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Wizard worm just emerged from a wizarding hole! Lucky you!!!✨🪱🪄🍀

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The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.

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France: hundreds of years with baguette -- DID NOT INVENT BANH MI

Vietnam: less than 100 years with baguette -- INVENTED BANH MI

ANOTHER WIN FOR VIETNAM‼️‼️‼️‼️

🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳🇻🇳

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I had always presumed a wish to prevent Mr. Bennett from having to decline Mr. Darcy's money that paid off Wickham, as a matter of pride (heh) and honor. I believe Mr. Bennett even hints at this when Elizabeth informed him of Darcy's actions. I think he had enough familiarity with Mr. Gardiner (and they were on more even "financial footing" as well as "propriety footing") that they could discuss the matter without it seeming like charity.

Something I just caught on my last re-listen to Pride and Prejudice: in Mrs. Gardiner’s letter, it’s brought up that Mr. Darcy deliberately avoids Mr. Bennet while in London.

“… Mr. Darcy’s next step was to make your uncle acquainted with it, and he first called in Gracechurch-street the evening before I came home. But Mr. Gardiner could not be seen, and Mr. Darcy found, on farther inquiry, that your father was still with him, but would quit town the next morning. He did not judge your father to be a person whom he could so properly consult as your uncle, and therefore readily postponed seeing him, till after the departure of the former.” (Chapter 52, emphasis mine)

This is not remarked on further in the text; Darcy doesn’t bring it up later and Elizabeth is more concerned with his rescuing Lydia than the fact that her father could have been spared a few days’ grief. This decision by Darcy, which I think must be the side effect of Austen’s careful timing of events (Austen gives so little detail in general in P&P that the constant notation of the passage of time is quite noticeable to me), is a rather dramatic demonstration of Darcy’s relationship with Elizabeth’s family, made more significant by the fact that Elizabeth is not directly witnessing it, but it’s left almost entirely unaddressed within text, left to the reader to figure out what it means. But I don’t know what it means! Here’s my propositions for why Darcy does this, in no particular order:

A) Darcy does not think Mr. Bennet is the proper person to consult because of the delicacy of the situation. He assumes that Mr. Bennet, due to fatherly affection for Lydia, would not be able to calmly and rationally deal with Wickham, but that Mr. Gardiner, as an uncle, would.

B) The same as above, but instead of fatherly affection, he thinks Mr. Bennet might act rashly or inappropriately as an aspect of his character. This is an assessment of Mr. Bennet’s character, but does not necessarily mean that Darcy thinks poorly of him.

C) Darcy does not think Mr. Bennet is the proper person to consult because they need to discuss money. He assumes that Mr. Bennet’s finances and/or attitudes surrounding money would hinder either Lydia’s settlement or the settling of Wickham’s debts and the purchase of his commission.

D) Darcy has had limited contact with Mr. Bennet and is simply uncomfortable with discussing things with him because they are only nominally acquainted; by contrast, he has had several conversations with Mr. Gardiner and likes him. The issue is him simply not knowing Mr. Bennet, rather than him knowing him well enough to think badly of him.

E) Darcy waits until Mr. Bennet has gone home out of a sense of protecting him/the need for him at Longbourn/not wishing to delay his journey.

F) Darcy already intends to hide everything from Elizabeth and believes that this will be impossible if he involves Mr. Bennet/he trusts Mr. Gardiner’s discretion.

G) Somehow, all of this relates to the fact that it’s Mr. Gardiner’s house. And this overrides the fact that this is Mr. Bennet’s daughter????

H) Darcy thinks of Mr. Gardiner as his friend and as a useful relative of Elizabeth, but Mr. Bennet he holds in less esteem. Both a bias for Mr. Gardiner AND one against Mr. Bennet.

I) He doesn’t want to have to explain himself to Mr. Bennet. He knows his actions will prompt speculation, knows that Mr. Gardiner already suspects something re: feelings for Lizzie so that ship has sailed, and he doesn’t need Elizabeth’s DAD poking his nose in!! Because he’d sniff him out.

I am very interested to know what people think!

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Please forgive me for ranting, but...I am so tired of AI. Just so tired. I don't want Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini, or Meta AI, or whatever other energy-sucking, water-wasting, mediocrity-spewing LLM is currently being thrust upon me. I just want to be left alone to create in peace.

