the things we cherish are small indeed

Sewing machines are operated by *people*. Knitting machines are operated by *people*. Yes lots of the process is automated but you cannot tell a machine "make me a t-shirt" or "make me a knit cardigan".

Guess what

she has a limited window of opportunity for it to work after shane moves in and they're finding their new rhythms because shane gets up first, so he told ilya "i can handle anya in the morning since I'm up earlier" meaning letting her out, making sure she's got water, AND getting her breakfast served (because this is logical and ilya gives her her dinner, so yes. balance. fairness.), but ilya processed this as, "you stay in bed because you like having phone time before you get up, and I will let anya out and you can feed her when you get up," which is sweet because now ilya gets his extra twenty minutes of staying in bed without feeling bad when anya needs to go out, and he doesn't expect shane to feed anya because he already gives her dinner so why wouldn't he also feed her breakfast? (especially because i know that dog's bowl is COMPLEX. she is eating GOOD. she is eating the insta model breakfast plate of dog cuisine meant to create the ULTIMATE dog health foundation for the dog of a millionaire.)

and they do NOT know that this miscommunication has happened because anya always eats quickly even with her slow feeder, so by the time ilya gets up, she's by an empty bowl doing her 🥺 please 🥺 breakfast 🥺 routine, while shane is doing yoga in the gym.

and it is not until little miss is well on her way to content sausage roll that they discover they've been HUSTLED.

crunchyroll is getting rid of typesetting in their subs. they're going from the good, modern subbing standard (aegisub/ass) - which lets you position, motion-track, and color code text anywhere on the screen - to one worse than what they had 16 years ago (back when their renderer couldn't handle anything fancier than 9-position placement and overlapping text). the one they're moving to (ttml) doesn't let you do any special formatting, just plain text at the top or bottom of the screen. they're doing it because a) they have exclusive licensing rights to a lot of anime, so there's no competition b) they want to make money off of sublicensing to netflix and amazon, but netflix and amazon use the garbage subbing standard c) sony bought crunchyroll a while back and put funimation in charge, and funimation has never given a shit about anime

for a while they were paying their subbers to convert their good subs to the netflix/amazon shitty ones, but they have decided that instead of paying to make good quality subs for their own platform and shitty ones for netflix/amazon (or demanding that netflix/amazon update their subbing standards in order to sublicense the shows, so that everyone has the good ones), they're just going to stop bothering to make the quality subs at all. worse, it seems like they're going through their backlog and converting shows that used to have good subs over to the bad ones.

the article has a TON of examples of shows that would be seriously impacted by this change. two of my faves it mentions are kill la kill (which makes HEAVY use of onscreen text for its punchiness and humor) and komi-san can't communicate (have you tried watching the netflix subs of this? they make the show literally unwatchable. the whole premise of the show is that komi has selective mutism and talks by writing things down, and the netflix subs just... didn't bother subbing any of the text. whole entire key conversations become extended shots of characters scribbling back and forth while you have no way to know what they're saying). some others it doesn't mention that i immediately thought of were shoujo kageki revue starlight (color-coded subs along both the side and the bottom come in clutch for tracking the revue duets simultaneously with the duet dialog) and yuuki yuuna wa yuusha de aru (you need motion-tracked subs for any on-screen group chat conversation to be readable, and yuyuyu has a bunch). and the article's got a bunch more examples from shows i don't know as much about. probably you can think of some of your own faves that this would ruin worst of all, the english fansubbing community has cratered since crunchyroll came on the scene. there's a lot more anime coming out each season, and audiences are used to day-of simulcast, and most of the really good fansubbers went pro or retired and not a lot of new ones have stepped up. so even torrenting or streaming bootlegs won't be viable for getting the speed, quality, and coverage of subs we're used to these days.

the article exhorts you to kick up a fuss - spread the word, complain on social media - and to cancel your crunchyroll account and give "subtitle quality" as your reason. it cites how back in 2017, crunchyroll tried to reduce their video quality, got slammed by their users, and rolled back the change. unfortunately, the sony/funimation takeover happened since then and that leadership doesn't seem to care at all about the quality of their product or what the fans think, so i don't expect them to respond to anything but a credible threat to their bottom line. so, maybe, if we can make a big enough dent in their subscription numbers, then they'll pay attention

and the article doesn't say this, but i'd add: complain to netflix and amazon, as well. any anime you see on those platforms, report the subs and say the quality makes the show unwatchable. consider canceling your subscriptions to those platforms as well, and citing the awful subtitle quality in your reasons, if the main thing you use them for is anime

One example is, if you've experienced a break-in, and you have OCD, you might keep checking the door locks over and over, because what if you missed something and you were wrong and the door isn't actually locked. This could go all night long if it's a severe enough case. Hence, OCD is often called the "doubting disorder."

If you don't fixate on the concept of contamination, you probably won't be particularly neat or clean. Hell, even if you are fixated on that particular anxiety, you can still end up with a disgusting living space, because, for instance, you might get stuck cleaning the same drain over and over because what if it has mold and you weren't thorough enough, and you get so fixated on the drain that you end up neglecting the expired food in your fridge. It doesn't make sense, you're afraid of mold but you got a fridge full of it, because your brain won't stop blaring alarms about the mold in the sink specifically. And you're fully aware it's irrational, which is probably the most maddening part.

