one of my earliest video game memories was my neighbor from down the street burning me a copy of Roller Coaster Tycoon onto a CD and giving it to me for free, with the caveat that one day a week he would sit behind me and backseat game HARD. like "build this here, okay now build this here, no not there, HERE, okay now make a path here," etc etc. i never minded it at the time, i genuinely had no idea how to play so i thought he was teaching me. years later i learned that him and his family were Orthodox Jewish and him backseat gaming me was his way of getting around the Sabbath ban on playing video games

"nothing's stopping you from getting a flip phone again just do it" <- I Get the sentiment but the world has become more and more (esp since the COVID) smartphone dependent.

last month my brother, a life long touchscreen hater, had to get his first smartphone because he couldn't pay his rent without one since his bank website no longer allows him to use his personal card reader (given by his bank) to make payments. most public transports outside the main city Require that you use the App to get tickets. the other day I went to a brunch place that wouldn't let me order food without going through the App.

I personally think smartphones have ups and downs, and I won't lie I really like having Small Games in my pocket at all times but the way smartphones have become a necessity/requirement to live in society is so fucking annoying and honestly fucked up.

I just think it's crazy when something has an objectively amazing story and it's hitting all the right buttons but there are just. So few women. It's crazy. It's crazy to me that STILL we are in a place where women are not equally represented in media. Like. It's really normal to have a cast where there's only a few women and they never really speak to one another. That's NORMAL. it's wild I'm going insane how are we letting all these amazing stories exist without WOMEN

I think trans women should be allowed to win competitions without being used as proof that trans women are “dominating” women’s sports and I think trans men should be allowed to have big roles in media without being used as proof that trans men benefit from male privilege. I think trans people should be allowed to succeed in life without being used as a way to claim that cis women are inherently the most disadvantaged, when usually those trans people fought just as hard (if not harder) to get where they are than their cisgendered peers. I don’t like how trans people have to fail in order to convince two-bit feminists not to attack us for a privilege that we don’t have.

The first time I took acid my friend and I were trying to make a ranked list of different divination methods and number one on the list was “you already know the information”

Here is the sequence of events:

One of our air attack pilots happened to fly a mission into Wyoming, which allowed him to sneak home. While at home he picked a bunch of stuff from his garden and flew it back to Colorado with him. This included many peppers.

He set a selection of these peppers on one of the desks in the dispatch office, held up a thin orange one that was about three inches long, and said, "I honestly don't know what this is. I think something hybridized. But I can smell the spice and it scares me."

And then he left.

Meanwhile, my boss, who the entire time I've known him has had an old One Chip Challenge (you know, the ones that were pulled off of shelves for being potentially deadly), and is constantly trying to convince everyone to eat it with him, and who is DEFINITELY dealing with some PTSD and insomnia due to the events of the summer, well, he's eying this Mystery Pepper with immense interest.

He does not touch the pepper for a whole day.

Day two of this pepper sitting on the desk rolls around and suddenly I hear, "I'm gonna do it" and a crunch.

I looked over and this man has just eaten the ENTIRE Mystery Pepper in one bite.

For about two seconds he was fine, then he starts spluttering and saying he can taste it in his ears. He then scrambled over to our fridge and downed probably a full cup of half-and-half before coming back to his desk still looking vaguely red.

"I feel like you should probably tell your therapist about whatever just happened," I said.

He hummed, coughed, and replied, "I'm more interested in why it only made me cry out of my left eye."

Cannon divergence: when your artillery has gone astray, maybe?