The Helsinki Science Fiction Society has announced the winner of the 2025 Tähtifantasia Award, given for the best fantasy book published in Finnish during the previous year. The English version of the award citation says: Anna In the Tombs of the … Continue reading →
Baen Books announced this year’s finalists for the 2025 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award on July 9. The finalists for the 2025 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award are: First launched in 2014, the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award has sought to celebrate original fantasy short … Continue reading →
We will literally never progress past biphobia until people realize that bisexuals in het relationships are still having a queer experience by virtue of being bisexual, we do not magically oscillate between gay enough and too straight. I’m going to maul someone to death.
I work for a Department of Defense contractor, have a clearance, and once had a two-drawer safe in my office, for storing classified documents. Our security department audited the safe once when I wasn’t around, and left a violation notice – about the (clean) gym clothes and sneakers I stashed in there. Because they were unclassified.
2. The suppository
I get scolded for telling my ex-supervisor in private that the word she meant to use was “depository” and when she told me to create a “suppository” for everyone to use, it didn’t mean what she thought it meant. Oh boy. She went off the deep end. Screamed at me that she knew what she said and she said what she meant, and she didn’t need someone like me correcting her.
She continued to tell people I was creating a “suppository” for everyone to use for another seven weeks.
3. The unprofessional pen choices
I had a performance review where the only area for feedback I was given was that my pen choices (in a software job) were insufficiently professional. In the intervening decades I’ve always tried to have the most unprofessional pen choices possible to live up to that. #scented #glitter #scentedglitter
4. The scrunchies
I have a coworker who will NOT let it go that I don’t match colored hair scrunchies to my outfit. I bought a pack of six scrunchies a while ago, and with a fairly limited color selection I obviously can’t match anything exactly, so I decided to go for completely opposite colors of scrunchies to my shirts to make it a ~creative choice~ instead. She simply will not stop commenting on it in annoyance! She tried to pull me aside for a lecture about how “distracting” it was. She even tried to go to management about it, to which she was told to let it go (she hasn’t).
Obviously, with all the drama surrounding it I mismatch the scrunchies even harder now.
5. The arm movement
I used to work in an adult vocational school for a mother and daughter team who were the most insane types of micromanagers. One day, I was called into the office to watch a recording of one of my lectures from earlier in the week, where I was scolded for where I stood (behind the lectern where my textbook was, and occasionally walking down the middle aisle) and how much I moved my arms. One thought my arm/hand movements were “too much and distracting,” while the other one thought I was too stiff and wooden and needed to move my arms/hands more to “add more visual interest for the students.”
They got so distracted by this argument that they dismissed me and told me that would let me know their decision on appropriate movements in and around the classroom.
6. The Italian baked goods
I spent a week in Italy on vacation, and brought back some Italian baked goods. I brought them to Monday’s staff meeting. My boss scolded me for bringing them in, as they’d be too crunchy and a distraction during the meeting. What WAS I thinking! I withdrew my contribution and spent the next few days enjoying them all myself at my desk.
7. The wedding
I was scolded for not attending my coworker’s wedding. I was not invited to said wedding.
8. The coffee mug
I used my own ceramic coffee mug that I brought from home instead of the disposable paper cups the office supplied. My boss told me this was disrespectful to leadership who was generously paying for the paper cups. She also did not like that I drank my coffee black and was “rejecting” the creamer and sugar that I guess I was also supposed to be grateful for.
9. The geese
I’m an academic librarian and have spent most of my career in library management. At one institution, I supervised our branch libraries and facilities, some of which were off-campus. The largest off-campus facility had a large parking lot with a grassy drainage ditch along the road it was on and a few grassy areas around the light poles. Every spring, a pair of Canada geese would nest somewhere in the parking lot, usually in one of the grassy areas, and stay until their goslings were old enough to fly.
The first spring I was there, the geese build their nest right next to the front door of the building. One parent would tend the eggs while the other one stood guard and charged at anyone who got too close. Canada geese are huge and very aggressive when they’re nesting, plus they hiss like cobras; in other words, terrifying up close. Although the staff put up a big sign warning people about the geese and gave them as wide a berth as they could, getting into the building became an adventure. In some ways, the situation was hilarious; once you got past the goose and into the lobby, the bird would stand in front of the door and glare at you. All of the staff had goose stories and shared tips for getting around them without getting attacked.
I had regular meetings in the building with the staff, one of which happened right after the geese nested. When I got back to campus, my boss asked how things were going at that facility. I said half-jokingly, “We’ve got goose problems.” My boss proceeded to lecture me for a good 10 minutes on how wonderful geese are, how he grew up with geese (presumably on a farm but who knows?), how they would never hurt anyone, how no one better do anything to harm the geese, and on and on. I stopped trying to clarify myself and just stood there dumbfounded. If getting attacked by a giant hissing goose every time you go to the library isn’t a problem, what is?
