Ella Of Surda

You'd think "don't use a fictional creature as an allegory for oppressed minorities and as a horde of vile automatons that it's always okay to kill in the same work at the same time" would be a no brainer, but roughly 70% of all works featuring goblins and/or robots demonstrate otherwise.

Article published July 14th, 2026

the horrors persist but so do books, art, hot chocolate, winter nights, the moon, the sea, the stars, sunsets, literature, libraries, cats, flowers, stories, love and the wistful feeling you get when you finally return home

ai will literally straight up say "I can make mistakes :)" and be accepted by millions of companies worldwide. meanwhile you'll either get fired or get your resume thrown into a trash can if you, as a human being, make one slight mistake or are not always performing perfectly

"Going a couple hours without eating a single kind of food? No thanks, I would rather kill a child" is such a wildly horrifying take to see MULTIPLE people proudly stating.

I hate you Ozempic craze I hate you 'heroin chic' I hate you weight loss ads on public radio I hate Burn Fat Fast ads every thirty seconds I hate you I hate you I hate you

I grew up before the term 'thigh gap' was invented I grew up before 'hip dip' was invented I was born before 'muffin top' was a thing before 'clean girl look' was a thing before 'glass skin' was a thing before razoring off peach fuzz was a thing and I'm so so so fucking tired of us inventing new concepts purely for the purpose of convincing people to hate their own bodies enough to buy products

Last time Tuberculosis ran through the USA a small number of people got it on purpose to look skinny and waifish and delicate and used makeup to look flushed and bony and when the Victorians figured out tapeworms people would infect themselves on purpose to starve themselves smaller and women and now in the year of our lord 2026 there is a noticeable fraction of the USAmerican population genuinely thrilled about a treatment-resistant microbial parasite that makes you shit and vomit your brains out for a month because side effects include weight loss and STILL we talk about being skinny like it's the natural default setting for all healthy people as if it's a self-sustaining standard and not an imaginary goal that we are constantly constantly constantly beating ourselves with a whip to acheive

Inspiration for Ziggy!! Inspiration for Ziggy for one thousand years (so that she may do crime)

Love to be on a website where I can join such hit 2022 fandoms as “century old public domain novel being read very slowly” and “half-century old mafia film that does not actually exist.”

Who wants to hear a DIY tiling pro tip that the experts won't tell you

Yes!

Do not drop your phone into the bucket of tile adhesive. This step is actually completely unnecessary and massively complicates the tiling process.

You say this but my uncle is a tiler and he swears by the “drop phone in putty bucket” technique. I think you’re just posting this for clout

Your uncle is caught up in a tradition that he was taught as an apprentice that he never questioned. Modern putty doesn't require phone, the formula has changed.

MY uncle says some customers still demand the phone putty technique because it "doesn't look right otherwise"

Drop an empty phone case in and those customers can't tell the fucking difference because there is no fucking difference.

My mum renovated houses for thirty years, she says “you’re half right, but in some cases - particularly in houses built before 1930 - the phone does add some benefit. Could be a tablet too if you’ve an old one in the garage. And anyone who says it’s got to be a particular model is just being precious about it, whatever the forums say.”

IPhones and tablets where invented in 1898, what did they do before then?

Nothing, tiles were invented in 1899.

my sister the historian studied ancient pompeiian tile mosiacs and there's definitely graffiti of dropping cans on strings into the buckets of putty, so it goes way back.