“What is this?  Hum must be something for Maru to climb into.”  AND “something for Hana to squish Maru down into.” 

My brother got married yesterday and because he and especially his new wife love those big expensive Lego flower sets he 3D printed these huge versions of the original Lego flowers that had their names and the date on the bottom for guests to take with them home after the party.

Yes, of course they work like the originals so you can stag them to make a bouquet. His favorite color is orange, hers is purple, and the white symbolized the wedding but we could mix and match the colors to our liking.

Hello friends we need to talk about this twitter account:

You might know him from a thread where he was getting wowed by free appetisers in a Mexican restaurant.

Firstly: He is doing a bit pretending to be a wandering samurai. It's a joke and his posts are all made up. This is very obvious if you actually look at his account and website:

He does purport to be Japanese but based on some of the other content he posts there's reason to believe he's British.

Which brings me to my second point: his Samurai content is interspersed with posts like this:

And this:

He is not cute or funny. Stop platforming him.

The chips and salsa thread went viral in June and his website seems to have gone live in July. This confirms what I suspected which is that said website with it's explicit disclaimers was made in response to the big viral hit.

Consequently, back when he first blew up it was potentially a bit harder to figure out that his stories are fictional. That said, the New York Times worked it out so I'm comfortable accusing outlets who ran the story describing him as a Japanese world cup tourist of legitimately terrible journalism.

rickyflowersjr

"Fascism is anyone I don't like, including those I don't like because of my own racism" being a common MO of a lot of people's leftism presently is the sort of thing we'd dismiss as too on the nose if you wrote satire around it a few years ago

am I the only one a little confused and weirded out by the way people are acting like Hank Green was “caught” using A.I. like it was some kind of shameful secret or he got caught in a lie?

like, I get people being opposed, upset, or concerned about the revelation, that it doesn’t align with their values, questioning how much he used it in his work, etc.—and absolutely, if it’s impacting his speech patterns, and he and his family feel like the amount he’s been using it is unhealthy, that’s a problem.

but that seems like a different problem from “oh no! they found out my terrible secret! I’ve been living a lie!”

he wasn’t “caught”. he wasn’t being dishonest. he talks openly about his opinions about A.I., which, while often critical (as much as his opinions about social media & the internet as a whole—which he clearly also uses—have been), are fairly evenhanded and nuanced, and from which it’s clear he uses or has used A.I..

I don’t think the backlash/criticism is entirely unreasonable. But it does feel like, even with the good faith criticism out of genuine concern, a heavy dose of it has been multiplied by parasocial feelings from the assumption that Hank Green the Internet Personality Aligns With My Values.

And, to be clear, this is absolutely not a “you did nothing wrong! I’ll support you no matter what!” thing.

I have been critical of Hank Green in the past (specifically concern over being in the Dropout / Brennan Lee Mulligan orbit), and probably will be in the past. On the whole I feel like his work has had a lot of net positive impact, but I know Hank Green’s values and concerns are not necessarily in lockstep with my own.

Tall Poppy/Goody proctor in a panopticon parasocial fandom.

is he back on crack or something

Anyone surprised at the People's Princess going full JQ? Anyone at all? Less awful failson is still a failson people.

Yeah, that tends to be how it goes when a snake bites you.

it’s sooo funny when rude customers encounter employees who can deny them service for the first time.

i was working at a little cafe where I could deny service over bad behavior, harassment etc. & mask mandates had just ended a week before & already people were being weird about me still wearing mine—an N95, the kind shaped kinda like a duckbill.

so this man walked in, looked at me sooo scathingly, laughed at me, and said “damn. never known a woman to choose…practicality over looks.”

And I just said, “oh. you can go, you’re not getting a drink.” And he said, “what???”

I said, “sir, you just walked in at 6 am & called women impractical and me ugly in one sentence.”

And he was so astonished he didn’t even argue he just turned around and left 💀🙏🏻 it was like he suddenly became self aware

One summer I was running ferry rides across a lake so people could see the waterfalls without walking 6 miles when a guy snapped my bra strap as he was boarding the boat. So i immediately threw him off, he started yelling for my manager, my boss cheerfully informed him that, yeah, she’s the captain of the boat and she can kick off anyone she wants. He goes to storm off, looks expectantly at his girlfriend, and she just goes, “Well, I’M not walking six miles, Michael! I’ll meet you back at the car!” and sits right back down!!!!

The expression on his face when he was told that he couldn’t get on the boat, then immediately told that his girlfriend was ditching him? PRICELESS. he just blinked at her and then stormed off like a child. I gave her a free hat and was like maybe rethink this relationship…….

i once had this fucker come up to order a beer. while i pour it he shows me the wanky fucking chemical structure tattoo on his arm and he’s like “hey. you know what this is” i was like “nah sorry” (never cared abt chemistry in school, plus having to look at a some rando’s pretentious tattoo gives me the douche chills). he decides to respond with “heh. you must not read many books”

i immediately stop pouring his beer. i reply: “heh. you must not want this beer.” thirsty boy immediately starts groveling like a worm “please please no i do want the beer im sorry im sorry” believe me when i say it was one of the most pathetic things ive ever witnessed

gotta love people immediately backpedaling when they realise that there are Consequences To Being Mean

I genuinely believe that part of why it has become so normalized to be openly callous and evil in politics is that customer service culture has trained affluent people that they can treat everyone they consider beneath them however they want and still be treated kindly.

When I worked at a comic shop, I dressed up as Black Canary one Halloween. She wears a leotard and fishnets. One of the regulars "dropped" his keys and went, "Hey, Gayle, could you bend over and pick those up for me?"

I kicked them behind the counter. His face as he realized no, he would not be getting them back until I wanted to was fantastic.

Same shop, different day, a dude comes in who won't even talk to me if the male comic guy is working comes in with his girlfriend. She is asking "Hey, we're going to dinner, right?" and he's going, "Yeah, yeah, just let me look around."

He gets a STACK of trades. A couple hundred dollars of books. As I'm ringing him up, he turns to her and goes, "Okay, we're not going to dinner because I want these instead."

She gets mad, obviously, and he tries to play down his dick move. I finished ringing him up, bagged his books, turned to her, and said, "You should dump him."

"WHAT?!" he shouted.

The girlfriend gives a little, awkward laugh and goes, "Oh, haha, yeah."

"No, I'm serious. This is an asshole move. You should dump him. You can do better than a guy who does this to you."

He called the shop the next day, apparently, and yelled that I'd caused his break up. The owner asked what happened, then said, "Yeah, I'd have told her to break up with you, too," then hung up the phone.

PORCO ROSSO (1992) dir. hayao miyazaki