a defiant potato

it’s weird that professional letters are supposed to start with “dear.” i don’t even call my mom that

my darling hiring manager. my springtime rose. if hired i will bring a strong work ethic to this position

It’s been almost two decades since I started reading books in English and I have to throw in the towel when it comes to bird vocabulary. English and French went in completely different directions with birds and every bird I come across in English is a total mystery. Plant names I’m often able to guess, but birds? there’s no way I could guess ‘hirondelle’ from ‘swallow’ or figure out on my own that ‘finch’ means bouvreuil and that a bergeronnette is a ‘wagtail’. I came upon ‘crake’ and pictured it as the bird we call crave, hopefully—but no, my dictionary said a crake is a marouette in French. Their ‘lark’ is our alouette, their ‘tit’ is our mésange—the worst offender is ‘nighthawk’ for ‘engoulevent’. Or ‘warbler’ for ‘paruline’. They’re so different I can never remember them and I’m resigned to picturing all the birds in anglo literature as walking (flying) question marks. It took me a whole year to realise that Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch was the book I’d seen at the library called “Le Chardonneret”…

i honestly don't really understand why "some people prefer watching gameplay online rather than playing games themselves" is treated as such a taboo when being a spectator is considered a pretty mundane way to engage with most sports, game shows, reality tv or even just like. chess.

like the usual arguments are "not everyone can afford video games or have the software to pirate" or "you can be a fan of a game's story, but not it's gameplay" but also some people just have more fun watching other people be really good at starcraft or speedrun super mario 64, i don't think that's a particularly out of the box way to engage with the medium.

There is no difference between watching speed runs or let's plays and watching golf or basketball or some other sport on tv. I will not change my mind about this. It's the same thing.

its crazy how we've had the art of movie lighting nailed down for like literally 100 years at this point but for some reason nobody wants to do it anymore. do people know they're still allowed to do it

Americans: always down to party

One time a friend told me that if she wanted to have a chill night she would come to me and ask for tea and a book to read. I didn’t like tea at the time, but I always made sure my cupboards had them in case she needed a quiet night. One time I told my boss that I loved oranges, but couldn’t peel them because of my nails. For a year he made sure to peel me one at least once a week. Once my friends gave me a made up superlative of “most likely to have a pen they could borrow” and ever since I’ve made sure I always carry a pen with me. A long time ago, my high school librarian told me that no one would care what my grade in my sophomore chemistry class was if I’m bringing them doughnuts and asking them about their day.

Sometimes friendship is about carrying pens and peeling oranges. But the point is, surrounding yourself with people who you want to do the little things for. The point of it all is bringing in the doughnuts because you’ve found the people who deserve the doughnuts.

How sweet it is to be with people you enjoy taking care of

I have to zoom in as much as I can and somehow SOMEHOW i still get LOST!

All of these characters and I STILL get lost on Corellia! I hate this map 😭

men will do literally anything other than engaging in pro-social community-oriented behavior and then get online and complain about how masculinity is vilified and men aren't allowed to be heroes anymore

"all men really want is to feel like the hero" okay then volunteer at a food bank. get narcan training. step in when a woman is being harassed on the street. help out an elderly neighbor with shopping or home repairs. learn how to safely de-escalate fights. help your friends move. join or start your workplace union. become a big brother or volunteer coach for kids' sports. clean up your local park or get involved in some local conservation campaign. do your own damn dishes. notice what needs to be done and then do it. the world doesn't need heroes, it needs helpers. there are literally so many paths to finding a sense of self-respect and worth through pro-social behaviors that improve your immediate local community and help build your network of close personal connections. but these guys don't give a shit about actually contributing anything to the world. they just want to whine and fantasize.

their inherent lack of self-respect is belied not only by the fact that they can't imagine doing anything that contributes to building a better, more resilient society, but how they can't imagine that doing so might involve a lot of small acts and choices and not one big act of heroism that gets them on the news as Big Man Of The Year.