You order a package off Amazon. When the Amazon delivery guy shows up to your door, instead of giving you the package you bought, he beats the shit out of you. Then, when he sees that you are not dead yet, he calls all of the Amazon delivery people in the area and they all proceed to beat the shit out of you. Miraculously, you survive. Another miracle: a friend in your neighborhood caught the assault on video. After a month of recovery and extensive hospital bills that you have no idea what to do with, the video has gone viral. You read the comments below. “This is what happens to people who fuck with Amazon!!!” Someone says. “I’ve never been beaten up by Amazon employees, and I’ve been using them all my life!” Someone else comments. Later, you start to see articles popping up about your story. They all mention that when you were 17, your license was revoked for reckless driving. In a Facebook post on your mom’s feed, someone is going on a rant about how not all Amazon delivery guys are bad, and that if you look really close, the “bad” ones are just stressed out. Your name is trending on Twitter. Jeff Bezos films a response to your attack, denouncing the video of you getting beaten to within an inch of your life by his employees as becoming “a symbol of hate towards Amazon.” The people who attacked you still deliver packages around your neighborhood. You saw one of them just yesterday as you were watering your plants. You still can’t pay your hospital bills. Your phone dings- Twitter again. “Maybe if you didn’t order from Amazon,” someone pipes up, “this wouldn’t have happened!”
You order a package off Amazon. When the Amazon delivery guy shows up to your door, instead of giving you the package you bought, he beats the shit out of you. Then, when he sees that you are not dead yet, he calls all of the Amazon delivery people in the area and they all proceed to beat the shit out of you. Miraculously, you survive. Another miracle: a friend in your neighborhood caught the assault on video. After a month of recovery and extensive hospital bills that you have no idea what to do with, the video has gone viral. You read the comments below. “This is what happens to people who fuck with Amazon!!!” Someone says. “I’ve never been beaten up by Amazon employees, and I’ve been using them all my life!” Someone else comments. Later, you start to see articles popping up about your story. They all mention that when you were 17, your license was revoked for reckless driving. In a Facebook post on your mom’s feed, someone is going on a rant about how not all Amazon delivery guys are bad, and that if you look really close, the “bad” ones are just stressed out. Your name is trending on Twitter. Jeff Bezos films a response to your attack, denouncing the video of you getting beaten to within an inch of your life by his employees as becoming “a symbol of hate towards Amazon.” The people who attacked you still deliver packages around your neighborhood. You saw one of them just yesterday as you were watering your plants. You still can’t pay your hospital bills. Your phone dings- Twitter again. “Maybe if you didn’t order from Amazon,” someone pipes up, “this wouldn’t have happened!”
You order a package off Amazon. When the Amazon delivery guy shows up to your door, instead of giving you the package you bought, he beats the shit out of you. Then, when he sees that you are not dead yet, he calls all of the Amazon delivery people in the area and they all proceed to beat the shit out of you. Miraculously, you survive. Another miracle: a friend in your neighborhood caught the assault on video. After a month of recovery and extensive hospital bills that you have no idea what to do with, the video has gone viral. You read the comments below. “This is what happens to people who fuck with Amazon!!!” Someone says. “I’ve never been beaten up by Amazon employees, and I’ve been using them all my life!” Someone else comments. Later, you start to see articles popping up about your story. They all mention that when you were 17, your license was revoked for reckless driving. In a Facebook post on your mom’s feed, someone is going on a rant about how not all Amazon delivery guys are bad, and that if you look really close, the “bad” ones are just stressed out. Your name is trending on Twitter. Jeff Bezos films a response to your attack, denouncing the video of you getting beaten to within an inch of your life by his employees as becoming “a symbol of hate towards Amazon.” The people who attacked you still deliver packages around your neighborhood. You saw one of them just yesterday as you were watering your plants. You still can’t pay your hospital bills. Your phone dings- Twitter again. “Maybe if you didn’t order from Amazon,” someone pipes up, “this wouldn’t have happened!”
just rememvered that guy on tiktok whos been spraying his hands with dog medicine to make them hard as fuck and how the last time i saw him he was capable of sanding soft wood down with the palm of his hand
So… I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about “life-changing writing advice” all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.
I’m going to try it.
I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that…” in prose writing I immediately think “how? How does he know it?” Interrogate your witnesses. Cross-examine them. Make them explain their reasoning. It pays dividends.
All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.
This is your “show not tell” advice explained!
Editor here.
First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.
What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.
This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*
If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.
*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.
This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.
“It was rainy.” Versus: “The rain pounded against the roof.” Or “The rain howled like an injured animal.” Or “The rain tapped against the window like an anxious lover.” All of these are inviting the reader deeper into the experience of the story by using stronger verbs and similes. And, at the same time, they stir feelings (instead of TELLING feelings). And feelings keep your reader engaged. Engaged readers keep turning pages; engaged readers become FANS.
This is also where
you want to pay attention
to verbs of being.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
We all know what erectile dysfunction is but literally no one is ever taught what vaginismus is and it can cause people to feel extremely lost, broken, and cause people to take their own lives.
