“My childhood was so awesome. Kids today don’t even know!”
Isn’t a flex.
It’s a lament.
More people should understand that.
Cereal boxes had toys inside.
Yes, it was a crass marketing for a sugar cereal made of chintzy plastic
Today you’re just expected to eat Capn Crunch because that’s what you do as a child, that’s what breakfast looks like. Which is… fine, I guess. Sugar still tastes good. That’s still a pleasure you’re otherwise asked to disavow by the protein shake nutribottles advertised on podcasts.
But it also means the idle minor joy of getting a random toy present, as a reward for nothing, just because you exist, is stripped. That random spark of joy is gone, replaced with nothing.
Where did the public pool go? the neighborhood park? the atrium food court public place to gather?
Same thing. All of them were just replaced with nothing.
Kids today have many good things. But it shouldn’t be a trade off. They should get to have instant messages with friends and go skating at the park. They should get to play amazing modern video games at home and go trick or treating for halloween. They should be able to have stickers and markers and macaroni art as well as youtube and streaming libraries and fortnite dances.
Fun should be allowed at every level.
Folks, I don’t know where you are from, but as a parent of a 5 years old girl who is now going through all those things… Those are still there. Every single one of the things mentioned in the post (little trinket toys on kids-oriented food, the public pool, the park, etc etc etc… All there.
Speaking as a parks associate-
Not how it used to be.
Parks are understaffed and under trained, making the parks themselves dirtier and less safe as the old crew retires and forgets to tell the new hires the ins and outs.
Pools suffer a similar fate or are pay to play at such costs almost no one can afford to visit at more.
The fun little toys that show up in cereal boxes are now so flimsy they break apart after only a few minutes of play, if they’re not just some part of the box you have to cut out and make yourself.
Anything and everything has become enshittified by capitalist greed sucking all the joy out of life, and it shows up most blatantly in the increasing low quality of children’s toys and games.
Or maybe that’s just America, stuck in the hellscape.
PS: I am speaking on a neutral viewpoint. My goal is not to accuse anyone for being a bad person but to correct errors that have been made. I am dismayed on how these affected so many people. The damage has been done and all I can do is shed light on the recent event.
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Good evening, everyone.
This post will be rather different from my usual posts. I have seen the need to address a concern that has arised.
Also check their blogs for other posts talking about this situation.
I apologize for being late to address my stand regarding this. I have read the posts in Melo’s and Glitchy’s blogs that they want to take a break and move on. I respect your decisions on that, take all the time you need before coming back.
I have confronted all three sides, gathered thought, formulated and revised this post for three days. I took my time to craft this post because this is urgent. As friend of the involved party I feel obliged to point this out, as I am also part of the staff of the server where the issue has been stirred.
It got messy rather quickly, so let me go back to where this all started. Basically, inflating a subject/s that should have been digressedand resolved in a clear manner when needed. The lack of proper communication, comprehension, and consideration for each other in the involved party is appalling.
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Note: Since Tumblr has a 10 picture limit in one post, I will be hyperlinking some screenshots with the word “Screenshot_#”
Some of these screenshots are already posted in the previous asks, I’m just explaining it with my say on it.
And some terms mentioned (the underlined words) have their definitions and sources hyperlinked as well for educational purposes.
(If they don’t work for some reason, I’ll edit back this post back with a link with a list of all of them for your convenience. Idk why the hyperlinks keep getting broken.)
Keep reading if interested. You are not obliged to take part if you do not want to but all I want to do is help the main party involved: @spunky-melo, @kazachi69, and @glitchysquidd
“No adult should be telling children that they’re safe, it is creepy as hell.”
Transphobes act like they’re “protecting kids” and then say shit like this completely unprompted and unironically.
Tennant?
TENNANT?
She’s coming for David Tennant??
OK BUT REBLOGGING BECAUSE OF THIS:
The pin reads “You are safe with me.”
So if anyone out there STILL wants to hang on to that H@rry-P*tter-adjacent username
GO FUCK YOURSELF
Why did she change her name from Kellie-Jay Keen to Posie Parker? Is she trying to confuse people into thinking she’s actress Parker Posey?
Anyone who supports ether kellie-jay keen otherwise know as poise Parker and JK Rowling needs to get off my dash and stop fallowing me.
