my little place in the world

Then for the last 5 years (huge interest rate hikes, tech stock drop-off scare in 2022, US regime change in 2025, blah blah blah) they snapped the trap and decided to activate the money machine, which is rampant enshittification and bleeding everyone dry with higher baseline costs and forced subscription costs and forcibly app-ifying every single thing (needs a login needs a credit card needs an id nees a ) and backing pretty far away from the "your good relatable buddy" tech CEO image. Like it's been the world's most blatant and annoying pig-butchering scheme.

his apartment is death row when it comes to plants.

he read years ago about plants being good for mental wellness and air quality, and he wants that!! that sounds like a great way to optimize a house!! plants!! cleaning the air and also doing *something* for mental health that he can't quite recall but fully believes.

AND YET.

he has read blogs. he has picked out easy care plants. he has bought special fertilizers and watering devices. he even bought a fucking grow light. he has ticked ALL the fucking boxes!! by ALL metrics!! he should be so good at Having House Plants!!

So of course he spends most of his days inside. Inside gyms. Inside rinks. Inside conference rooms. Inside all kinds of stuffy rooms full of terrible lights and an abhorrent air quality probably too.

So when he reads an article on how plants improve air quality and also do great things for your mental health he orders a bunch of them online. There was a "beginners package" that looked nice. The XL variety so that he doesn't just have 3 random plants looking out of place. A mix of big and small plants that promises to be cohesive and simple to maintain. Next day delivery and a bunch of plant pots that were made out of 100% recycled plastic.

He spends the next day happily mixing and matching plants with pots and reading their care labels intently. Some of them get put right next to his windows - direct sunlight. And others find spots on various counters where the light meter he also bought tells him is the perfect indirect sunlight.

The expensive bottle of plant food gets stored in a cool dark place to be used in 2 weeks, since the plants were given fertiliser at the nursery already. It's going to be great. His apartment looks so much more lived in. So comfy.

It reminds him of the cottage.

For the next week's he follows the care label instructions to the fucking letter. One drop plants get small amounts of water. Three drop plants get much more. And he has a special only for plant food teaspoon to measure out the absolute perfect amount of liquid feed per watering can.

It's going great.

He's amazing at this.

And then... Then they start dying. One yellowing leaf at a time he sinks into despair.

Switching the food does nothing.

Playing classical music is useless!

Moving the plants to different spots around the home doesn't save a single one of them.

At first he cuts the yellow leaves off and the rest of the plant still looks OK. Then he hides the worst of them when the cleaners come by. He's going to fix it. He can do this. He's Shane Hollander for God's sake!

One by one they end up in the trash. Sometimes he replaces them with a new identical victim, but most of the empty plant pots get thrown out or handed off as gifts to Hayden.

The last straggler is a single spider plant that has managed to hang on against all odds. It has lost and regained leaves and has looked close to death since week 3 and Shane is sure the plant is alive despite his care instead of because of it but he refuses to give up on the thing.

Ilya comments on it at one point. Fingering a limp, semi yellow leaf with a frown. Asks Shane if he shouldn't throw it out and get a healthy plant, and Shane shuts that shit *down* because that is his plant. That's his buddy. The one who refused to give up!

That plant is a fighter!

Proof that not *everything* he touches dies.

That plant is Hope!

the idea of ilya finding this oddly reassuring because it shows that shane doesn't just give up when things are bad.

Im also imagining him with a note on his phone for "shane clubs" with notes and rating on how much shane will like them

so ilya has an internal criteria for if shane will like a club or not (is there a place to be outside of the main action? is there a place where you can stand and the music isn't so loud? are the lights predictable or do they have a lot of strobing? etc.), and if the club meets THOSE qualifications, then he will ask at the bar if they have ginger ale. if no, out of the running as a place he will take shane. if yes, success! new Shane Friendly Club.

Club with heavily upholstered booths that muffle sound. Lots of ginger ale. Menu has several variations on a Moscow Mule

Club with a big fishtank behind the bar that Shane likes to look at when he’s overstimulated. Drinks are hipstery. Shane likes the hibiscus-peppercorn Old Fashioned.

Club that has twinkly chandelier lights that aren’t too harsh or too dim. Ginger beer instead of ginger ale. Still good though.

Club that plays weird avant-garde Québécois indie rock and doesn’t allow cameras. Large selection of Canadian whiskey.

Bar with lots of darts and pool tables if Shane is feeling competitive. Aggressively hipster. They brew their own weird probiotic soda. Shane LOVES weird probiotic soda.

Bar and grill with live jazz. They have a vegan menu. Shane likes the fried jicama sticks. Organic ginger ale.

Club with gauzy curtains hanging from the ceiling that look cool AND block cameras. No ginger ale, but Shane will have a mint julep (they are excellent)

Club playing exclusively 80s hits, weird cocktails with rosemary smoke. Every hour on the hour they drop pounds and pounds of confetti from the ceiling. Drunk Shane thinks it’s pretty.

Club with a ball pit gimmick. Ilya suggested it as a joke but Shane’s eyes got huge like a cat fixating on a bug. It’s deeply overstimulating and he can tolerate it for about 90 minutes before he has to stand outside for a bit. Very strong drinks.

1. Do not do age verification.

My meme-ish poster about executive dysfunction, or "The Sits" as we call it in our house. This is to share my experiences with exec. dysfunction, everyone's a little different ☺️

So because parkour is such a ridiculously male dominated sport, the "correct technique" for a lot of these movements that you're taught when you become an instructor plays to a male body's strengths: upper body strength, higher center of gravity, etc.

She demolishes this course by moving in ways that make sense for her body. She doesn't muscle her way up to her over a wall, she just throws a leg up over the wall. She doesn't use upper body strength to do the salmon ladder, she uses her hips!!! And it's fucking incredible.

So many girls and young women walk away from parkour because every movement caters to the strengths of men, because doing what makes sense for their bodies is seen as "bad technique" to be trained away.

Mewtwo

Secrets of Nimh

Wolverine

Akira

Elfen Lied

Shadow the Hedgehog

I have type 2 Narcolepsy. Studies have shown that serious viral infections can cause people to develop Narcolepsy if they are already genetically susceptible to having it. This includes covid. That is what happened to me.

Yall, I can’t believe that I have to do this, but I am going to say this in as clearly as possible

The anon was very confused.

That is, when an official told you, a rice farmer, that you owed more taxes than you really did, it was very useful if you were good enough at math to know he was lying (and could prove it) and if you were good enough at writing to write a letter to your government defending your case.

Education in Japan didn't become widespread, with nationwide standardized exams, until after the Meiji Restoration. Japan of course wasnt a democracy; it was blooming into a fascist nightmare. So why was this the time when education became available to all people, the rich and poor, boys and girls alike?

Education as a universal human right was not a motivation for the Japanese government.

Instead it was motivated by the desire to cultivate 人材, jinzai, human resources/talented people. Jinzai could help the empire expand. Even today, the Japanese government explicitly uses the term jinzai prominently in its Ministry of Education documents.

So if, today, we're heading into an era that looks increasingly fascist, the government could still be motivated to educate its people in order to remain competitive.

But let's say that 50 or 100 years from now, AI is doing for us what the jinzai of the past used to do: the coding, the engineering, the diagnosing, the war commanding, etc., etc.

Let's say we actually only need a few flesh-and-blood jinzai to oversee what AI is doing. Those people would need to be incredibly intelligent and skilled, but if the need and desire for everyone to be educated has dissipated, then who are the select few who will have the opportunity to become educated? Will we fall back into a society where only the wealthy can school their children?