akacrispy: Yellow Gatorade is best for when you’re thirsty. Orange is best for hangovers. Dark blue is best for sports hydration. Light blue is best for when you want a cold drink. Red is best for lunch. Not going to explain the science behind this.
Quotes
Monday, August 11
Saturday, August 9
“i am sorry, i did not open the doors when i said i had. that was my mistake. the doors are now open”
Wednesday, August 6
Who needs a quick wholesome story break? So I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. My house was in the center of a bunch of neighboring cornfields.
We didn’t get Girl Scouts, encyclopedia salesfolks, knife sharpening, or proselytizers. I read about some of the door-to-door stuff in books, but I had never seen an ice cream truck.
One day, I heard music, and my mom looked out the window and did something strange and rare (we didn’t have a lot growing up). She handed us money from her purse and said, “RUN, I will give them directions after you get your ice cream; they must be SO lost.”
So, my sister and I ran. I don’t even remember what I got. I remember it was sweet and cold. I remember my bare feet pounding on the grass in the front yard. I remember panting in the sun. But I have never, ever forgotten the magic of that day.
Well, now I live in a big town! In a neighborhood! And I have heard ice cream trucks go by in recent years. But none this year.
So I called an ice cream truck that I googled, asking if they ever came by. “We’re not out at a lot of places, gas prices being what they are, but we are doing events.” “Events like… birthdays?” I asked. “Yeah!” “Y’all free for an hour on June 27?”
Today, we had a small and careful outdoor party. And I asked them to tally up the ice cream at the end, and I’d cover it. It was great fun, and my inner child was greatly pleased.
I had a snocone and a TMNT Raphael with bubblegum eyes and a blue raspberry Icee pop, but my favorite part of the day—my favorite part of the MONTH—was the neighbor kids coming by. Running. Bicycling. Money tucked tightly in their fists.
And I’m not like a wealthy person. I’m a musician. But I have never felt richer than when I gestured to the kids who followed the music and said, “The ice cream is free.”
Nobody abused my hospitality, and it’d honestly probably be okay if they had. But I got to give some kids a tiny bit of the magic that that one terribly lost ice cream truck gave me on a summer day when I was a kid.
Rylee Marcotte, a technical sergeant with the Air Force who has served for about 13 years, was hoping to be able to wear her uniform to her final outprocessing appointment before being involuntarily separated. […] She was told she had to report in uniform – not civilian clothes – but a male uniform. […] “So now I am outprocessing the Air Force at Fairchild Air Force Base virtually, when four minutes south of me is the military personnel flight – I can walk there – but I’m not being allowed to walk out in uniform,” she said.
Troops are also frustrated about their service suddenly being categorized as somehow less than honorable, because it goes against many of the things they’ve been told over their many years of service, often citing years of stellar evaluations and fitness reports, awards and professional accomplishments.
Tuesday, August 5
TheMaineWonk: $66/hr. That’s what the minimum wage would need to be today to match the home-buying power Boomers had in the 1970s. Trickle down economics doesn’t work, has never worked and will never work in an oligarchical society.
Saturday, August 2
Every time someone saves a puppy, John Wick puts a pencil back in his pocket.
Travel hopefully. The universe will surprise you. Constantly.
Susie Dent: Sometimes the historical dictionary offers solace through the existence of an obsolete word that is sorely needed now. One of them is ‘respair’, recorded just once, in the 15th century. It means fresh hope, and a recovery from despair.
Sunday, July 27
Susie Dent: Sometimes the historical dictionary offers solace through the existence of an obsolete word that is sorely needed now. One of them is ‘respair’, recorded just once, in the 15th century. It means fresh hope, and a recovery from despair.
Sunday, July 20
Fatima Khan: “$45,000 hiring bonus for new ICE recruits and a six-figure salary.” Oh so the money WAS there! Y’all just didn’t teel like using it on teachers, healthcare, or student loans. … neat. :(
mmpadellan: Dear MAGA, You hated Pope Francis. You hate Pope Leo XIV. You hate ideals taught by Jesus Christ, like loving thy neighbor, feeding the poor, and treating immigrants (strangers) with kindness. Maybe you’re not as Christian as you say. Maybe the problem is YOU. Think about it.
malwaretech@infosec.exchange: Real freedom is saving 4% on my taxes by living in in a country with no healthcare, child support, or functional education system, then paying like 50% of my post-tax income if I happen to want any of those things. Europeans simply cannot comprehend this level of freedom.