It doesn’t even refer to children in any way! It’s from the Gayprideshop.co.uk and it looks like this.
What a stupid fucking maneuver. Graham Lineham lost his agent, his marriage, and his career after making the same accusations against Tennant for wearing a “Leave Trans Kids Alone” t-shirt and this random transphobe thinks she can make a swing based on literally nothing at all? Good fucking luck.
i would like to also point out that this is exactly why people are being told to stop supporting jk rowling financially, and to stop supporting her work entirely. jk rowling has some actual powerful influence, both politically and monetarily. if she can pay for legal fees of other people when they get sued for libel for claiming LGBT+ allies are all pedophiles*, then this is an example of how she can be a very real threat to LGBT+ and trans people especially.
*not saying this is what actually happened as i don’t know what those legal fees they mentioned she paid were actually for, but it still demonstrates her financial power.
capitalism corrupts everything it touches, even weather forecasting
US private media companies like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel take publicly available forecasting information provided by the National Weather Service, a publicly funded government service, and repackages it into their own forecast and disseminates the info.
In 2005, AccuWeather lobbied to attempt to ban The National Weather Service from sharing predictions with anyone besides commercial entities. In 2012 they successfully blocked the NWS from producing a free app for the public.
This allows there to be an inaccessible filter on free, timely, and accurate weather information and forces it to be distributed through for profit apps. Even free apps are bogged with ads and delayed alerts.
The G Word with Adam Conover covers this extensively and I highly recommend watching that episode or reading the transcript here [x] but I will sum it up, starting with an episode quote:
“Imagine a future where extreme weather warnings live behind a pay wall.” In 2015, AccuWeather received warnings from the NWS that a tornado was heading towards Moore, OK, a city that has been decimated by F5/EF5 tornadoes twice. They only notified users that were paying for the app.
Follow your local meteorologists on social media, especially if you’re in an active weather area.
If you’re in tornado prone areas, follow storm chasers on social media and check the Convective Outlook during your tornado season.
Get a NOAA weather radio or tune to your local NWR station! They are the most reliable source of weather information in the event of a power outage and the coverage area is extensive. They cover all hazards including severe weather, wildfires, dust storms/haboobs, heat/cold warnings, and any other warnings the NWS would put out. Here is information specifically for Deaf/HOH accessibility.
hey is it just me or should we be making a huge fucking deal over tumblr staff deleting a video that debunks IOF propaganda
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(and while I’m at it here is the YouTube link to the video also. ive been trying to save/access it in the wayback machine to link that instead for archiving purposes but I’m having difficulties so I’ll try and add it later but if anyone else is able to add it sooner it’s appreciated)
they deliberately targeted the family of al jazeera’s gaza bureau chief. he reported on the airstrike that killed his family without realizing they had been killed, and then found out they were dead live on air.
wael el dahdouh, like shireen abu akleh, is a voice and face familiar to many who have watched reports coming out of gaza. it has already been harrowing watching him report for eighteen days straight in the most dire circumstances, but now its like seeing a beloved uncle or father overcome by grief live on air. we keep saying “there are no words” because really how else do you describe a horror of this magnitude?
The vulture capitalist hedge fund that bought and subsequently destroyed Toys R Us now owns Overdrive/Libby.
They have already begun making it worse/less usable and they have a chokepoint monopoly on the delivery method of ebooks borrowed from public libraries in the US.
A fun thing about capitalism is that rich people can buy something a lot of people love and depend on, and then destroy it for fun and profit, and there’s not really anything we can do about it.
so I’ve seen this medium post going around on twitter and also tumblr and i just want to provide a US librarian’s perspective on the Overdrive/Libby side at least!
first of all, Overdrive absolutely has a monopoly and they are absolutely price-gouging libraries. ebook licenses cost on average $60 per copy, and they often come with a limited number of uses or a year-long license or other strings. (ask me how long we can circulate a $15 physical book! because it’s more than a year.) but that has been happening since WELL before KKR bought them out. i’m not here to cape for KKR, but the person to get mad at here is (primarily) the virtual monopoly. (and also the publishers, who generally set the T&C that their books are sold with.)
BUT. i did read the entire Medium post linked, but I think a number of the concerns are coming from a place of genuine but misinformed concern.