Side note: polonium-210 is a very dangerous isotope, however it "does not pose a radiation hazard when kept outside the body", as the alpha particle it emits have very little penetration power and cannot pierce even the outer layers of dead skin. It has still killed countless people, though, not because of children's rings, but because of tobacco. Polonium latches onto and concentrates in tobacco leaves, leading to heavy smokers being exposed to more radiation than survivors of the Chernobyl disaster.

When people say they enjoy things, they usually mean one of two things. The first is that these things are fun; that is, they satisfy immediate emotional needs or desires for pleasure. Candy Crush is fun, for people who are into that sort of thing; waterslides are fun, watching TV is fun. Fun, in the way I'm defining it for this post, is the party food of pleasure; immediately and usually temporarily satisfying, and after that, mostly satisfying only as a happy memory (although some of these activities, like watching a TV show, can generate further opportunities for pleasure down the line like daydreaming, discussion, and making fanart). Like party food, this kind of fun is a good thing to have, and someone who doesn't get enough of it is at high risk of stress-related health concerns. Also burnout. A lack of fun is a major contributor to burnout.

The second kind of pleasure that most people talk about is rewarding activity. The lack of rewarding activity in one's life is a major contributor to depression. It creates a sense of purposelessness and worthlessness and generates a low attention span, sapping the ability to feel long-term motivation or pleasure. People usually try to pick themselves up with the first kind of fun, which is a band-aid but not a very sticky one; the lack of rewarding activity grows and festers over time. Rewarding pleasure involves working on something long-term that feels worthwhile. There are usually also spots of fun (or you wouldn't have gotten into the activity enough for it to become rewarding), but there also tends to be long slogs that aren't that fun. Nevertheless, when people report on doing said activity, they will speak about it with great enjoyment and remember it being enjoyable and claim they like it. (I like being a writer. Writing can sometimes be boring as shit.) (Look into Csíkszentmihályi's work on experience sampling and flow states for more info on this, it is FASCINATING.)

In Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal sums up what she thinks are the most important contributing factors to rewarding activity. These are not the only factors, but I agree that they're a good baseline of the critical ones. I'm going to paraphrase them using different language. The four big contributors are:

Satisfying work. This is the vaguest one because different people find different things satisfying. Basically, the task itself should feel productive, and you should not feel bad about doing it to the point where it causes you distress. Satisfying work involves clear goals with actionable steps and a clear product, preferably something that you can see, touch or use. A clean house, a new high score, a freshly built table, a happy child.

Mastery. Rewarding pleasure is often something that you can get better at. There are things to learn, practice, improve. Improving your ability to solve tricky code problems, getting better at painting landscapes, figuring out fun new strategies in Magic: The Gathering, being able to build computers better or faster or cheaper. Mastery does not require becoming the best at something (although some people enjoy that specifically also), merely seeing progress in yourself and being able to take pride int he fact that you are better than you were.

Social connection. Rewarding pleasure often involves social or community connection. A long-term social group that discusses fan theories of their favourite show. Your weekly tabletop rpg. Teaching a room full of kids who to make leather belts. Working at a small bookshop and making small talk with all the tourists. Some people find social activity to be fun in the 'immediate pleasure' kind of way, some don't, but it is a critical factor in mental health and in the long-term... rewardingness (?)... of a hobby. Animals can also partially fill this niche, but be warned, they are far, far less effective than people. Your cat might be able to stop you from committing suicide today. You cat alone will not make your life satisfying.

Contribution. Humans are community animals and have a need to be something larger than ourselves or, more specifically to be of service to something larger than ourselves. Looking after kids, cooking big meals for others, creating art or physical products for others. Teaching the next generation how to read. Serving your God. Saving a species of small fish from extinction. Volunteering at your local charity shop or soup kitchen. Being a member of a crowd to reach the Guinness World Record for "most people fit into a storage crate". Making useful tutorial videos, being an entertainer, joining your local queer support group or political organisation. Humans fucking love to be part of something bigger than their own brain and they fucking love to help people.

The world is full of rewarding activities, and not all of them rate high in all four categories. The woman working in the charity shop warehouse and chatting with her coworkers isn't necessarily all that interested in mastery of her job (although I've worked in these places and some people do take pride in learning to be as efficient as possible), the musical hermit training to become the best violinist in the world might not be all that interested in social connection or how the audience actually feels about him. You might have noticed that I've listed hobbies, jobs, and non-employed but important life work (volunteering and childrearing) as possible rewarding activities; you can find rewarding activities everywhere. (In fact the lack of rewarding pleasure in our work lives is a very serious problem that companies keep trying to condescendingly band-aid over. The late David Graeber had a lot to say about this and I highly recommend his work, particularly Bullshit Jobs, which is a book specifically discussing the lack of above points 1 and 4 (satisfying work and sense of contribution) in so many modern workplaces and its distressing psychological ramifications). Rewarding activities are not 'fun' all the time; in fact, Csíkszentmihályi's work found that many of them are quite unfun most of the time. They do, however, create long term pleasure, and are emotionally and psychologically critical.

Ashley St. Clair, who dated and had a baby with Elon Musk, says he admitted to her that he used AI and voting machine technology to rig the 2024 election for Trump.