LeftistCEO: Paying 20% of your paycheck to insurance = good, capitalist, affordable. Paying 4% of your paycheck to Medicare = bad, communist, too expensive. Americans really are the most propagandized people in the world.
Carl Sagan, Contact: “You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”
Warren Ellis: “Everything is loud out there, but it’s not on you to have to take it all in at once. When you get up tomorrow, try sitting outside or by a window for ten minutes instead. Just quietly be in the world, instead of the entire world trying to move into your head. You’re going to be okay. See you next week.”
Tuesday, July 15
When Do You Think We Spun Off the Main Plot
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
“I think we’re living in a dystopic riff on the main timeline, like a nightmare that someone in the main plot is having. “That’s where we exist, because I was just watching the news and they had a talking hat on. He was talking about the situation in the Middle East and he was like, I wish we had a Bush presidency right now. “And my first thought was, oh man, that would be great.
We Have Enough Dead Friends (Lena Oleanderson)
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Come over. The doors are open, my flat’s a mess and so is my heart but the doors are always open. Come over. I will make soup, probably from frozen but the important thing is we will both eat. You don’t have to be dying, but if you are, or you feel like you are, or if living’s been hard, call me, and I will show up. It doesn’t have to be that bad, it doesn’t have to be bad at all, but if it is, please call.
This shit sucks, and it sucks having to explain why it sucks, and it sucks that assholes will argue it doesn’t suck.
You deserve a break. Stop healing. Choose violence. Go batshit insane. Do it for the plot.
leojamesmusic: It works like this, you look the ICE agent right in the face, cell phone in hand and say “Identify yourself as a real officer.” Then you say, “badge number and serial number” because they are playing dumb. Start dialing emergency services. If they refuse two times you call 911 and say, “there is a man here impersonating a cop and he has a gun.” Someone was assassinated by a fake cop. Time for ICE to stop hiding behind the masks. We need to learn who they are.
boredwalktees: Reality is in retrograde.
broadwaybabyto: Alligator Alcatraz was built in 8 days. It took just over a week to create a massive concentration camp. Remember this the next time those in power claim they can’t house the homeless, feed the starving or provide medical care to the poor. They can, they don’t want to.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko: “Every Nazi who remains alive will kill women, children, and old folks. Dead Nazis are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a Nazi, I am saving lives.”
St. Peter: “In 99999999976.33% of all branches of the universal wavefunction, you are an evil dictator who enslaves and murders hundreds of millions! ‘You’ happen to be the version whose wicked ambitions were repeatedly thwarted by bizarre coincidences over and over and over.”
Variant Hitler: “Boom! Gimme the halo and wings.”
St. Peter: “Sigh Right this way, Mr. Hitler.”
Caption: Reconciling theology and multiple worlds theory turns out to be difficult.
Keenan: “The German word for bagpipes’ is dudelsack and I hope this introduces as much whimsy into your life as it has mine.”
samsamyea: “People love to say ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ until EBT is the village, until free lunches is the village, until medicaid, public schools and Libraries are the village. Y’all want women to shoulder the weight of raising the workforce out of the goodness of their hearts while simultaneously demonizing welfare moms for using the village.”
birrion: Hating Nazis should be the default position.
alexdmub: My fav college prof once said “there are two normative positions everyone needs to hold: nazis are bad, and slavery is bad.” Anyone who doesn’t meet both of these criteria shouldn’t be taken seriously.
petergleick@fediscience.org: “Thoughts and prayers” does sound a lot nicer than “I didn’t do anything before to prevent this foreseeable disaster and I’m not going to do anything now.”
Thursday, July 10
The Germans have a message for you: _We’ve been where you are now.
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Fighting fascism is an ideological war of attrition against you. You win by not relenting this instant, tomorrow, and every day thereafter. Listen to us! MAGA Fascism You aren’t crazy: MAGA under Trump is turning fascist. Even researchers begin to realize this. For all historical differences, there are modern definitions of fascism perfectly applicable to MAGA: “It wants to silence and even murder its opponents rather than arguing with them; it prefers an authoritarian state over democracy; it pits an aggressively exclusionary idea of the nation against a pluralism that values and prioritizes difference.