Deep Search is a new (and separate!) feature rolled out this spring– it lets you search across multiple libraries, if you have more than one library card. It’s actually a huge improvement to how searching used to work, where you used to have to search each library card separately. It’s entirely unrelated to the Notify Me feature, which I do think is a definite downgrade, and Overdrive has been frustratingly opaque with us about the reasons for the change. (I will say that many library networks didn’t ever offer the ability to suggest books via Libby/Overdrive– purchase requests were an opt-in feature.) I don’t doubt that there are profit-driven reasons for that change, but I also think that in general Libby is more usable these days than it’s ever been. and it’s been 3 years since the KKR buyout!
Relatedly, the Libby app was first released in 2017. It was meant to be a big improvement over the pretty clunky Overdrive app, and in most respects it was– except that it didn’t offer screenreader functionality. This was a huge misstep on Overdrive’s part, and they should have had screenreader support built in from the gate. But THAT is why Overdrive the app was only shut down in May of this year– they needed to get screenreaders up and running in Libby (which they did in fall of 2021) before they could begin to sundown the Overdrive app. And honestly, I’m glad they got rid of the old app! It doesn’t make sense to have two apps with the same functionality. It’s confusing for patrons, and it’s hard for librarians to support multiple apps (ask me how much I love when someone calls in and says “the library app isn’t working” and I have to ask which of five separate apps it could be.)
Again, Overdrive absolutely should have taken less than four years to get screenreaders working in Libby. Accessibility should have been a feature from the start, and I still find it frustrating that there’s no built-in autoscroll for people with mobility issues. But honestly, keeping the old app running for a while and gradually sunsetting it is good user support– it gives users time to transition slowly and helps librarians have lots of lead time to warn patrons about the change. And frankly, none of this has anything to do with KKR, which bought Overdrive three years after Libby was released!
I am absolutely not caping for KKR. I’m deeply concerned about venture capital in general, and I think KKR in particular’s purchase of S&S is a real fucking bad thing! I literally left my last job bc a VC buyout led to burnout and an RSI so bad I had to get major surgery. I don’t want capital in publishing! But I also don’t want people to panic about a series of arguments that don’t accurately represent the situation on the ground.
I see an article like this and frankly, I see what feels like well-intentioned fear-mongering. Libraries are dealing with a LOT of shit right now. We are underfunded and often overworked. We are the place people go for help with every section of our failing bureaucracy. Also, a lot of people are calling us pedophiles for providing kids with queer books! What we really do not need is a lot of people calling us in a panic with misinformed concerns about Overdrive– believe me, we know better than anyone the places in which it fails (mostly, charging us through the nose, which again it has been doing for waaaay longer than KKR was involved.)
So where do we go from here? Continue to support and advocate for your local library. (You don’t need to stop using Libby. In fact, the more users we have, the better we’re able to negotiate better pricing. If Libby really does enshittify, THEN we’ll figure out what to do– libraries are pretty good at figuring out how to make a lot happen with a little when we need to.)
If you’re able to, consider checking out physical books! They’re a lot cheaper for us to provide, and plus you get to talk to a librarian or staff member while you do so. (Or you can use self-checkout, if you don’t want to talk to anyone. I get it!) If you want to purchase a book that’s not in the library’s catalog– ebook or otherwise– look on the library’s website for a purchase request form, or ask a librarian where to find that form.
And if you’re involved in local politics, advocate for libraries in your city or county’s budget. (If you’re not involved in local politics, consider becoming so! It is imo the biggest bang for your buck in terms of involvement vs outcome you can get, politically.) Contact your representative about state budgets. And if you’re not sure how to get started or who to contact or what meetings to go to– hey, why not ask your local librarian?
I wish people had the energy they have for deconstructing and hating Harry Potter could also be directed at Five Nights at Freddy’s, considering the creator of FNaF is every bit as much of a transphobic bigot as JKR. And he’s even younger and can use his money for even worse shit for longer.
It’s kinda past “oh, FNaF is just an Internet meme franchise, it’s just a couple games that are only popular because Markeplier did a yell at one, pwease it’s a wittwe multi-biwwion dowwa feanchiwe uwu.” It’s everywhere, it’s as pervasive as HP now. There’s a movie now. There’s merchandise everywhere you go.
Both of them are fucking everywhere and completely inescapable this time of year, but only one has at least a little blowback.
