I have no pity to spare for thee...

It was a poorly worded statement about having lots of resumés of highly qualified women whom they wanted to hire into government positions should Romney win. Because he actually recognized that his background, religiously and just as a straight white man, meant that he mostly knew other straight white men but recognized that that was no way to staff a government. Like, Romney was actively directing his team to expand the diversity in his potential administration because he recognized his own personal shortcomings in that regard. It's the sort of DEI thing that gets demonized by the Republican party now.

A much better target are his ridiculous classist comments, such as the infamous '47 percent' thing about how poor people just see themselves as victims unlike the Real backbone of the economy ie the job creators like him (very Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged of him, ew). Or the less infamous but no less fucking out of touch criticism about how people shouldn't take out student loans to afford college, they should swallow their pride and just ask their parents for the money!

for any address to twitter you can replace the “x.com” with “nitter.net” and you will be able to browse as if you have an account. Lifesaver.

Dead Boy Detectives (2024)

1.02 — The Case of the Dandelion Shrine

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

Are you a word nerd like me, and my father before me?

Then may I introduce you to...

Other materials at the time, namely clay, would absorb flavors and germs meaning that if you ate beef off a clay plate your next meal with that plate could have beef flavor and microbes common on cow meat on it.  That would leak out seemingly at random no less.  Heck imagine a sick person coughing into their soup bowl and then months later their germs hiding in the clay would pop out to infect whole new people.

Also the earliest human use of glass we know of is for its sharpness.  Pre-historic people would use volcanic glass as sharp knives for food preparation.  Also beads.  Pretty much any new substance humans get their hands on for most of our history we immediately try to make into beads.

Everyone say thank you to trans mascs for showing us a version of masculinity born from joy and desire instead of just through coercion

Everyone say thank you to all people outside of the cis gender binary for showing us a version of gender born from joy and desire instead of just through a simple frame work in which our oppressor have used to kill, erase, and censor us.

1) A young teen came by and poked through our bin of flags and asked us about which flags meant which labels. "I told my friend I'd get her one," she said. "Her grandma won't ever let her come to Pride things, so I said I'd get her things if I could."

"Well," I said, shoving flags and stickers into her small hands, "hopefully she grows up or grandma changes her mind soon, but until then, hopefully she will always have as good a friend as you."

2) A young person came by twice, the first time with a larger group of peers and grabbed some free merch, and on their second visit with another friend, they were crying. Like full on sobbing into their flag-cape, overcome with emotion, as they stuck a pronoun sticker on their friend. "I'm sorry I'm crying. I'm sorry, it's just. It's a lot."

Oh honey. It's Pride. It's one of the hottest days of the hottest part of the year, and we're here partly to party but also to celebrate the fact that we're kinda like cockroaches and someone's gonna have to do a fuckton to get rid of us, and by god have they tried and failed before, and God willing, they will fail again. It is okay and perfectly fine to cry. Feel your feelings, sweetheart. We just smiled and gave them all the sweet and kind words we could muster, knowing we all have been there.

3) a mom came by with her kids, twin daughters. "It's their first Pride!" she said so proudly as they chose their flags and stickers. One of them grinned wildly as she waved her flag. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

4) There was a gaggle of kids who descended on the flag bin like vultures. "It's me, it's me!" one said excitedly, snatching up one of the microlabel ones. "Look, it's my flag!!!"

5) I got to introduce some folks to the region's local queer discord server, and it was like watching kids discover a candy store. They were so excited to hear about another way to stay connected, since they admitted that scheduling often prevented them from doing the more frequent casual events in their hometown.

God, I love Pride. I feel so disconnected from people sometimes. Depression and being busy and feeling bitter and burnt out and in pain, physically and emotionally, often keeps me from feeling the most enthusiastic about being around folks, but then I do events like this and I just remember how much I love my people.

i actually read her book when i was about twelve years old, in the most shocking and probably only example of me ever being ahead of a trend, and even at twelve i really loved everything she said. at that point in time i lived in fear of my mother's threats that she would come and throw everything away while i was school, and my small and very adhd mind simply could not grasp the concept of "have less stuff". have less of WHICH stuff? how? i'd never actually been taught how to clean my room besides being told "pick up stuff" and "be organized", and as she points out multiple times, cleaning is not an intuitive thing. it's a learned behavior and skill.

anyways. her entire philosophy centers on surrounding yourself with things that you love, and only things that you love (or things that you absolutely need). she explicitly says over and over again that it is not about throwing things away, it is not about minimalism, it is not about "what is the smallest amount possible that you can survive on". she literally has a whole section where she talks about how hard it can be to throw things away when you've lived in poverty all your life and you don't have absolute confidence that you can replace something that you really needed if it gets thrown out, even though you're not likely to ever really need it--you've just been conditioned to think that because that's literally how you survive, when you're poor. she talks about how that mindset can serve and how it can damage. she talks about how minimalism is sort of a rich people thing, cause they can afford to throw everything away.

That we are the caretakers of the objects we keep and have an obligation to not only care for them, but also to *use them for their purpose.*

If you don't wear that jacket, no matter how cute it is, it is a disservice to let it rot away in your closet. Let it go on to be worn by someone else. It's not that you didn't love it enough- it's that you love it enough to let it serve its purpose, even if it's not with you.

"I'm telling you, Edwin is the best person I know and I won't leave him in hell."