Grumpy Old Snake

When people discuss the importance of using things, such as special plates, candles, special clothes- they will say that it's best to use them all the time, and that this makes each day special or something like that.

Which is only part of the picture if you ask me.

It's good not to hoard things forever, but if you use everything all the time, it also leaves certain special times as kind of indistinct from anything else. Like having a Christmas tree up all year kind of takes something away from it.

So here's my rephrasing: special things should have a concrete time of use, not an abstract one.

If you have an outfit you love but have it dedicated to only wear once a year on a specific day? Totally fine! You are using it, and it is contributing something to your life.

If you have plates that you'll only use 'for a special occasion' but haven't touched them in years? Evidently you don't know how to recognize a special occasion and should try and think of more specific qualifiers.

Wow I forgot to use my tumblr - did you know Fairmeadow has been posting on Tapas once a week for like, 8 months!?

Fairmeadow is my ~ fantasy drama ~ webcomic about a neurotic Orcish soldier stumbling into a remote commune of radical pacifists. Will she learn to get along with different people or just be a huge asshole forever? How far are they from civilization? Wait, is this some kind of cult? Read it and share it with the people you hate :)

Read Fairmeadow on Tapas

Wow I forgot to use my tumblr - did you know Fairmeadow has been posting on Tapas once a week for like, 8 months!?

Fairmeadow is my ~ fantasy drama ~ webcomic about a neurotic Orcish soldier stumbling into a remote commune of radical pacifists. Will she learn to get along with different people or just be a huge asshole forever? How far are they from civilization? Wait, is this some kind of cult? Read it and share it with the people you hate :)

Read Fairmeadow on Tapas

Permanent DMCA regime and an end to fair use seems pretty dystopian from where I'm sitting and the fact that the comments on this post are full of uwu smol bean creatives who are very proud to say things like "I don't care how AI works, it's evil" but can't imagine how their attempts to define model training as theft might have downstream problems that harm everyone BUT megacorporations is exactly the issue that I'm trying to articulate.

There's a whole scene that gets cut from every production of Tempest because it is clearly supposed to be funny, but the punchline is "widow Dido," and the best guess is that it was essentially a meme that we just don't get anymore. So the scene doesn't work, it isn't funny, it's barely comprehensible. Widow Dido wasn't canceled, society just moved on to different stupid jokes. One of the bits in Merry Wives of Windsor, a genuinely funny play, that is clearly supposed to bring the house down, and probably did in 1598, is that this one guy is French. That's it, that's the joke. Hon Hon Hon baguette du fromage. Get a load of this Frenchman. At best these days it comes off as silly and juvenile. But to an Elizabethan English person, some French guy fumbling a good English girl was hilarious.

And yeah there's also an element of xenophobia and nationalism there and that's not great, but mostly it's just not really funny anymore that French people exist, it's just like... ok? And??

And i think a lot of like. Bits where the punchline is that people are gay, Steven, or like. A woman is doing something, a Trans person exists, this guy wore a dress, isn't it sooooooooo funny that these two dudes are saying romantic words at each other ironically or acting like a couple like...

Yeah the idea that this would be funny is rooted in bigotry. But also,

It's just not funny? Like ok? This guy is wearing a dress? So what? Like ok this character hit on someone thinking they were one gender and was wrong, that's just a random Thursday in a South End bar, we've all been there? Nu?? Sometimes people are from Wales, yeah, that's how geography works?

There's a whole scene that gets cut from every production of Tempest because it is clearly supposed to be funny, but the punchline is "widow Dido," and the best guess is that it was essentially a meme that we just don't get anymore. So the scene doesn't work, it isn't funny, it's barely comprehensible. Widow Dido wasn't canceled, society just moved on to different stupid jokes. One of the bits in Merry Wives of Windsor, a genuinely funny play, that is clearly supposed to bring the house down, and probably did in 1598, is that this one guy is French. That's it, that's the joke. Hon Hon Hon baguette du fromage. Get a load of this Frenchman. At best these days it comes off as silly and juvenile. But to an Elizabethan English person, some French guy fumbling a good English girl was hilarious.

And yeah there's also an element of xenophobia and nationalism there and that's not great, but mostly it's just not really funny anymore that French people exist, it's just like... ok? And??

And i think a lot of like. Bits where the punchline is that people are gay, Steven, or like. A woman is doing something, a Trans person exists, this guy wore a dress, isn't it sooooooooo funny that these two dudes are saying romantic words at each other ironically or acting like a couple like...

Yeah the idea that this would be funny is rooted in bigotry. But also,

It's just not funny? Like ok? This guy is wearing a dress? So what? Like ok this character hit on someone thinking they were one gender and was wrong, that's just a random Thursday in a South End bar, we've all been there? Nu?? Sometimes people are from Wales, yeah, that's how geography works?

before you say "4% isn't that big of a difference between the US and China"

Men make up 93% of the US prison population, but despite this, the US accounts for 30% of the GLOBAL population of incarcerated women.

Housing insecurity is the most significant predictor of incarceration with 22% of state prisoners experiencing it shortly before incarceration.

12% of state prisoners in the US were unhoused before their 16th birthday.

68% of US state prisoners were first incarcerated before their 16th birthday.

More than half of people in prisons and jails in the US have a mental illness.

Cognitive learning disabilities occur in state prisons at nearly 500% the national rate.