Emzzy

On the referrers tab of the participation spreadsheet, 16 people arrived at the survey from a flyer/leaflet, and that's right below people who arrived from Twitter (22 people).

I think it would be great and really funny if flyer/leaflet could be above Twitter. That would be so satisfying for me, because Elon Musk is a knobhead and old school hardcopy everything is the best.

So, if everyone could please print out some flyers (PDF, Google Doc) and stick them up in random unisex toilets/changing rooms, or pin them on pinboards, or stack them on tables, or put them in postage-paid envelopes from random junk mail and post them, etc. etc. that could help the cause.

Let's stick it to The Man (Elon "Knobhead" Musk).

Unrelatedly, we're at almost 25,000 responses, whaaaaat!!!

The gap has halved, flyers are catching up to Twitter!

Keep it up! (Flyers: PDF, Google Doc)

So far, countries that are flyering well:

USA - 8

UK - 5

Germany - 2

New Zealand - 2

Prefer not to say - 2

Poland - 1

Switzerland - 1

81% of people who get to the survey with a flyer haven't participated in the survey before, which is particularly good!

I'm going to print some today and put them up on my little town's noticeboards as soon as I can manage it, we're hella queer round here, maybe that will help? I'll make some with the closing date on, and with the survey address, and then I'll put it in the public promo folder so you all can use them too if you want.

(Unrelatedly, we got to 26,000 participants last night! 💜🚀✨)

“Grace,” he sings- and reaches for the harmonics above that basic note as scaffolding upon which to drape meaning. Unreachable, indispensable, dearer than self.

I smile, stretching my now-spidery fingers as I gather the music I'll need. 

“Rocky,” I play.

this this this this.

Flotsam House

The third thing Ferret did before she ran away was pick a new name.

It nearly had been the first, but Ferret was a little more sensible than her family tended to believe. Instead, she packed her schoolbag with clothes and snacks and trinkets and then wrote a short, but important letter. She’d left it on her parents’ bed before she’d walked out the door and into the swirling afternoon mist.

That mist had rapidly become fog.

Now, it was something even thicker that made Ferret wish she’d packed a dictionary so she could accurately complain about what it was. It was silver and cold and grasped at her tufty brown hair and bright green raincoat. Little drops of water kept finding their way into her hood and rolling down her spine, making Ferret jump and squeak every few feet.

Ferret was starting to realise that, even if she wanted to turn around and go home, she had no idea what direction to go.

Mistlewoods Rest Home for Dragons

Making a dragon their afternoon tea was a very fiddly operation. Especially if that dragon hadn’t yet burnt off all their tastebuds and tended to be prone to grumbling flame if it wasn’t done just right.

Sorrel Thistledale took her duties extremely seriously.

First, she tied up her golden plaits, put on her father’s spare apron (the blue one), and fetched the stool from the pantry. After that, she put the full pot on the fire without catching her sleeves alight. Then she ground the coal and the quartz and the little red flowers into a gritty, sweet-smelling paste and scraped every bit into the now-boiling water. The last step was to stir and stir with the long wooden spoon until the water turned a pretty pale pink.

Once it was done to her satisfaction – and, hopefully, Old Ember’s – Sorrel very carefully poured the brew into a teacup the size of a bowl and carried it towards the big dining hall where the earliest riser of the dragons would be waiting. Ector the Balloonist

Ector’s first solo flight began on a cold autumn afternoon when Grandma Elaine discovered she’d been sold an improperly stored phoenix feather – just as it blew her clear across the workshop, singeing her eyebrows and breaking her right leg in two places.

Even Ector heard the explosion. He’d taken his hearing aids out to better be able to focus on the details of his newest project, but the deep boom rattled his head and the walls.

“You’re not coping” Ok here’s the deal; I’ll stop feeling this anger when we have a national memorial (we don’t) or a cdc equipped to stop it from happening again (we don’t) or a population that takes a deadly disease seriously BEFORE it effects them personally (WE DON’T!)

There’s something called culture. People (especially USAmericans) think of culture as cultural dress, cultural food, cultural music. These are culture, but they are only the very superficial aspects of it. Like the icing on your cake. Far more deep rooted is the more meaty bits of culture: the attitudes, the ideas, the taboos.

There’s a guy on tiktok who has done a series that shows this very well, of Germans Vs Irish. In one video the German offers the Irish person two kinds of tea, green or black. The Irish person keeps putting off the choice with things like “Oh sure whatever is easiest”, “Which have you more of?” and, “Ah sure I don’t want to cause a fuss” whereas the German just wants a straight answer. This is a cultural difference of politeness.

Here in the UK, accents mark your class very openly. They let everyone know where you’re from (though this has become less pronounced in the last 50 years,) and what your background is. A lot of people (especially northerners, but also a fair contingent of working class southerners) face discrimination on the basis of their accents.

Some of us (myself included) even change register (though I believe USAmericans call it code switching) in and out of our regional accent and a close approximation of RP. We learn to do it because it makes us seem more intelligent (even though it shouldn’t) and helps us be taken more seriously.

Thus, our country carries a lot of baggage when it comes to accents. Especially those of the working class who have had their accents made fun of, or have faced discrimination based on it.

So when someone outside the country (usually USAmericans) makes fun of our accents they’re stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the “It’s Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innit” is a working class accent.

Now, that’s not to say we can’t take a joke, but this is the kind of joke you share with someone who you have been friends with for a while. My boyfriend often will pick up on the way I say certain words, in much the same fashion I pick up on his idiosyncrasies of speech (English isn’t his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we aren’t predisposed to liking you, then the joke you’re trying to make is more like an insult.

The way I like to think of it is if you were in a pub, and made those sorts of jokes to someone. If they knew you, and they liked you, they’d probably laugh along. If they didn’t like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.

Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still don’t sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.

When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who, people were surprised that he used his own northern accent, instead of performing with an accent like every Doctor before him. That was only 15-ish years ago.

Even now, this still happens - James McAvoy made a very vocal protest a couple of years back about a critic who complained about the use of Scots accents and only applauded the “plummy English” accent of one character in a play.