actually no one is allowed to make fun of transmasc names anymore. i dont care if it's a 13 year old trans boy named after his favorite cartoon or whatever you're not allowed to make fun of trans guys' names

Hey students, here’s a pro tip: do not write an email to your prof while you’re seriously sick.

Signed, a person who somehow came up with “dear hello, I am sick and not sure if I’ll be alive to come tomorrow and I’m sorry, best slutantions, [name]”.

My friend is trying to name herself, and she's like, "Oh, what's that name that's like marmalade, but it's a name?" and I know she means Adelaide, but I think I can talk her into naming herself Marmalade if I play my cards right here.

People tend to throw out the phrase "extremely specific kinks" as though that inherently implies something transgressive, but in my experience, the overwhelming majority of extremely specific kinks are so innocuous that you could see them in public and not even clock them. For every person who can only get off to having their nipples electrocuted, there are a dozen who are volcanically aroused by seeing their partner wearing one specific pair of socks.

Honestly thought I'd never hear the word "usborne" again. My mom used to live and breathe that company, and while I certainly don't regret a fair chunk, I do find it amusing as I look back now. I legitimately thought it had fallen off faster than Juice+.

In reference to a post where i mention my kid has the usborne “see inside germs” book.

So if people don’t know, usborne is a weird publishing company that has done indispensable books for British children for generations; they’re in every library, school and nursery, and have shelves devoted to them in every bookstore. They are how many people learned to read, and are the originators of many hyper focuses. They’re famed for doing educational lift the flap books for all ages, like “see inside your body”, as well as as the ubiquitous touch-and-feel series, “that’s not my….” In which a mouse comments improbably on various creatures not being their creature. “That’s not my dragon,” the mouse says, inviting you to stroke a dragon with a patch of fur on it, “its tummy is too soft. That’s not my dragon,” on the next page, where the dragon’s ears are lined with textured paper, “its ears are too bumpy.” This seems like such an inefficient way to find one’s missing dragon, a fact that simmers underneath you through endless repetition. Why does the mouse own so many things (pirates, ducks, polar bears) and why is it interrogating other people’s pirates etc by feeling their legs.

At any rate, turn a parents’ house upside down and these books fall out.

Which is why it’s completely hilarious that they are also an MLM.

Well. Kind of. In the old school sense. It’s less about signing up a pyramid scheme and more about getting a random citizen to buy a crate of perfectly popular books and try to sell them on from their home. It’s very traditional for Mums On Maternity Leave to do this. Pre-social media and online ordering, they’d hook up other mums at toddler group. Today, they post awkwardly on social media. The idea is that buying from another parent is cheaper than the bookstore, and they get to keep the markup. They get intense about things, and I believe they attend conferences. Nobody makes a huge amount of money and it’s unclear how undercutting local bookstores is helpful; it’s also basically the same RRP as Amazon I think.

And the books are perfectly respectable and sell perfectly well in bookstores.

So. Like. This marketing scheme is completely weird. Why?? Why does it still exist? People buy the books normally! You don’t need to promote them aggressively! You don’t need elaborate independent local middlemen schemes! You can just buy them! I have never understood this. I just file it under one of those weird mat leave hustles.

But don’t worry OP. They’re still going. They’ll never stop. The thing is that your mom got bored and online sales probably ate whatever residual profit margins were left and it’s probably very liberating for everyone to grow out of the “that’s not my cow” stage, but Usborne books are going strong.

Cillian Murphy winning Lead Actor in Film at the IFTA Awards 2024

What's your favorite piece of vintage media that's NOT a movie?

There's these old Sherlock Holmes radio plays I used to binge—I think maybe they were these ones, though I wouldn't have guessed Basil Rathbone's involvement because the show’s defining features were (1) not being very good and (2) segueing into an ad for Clippercraft Shirts every five minutes. The only story I really remember has Moriarty hiding a bomb inside a chicken at the diamond jubilee, which is cleverly foiled by Sherlock Holmes taking the chicken bomb and jumping into a lake with it. People in the 40s really knew how to write a gripping yarn.

my mum’s taking my dog to get his nuts removed today

I think tonight i'll finally write that guide on airport security for trans people by an actual trans security guard because an experience with a trans woman passenger today has shown me it is like. Very needed

I will open the fucking TikTok app just to watch this video multiple times

i am.. still reeling from this experience :/

last night i dreamt i was playing a bizarre bootleg first person pikmin game and at one point i threw 3 pikmin at an enemy simultaneously and somehow accidentally merged them into a hot pink Gun Pikmin that i could pick up and fire. it looked something like this

Source smoothdunk on twitter