tug my shirt for attention or see me as a whipping boy for their insignificant grievances I never asked for. 

If the quarantine made many lives a nerve-wracking unbearable hell for some people, then what happened next would be the breaking point: footage posted of Minneapolis police murdering George Floyd sent people into the streets in an outrage, and rightfully so. Short-Term Memory America didn’t learn and repeated their mistakes once again. No surprise there. The unnecessary needless precursory murders of Breonna Taylor and Armaud Arbury led up to the state’s latest nationwide collapse of unrest.

It took the latest event of racism and murder for everyone to finally come outside since the start of the pandemic and show what they were hiding for the longest time. Frustrated adult-male mouth-breathers acting out like total jerkoffs throwing their childish ignorance and building blocks in more reasonable mature people’s faces, and unattractive vanilla pig females turned into cartoon versions of themselves as they yapped multitudes of n-bombs and were damn proud of it. Cutting noses and spiting their own faces; doing whatever it takes at all costs to preserve their personal right and false constructs in treating people-of-color like garbage. Bulletin-board bruisers and ultimate keyboard warriors finally brought it out for all of the world to see. Others, however, had enough of their friends, family, co-workers, and fellow human beings being shot, beaten, or killed based on the color of their skin. They came to protest, picket, fight in the streets, and set it all in flames because enough was enough…enough of a corrupt racist celebrity president who’s done absolutely nothing except write off white supremacists and dismissed the coronavirus as a hoax. It all came down to this after living in an irrational anything-goes backwards presidency, all because the Fascist-in-chief cared for no one but himself, his family, and those who pledged their allegiance to him.

If the last four years provided us some out-of-this-world ridiculousness, what else would’ve been possible? We’ve experienced a hell like no other. We genuinely lived in fear that we could reach the point of no return. No one had any idea what was in store for us or how bad it could’ve been; during an election year, nonetheless. 

Where I’m heading is another story. I drive home down Rt. 25 and there are clusters picketing on the side of the road. One supporting Black Lives Matter, one for Tr*mp 2020. Summer’s on her way and the new heat was here; the allegory of pent-up frustration and emotion which everyone was feeling exacerbated by the pandemic. The possibilities were spring-loaded in the back of my mind and made me on edge, not knowing what could happen. 

All I, and us, could think about was when this would all end, and when we could go back to life as we knew it. We were holding out on all hope that something had to give. When will we be open for business again? When would be all go back to what it used to be, or what would ‘the new normal’ be? Will we change course and advert a national crisis, or will be dig ourselves a totalitarian grave so deep we won’t crawl out of? Will we have reason, rationality, science, humanity, and common sense back again, or will we have hatred, nastiness, cruelty, and contempt kept in place for tradition’s sake and have it rammed down our throats until we die sick of it?

It was the three most surreal months of my life. True uncharted territory; no map, no compass. And Spring wasn’t even over. Not just yet. As everything was unfolding and unraveling, something else was headed my way. A season that was anything but normal was going to end on an even more bizarre and curious note. Not in the form of more shutdowns, sickness, emptiness, or despair; but of someone who reached out to me.

(To be continued.)

Cleaners From Venus “The Jangling Man”

Damp “Death, Sex & Arby’s”

Ing “Dust”

Crumb “Ghostride”

Future Islands “Day Glow Fire”

Lisel “Digital Light Field”

Milly “Talking Secret”

Stardeath & White Dwarfs “What Keeps You At Night”

Miserable “Loverboy”

Districts “Cheap Regrets”

Snarls “Walk In The Woods”

Es “Hidden Track”

Strobobean “Keep It Together”

Katie Tempest “People’s Faces”

Penelope Isles “Round”

Shopping “All Or Nothing”

[gerdfeed]

The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours. Additionally, nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.

Opinion | Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: American Psychological Association

Published: Feb 23, 2023

Teens and young adults who reduced their social media use by 50% for just a few weeks saw significant improvement in how they felt about both their weight and their overall appearance compared with peers who maintained consistent levels of social media use, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

“Adolescence is a vulnerable period for the development of body image issues, eating disorders and mental illness,” said lead author Gary Goldfield, PhD, of Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. “Youth are spending, on average, between six to eight hours per day on screens, much of it on social media. Social media can expose users to hundreds or even thousands of images and photos every day, including those of celebrities and fashion or fitness models, which we know leads to an internalization of beauty ideals that are unattainable for almost everyone, resulting in greater dissatisfaction with body weight and shape.”

However, much of the psychological research on social media, body image and mental health is correlational, according to Goldfield, so it is uncertain whether people with body image and mental health issues spend more time on social media or if social media use leads to greater body image and mental health issues. 

To better understand the causal effects of reducing social media use on body image, Goldfield and his colleagues previously conducted a pilot study with 38 undergraduate students with elevated levels of anxiety and/or depression. Some of the participants were asked to limit their social media use to no more than 60 minutes per day, while others were allowed unrestricted access. Compared with participants who had unlimited access, participants who restricted their use showed improvements in how they regarded their overall appearance (but not their weight) after three weeks. Due to the small sample size, though, the researchers were unable to conduct a meaningful analysis of the effect of gender.

The current experiment, involving 220 undergraduate students aged 17-25 (76% female, 23% male, 1% other) and published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media, sought to expand the pilot study and address the gender limitation. In order to qualify, participants had to be regular social media users (at least two hours per day on their smartphones) and exhibit symptoms of depression or anxiety.

For the first week of the experiment, all participants were instructed to use their social media as they normally would. Social media use was measured using a screentime tracking program to which participants provided a daily screenshot. After the first week, half the participants were instructed to reduce their social media use to no more than 60 minutes per day. At the start of the experiment, participants also responded to a series of statements about their overall appearance (e.g., “I’m pretty happy about the way I look,”) and weight (e.g., “I am satisfied with my weight,”) on a 5-point scale, with 1 indicating “never” and 5 “always.” Participants completed a similar questionnaire at the end of the experiment.

For the next three weeks, participants who were instructed to restrict their social media use reduced it by approximately 50% to an average of 78 minutes per day versus the control group, which averaged 188 minutes of social media use per day.

Participants who reduced their social media use had a significant improvement in how they regarded both their overall appearance and body weight after the three-week intervention, compared with the control group, who saw no significant change. Gender did not appear to make any difference in the effects.

“Our brief, four-week intervention using screentime trackers showed that reducing social media use yielded significant improvements in appearance and weight esteem in distressed youth with heavy social media use,” said Goldfield. “Reducing social media use is a feasible method of producing a short-term positive effect on body image among a vulnerable population of users and should be evaluated as a potential component in the treatment of body-image-related disturbances.”

While the current study was conducted as a proof of concept, Goldfield and his colleagues are in the process of conducting a larger study to see if reduction in social media use can be maintained for longer periods and whether that reduction can lead to even greater psychological benefits.

Article: “Reducing Social Media Use Improves Appearance and Weight Esteem in Youth with Emotional Distress,” by Helen Thai, BA, McGill University; Christopher Davis, PhD, Wardah Mahboob, MA, Sabrina Perry, BA, and Alex Adams, BA, Carleton University; and Gary Goldfield, PhD, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Psychology of Popular Media, published online Feb. 23, 2023.

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If reducing online use results in improvements to self esteem and perception, I wonder what the effect would be of an increase?