Welcome to the year of klapollo (2026)

1.

I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."

As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.

Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.

A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.

As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"

Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.

You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.

It was not.

It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.

And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.

This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.

After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.

None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.

With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.

Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.

"Phyllis," said he.

The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.

"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"

Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.

Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.

i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.

so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.

this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.

the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":

these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.

then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.

our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.

And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?

The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.

Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Bringing a handful of items to make us set aside will add more work, but in the normal course of my own day, we're having a bring up a cart-load or two every couple hours for sorting anyway. Generally, the front-line worker you speak with are probably the ones gathering and sorting this stuff. Assume that any complaints you give front-line workers won't go anywhere; not for laziness reasons, just that they're overworked and people who've been around long enough know their complaints/suggestions - even directly from customer's lips - might as well be tossed right in the toilet

What's REALLY going to hurt the company, is customers bringing whole cart-loads up and abandoning them in frustration. Bonus points if it's mixed goods; if we can easily sort out "cart full of cold items" or "cart that's just clothes," that can just get passed off to its relevant department. The goal here is to waste the whole company's time needing to pull people from other departments to assist in sorting through a deluge of shit. The only time I pretty much ever get support with sorting, for example, is days when we have blackouts and dozens and dozens of customers abandon their carts

CRITICALLY, you need to also kick your complaints up to management. If stores have some survey thing or whatever and enough people get mad there, it helps, but even field and department management are going to have to report for what's slowing down business. Politely, but firmly, ask to talk with management about your frustrations. You don't even have to be rude; in fact, if you can be kind, confused, even chatty and kind if you want. But you gotta keep 'em on the line as long as you can. Roadblock. Make it clear specifically why you're frustrated. If you have a membership of some kind, literally start the steps for canceling it right in front of them (and if you can actually go through with the full cancel, even better!) No retail worker is affected by the "I'll never shop here again routine" (any customer that's said that to me is someone I'd never miss), but if field management AND corporate has data to back up people leaving the ecosystems in droves, they tend to get scared quick

Coordinate. If you have family, friends, etc who have time to kill and want to fuck over corporations, stagger out your faux shopping trips and complaints. Keep up the momentum. Most corporations are relying on people to get bored and give in. Single big blasts on busy days are a huge help too, though hitting companies on less-busy days when they're likely to have less staff means even more leftover work

inat has options for this! for each observation you upload, you can choose to keep the location public, not to disclose location at all, or to obscure it.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

(via bsky)

Then a day before the date there's another text like "hey you still have my stuff, right? Yeah you have them, I'd know if you'd have returned them, I keep tabs on everything. Return them tomorrow. :)"

And on the day they're due it's just this picture

So, con drop was coined to explain the drop of energy that comes a few hours or maybe a few days after attending or participating in a convention.

After spending several days on an endorphin and dopamine high, you go home and crash. Life seems dull. You feel the emptiness. You need to sign up for another convention. You're chasing the next high.

This is the same kind of feeling the BDSM community have called dom-drop or sub-drop.

The feeling can come with mood-swings, moodiness, fatigue, depression, etc.

I was aware of both, but at some point I realized it also happens to other kind of events that bring a high of dopamine. Like a party, an evening with your friends, anything where you have a lot of intense positive emotions.

Sometimes I come back from a party with my friends. And in the bus, I immediately crash and start doubting myself. And if my friends are judging me. And wondering what I said or did wrong, overanalizing every micro expression to see if they secretly hate me. (they don't).

I used to feel guilty about this. I'm supposed to have a good time and here I was, immediately crashing the moment I left.

(of course I have adhd and a weird relationship with dopamine.)

The moment I connected it with con-drop, it made sense.

So here I am after the high of the book fair, forcing myself to take it slow and not immediately start working on a new project to chase the high.