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feel like psych deserves more credit for manifesting guest stars from almost every single property it referenced. i know plenty of shows have pop culture relevant guest stars but none of them make references that are so very specific and none of them get 99% of their references to actually show up. like psych will throw out a name exclusively for the bit and then an unpredictable number of episodes/seasons later that person will literally show up as murderer/victim/random extended family member of the week with no comment. george takei. william shatner. cybill shepherd from moonlighting. almost every single actor from the breakfast club (one of them recurring!). biff and doc brown from back to the future. dr frankenfurter himself. literally carey elwes. john cena??? john rhys davies. half the cast of twin peaks. the original "come on son" guy. alan ruck. michael rooker. both leads from she's all that. winston from ghostbusters. bud's mom from the cosby show. curt smith from tears for fears (who also sang live with them at an event, like, twice). they mentioned billy zane and val kilmer so many times per season that through sheer willpower they got billy zane and val kilmer to both show up in their series finale. those guys committed to their bits so hard that they ended their show with one of the most diversified and stacked cameo rosters in tv & thats honestly so funny and iconic of them

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how it feels to stop tossing and turning and get up to piss

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they went off with this

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I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.

My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813

*electric guitar riff*

And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like

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I'm pissed they got away with calling it a "hallucination" when their dumb computer thing says wrong information. I don't think they should get to have that.

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i. there's this video of a guy dancing on his tiptoes. i will begrudgingly admit the song is kind of catchy actually. i don't think it's the worst song i've ever heard. he seems passionate about it. but it is embarrassing, how he's dancing.

ii. you know where this story is going, unfortunately, and so do i.

iii. three weeks ago i had to drag half a dead rabbit out of my dog's mouth. i was just recently discussing how cruel things feel lately. that the way the world is shifting feels mean. three days ago, a random woman rolled down her window to snap at me because she missed her turn. this is now routine.

iv. 11 years ago in october, i made a post about how we shouldn't make fun of people for doing brave, vulnerable things. it has over 400k notes. people - at the time - seemed to generally agree with me. we have all felt shy and insecure when we share an intimate part of ourselves. we have heard someone at a concert say "that's fucking embarrassing" and said to ourselves - oh, this person is unsafe to be vulnerable in front of. we have said i can't act like that in public. we have left our art and passion in the dark. i think there will never be enough graveyard space for the art we have killed because what if others shame me for it.

v. the thing i was bullied for in high school was because i was a "predatory lesbian." a popular girl i'd literally never spoken to just decided she didn't like me and announced i was "stalking" her. to this day i have no idea what motivated this - i think i was just shy and poor and awkward and ugly. the perfect target. what they don't really ever show in movies is how quickly it moves, how suddenly strange people in the hallways are attacking you about it. they also don't show you that the bullies get this strange ... glee out of it. like, it's fun for them. it's enrichment. everyone else is in on the joke. suck it up, kid.

vi. so far, from what i have seen, creators that stand up for the musician all seem to have the same story: when i asked why we're bullying a random guy, people actually got mad that i asked. i've had similar things happen to me when i ask for us to be less comfortable with our anonymous cruelty. when an internet stranger says "be kind, it saves lives" - people find it funny to say fuck you i hope everyone kills themselves. pages and pages of people saying the same bullshit. sitting in their little caves, eating their own humor. it's just genuinely exhausting. the natural endpoint of "cringe culture" is that even kindness is cringe-worthy.

vii. loneliness is an epidemic. but where are you going to make your community? call your representative. go back to bed about it.

viii. due to how i was raised, i am always confused by cruelty. i understand the american isolationist belief "i can do whatever i want" - sure. but why wouldn't you want to be kind? i have lived too many bad things. i cannot be the epicenter of someone else's bad dream.

ix. it's just that if we were going to bully someone relentlessly, why is it never the healthcare CEOs. why isn't it the fascists. why isn't it, like, someone who you could at least argue "deserves" it. why is it always just some guy in socks singing a pretty mid song? or a person that doesn't look like you, just, like existing.

x. it's just that i think people enjoy doing it. they want to do it because they get some kind of masturbatory release from it - like a shrug or a splinter, they all seem to say the same thing - come on, it's funny.

xi. the world is sometimes beautiful, and sometimes you make something. the world is sometimes terrible, and you are worried they won't accept what your hands can wring. you open the instagram comments and they're still saying all sorts of shit to just - like - a normal guy. and some part of you thinks: if that was me. good lord. if that was me i'd -

xii. somewhere there is a graveyard. someone is already burying their hopes and dreams.

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RYAN GOSLING "I'm Just Ken" wins Best Original Song at the 29th Annual Critics' Choice Awards (January 14, 2024)