Seriously fuck apple hardware and their hinges that break monitor cables and their butterfly keys and their 24-step battery replacement process that involves *removing your goddamned speakers* to replace the battery.
Fuck. That.
Fuck their specialized Apple screwdrivers
And their bullshit expensive replacement parts.
Two weeks ago I added RAM to my new laptop and it took about four minutes.
I just now replaced the fan on my old laptop while I was on a call with a vendor.
Both of those things used the same phillips-head screwdriver that I got in a pack of three for a dollar fifty at daiso. And I didn’t have to *use a hairdryer to soften the adhesive on my speakers* to access either of those parts, let alone a part as basic and as likely to fail as a fucking battery. Hell, I opened up my new laptop and found out that there’s a spot for me to put in a second SSD with a similarly small amount of effort.
But while I’m here:
Fuck modern cars. Fuck the engine covers with breakable pins that make it a pain in the ass to do anything more than checking the oil. Fuck the use of tablets as an interface for dealing with the car. Fuck proprietary RFID key fobs and fuck tire monitoring systems that’ll make you fail a smog check.
Fuck cheaply made clothing that won’t last more than a couple dozen wears but is so thin and flimsy that it also can’t handle being mended.
Fuck printers that require a subscription for ink every three months even if you aren’t out of ink, because they’ll say you’re out of ink because they disable the cartridges after a certain time no matter how much or how little you’ve printed.
Fuck printers generally, they’re such cheap and horrible pieces of garbage at the consumer level that it’s usually less expensive to buy a new printer than it is to replace cartridges, and it’s usually cheap to replace the rollers but the printer is such shit that your odds of snapping off some fiddly piece of plastic garbage are about 50/50 even if you do know what you’re doing.
Fuck all of this shit. You should be able to fix what you own, and if you can’t or don’t want to learn how to, you should at least have the option to try without becoming a professional.
I keep seeing that post about wanting packaged delivered slower by happier, safer, better-paid workers and first of all: Fuck yes. But also: I want clunkier, heavier technology that is easier to fix.
If I needed a laptop that could fit into a manila envelope I would get a fucking tablet, what I need is a laptop that has some actual computing power and that I can swap the hard drive on in less than forty minutes.
The cellphone I had five years ago had a smaller screen and a thicker case, but I could replace the battery with my thumb as the only tool, and with some effort (less than it would require now) I could replace the whole screen. I don’t need a seven inch screen and four cameras on the back and a thin, lightweight case, the phone that was the size of my palm and half an inch thick was fine and LOOK I know a lot of the components have become smaller; why did we move to slimmer cases instead of keeping the thicker ones that anyone could crack open to swap in a SIM or replace the battery? You could have BIGGER batteries, with longer lifespans if you still had thicker cases and smaller screens and then maybe this piece of shit phone would fit in any single pocket on my clothing instead of hanging halfway out and trying to make a dive onto the ground every time I stand up.
I don’t like the attitude of “stuff in the old days used to just WORK” - in some ways it’s true, in some ways it isn’t. Cars in the old days certainly did NOT just used to work. But it used to be a fuck of a lot easier to get into an engine and *fix it* without having to get an entire collection of vehicle-specific tools and half a computer science degree. Printers have never, in the existence of printers, “just worked” but they didn’t stop printing because of a programmed date on a chip in the fucking cartridge.
A lot of hardware from today is fine. SSDs are pretty great, and there are new manufactured hard drives that I know are going to last thirty years, just like the 40MB drive from 1987 that a customer brought into my shop a few years ago.
There are people out there who are making good stuff.
But it’s so fucking frustrating the way that it feels like you have to fight to find something that isn’t just the absolute shittiest piece of garbage. The amount of stuff out there that is flimsy, likely to fail, and only-user-serviceable-if-the-user-is-already-technically-proficient is really, really upsetting.
Gosh do I even want to open the can of worms that’s proprietary FOOD such as corn?
Corn is one where I get exceptionally weird because I’m allergic to it and the amount of effort and learning required to remove corn from my diet converted me from a libertarian into an anarchist.
The corn lobby is fucked and what we eat is absolutely based on a profit motive that is tremendously indifferent to our health and wellbeing.
So, like, yeah I have a huge issue with Monsanto making proprietary seeds that have to be bought every year but also Monsanto aside, corn in the US is something that I *do* consider analogous to apple products and tesla cars because consumers should be able to remove a product from their diet without needing to have a professional-level understanding of food science the same way you should be able to fix your car without having to become a programmer or fix your computer without learning how to solder or buy half a hardware store’s worth of screwdrivers.
