ewww terfs and radfems aren't welcome here and will be blocked so get the fuck outta here, you fucking losers

moment of unspeakable beauty today when one of my coworkers called another coworker "judas" for not splitting a can of white monster with her, and i got to watch the guy who sits next to me open a new google tab, type in "jeudis," and say quietly to himself "french thursday...?"

@greenvelvetchaise

my wife and i like to torture each other when we lay down for bed at night by tickling or poking each other. as a deterrent we’ve created an entity called “The Bird” which will attack you as a way to show we’re no longer comfortable with whatevers happening. we’ll say “The Bird is coming” or “The Bird is going to get you” instead of “hey stop doing that” then we peck each other with our hands. here’s a visual to help

fun fact: if you pirated six full length albums from your favourite band, listened to them all back to back 5 times, and then sent them $20 on ko-fi or whatever, on average they would have earned slightly more money per play than they'd get from you streaming the same shit with ads on spotify.

invariably when I talk about media piracy people are like "but what!!! about creators!!! they need to make a living!!!" my homey in romey if you're that worried about it send your favourite artist $5 right now. do it. shut the fuck up.

I want to support artists but I can ONLY do it if I'm being drip fed shittier and shittier versions of the content a tech executive thinks I want. I have no choice in the matter because uhhhhhh other people won't pay for things if they're free. yeah that's right. other people are the problem.

here's the piracy secret big media don't want you to know: you can always give artists money if you want to.

ADDENDUM: woke up this morning and realised my math was off (I missed a decimal place). your favourite band would actually earn about 10x more per play from your $20 than they would from spotify.

That means you could pirate six albums and listen to them 50 times each, and you would only owe around $20 in spotify equivalent fees. Figures below the cut since people keep disputing them in various directions in my inbox:

One small but extremely annoying effect of Tech Modernization or w/e is how UI contrast is garbage anymore, especially just, like, application windows in general.

"Ooh our scrollbar expands when you mouse over it! Or does it? Only you can know by sitting there like an idiot for 3 seconds waiting for it to expand, only to move your cursor away just as it does so!" or Discord's even more excellent "scrollbar is 2 shades off of the background color and is one (1) pixel wide" fuck OFF

I tried to move a system window around yesterday and had to click 3 times before I got the half of the upper bar that let me drag it. Why are there two separate bars with absolutely nothing to visually differentiate them on that.

"Well if you look closely-" I should not!! have to squint!!! at the screen for a minute straight to detect basic UI elements!! Not mention how ableist this shit is, and for what? ~✨Aesthetic✨~?

and then every website and app imitates this but in different ways so everything is consistently dogshit to try to use but not always in ways you can immediately grok it's!!!! terrible!!!! just put lines on things again I'm begging you!!!!

I know I sound like a broken record when I praise Windows 95 UI, but holy fuck Microsoft figured this shit out already about 30 years ago. It's all there, black and white, clear as christmas:

So much of modern UX woes stem from not knowing, or intentionally ignoring the genuine design study put forth into GUIs in the 90s.

3D elements are 3D in a specific way with lighting from a specific side to make it obvious where a window element begins and ends.

The gradient always should from from one side, and keep it consistent.

Make your color shading and shape of scroll bars consistently side and easy to press. I have a 4K display, don't make me hunt for the magic activation pixel that makes your 3-pixel wide scroll bar appear.

It's a desktop application, I've got the screen real estate to spare to have the actual GUI elements present on screen at all times (I know, heresy).

The moment aesthetic takes precedence over form and function, you've failed as a UI designer.

And any argument about "we don't have the resolution" can go right out the window, we were having nice, clear and legible interface widgets on nine inch screens in 1984. We continued to have nice, clear and legible interfaces on machines vastly less powerful than today's and on screens vastly less pixel-dense than today's. We used to know what the hell we were doing. At least one of these examples even has on-screen instructions in case the widgets functionality isn't immediately apparent.

(images sourced from The GUI Gallery)

since this has come back to my dashboard again i want to call attention to one more thing that these GUIs have that modern ones don't even try to do.

RESIZE WIDGETS.

Do you tire of trying to grab and resize a window whose border is literally only 1 pixel wide?

Do you see how large the corner widgets are in those clips above? Those are at least 16x16 pixels. They're almost as large as the Close buttons on a modern GUI. If you can see the bottom right corner of your window, resizing it is a snap. You can aim much more easily at a 16x16 widget than you can at a one-pixel-wide vertical line.