Raise. Awareness.
For the uninformed, vaginismus is when the vagina painfully tightens and spasms when faced with pressure, usually from anything trying to insert into the vagina. It’s the reason I can’t wear tampons, and why many people can’t have vaginal sex without severe pain.
There’s not a lot of treatments, and there isn’t a single one that is for vaginismus exclusively - they’re all medications or treatments to treat symptoms, but not the causes. In fact, for a long time doctors waved off vaginismus as a purely psychological disorder in cis women.
Seriously, this is so unaddressed and uncared for in medical circles. Please spread awareness, even if all it’s for is to let those who have it but don’t have a name for it finally be able to understand what’s happening to their bodies.
Certified Sex Ed Post!
Hi hello! This post is almost 10 years old and there ARE treatments for this. Vaginismus is otherwise known as pelvic hypertonia and it is a MUSCULAR condition that can be caused by many different factors including endometriosis, trauma, chronic UTIs, and connective tissue disorders.
It’s incredibly common! And it can be treated by physiotherapy.
I know this because I’m currently undergoing physio and although it can take months to recover, I’m already seeing improvement. A lot of the pelvic floor exercises are available online, but if you have these symptoms please TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR and see if you can get a physio referral (or investigation for underlying causes like endometriosis).
Also, my additions to posts never get reblogged so a note to my followers: this is SUPER IMPORTANT ISSUE that affects many people and is rarely talked about. Please reblog, and please share this info with as many people as possible.
Pelvic hypertonia/vaginismus is incredibly debilitating and psychologically damaging but it CAN BE TREATED. Spread the word, and you never know who you’ll be throwing a lifeline to.
We need etsy to get bought by someone who will run it like the navy i need to only see small businesses in eastern europe weaving baskets by hand and anime yaoi keychains with original fanart
Literally need someone with an serial killer level obsession with content moderation to sit at a wall of monitors sniping dropshippers. I need etsy HQ to look and sound like the nerv command center in Evangelion
Everyone’s thinking “witch” but the owl was actually going as a cowboy.
Iirc the original images are from years ago, and everyone was worried that the owl was actually stuck to the toy - but apparently the townspeople had seen him put it down to hunt and such, and then go back to pick it up again. Which straight up triples my enjoyment of this story.
Does anybody have that image of what cyberpunk dialogue is like. “to crack a cyber lemon this nasty” or whatever
That’s the bitch
If you want an idea what more authentic oldschool hacking language sounds like, there is an absolutely ANCIENT webpage called the Jargon File (seems to have been updated from the early 80s up through 2004), aka the New Hacker’s Dictionary, that kept a record. It’s not far from Gibson’s idea but if anything it sounds even dorkier, peppered with coding terms and prehistoric memes
when I feel bad about my ability to write interesting stories I try to think about the skyrim wizard college questline
you join wizard college. in the main room there is an elf in all black robes who stands there all day. the other characters are like “I think that guy is a spy for the elf cops”. you can talk to the elf and he says he’s an elf cop. later you find a magic orb, and the other wizards are like “I bet that elf is planning something with the orb” and once again elf cop is like “we the elf cops should have that orb”. you have to go fight some skeletons in a dungeon because uhhhh and when you get back elf cop has killed the head wizard off camera with the orb for some reason. you fight more skeletons in a different dungeon to get a magic staff to turn off the orb and kill elf cop. then elf CIA shows up and takes the orb because I guess it was theirs and they dropped it. you are now the most powerful wizard in skyrim
It’s even better than that. He didn’t drug that coffee, but the other one, the one he isn’t offering to Wilson. He did this because he (rightfully) assumed Wilson would not trust him and ask for House’s coffee instead.
Also noteworthy is that when Wilson drugs House through coffee this very same episode, he does it by drugging the offered cup, because he knows House would never even think to suspect him.
They are insane.
House was sort of like Death Note if there was no death note and Light and L were just coworkers and best friends with sexual tension
“DNI: Standard DNI criteria” is so funny, like anyone checking if they should interact is gonna be familiar enough with dni’s to know the standard redundant options. really exposes the purpose of them, they signal an in-group to other people with the same DNI rather than actually being a warning for potentially unwanted interactions.
me when im a self-identifying Bad Person and someone says not to interact: “oh, thanks for letting me know, i’ll be off”
“DNI: Standard DNI criteria” is so funny, like anyone checking if they should interact is gonna be familiar enough with dni’s to know the standard redundant options. really exposes the purpose of them, they signal an in-group to other people with the same DNI rather than actually being a warning for potentially unwanted interactions.
me when im a self-identifying Bad Person and someone says not to interact: “oh, thanks for letting me know, i’ll be off”
Honestly I think my students should be bummed out that I have a healthier relationship with alcohol now because I’m way more generous of a grader when I’m drunk
scribbles on my notebook “get. my. TA. drunk” and gives you a big thumbs up
Among his other activities, [Steve Wozniak] collects phone numbers, and his longtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits. But for most of Woz’s life there were no Silicon Valley exchanges with three matching digits, so Woz had to be satisfied with numbers like 221-1111.
