technology related sensory memories from my childhood
sliding the metal cover on floppy disks
the slight resistance of inserting cassette and video tapes
ripping off the strips of holed paper off of dot matrix printer paper
rolling the wheel on a disposable camera to take another photo
The heaviness and rubber texture of the roller ball in a computer mouse, and the little ring of lint
Unkinking the curly cord of a telephone while you talked
The -peww sound and slowly fading image of a crt monitor turning off, and then running your finger through the static on the dusty glass
The crunch of opening or closing a plastic Disney vhs cover
The sound effects in kidpix
Extending and collapsing metal antennas and using them as magic wands
…God, it is so weird these things aren’t around any more. Cause it’s true, the sensations are so distinct. It’s bizarre to think about missing these tiny relics.
FACT CHECK: Are People Adopting Pit Bull Terriers for the Sole Purpose of Euthanizing Them?
The #PitbullDropOff hashtag and related claims of mass dog killing stem from a sophomoric troll attempt with origins in 4chan.
CLAIM:
People are adopting pit bulls with the express goal of euthanizing them,
and then bragging about it on the Internet with the hashtag
#PitbullDropOff.
RATING:
ORIGIN:
In mid-May 2018, the hashtag #PitbullDropOff began to gain traction on
social media. A typical post involves a picture of cute pit bull
terrier-type puppies, and a message that the person who took the picture
adopted them for the express purpose of euthanizing them to get them
off the streets. This post from “muffs-o-matic” is representative of most:
These posts are fabricated; they are part of a juvenile attempt to
provoke anger and outrage on the internet, and are specifically directed
at “naive pitmommies and various other low IQ individuals.” They have
their origins not in reality, but in the callow minds of the festering
racist, misogynistic, and nihilistic world that is 4chan — an anonymous
message board that unites trolls, “incels,” and neo-Nazis together in
their shared contempt for human decency.
A 13 May 2018 anonymous post
found in that website’s most infamous board (/pol/) presents an update
on their campaign, and also how you — assuming, of course, that you are a
troll — can get involved in the game:
Indeed, as many have pointed out on Reddit,
most of the photos shared on Twitter and Facebook with the
#PitBullDropOff hashtag include images that can easily be found on
reverse image search as having nothing to do with #PitbullDropOff, and
which predate the hashtag by years. The image that appears in the post
by “muffs-o-matic,” for example, can be found in a February 2017 list of
cute puppies on The Chive.
This tweet, from a burner account clearly created solely for the #PitbullDropOff troll, contains a picture of a sad dog that is at least as old as December 2011:
Outside the smug satisfaction of feeling smarter than the people they
have trolled, the underlying motivations for the hashtag fall clearly
into the political ideology
of the /pol/ message board, which has coagulated over time into a
simple philosophy: Women, liberals, and minorities are destroying
America. Here’s a sampling of some of the comments in the thread:
The anonymous trolls also suggest that pit bull-type dogs are almost
always owned by ethnic minorities, and are thus aggressive and
unfriendly — a racial stereotype that has long motivated anti-pit bull movements:
While we cannot speak to the broader claim that some terrible human
beings have adopted dogs for the purpose of putting them down, we can
say with confidence that the current viral #PitbullDropOff trend on
social media is a hoax orchestrated by anonymous hoaxsters using
unrelated photographs, fake context, and a characteristic reliance on
racism and misogyny. Don’t feed the trolls.
These horrific, sexist, racist paragraphs – screenshotted and shared for posterity by James Smythe, to whom we are all indebted – are the work of one Liam O’Flynn, a writer and English teacher. Evidently, they come from his book Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English, and are intended as examples of good writing.
UM.
Dear white male writers: DO NOT DO THIS SHIT. IT IS SUPER GROSS AND FETISHISTIC AND ALSO TERRIBLE WRITING. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
Like I just. “Her virility-brown eyes -” WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? How can you have an “Amazonian figure”ON a “wafer-thin body” when “figure” is a word that describe’s a body’s shape, and Amazonian means pretty much the DIRECT FUCKING OPPOSITE of “wafer-thin” in the first place?
What the shitting fuck does ANY of this mean, apart from “I am only nebulously familiar with the concept of women and completely at a loss if I can’t compare their various bodyparts to jewels, animals and footstuffs”?
STOP
GO TO WRITING JAIL
GO DIRECTLY TO WRITING JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200
tag yourself i’m the two beryl-green jewels in the snow
if her ears frame her nose do they like, grow directly beside her nose? how does she see from them?
*facepalm*
“
Writing With Stardust: the Ultimate Descriptive Guide for students, parents, teachers, and lovers of English
“
lovers of english
oh my goddddddd
i can’t get over this fucking post
“I loved her nebulous, eden-green eyes which were a-sparkle with the ‘joie de vivre’. They were like two beryl-green jewels melted onto snow.”
1. what the fuck is joie de vivre
2. melted jewels?
3. beryl green
eden green:
WHICH ONE IS ITTTTTTTTT
@laughlikesomethingbroken “Joie de vivre” is a French phrase that literally translates to “joy of living”, while it IS one of those phrases that gets used in English in this context it is SO EXTRA AND UNNECESSARY OH MY GOD. Don’t use French to make yourself sound sophisticated when you’re NOT
I don’t know where to even START. Curvilinear waist? Sugar candy-sweet? What the FUCK are seraph’s ears? Voguish clothes? What the everloving fuck is “constellation blue” supposed to mean??? Like forget the objectification, this writing is horrifying enough before we even get to the embedded sexism
seraph’s ears are ears that you can’t see bc they’re hidden behind her 6 wings
Oyster white teeth?
holy purple prose batman
Female writers do this too. Have you read a Mills and Boon novel? Have you read high school girls’ yaoi fanfics?
Uh oh, we were focusing too much on how a grown man is selling this shit and not enough shitting on teenage girls. Egalitarians here to put an end to that shit.
Guess what? I’ve read A LOT of Harlequin novels and a LOT of fanfic and I have never ever seen anything this horrible at description.
Also, none of those stories were trying to hold themselves up as high examples of the craft
You guys here is the description of the book on Amazon.
If this is the description I cannot think how bad the inside is.
I never ever want to hear anyone make fun of fanfic writers again
NEVER EVER
Lord god almighty. I’ve been feeling really down about my writing lately, but this is a confidence boost. 8I
As well as the sexism, racism, purple prose, and general nonsense… “The moons delicate light”? At least learn to use apostrophes correctly before setting yourself up as a writing expert, good lord.
“You will find that this book will transform the way you think about descriptive writing.”
pigment-less octopus found via remote operated vehicle northeast of Hawaii’s Necker Island by NOAA scientists on the Okeanos Explorer on 2/27/16 at a depth of 4,290 meters.
Most important lesson I learned in the past year is, don’t let anyone turn you cruel.
No matter how badly you wanna give the world a taste of its own bitter medicine.
It’s never worth losing yourself over.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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