welcome to shrug city, P

my dad is very intensely involved a battle with his city’s public administration over a playground they have tried to forcibly remove like five times in the past 20 years and DID remove once in like 2005 but then had to rebuild because my dad was such a pain in their asses and came through with undeniable receipts of the zoning plan from the 60s/the historic/cultural value of the urban planning…. like there’s a woman in the city office who is his arch nemesis. he is literally the daredevil of urban planning

everyone in the tags needs to stop saying they want to fuck my dad.

Conservative beauty standards are back with a vengeance which means it's especially important to go out this summer with bellies out and bodies unshaved. Also be unapologetically disabled with mobility aids and wearable medical devices and stim toys and ear defenders and all that stuff. You need it. People need to see it. Everyone needs to be reminded that life is unquestioningly more enjoyable when you're not living inside an arbitrary set of rules created by people who are offended by all the wrong things.

at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you

at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.

at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly

at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.

at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.

At some point in your life you will be adding garlic to a dish and you will think "that is not enough garlic." These are angels speaking. They are correct. Add more garlic.

Yeah you're not gonna win against a country that's built around attrition. You cannot bomb away the leverage Iran has over Hormuz

There's a lot of noise about this MOU but the big takeaway is that Iran took a theoretical deterrent and turned it into a real bargaining instrument. We will know the terms soon enough but even if this MOU collapsed tomorrow, this war has left the world with a new reality. If we want global energy stability we need to cooperate with Iran.

Summer (northern hemisphere) PSA

I feel like to really get this circulating as it should, we need it superimposed over the picture of the turkey going in the fridge. (I can't do it I'm on my phone.)

With the 250th anniversary it's likely to be especially bad this year!

since there is such an "english speakers who don't even try to pronounce a foreign mame correctly" epidemic, native english speakers often try to overcorrect and end up thinking they have a moral imperative to pronounce every foreign name correctly at all times. so i'm gonna hold your hand and look into your eyss as i say this: you can't. you can't pronounce every sound in a language you don't speak. and that's fine. it happens to the rest of us too. we won't be mad so long as you try your best.

long live þe evil princess, 17þ of her name!

guy currently hurtling toward a migraine at a rate that would impress most astrophysicists: i wonder wgat is happening in my beautiful telephone