I do wonder if some of it is that FNaF is more popular with zoomers and HP is more associated with millennials (and as tiktok won’t shut up about for the past 3 years, everything millennial is cringe and everything zoomer is based).
This is why I am not seeing the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie.
From my understanding, the primary difference is in how the creators are interacting with their production.
JKR has explicitly stated that she sees anyone buying or participating in the HP franchise as supporting her views and her choices, and has been acting accordingly by putting the money she earns directly towards shitty political practices.
Cawthon purposefully departs his personal and professional decisions, and has given over a great deal of the FNAF franchise to third parties so his personal choices do not weigh in as heavily on the creations being made and consumed.
At least, that’s my understanding of it and how it was explained to me. It’s still hella hinky.
It’s a holiday. For children. Give them the candy, or fuck off.
Also even if they aren’t “developmentally delayed” who gives a shit? If a teenager dresses up and goes trick or treating why shouldn’t they be allowed to have fun
yeah like i never got the opportunity (because my parents said it was satanic or sumn idek, im a christian and it doesn’t make sense to me) so this year will be my first time trick or treating, at 15. Anyone at any age should just be able to have fun
HELL FUCKING YEAH DUDE, I HOPE YOU HAVE FUN AND GET A BOMB ASS COSTUME
HELL FUCKING YEAH DUDE,
I HOPE YOU HAVE FUN AND GET
A BOMB ASS COSTUME
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Gift art for @cell113 (or @papercricketgallery) of their species Iunno (the link is to Artfight, which people not logged in can’t see)
I’ve actually drawn Cell’s Iunno for the last two Artfight, but not this year, so I decided to keep up the yearly work!
remember, if you’d like to work with me for this week, either art trades or collabs, send a comment, dm, or ask and we can talk about it!
I don’t have any more specific plans for friend week, so if no one contacts me wanting to art trade/collab, and if I don’t get any ideas for gift art, I’m probably going to take the last few friend week days off.
So at my workplace, we fund a Food Is Free shelf. It’s the basics: take what you need, give what you can - our town has a high level of poverty, there’s a cost of living crisis, be the good you want to see in the world etc etc.
Today we had a guy knock on the door and ask if we had a plastic bag he could use to carry a few things - I said sure, got him a plastic bag, and he started packing up his 2 rolls of toilet paper, his 3 or 4 foodstuff items. He said he’d been to a funeral out of town (1500 kms away) and spent his paycheck on fuel - he was only broke till Friday, he said.
And I said, well I’m glad we could help, it’s why we have the shelf. We want the community to use it.
And he said:
But people ABUSE it! I’ve seen people take heaps of stuff from it - and they don’t even have kids or anything. And it’s fair enough, some people are struggling until the next paycheck, but other people just ABUSE it. You need a sign that says TAKE ONE ITEM ONLY or something. I’ve taken something from here maybe twice, but I’ve seen people coming round every week! I’ve even put stuff on the shelf! Yeah, you need CAMERAS or something. People abuse it.
So here is a man who is actively utilising a public resource that we created to support our local community…And yet he is so brainwashed by capitalism into thinking that people don’t deserve basic needs - if they’re not working hard, or maybe they’re struggling but they don’t have it As Bad as others, or they’re using a FREE RESOURCE more often than HE thinks is acceptable. He thinks that we should use security cameras to crack down on people “STEALING” from the Food is FREE shelf. Like he’s more worthy, like he’s a better person, because he doesn’t need as much help as others might.
Sometimes, when something is free, people might abuse it. But isn’t it better to offer the support to people who need it? To offer an opportunity for people to get back on their feet (even if they’re only broke till Friday)? To provide help, no questions asked and no conditions needed?
So what if people abuse it - isn’t it worth it if helps someone?
^^^ My experience with free stores is that there is usually too much and you kinda wish people would take more. Our consumer society is wasting such a massive amount of food, games, books, movies, food… the only thing that are ever in short supply are the things that are build to break quickly like smartphones.
“…the sight of Elon Musk charging towards Wikipedia with his trademark guile and delicacy was so predictable that it was almost relaxing. He saw a collective resource that people prized and he wanted to hurt it.”
Thoth knows Wikipedia’s not perfect, but I’d sooner have it handy than not have it.
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