Then, one day, while eavesdropping on cell phone calls, Woz begin hearing a new exchange: 888. And then, after more months of scheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phone number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph.
The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong numbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible to misdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there was never anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or, not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of a television in the background, or somebody talking softly in English or Spanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently.
Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a woman say, at a distance, “Hey, what are you doing with that?” The receiver was snatched up and slammed down.
Suddenly, it all made sense: the hundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. They were picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom of the handset. Again and again. It made a noise: “Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep.”
The children of America were making their first prank call.
ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself
Yep. This is terrifying. I’ve caught nursing majors, engineering majors, architecture majors relying on ChatGPT to do their homework. These are people who need to know their field well to ensure people don’t die and they’re letting a glorified algorithm cheat them through school. It’s so dangerous
hey. hi. I work in academia. and there are a lot of student-age folks on this site.
don’t do this. don’t use genAI. even if your professors give you permission. even if they ask for it or suggest it. if they do anything short of directly requiring it (and I weep, because I’ve already seen assignments that require it) don’t touch that crap. if they do require it, stick it to them. be as maliciously compliant as possible. be a nightmare.
I know it might sound easier right now – just plug in your assignment and get the answers. you don’t care about this class anyway, it’s not for your major, you don’t see the value of the assignment.
but for your own sake, for the sake of your education and mind, and for the sake of the future world we want to have: learn the stuff. you are not as stupid as the corporate bizzaro kings who want to rule the world think you are, so don’t give them reasons to believe it.
and odds are good genAI is gonna give you corrupted info anyway – more and moreso as the machines cannibalize themselves.
just don’t do it. not even “I just do it for XYZ–” no. stop. there is no valid use of generative AI, and even using it for memes or lolz feeds the system and directly feeds the pockets of the people who want to replace you anyway.
Rage reblogging this. Yesterday i got into an argument with one of my college friends who is using chatGPT to do all her work. We’re psychology students. The whole group chat laughed my arguments off as if they didn’t matter because “she’s an artist, of course she’s anti-AI” and i had to deal with it. This is a warning. If your therapist graduated in 2023/2024, ask about their opinions on chatGPT. They might lie to you if you ask “did you use it to graduate” directly, but try to make jokes about it and play it cool. If they’re into it, DROP OFF. FIND A NEW ONE. Do not trust your brain to someone who didn’t bother to use theirs.
ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself
Yep. This is terrifying. I’ve caught nursing majors, engineering majors, architecture majors relying on ChatGPT to do their homework. These are people who need to know their field well to ensure people don’t die and they’re letting a glorified algorithm cheat them through school. It’s so dangerous
hey. hi. I work in academia. and there are a lot of student-age folks on this site.
don’t do this. don’t use genAI. even if your professors give you permission. even if they ask for it or suggest it. if they do anything short of directly requiring it (and I weep, because I’ve already seen assignments that require it) don’t touch that crap. if they do require it, stick it to them. be as maliciously compliant as possible. be a nightmare.
I know it might sound easier right now – just plug in your assignment and get the answers. you don’t care about this class anyway, it’s not for your major, you don’t see the value of the assignment.
but for your own sake, for the sake of your education and mind, and for the sake of the future world we want to have: learn the stuff. you are not as stupid as the corporate bizzaro kings who want to rule the world think you are, so don’t give them reasons to believe it.
and odds are good genAI is gonna give you corrupted info anyway – more and moreso as the machines cannibalize themselves.
just don’t do it. not even “I just do it for XYZ–” no. stop. there is no valid use of generative AI, and even using it for memes or lolz feeds the system and directly feeds the pockets of the people who want to replace you anyway.
Rage reblogging this. Yesterday i got into an argument with one of my college friends who is using chatGPT to do all her work. We’re psychology students. The whole group chat laughed my arguments off as if they didn’t matter because “she’s an artist, of course she’s anti-AI” and i had to deal with it. This is a warning. If your therapist graduated in 2023/2024, ask about their opinions on chatGPT. They might lie to you if you ask “did you use it to graduate” directly, but try to make jokes about it and play it cool. If they’re into it, DROP OFF. FIND A NEW ONE. Do not trust your brain to someone who didn’t bother to use theirs.
okay so i'm looking for another project and i'm lacking some creative inspiration so here goes.... whatever organism BLAST says my ask is, i will try and make out of clay!!! hopefully no super thin parts or really tall but if that's what the BLAST gods deem appropriate, oh well.
ALSO i love this blog so much !!!! thank you for sparking joy on this hellsite <333333
@hellsitegenetics sorry it took so long !! but here he is, i hope you enjoy!
also sorry in advance for the poor photo quality lmao, i know literally nothing about photography and was using my sisters phone as a torch just so you could see him 😭
my new favourite way to fuck with my coworkers is by responding to any minor injuries they get by asking them if the offending object bit them. burned by a hot drink? aw, did it bite you? cut your hand on a sharp edge? oh no, did it bite you? bumped into a table and bruised their shins? guess you got bitten. they know to expect it now but it still gets them every time.
