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this post really the me, because my experience here in the UK is that Terry Pratchett is incredibly easy to find. I have a strong memory of checking my local charity shops the day after trump's (first) election, desperate for some Pratchett as a comfort read and knowing I'd almost certainly find something, and coming away with monstrous regiment, jingo and small gods.

I think they're a little less common now than in their heyday, but for me the real joy of Pratchett and second hand shops is how often you'll see them there, waiting like an old friend, ready to be read again 💛

One of my favorite things about Terry Pratchett's books is their unique relationship with used bookstores. Particularly because they are difficult to find, for three reasons. The first reason is that they aren't there. Books in used bookstores were once owned by other people, people who decided to let that book go in the hopes that it will find someone new who will love it. It's very difficult to let go of a Terry Pratchett book. The second reason is that, if they make it into a store, they never stay there very long. They're usually purchased less than a few days after their arrival.

The third reason is my favorite: if they made it to the bookstore, and remained unnoticed, it's because the spine is worn. It's been read and loved so much it's almost unrecognizable from the spine. I've never found a used Terry Pratchett book without a cracked spine, and I love it. Cracked spines, stained pages, worn covers, these are the physical signs of love that we leave on our favorite books, and every Terry Pratchett book I've found in a used bookstore has been loved, dearly.

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You are now trapped in the last movie you watched with the last person you texted. How’s it going?

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The closest experience I've ever had to discovering "the vitamin" was buying a 100% wool outfit and wearing it in the winter.

Not only was I not freezing anymore, I was not sweating and overheating either. The horrible sensory nightmare of winter clothes disappeared.

In particular, I bought a pair of wool pants. They were a thrifted pair of fancy dress pants like you would wear at an important office job, and they were easily the most comfortable pair of winter-appropriate pants i'd ever worn. I wore them Every Single Day.

From that point on I realized a lot of my clothes were making me feel bad, and the common thread was polyester. Especially polyester blends.

It's a trap because the polyester clothes are the ones that always feel sooooo silky soft when they are in the store, whereas cotton, linen and wool can feel comparatively rough and scratchy. But when actually wearing them for hours throughout the day, it's the natural fibers that feel more comfortable.

Maybe the secret to sensory comfort is not about the presence of softness, but the absence of overloading sensations. Or maybe the sensory stress and agony is not triggered by texture of the fabric, but by how it breathes and regulates temperature.

Then there's the problem of clothing life span: polyester blends, no matter how soft they seem at first, become rough and scratchy and covered in hard, itchy pills after wearing them 10 or 20 times, whether or not they have been tumble-dried or even washed at all. (I tested it!) Linen and cotton become softer and more comfy the more you wear them, polyester but ESPECIALLY polyester blends become a constant stressor. Polyester blend t-shirts I used to love for their softness now feel bristly and irritating.

So now I'm trying to change my wardrobe to as many natural fibers as possible, and the more natural fiber clothes i have the more I realize that the plastic fibers stress me out. It's so easy to overheat or freeze in them and they're always degrading and becoming less comfortable and it sucks.

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Was just informed that "any sufficiently deep enthusiasm is indistinguishable from academic rigor" and hoo boy we are really in a crisis of anti-intellectualism.

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News from the side hustle! Follow The Tales Were True on Instagram for updates - it’s a super cool British Isles folklore inspired D&D adventure which comes with a whole pile of fun content. When Kim asked if I had any folkloric thoughts for subclasses I immediately had TOO MANY, but this one won out. Coming soon to a kickstarter near you!

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Another faux pulp sci-fi novel cover, but for the TV series this time around.

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anyway one of the things they don't tell you about vicar school is just how much time you will spend emotionally kneeling in front of your friends.

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the thing is I did use chatgpt once, early in, because one of my friends said it was useful for sorting information, so I tried it and like. honestly? it just isn't very good.

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A good rule of thumb for AI is "would you trust a trained pigeon to do this?"

"We trained a pigeon to recognise cancerous cell clusters and somehow they're really good at it" okay great, that's something that could plausibly be a thing.

"We trained a pigeon to recognise good CV:s and left it in charge of sorting through all our job applications" uh perhaps consider not doing that.

