Do you know how bugfuck insane the words "Unionized Starbucks" would have sounded to someone in 2005? Baristas getting union-mandated breaks could have been a throwaway joke in part of the Scary Movie franchise as something ridiculous.

RALPH NADER WAS AGITATING FOR A FIFTEEN DOLLAR MINIMUM WAGE IN 2004 AND SHIT IS MOVING SLOWLY BUT MY STATE HAS A TWENTY DOLLAR MINIMUM WAGE FOR FAST FOOD WORKERS. WHEN I STARTED HIGH SCHOOL THE ONLY OPTION FOR AN ABORTION AFTER 7 WEEKS WAS SURGICAL AND NOW THERE'S A PILL.

FUCKING. ELECTRIC CARS. SO GODDAMNED MANY PEOPLE HAVE SOLAR PANELS ON THEIR HOUSES OR IN THEIR PARKING LOTS.

WE DON'T HAVE SMOG DAYS IN LOS ANGELES ANYMORE UNLESS THERE'S A FIRE AND IT'S BECAUSE OF CARB STANDARDS.

LITERALLY MILLIONS OF FUCKING PEOPLE TURNED OUT TO PROTEST POLICE BRUTALITY IN 2020 AND YOU CAN SAY "NOTHING HAPPENED" ALL YOU WANT BUT THE WAY PEOPLE TALK ABOUT IT NOW IS FUCKING DIFFERENT THAN THEY DID AFTER RODNEY KING AND NOW PEOPLE WILL STOP AND WATCH OUT FOR EACH OTHER INSTEAD OF GOING 'NOT MY BUSINESS'

THERE IS A MALARIA VACCINE THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO OVER A MILLION CHILDREN IN JUST THE LAST FIVE YEARS SINCE IT WAS APPROVED FOR USE OUTSIDE OF TRIALS

It is 14 Nov 2024.

Start the party, the AO3 is turning 15 today!

Join our anniversary celebrations with our 15 day Trivia Game and Prompts challenge. Who knows – you might end up winning a cool prize!

How well do you really know AO3? It’s more than just a place for your favorite fanworks with its rich history, unique features and its commitment to preserve fan culture. Ready to test your AO3 knowledge? Join our 15-day AO3 Trivia Game!

Trivia Game – How It Works Starting today, we’ll post one trivia question a day for the next 15 days. Collect your answers and submit to the google form for that day — we’ll do a random draw from the highest scorers, and winners will get exclusive AO3 merch!

Prompts Challenge for Creators We’ve got something for all the creators, too! Every day, we’ll post a new prompt as part of the AO3 Prompts Challenge.

You don’t have to complete every prompt – just pick the ones that inspire you. When you’re ready, share your creations and add them to our AO3 anniversary collection and join the party!

Whether you’re here for the trivia, the prompts, or neither — thank you for being with us on our fifteenth anniversary. Happy 15th!

netflix subtitles are great for when you want to read a caption with like 50% resemblance to what's being spoken

character in a movie: buddy, i'm gonna tell you what i've got to do

netflix subtitles: i'll say what i must do

character in a movie: *exhales*

netflix subtitles: (blows raspberry)

character in a movie: ciao!

netflix subtitles: (in italian) bye!

*character in a movie: ciao!

netflix subtitles: (speaks foreign language)

IF YOU LIVE IN THE USA

THIS IS ILLEGAL

REPORT THEM TO THE FCC

THEY HAVE A LINK ON THEIR WEBSITE TO RWPORT IT

ITS REQUIRED BY THE ADA THAT SUBTITLES EXACTLY MATCH THE DIALOGUE

i reported basically every Star Trek show on Paramount+ because the subtitles were all fucked up. they sent me auto emails to let me know they were working on it, and then a real life human being got in touch with me after they had fixed it, to ask if i was still experiencing the issue. they WILL do something, they are required by FEDERAL LAW to do something.