OK, maybe technically Windows' borders are wider than 1 pixel. They're technically 3 pixels. That is still just really goddamn tiny compared to 16 of them.

We used to be a society. Look at this. Look at this.

WINDOWS FUGGIN' 95 HAD THE CORNER WIDGET. Why the hell can't Windows 11?

On one hand, it's great to see people learn how to unfuck their living spaces. On the other hand, that stuff like "frequently used articles should be stored near where they're used" and "trash receptacles should be placed near activities that generate trash" are being received as radical ideas points to a serious knowledge transmission problem.

Some people's parents get Really Weird about trash cans and practical items being where they can be seen, is part of the problem here

Source: currently a janitor at a church and you would not believe how many boomers get upset with me for insisting the trash cans need to be practical and easy to use instead of out of sight and too cute for functionality

including in the actual bathrooms

actually no sorry there's a list here

things people have told me are "tacky" and that I need to get rid of (they have lost many of these arguments because I'm a bitch, others are ongoing)

an umbrella stand by the door with spare umbrellas for parishioners to use

a table by the front door "because people keep putting things on it" (that was. Why that table was there)

the signs that directed people towards the bathrooms

the actual trash can in the bathroom "because surely we don't need one so big" (for the bathroom that services the fellowship hall, which hosts things like the local scout events, so yes we need one that's at least 20 gallon)

apparently it's also tacky if I write down when I changed things like batteries and air fresheners, on a calendar they'll never see unless they go into my office??

another table in another waystation type area because "people keep putting things on it" (even when it's completely clear)

signs we are legally required to post

What the fuck is wrong with people

#sort of tangientially related but:#i once worked on a wetland restoration project involving a new small lakeand one of the board members wanted#the life rings that we had to include#to have 'natural looking covers' disguising them to 'reduce visual impact and make them blend in'#and I had to gently explain that life saving equipment needs to stand out

Had to show these tags. The way some people think astounds me.

The rest of the queers aren't allowed to exclude asexuals anymore; we've got the JK Rowling Seal of Disapproval! It's official, we belong!

VIBE CHECK! *yearns deeply for you from an unfortunate distance*

Laughing my ass off at these reactions to this poster, mostly because I feel the exact same way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I need you to understand:

"Listen," one guard said, "I know we have only just met-"

"No," the other guard said, "we've worked together for years!"

"-but you can trust me when I say-"

"I can't, you have the curse that's opposite from mine!"

"I don't care for you at all."

"Well, I… oh… I love you too."

i dont make comics often but this was too cute.

While making dinner tonight, I very very fleetingly, but very seriously and legitimately thought “I should watch Goncharov tonight”

And then I Remembered.

That it's no longer on poob?

they call me byecurious yhe way im always a little interested in leaving👋

companies make billions from you thinking you're ugly btw. only ugly thing is their bottom line. log out of tiktok right now.

learning to ask 'is this an ad' will save your life

the rapid disintegration of rainbow capitalism pretty much encapsulates the problem with rainbow capitalism in the first place: it is and always was performative fair-weather allyship that evaporated in the face of any real political pressure

Problem? It was never a problem, unless you had unrealistic expectations for what it meant. It was a symptom, and a good one. — Be strategic and think about this deeper for a minute.

It was absolutely performative fair-weather allyship. But it was a bellwether that the pink dollar was worth taking over any hypothetical backlash a business might face for supporting the queers. For some, and at some times in the past, it was a reassurance that they would do business with you even if they knew you were gay, and that was a huge issue if you eg. wanted to buy a house or a car. And it helped make queerness both more visible and more normalised in society, instead of trying to sweep teh gays back into the closet.

You’re not going to get rid of cynical cash grabs so long as capitalism is around, so you might as well be clear-eyed about it and recognise that while rainbow merch is totally unreliable for actual support, it was a sign that the smart money was betting in your favour.

You can always trust a business to find a sort of middle space that's vaguely agreeable to most of its customers and sit there avoiding all controversy in the absolute most craven and soulless way possible.

This means that a business is in fact a very good indicator of what's vaguely agreeable to most of its customers and what counts as controversy.

Don't think of them as allies. They aren't people. They can't be. Think of them as a barometer. If the barometer is up, you've probably got sunny skies. When the barometer starts dropping, prepare for heavy weather moving in.