But I will fully admit that I’m very weird about corn so I might be on my own in that one.
Wait, what the fuck are Americans eating that its so hard to remove fucking CORN from your diet???
What on earth can you put corn into???
Corn is (or can be) in:
Baking powder, powdered sugar, modified food starch, dextrose, dextrin, caramel color, natural flavors, xantham gum, cellulose, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, corn starch, glucose syrup, maltodextrin, corn oil, vegetable oil, vegetable protein, vegetable glycerin , confectioners glaze, corn meal, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can’t remember off the top of my head.
Corn starch is in a ton of food, everything from pasta sauce to canned hash to peanut butter, and if you don’t eat wheat (I don’t, I’ve got celiac disease as well as a corn allergy), corn is often included in wheat-free flour mixes and pasta.
FAKE TRANS DOCUMENTARY/ORGANIZATION: Here’s the ridiculous
story about how extreme the far-right is willing to go to dehumanize trans
people. I was nearly tricked into doing an elaborate anti-trans documentary by
Matt Walsh’s film crew this month. It started with an email from the “Gender
Unity Project” a couple weeks ago. They claimed they were doing a film on the
trans community and gave me names of well-known trans individuals and surgeons
they had interviewed. It all seemed normal at first. I even talked to the
producer (Makenna Lynn Waters) on the phone beforehand. She sounded like a
well-meaning cis film graduate who was just curious about the trans community.
When we chatted, she claimed the documentary was
self-funded. I was suspicious because she had finished college recently, but
figured she was just rich (who has that kind of money?). Later, she told me the
individual they were interviewing in Chicago had suddenly canceled (this
happens, but is still sus). Then she offered to fly me to Nashville: where Matt
Walsh lives. They finally sent me a release form this morning, which strangely
didn’t have the name of the company on it. So, I looked up the Gender Unity
Project. It used a registered agent to shield the company owners. It’s dubious
but sometimes registered agents simply make it easier to incorporate. Then I
looked Makenna Lynn up. Her name didn’t show up anywhere.
After some heavy Google searching, I realized she used her
middle name as her last in our emails. I found the IMDB page of her real name
(Makenna Waters). It turns out she’s a producer for the Matt Walsh show! That’s
not a red flag: that’s a gun to your face. If you’re not familiar, Matt Walsh
is a white supremacist who makes a living denying the basic humanity of trans
people. She wasn’t just a producer for his show: she worked on over 200
episodes of it! I finally found her Twitter, which features videos of Walsh berating
protesters and Ben Shapiro doing his usual BS.
I decided to look closer into the “Gender Unity Project.”
After searching its state registration number, I learned it was registered to
Justin Folk, a white supremacist documentarian who works for Matt Walsh and
Prager U. His initials (jrkfolk) were also listed in the release I thankfully
refused to sign. So, if you’re contacted by these slimy assholes, don’t respond.
The last thing we need right now is another “gotcha” anti-trans documentary!
Stay alert and take any media personalities with a grain of salt.
fanfic speedrun: write the scene you want to write and skip the rest of the fic
(same goes on the reader side of things)
I’m seeing people on this post who think that what I’m saying is, “Write out of order, starting with the things you enjoy most.” And while that’s fine advice, it’s not actually what I said.
What I said was, “Only write the thing that’s fun, and don’t write the rest.”
Write one shots. Write drabbles. Write ficlets. If you have 5 interesting scenes but you can’t figure out how to tie them together into a fic, then write 5 separate ficlets, post them in a series, and when you get another idea for that series just plop it right in there and rearrange the works into the right order.
You don’t have to write longfic to write fanfic.
I love one shots. One shots are awesome. One shots don’t fuck around. One shots are a hit of pure, distilled fandom straight into the veins. They know what they’re here to accomplish and by God they accomplish it with as little extraneous bullshit as possible. Sometimes you don’t want a 30 chapter slow-burn epic five course meal; it too much. Sometimes you just want to down a double-expresso one shot of your favorite character and ride that high for the rest of the afternoon.
Why don’t some people realize that the best way to care for some creatures is to humanely euthanize??
Case in point:
This just crossed my facebook feed. This poor kestrel was electrocuted and is under the care of a center in Hungary (I believe). Both its feet and one wing had to be amputated. How is this a life? The poor creature can’t perch, can’t hold its own food. It can’t be a bird.
Amputations alone aren’t bad, but trying to keep an animal alive when it can’t preform basic behaviors is cruel. Why can’t people understand this?