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"the 5th celebrity you have saved on your phone -" you and i live in vastly different worlds

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Obviously not expecting a (white) American site to gaf about today so lemme talk a bit more about Windrush Day and the Black British experience:

I feel like the Black British experience is constantly one of work and struggle. Our parents and grandparents lived through colonial and post colonial (using the term lightly) rule just to end up working and serving the imperial core, targeted by the same government that invited them here. A lot of the time its phrased as a choice but in reality what else could they have done? Ts and Cs apply bc for some West African Brits their parents were middle class back home but for me and others our families grew up in poverty in places still recovering from slavery and colonialism.

Britain whitewashes the history of Black immigrants, literally in the sense we're not taught our own history of Black people in Britain and metaphorically by applying British individualist myths; that as long as you work hard, don't complain about it and love Britain you can be British too. But it erases, ignores and distorts the truth that the British state used our community as nothing more than a labour force to rebuild after WWII and actively targeted Black British communities with police surveillance, brutality and systemic racism. All whilst denying it of course and turning their nose up at the very accusation. Very British.

Black British contributions, West African and West Indian to be more specific don't just apply in terms of work but in terms of shaping culture. 'Roadman' has become a meme and a caricature (including by some Americans on here ik u lot love 'chav') with barely any connection to its Black British roots, even when the term gets used as an insult to mainly Black working class men or used as a British version of 'thug'. The grime scene is undeniably a staple of Black Britain yet it is pathologised and judged, moral panics about Black people's violence and yet capitalised and profitted off of by non Black Brits as an aesthetic. Everybody wants the tracksuits, the tunes and the terminology innit. To be 'road' means to be Black British yet when its time to talk culture, nobody wants to credit it us. All of a sudden its 'London culture'.

But it isn't all doom and gloom. There's so much history and culture here in our spaces. I'd be lying if I said growing up where I did was easy. But it has shaped my outlook and made me and I'll carry that with me forever. Our grandparents and parents came here with so little and made so much out of nothing. And I'll always honour that. Justice for the Windrush generation.

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I'm trying to train my colleague to feel more confident in Excel

(I am, and I'm not tooting my own horn here, extremely advanced at Excel. my formulae often run through 20+ clauses and autocalculate the entire sheet from one manually entered item. I knew this would be a challenge for me to calibrate because I have a tendency to assume everything I can do well is easy because I have low self esteem, so I was ready to start at the basics - maybe a quick single-clause IF function or a SUMIF if we were feeling fancy)

so I sat down with her yesterday too work through a model sheet I built her, and quickly found she didn't know:

what an = was for

that you could do a basic addition function (=A1+B1), and this delighted and impressed her

that you could click and drag or copy a cell and the formula will recalculate based on its relative position (I started to explain that you can stop it doing that if you want by using a $ in the cell reference and she said no, please stop I think that's too much for me)

and I'm not saying this to shame her because she's not stupid or unwilling to learn, it just threw me because I don't remember ever not having a knowledge of the basics of Excel. Like over the last 8 years I've learnt a LOT and I was very much doing basic mathematical functions on it when I started office work, I know I learnt a lot (and also that I have an instinctive aptitude for the specific logic that Excel uses), but I've always known what Excel is for.

anyway we were talking today and come to find out that she just. did not cover Excel at all in IT at school (we're the same age, btw, this isn't a generational thing)

then I was talking to Sam and it slowly dawned that actually I did an additional short-course GCSE (Business And Communications Studies, which was basically IT for administrators) that was mandatory in my school, so I assumed it was a national core subject like Maths or English or Science. Turns out no, my school were just stuffing their GCSEs (I did 16 GCSEs)

and now I'm reeling cause I'm like OH. OH FUCK. IS THAT WHY EVERYONE'S MICROSOFT SKILLS ARE SO UNBELIEVABLY BASIC????? because I truly did think that everyone my kind of age did at least a few years of Microsoft Office type ICT training in high school.

let me know in the tags how old you are and what country you went to school

(also substitute Numbers/Google Sheets if you don't use Microsoft, we're just talking about any spreadsheet programme)

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desperately need more representation for gay people who Aren't Hot

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I took my little brother (autistic, mostly non verbal) out and he was using his voice keyboard to tell me something, and this little boy (maybe 4 or 5?) heard him and asked me "Is he a robot??" I tried to explain to him that no, he isn't a robot, he just communicates differently, but my darling brother was in the background max volume "I am robot I am robot I am robot I am robot"