Whenever I am feeling distraught or fed up with humanity, I think about all the gay nerd freaks in the 60s who despite decades of separation were, for all intents and purposes, just like me. They may not have heard of phrases like “slay” or “serve cunt” or “gay marriage” but by god did they feel them. I love you gay nerd freaks from the 1960s.
May we all live long and prosper, live laugh love, fuck marry kill, or whatever combination of words you prefer.
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I may have mentioned it here before, but oh god do I loathe Pillowfort. For one reason and one reason only: their interface is atrocious. Not “bad corporate decision” bad, but “high school student’s first html project” bad.
The big stuff: The color choices are awful. Because the header and sidebar are so dark compared to the background, they feel oppressive. There’s 2 different shades of blue for zero reason. The big red number is how many you’re following, for some reason. And the contrast is just abysmal.
The layout is awkward as hell. Why aren’t any of the controls, like your notifs in the main bar at the top?
If this was just a super rough alpha proof of concept type of deal, that’d be one thing. But what makes it worse is it WAS. It’s the exact same layout used on their initial announcements and kickstarter. FIVE YEARS AGO.
It’s so frustrating to navigate and just all around bad that everytime I open it thinking I’ll use it again I just grumble “I could do better...” I’ve been sketching rough ideas but never had a chance to build anything...until now.
This is just my ROUGH DRAFT. Put together in a handful of hours in a single day, adding some inspiration from old school DA from some design aesthetics.
My goal is to have a working prototype finished in under a month, in an environment that could theoretically handle users. Entirely by myself.
All because spite is an incredible motivator. And if anyone tries to make any excuses for them, I’m a fucking ameteur at webdev. I’m only halfway through a crap community college degree program on web development. I only just learned things more advanced than basic HTML a few months ago. A COMPANY, no matter how small, should be able to do better than just me alone.
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“Your brother is adorable.” The cashier cooed at Danny, peering over the counter with a smile. “What’s his name?”
Danny looked down to the surly, scowling little de-aged Batman currently holding onto his hand, glaring up at the cashier with bright blue eyes.
Things had already been bad enough when he’d gotten caught in a fight in Gotham, but things went from bad to worse when a magician had hit Batman with a de-aging spell and then shoved them through a portal.
Into a different fucking dimension.
Because of course neither of their lives could be easy. And now the two of them were stuck in Iowa in the middle of nowhere, at a truck stop gas station, trying to go on a cross-country roadtrip to reach the nearest hero city and get home.
He looked up and smiled awkwardly, trying to come up with a name off the top of his head — one of the heroes called Batman ‘B’ when he got hit right? B for Batman, right. B… B… Bee… Bees.
“Buzz.” He said, and tried not to grimace as the cashier’s face warped with surprise. “Like the astronaut.”
This was gonna be a long trip.
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it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.
yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.
right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.
the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.
these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.
it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.
we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.
secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)
whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.
they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")
and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."
i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.
one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.
i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.
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say what you will about political genius cersei lannister but history will remember her progressive reforms (inventing the idea of firing the kingsguard, elevating bastards to the small council, probably like doubling the funding to STEM research between qyburn and the pyromancers, setting the tower of the hand on fire, etc.) thats the first queen of westeros and its first ever ruler to not have any targaryen blood (unless).
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