I Have Successfully Resisted The Urge To Use The Phrase "well-placed Bazinga" Suggestively. You're Welcome.

There are books now that are specifically used as status symbols: people use them to appear to be the person they want others to see them as.

Consumer culture has the distressing effect of enhancing the human tendency to convince oneself that one liked something, for the sake of conformity and peace of mind. People tell themselves that they liked what they were told they should like.

Reviewers often wind up with extreme biases for and against certain types of works, for similar reasons to the above. It's also not too crazy to consider there may be some corruption in the literary review community.

Marketing is now a powerful discipline with cutting-edge psychology behind it. When used by trained professionals instead of incompetent corporate outcasts, it can essentially function as mind control, even for the well-informed.

Also, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

TL; DR: Don't feel bad about hating something everyone else seemed to love. There are many reasons why terrible books can get good reviews. And your own opinion is still a valid opinion, even if it's contradictory.

the sense of horror when you finish a book that was Ass Bad and you go to see what fellow haters are saying but all the reviews say it is the best thing they've ever read. feel like i just saw my reflection in the mirror move all by itself or something

It's easy to be "original" when there are no rules, no exceptions. But, under those circumstances, it's difficult to be interesting.

This is very close to the original concept behind Anguish Languish: words now have to be rationed, just like other war supplies. We have to make do with the words we have plenty of.

OK so my shitpost R&D department was researching the viability of a jocular analogy between national language regulators, war rationing, and soviet bread lines. This isn't a viable product right now so you'll have to just kind of imagine that it's funny, but the idea is, like, people are running out of words because they offshored development and then a war footing devastated international trade, so now there aren't enough words to go around and the government is publishing all these posters encouraging people not to waste them. The government has stepped into nationalize word production and distribution but because all the best words are going to the Posters on the war front, the public has to spend hours in line just to get a random selection of words that they can hardly use. People have to find a way to smuggle in illegal foreign words or rely on unsafe home-brewed vocabulary while repurposing all the new words for munitions and war strategy to talk about groceries and romance. Barter dominates, especially in the provinces, as people try to scrounge together a functional vocabulary to educate their children.

Anyway I'm dropping it because I realized that while this is hard to make into a good joke, it would actually be a fantastic strategy/puzzle game. Someone go make that!

"Stolas isn't wrong for choosing his own happiness for once after years of abuse and depression"

and

"Octavia isn't wrong for feeling betrayed by her father and fearing she's been only an obligation to him"

are two concepts that can and should coexist.

--Hey, didja hear what happened to Brett?

--No, tell me!

--Well, last night, some assholes came out to his dock and ripped off his Johnson.

--What?! Is he gonna be okay?

--Yeah, he was in bed, he slept through the whole thing.

--How can someone sleep through getting their Johnson ripped off?

--Yeah, he's a pretty heavy sleeper, I guess.

--That's... so weird. But is he gonna be okay?

--Oh, he's not hurt at all. They never even came in the house.

--Wait, what?!

--They didn't actually make much noise. But now he needs to borrow your truck.

--To go to the hospital?

--Huh? No, to pick up his spare.

--His spare what?

--His spare Johnson. It's in his shop.

--Okay, why are you messing with me like this?

--What! He's got his spare Johnson up at his shop. He just needs your truck to bring it down here.

--He needs my truck. To pick up his spare Johnson. And attach it, right? After getting his original Johnson ripped off, and he didn't even wake up... or bleed out! Look, what the...

--Well, they didn't actually rip it off, I meant he got ripped off. They had tools, and they unbolted it from the back of the transom.

--...Transom??

--Yeah, you know, the board at the back of the skiff? Where the motor sits?

<long pause>

--You're talking about an outboard motor. A fucking Johnson brand outboard fucking motor.

--Uh, yeah? What did you think I was talking about?

My Dad: "The Melrose [apple tree] also has some massive pups."

Me: " . . . . . "

Me: "Just so you know, you should expect some... weird reactions... if you use the phrase 'has some massive pups' in public."

beavers have the lifestyle that most children dream of. dig and travel through underwater canals. dam a river and flood the local woodlands. stomp mud into dam to seal. swim to flooded trees and destroy them. live in a secret hideout with a underwater entrance. full ownership over an engineering project

Why is this simple fact so hard for people to understand

While on that again, I notice that people do this thing where they're like "TME is useful because it describes how people who are not trans women can and do invent malicious rumors and harassment campaigns about trans women and everyone believes them".

And I'm sorry to point out but it's not just "TMEs" that do this. I have been around here for many years and I can confirm that trans women are just as happy to invent or reblog callout posts and generally do abuse by proxy. Just like everyone else.

There isn't really any kind of identity category that makes someone inherently safe, principled, or progressive.

please support this interracial french gay couple and their 20 kids

I volunteered last year with a retired engineer who once transported a space probe instrument from San Antonio, Texas, to Berne, Switzerland, in a series of inanities that would make an incredible Wes Anderson movie.