Just because it can’t perform basic functions doesn’t mean it can’t be happy. Should we be putting down humans with those limits? Should any human who cannot perform basic functions be put down?
Do you work with animals? If you did, you’d know we don’t use words like “happy.” Don’t distract from the point by putting anthropomorphizing words in my mouth.
Since I’m fucking tired of people comparing injured animals to disabled people let’s use the basic framework/analysis for an animals care/welfare—the five freedoms
Here’s the five freedoms as written out by the Farm Animal Welfare Counsel:
Freedom from Hunger and Thirst: By ready access to fresh water and diet to maintain health and vigor.
Freedom from Discomfort: By providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.
Freedom from Pain, Injury or Disease: By prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.
Freedom to Express Normal Behavior: By providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind.
Freedom from Fear and Distress: By ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.
So what we can do for this bird is feed it and give it water. That’s it.
This animal cannot understand where its limbs have gone, cannot feel comfortable and at ease in any environment missing three crucial limbs, is bound to be in pain and injure itself from trying to act like a normal kestrel, cannot do most basic behaviors, and cannot be saved from its own distress
A bird cannot have explained to them why they don’t have their legs and wing. A bird lives in the here and now and their here and now will always be “I cannot act in all the ways I need. I am scared. I am alone. I am vulnerable.”
So no. We’re not about to compare a fucking animal to disabled people and it speaks volumes of ignorance to animals and their welfare, and to profound dehumanization and disrespect of disabled people that you would even think to do so.
My god, this. Sometimes, loving an animal or animals means making the choice to let them go. And yeah, comparing critically wounded animals to disabled humans is fucking gross.
Vet technician here: My team and I would have been willing to give this bird a chance rather than euthanize immediately.
However, humans are animals. All of them, equally. And we’re adaptable as hell. Personally, I find it empowering when I can adapt with my disabilities and either (try to) remember my limits or work with them to accomplish something (like eating).
It’s okay if you don’t agree, or if you’re uncomfortable with the metaphor for yourself for any reason at all. (Especially if you have a history of being dehumanized – I was kept in a rabbit cage with a food bowl for years and I completely understand.) But I see myself in this little bird. I had a trauma that left me physically disabled, and I didn’t want help AND I didn’t believe I could be saved, yet I got it, and I get it every day now, and it’s fine now.
This isn’t to say I’d save the hawk because I think humans can be saved, or that if the hawk has to be euthanized that a human without limbs should be. We’re totally different beasts. And we’re all awesome and resilient in different ways ❤️
You have no business being a vet tech if you would have “saved” this bird. As someone who has worked over five years in raptor rehabilitation and with nonreleasable raptors, you would have sentenced it to a life in suffering. You know nothing about birds of prey and it’s showing.
Don’t like that trope where women are forced into arranged marriages against their will for their family’s political advantage, it just reinforces the frankly sexist idea of women as overemotional and obsessed with romance to the point of stupidity, and neglects the reality of all the women throughout history who would gladly marry for power, riches and political advantage as long as the spouse in question wasn’t entirely awful, because ambition is not an inherently gendered trait, you gotta have a roof over your head, and that earl title suits your brother
Something about ambition being a virtue in men and a flaw in women, and how that kind of thinking also influences people’s perception of women in politics and business today
Maybe I’m just very ace, but I feel like if you’re going to sleep with someone, you might as well get an aristocratic title and a few estates out of it
If you’re a woman living in a society and belonging to a social class where getting married is the closest you’ll ever get to having a job, why wouldn’t you marry for social, political and financial advantage? Sure, your husband has a weak chin and the annoying habit of mainly talking about his hunting dogs, but the estates are gorgeous, the horses are fine, the servants are numerous, you’re dining with the Prime Minister and his wife, and you just used your connections to secure a viscount for your younger sister
I am trying very hard to grasp your point here but I feel like this is an incredibly bizarre take. Like… depicting coerced marriage (which includes expectation of sex with some rando you might not even know, bearing heirs (multiple) for him, and a non-negligible death by childbirth) as a bad thing, especially in a society where men could also be pressured into arranged marriages but generally had far more options besides that, is not some commentary on lack of ambition in women. One has…. nothing to do with the other?
I mean, in the kind of media you describe, 99% of the time the reason for the woman hating this forced marriage is a) the groom is objectively awful, or b) she’s already in love with someone else.
Maybe I’ve just not seen the kind of media you describe, because I haven’t seen it chalked up to lack of ambition at all.
A good chunk of toxic masculinity comes from straight girls imposing ridiculous and weird masculinity standards on their boyfriends or potential boyfriends but we don’t like talking about that.
