Tomska going hard on Twitter again.

He's right.

having one of those executive function days where everything is too many steps

by which i mean, like, here's how my brain parses the steps in making coffee

good day:

1. make coffee

regular day:

1. put water in coffee maker
2. put coffee in coffee maker
3. turn on coffee maker

bad day:

1. take pot from coffee maker
2. turn on sink
3. fill up coffee pot
4. turn off sink
5. pour water into coffee maker
6. put coffee pot in coffee maker
7. open cupboard
8. get coffee filter from cupboard
9. get coffee beans from cupboard
10. put filter in coffee pot
11. measure coffee
12. pour coffee into filter
13. close coffee maker
14. turn coffee maker on

anyway this is a "14 steps to make coffee" kind of day

This is actually a really good way of explaining this

Ah, they're probably coming up next! I don't recognise the performance off the top of my head, but doing ballet is HELLISHLY INTENSE and doing it without your muscles througly warmed up is just asking for injured tendrons. In between scenes the dancers literally can't sit still for too long or their muscles will cool down, or worse, cramp up, and if they're not changing costumes they're usually stretching, vigorously massaging their legs and, like here, bouncing around to the tune.

So this is a perfectly natural ballerina behavior. They're just keeping warm and bonding. 👍

I love how the last line has the exact cadence of a "is the ballerina video cute" blog

these ballerinas are not distressed and this in fact good enrichment for ballerinas when confined outside their natural habitat (the stage)

People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me

Lady on the bus next to me: Tell me again- what are you not going to do in daycare today?

Little boy: I will not hit the teacher with a light saber.

Lady: And why are you not going to hit her with a light saber?

Boy: It is my toy, and my choice, but if I hit her with the light saber, I’m acting like a Sith.

Lady: Do you want to be a Sith?

Boy: No! I am Obi-Wan!

Lady: And why are

you not going to hit her

with a light saber?

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

þink again.

getting thorny in the linguistics fandom

þorny*

That also goes for using ß as an aesthetic B. 

On my old server, there was a character named ßillyßadass.

This never failed to make me laugh, because that letter is not pronounced like B. It is a sharp S. 

That guy named himself SsillySsadass. 

Also to people who you Σ as an aesthetic E

that’s an S too, Σo maybe check next time

oh boy

Д as an aesthetic A? Дon’t be a дumbass.

И as an aesthetic N? don’t be sillи.

П as another aesthetic N? stoп it.

У as an aesthetic Y? ty bad.

Ш or Щ as an aesthetic W? nope. it’s “sh” and “shch”!

Я as an aesthetic R? surprise! it’s “ya”.

ah yes, that classic horror film SNYEYAPOVUL DIAYAIES

This is pronounced Stargoat.

Reblogging for Stargoat.

STARGOAT

I saw in Japan a bag of marshmallows named SCANDINAVIAN MÅRSHMÅLLOW and I still have not recovered from that. It reads as SCANDINAVIAN MORSHMOLLOW 

I always read STARGÅTE as ‘stargåde’ with a Swedish pronunciation.

Star Riddle.

This one about broke my brain:

There is so much going on here that we need to properly break it down:

Η (eta): Long “e” sound like in “free”
Ψ (psi): “ps” sound like in “psychology” or the noise you make to call your cat
Ρ (rho): equivalent of English “R”
Λ (lambda): equivalent of English “L”
Τ (tau): equivalent of English “T,” one of two letters properly employed here
Φ (phi): equivalent of English “F”
Σ (sigma): as noted above, equivalent of English “S”
Μ (mu): equivalent of English “M,” other properly employed letter
That “presecription” Rx combo: Does not occur in Greek or any other alphabet, what the Hell is it doing here
Θ (theta): soft “th” like in “thing”
Γ (gamma): Kind of an asperated “gh” sound like you start to make a hard “g” but stop halfway through
Δ (delta): hard “th” like in “there.”
Χ (chi): asperated “kh” like in “challah”
Π (pi): Equivalent of English “p”

The other letters do not occur in the Greek alphabet, although you will see English letters used for things like names and titles.