Oh shit I got some snitching to do

Evanescence: These wounds won’t seem to heal, this pain is just too real, There’s just too much that time cannot erase

12 year old me:

31-year-old me:

just saw a fanfic on ao3 have a dedication for chatgpt... that section is meant for your horny perverted mutual who proofread your work, you violated sacred law and you will be torn apart and laid bare btw

anyways, if you feel the need to use ai to do your work for you, consider this: get a new hobby because this one isn't for you

I'm pretty sure AO3 has a block function now.

As one whose loans have been forgiven, I want to frame this more accurately. Biden has taken tremendous heat for forgiving loans that ought to have been paid back and dumping the debt on the taxpayer.

What Biden actually did is what the EXECUTIVE branch of government is meant for: he enforced the law. The contracts for those loans and many more included forgiveness under certain criteria: x years of income-based repayment, 10 years of public service, borrower disability, so on. Borrowers met the criteria and were refused the forgiveness guaranteed in the contracts.

People have gone mad over shaming borrowers for supposedly not fulfilling the terms of their loans, when many exceeded their obligations. Meanwhile few have said a peep against the lenders and servicers that refused to honor the terms they too signed off on. The Biden administration intervened to stop their mass evasion of legal obligations.

people should stop acting that way about mathematics to mathematicians and start acting that way with business majors instead

this is why we need STEM-humanities solidarity

🎶Capitalist training! Looney Tuner!🎵

gen z has to reckon with its radicalization problem. you are not a morally pure and superior generation of youth come to save the world, your men and boys are radicalized at an unprecedented level and you ignore it because it’s too hard to address but you have to. these boys are in your classes, they date your friends, you know them and you cannot continue to pretend this is an “old white guy” problem

girls are contributing, too. the coquette aesthetic, the “i don’t want to girlboss i want a man to pay my bills”, girlmath girljob girlmoney. it’s a joke, it’s clothes, it’s whatever, i get it but it is driving a mentality of traditional gender roles and you know you’re joking but your boyfriend doesn’t. your kid brother doesn’t. you have to stop this shit it is a contributing factor

Wow — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/3hiS1uP

i love 90s television all these high quality fabrics got me so turned on i almost passed out

Imagine an alien sharing a cool human fact they just learned like ”hey guys did you know that the silvery markings on humans actually aren’t true stripes? They’re called stretch marks, they happen when the human is growing fast enough to actually outgrow their skin, which is apparently something that just fucking happens to almost all of them at some point of their life.”

and another one is like ”wait so you’re saying humans don’t have stripes.”

”actually they do, but the stripes are invisible. There’s genetic code that’d give them stripes but they’re just the same colour as the rest of the skin. So the visible stripes are not real stripes and the real stripes are invisible.”

”I swear if you tell me one more weird human thing today I’m beating your ass.”

The human in the room looks up and goes "Wait I have stripes?"

"what do you mean cats can see them, but I can't?"

what do you fucking mean cats can see them

I WENT THROUGH THE SAME THOUGHT PROCESS

MY CAT THINKS I HAVE STRIPES?!?!?!?

NO NO ITS NOT "IT THINKS I HAVE THEM"

BECAUSE WE DO APPARENTLY

SO ITS ACTUALLY A VERY DISTRESSED "MY CAT THINKS I KNOW I HAVE STRIPES?!?!?!"

AND I THINK THATS A BIT WORSE TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST

MY CAT KNEW I HAD STRIPES BEFORE I DID?!?!?!?!?!?

I DIDNT THINK OF THAT

WELL I DID AND NOW I CANT UNTHINK IT

@beenovel @messiambrandybuck these are the variants

WHAT

apparently there's a disease where they become visable, and these are the most common kind??

Ngl it looks cool but???? I'm still in shock tbh

I NEED TO KNOW WHAT PATTERN OF STRIPES I HAVE AND THE CATS WON'T TELL ME

I COULD HAVE A CHECKERBOARD ON MY BACK AND NO ONE WOULD KNOW???

They’re called Blaschko's lines!!!

The reverse can also be true ... kinda.

I remember reading somehwre the human eye can see more shades of green than any other colour. I just googled it and the human eye can see 10 Million different shades of green.

So human could see stripes and patterns on, say, a reptillian race who maybe can’t see as many colours as we do, and think they’re just one boring shade of green.

Human: We have stripes?! I wish I could see them. I hope they look like yours.