So when we put it all togheter, this miracle of title design reads something like:

EEPSRLTFL SMRRKHSSSS THGH THLSKHLPDRKHFL

Goddamn. Okay

Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn't keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn't playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.

There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.

As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.

A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone."

Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.

Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.

"Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

— Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten"

in a rare moment of "huh i can maybe contribute to this", i was reminded of this exerpt from Tim Kreider's We Learn Nothing, a collection of his essays.

this one was written about a deceased friend of his, Skelly, who was known to spin tales about his life to hide the shameful parts from others. at his funeral, when all the secrets inevitably started to unfold, Kreider writes:

The worst part, for me, is imagining how alone he was. This is the most poisonous thing that secrets do to us—they isolate us from everyone around us and make us feel even lonelier than we already are. I wish he could’ve somehow brought himself to talk to us. I sometimes fantasize about how I would’ve reacted—what I would’ve said to him, how I would’ve tried to help. As Kevin once complained, “I wish he coulda just told us so we could’ve mocked him for it!” But not everybody gets to be free. Some have to stand guard at their own prisons for life. Some secrets we must take with us, as the melodramatic old idiom has it, to the grave.

Ohhh Musk has no idea how badly he's fucked up

Tesla Faces its First Ever Strike after Refusing to Negotiate with Swedish Union

• The strike was initiated by IF Metall after five years of Tesla refusing to negotiate a collective agreement.
• It is the first formal labor conflict called against Tesla anywhere in the world.
• The National Mediation Office summoned both parties, but Tesla's representatives quickly withdrew from negotiations.
• The strike was then extended to include all repair shops servicing Tesla vehicles in Sweden.
• Swedish employer unions have also pressured Tesla to cave and align with the country's labour model.
• Strikebreakers have been sent in, a tactic forbidden since the 1930s by agreement between the Swedish unions and employers. (Ie. not illegal but liable to make the entire country hate you.)

As noted by Atle Høie, general secretary of IndustriALL, an industrial union confederation representing 50 million workers in 140 countries: “Elon Musk’s business model is to avoid respecting human rights. Now he is taken on by one of our strongest unions. We must defeat the Tesla business model, and Sweden is the best place to start.”

Sweden has one of the highest rates of unionization out of the Nordics (which have the highest rates of unionization globally alongside Cuba and Vietnam) and the thing about that is you get sympathy strikes:

There's already talk of launching similar strikes here in Norway if the Swedes aren't heard. For an idea of what happens if they keep this up, let's look at the time McDonald's tried these kinds of tactics:

Or Toys R Us:

Tesla's presence in the country is limited compared to those, but I think it's fair to say their choice is going to be between pulling out or caving to their demands, because these kinds of threats to union power are not tolerated.

If you've seen news declaring the strike was called off and that the workers are all happy with their jobs: It's misinfo, those are scabs, the strike is on and it could very well break Tesla's resistance to unionization and trigger a domino effect in other countries if the Swedes win out.

It's confirmed, Tesla is doubling down and the strikes are ramping up!!

The import blockade began in select cities today, and Tesla has already tired to get around it. The unions have responded by extending the blockade to every port in the country, with further measures in the works if Musk refuses to budge.

With Musk controlling Twitter/X now, discussions about it on there are predictably filled with trolls and detractors. The workers at Tesla could all be tremendously happy with their jobs and it would not change the fact that this is an attack on the entire labour model that gives other workers decent conditions. This is not just about Tesla, it's about preventing it from setting a precedent for other employers.

IF Metall have asked people to talk about this on social media, particularly on X, to counteract Musk's army of trolls and build awareness and support for the strikes, so please do if you can. Here's an up-to-date (Nov 7th) article in English which you can share:

Talk about it! Post about it! (Be more concise than me about it!) The hate they're getting from Musk's shills on X right now is insane.