Reptile Alien: Wait, I HAVE STRIPES!

*mutual excitement all around*

So what y'all are saying is that we can sometimes only see our most special traits through the eyes of another?

Me to my cat: Did you know about this?

My cat:

I see a lot of posts saying "teach boys about consent".

While that is true, a lot of parents will do that and fail to see how their own actions are the problem.

If you've spanked him, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've forced him to sit on Santa's lap, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've forced him to give hugs and kisses to family members, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've grabbed him in order to force him to sit still, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've labeled him as "too sensitive" for not wanting to be touched, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've assumed he's okay with something because he technically allowed it even though he felt pressured, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you're only going to criticize his actions but not your own, it won't work.

I am a firm believer that it's not just what he experiences in his life, but what he witnesses too. Okay so you don't do any of those to him but you do those things to his sisters? His cousins? His mom? He is learning consent is for him hut not for women.

One of my sisters has young children, both of whom are some flavor of neurodivergent. She is too, and as a result she often lost patience quickly with some of their quirks. The biggest offender is that her kids are extremely wary around anyone they deem to be a stranger, making social connection very difficult for all participants.

When I first met her daughter, she was 3 or 4, and was extremely reluctant to come and meet me. My sister began to shame and push and pull her towards me and I stopped her. I said "don't force her, don't teach her that she has to let men she doesn't know touch her, she doesn't need to hug me"

My sister froze in place, processed it for a moment, and let her daughter go. She went back to hiding behind mom. We continued our conversation and her son slowly approached me, hugged me, and climbed up onto the chair I was in to sit beside me and partially in my lap. After a few minutes, her daughter joined him. She didn't hug me, but she came over to touch and talk to me.

My sister was speechless. Her kids DON'T do that. I've heard many complaints from many family members about how antisocial they are. All I did was stick up for their right to offer or withdraw consent- and really just her daughter's, as her son had met me pre-covid and had already gotten over the hurdle at 2 years old, but her daughter was born during covid and thus it made her severe distrust of strangers even worse.

Now her kids are in elementary school and making friends easily and I regularly get stories from her about how she witnesses them connect with other socially withdrawn kids and stand up for both themselves and their quieter friends. She took my advice to heart and started allowing them to voice whether they consented to something and now her little boy will approach a crying kid on the playground and say something like "do you want to play, or do you want me to just sit with you, or do you want to be alone?" and then actually listen to what the other kid tells him.

My niece has an incredibly traumatized boy in her class who escaped war with his family, and he doesn't talk to anyone. But he visibly relaxes when my niece goes to sit next to him when he's too scared and curled up in the classroom's Quiet Corner. She reads to him and shows him her toys and holds his hand on field trips and yells at anyone who is mean to him. I'm told she's the only person who can approach or touch him without causing a meltdown besides his family, and it started because the first time she sat with him she asked if it was okay if she did so and she waited several minutes for him to nod before she sat down.

But they still avoid the family members that forced them to interact even when they were uncomfortable. I still hear those complaints, hundreds of miles away, and the jealousy that I've only met the kids a few times but they talk incessantly about me. If I call one of my family members and the kids are over, I can hear them in the background trying to talk to me if they figure out it's me on the other line.

Anyway. Long story short I didn't have to advocate for my nephew the way I did my niece, but advocating for my niece in front of the both of them dramatically changed the way both of them were taught to manage social interaction. Consent isn't just about teaching the boy. It's also making sure he sees that consent being practiced with everyone.

YES.

People who think consent is a topic of sexuality have missed the whole point.

The topic of consent is about being an autonomous human with a body and mind of your own. It needs to be role modeled, respected, and taught from birth and should extend into every part of life.

This extends to things like forcing kids to dress in the clothes they hate, cutting (or not cutting) their hair without their input, and generally ignoring that a kid is an actual PERSON. Yes, some common sense applies, so no flip flops on the snow, but putting your daughter in a frilly dress when she hates frilly dresses, because " you look so cute"... 😡

she's so cute, how do I talk to her

This reminds me of the image i made after seeing one of these bad boys in the wild a bit back. True beasts of beauty.