10. The deadline meeter
I was dinged on a performance review for … completing projects by their deadline. I was told I should always be turning in projects ahead of their deadlines. I said I thought we might have a difference of understanding about the point of a deadline and asked how far ahead of the deadline would be acceptable (so that I could mentally create new ones). She told me she just went by feel.
That was only one of many problems I had with this manager, who was later let go as part of a two person layoff. I inherited her office and her files and of course read my file with great interest. In the back of the folder, she had taped a plain white envelope, and inside the envelope was a list of all the times I had ever missed work with my stated reasons in quotation marks like I’d made them all up. Easily verifiable stuff like “car ‘hit a deer’ and needs to be ‘inspected for safety.’”
Note: I regularly worked 60-80 hour weeks in this job and had four weeks of leave time paid out when I eventually left, so I think it’s fair to say I did not have an absentee problem.
11. The aggressive greeter
I got written up for saying “hi” too aggressively.
12. The risk manager
I was scolded for being a “no person” instead of a “yes person.” My job title literally had “risk manager” in it, at an organization that served children doing potentially risky activities.
I’m sure it’s annoying to have a no person around if you’re a yes person, but my job was to be the no person *so everyone else could be yes people* and no one would die.
13. The risky use of Excel
Using Excel to work out averages, minimum, and maximum values from a spreadsheet got me growled at publicly by a former manager.
Apparently Excel is not reliable (!) and using a calculator is more accurate. I had thousands of data points from testing an oven so the probability of an error was high whereas Excel would be accurate. 100% accurate.
So I had to spend three days pretending to use a calculator to satisfy this manager. I worked from home and spent one day in the cinema instead.
14. The pencil sharpener
I bought a pack of pencils for my kids and brought them to work to sharpen them using the electric sharpener. My coworker kept saying, “You’re using the company’s pencil sharpener to sharpen your own pencils?!?” She was in shock!
15. The headline
When I was a young newspaper reporter for a very small daily, I regularly walked through the back shop where pages were pasted up to get to the break room. One day, I saw a front page being built by the printers that had a six-column headline about a local official who evaded a mugging: “Water Board president beats off attackers.” I laughed and then thought to mention to the city editor that we’d probably sell out the edition, although not for the reasons he might think. He grudgingly re-wrote the headline, but at my six-month review, reprimanded me for having a dirty mind.
….this is one of those takes I didn’t know existed passing by me like the Acela while I stand on the station platform.
Someone PLEASE tell me how antinatalism harms adults. I gotta hear this nonsense.
they want children → are told that the world is burning → they consider this to be shaming someone for their natural, beautiful desire to share their love
“Someone expressed an emotion other than total and unconditional support to me; I am being deeply oppressed and need to start a movement about it.” kinda thing?
…………………………………… Sorry i thought i might have something constructive to say here but i think I’m baffled. Never mind that having a kid is still expected and pushed on people (women) in 99% of society. Baffling. Baffling.
Srsly. I started saying that I wasn’t going to have children when I was 13. I was not believed by anyone - ANYONE - until after I was 30. Because ‘kids just happen’ and 'you’ll want them once you meet the right man’ etc etc.
I’m gonna be 42 next month, and I have had zero babies.
I still cannot believe I got the chance to work on such an incredibly special show 🥹 Lemme rant for a sec:
There’s so much more to The Owl House than just Lumity, but watching these girlfriends fall in love in canon really touched my life and the lives of so many queer kids around the world. I was so honored to play a small part in Luz’s coming out story and her relationship with Amity.
I’ve visited middle schools, high schools, and colleges around the US where I spoke to classrooms about my job on TOH, and so many kids told me how much this show meant to them as young queers, artists, and neurodivergent weirdos. We need to be supporting those kids and their futures now more than ever. Nobody can diminish your light!
Queer rights are human rights. Joy and Pride is resistance. Expression and Nonconformity are threats to power. So is Humor, and Art, and Love, and Community— all precious as they are vital, especially in times like these.
Trans rights are human rights— the right to privacy, autonomy, and deciding what’s best for our bodies is between us and our doctors, not our governments. Anti-trans laws reflect fascist ideals, the lavender scare, and racist segregation throughout history.
Immigrant Rights are human rights— the rights to travel, seek asylum, build a life for yourself, share your culture with others. Immigrants are a disruption to an ethnostate.
Heroes and Villains from The Owl House, though fictional, represent and embody these very real concepts from our world. And that’s just part of the reason why this show genuinely resonates with me and so many people.
Ok enough rambling from me… please stay safe out there
contrary to popular belief not everyone has an innate sense of internal gender or care to have one or seek a name for it, some people go their whole lives without questioning their occupation in one of two gender roles, but for some people, if pressed, they don’t feel that internal sense of ‘i am a woman’ or ‘i am a man’, and in that case i feel the switch over to transgender vs cisgender relies on active identification of a gender other than the one they were assigned. if someone’s like ‘idk dude I just work here’ then that’s valid
A portion of people in the notes are like ‘but that makes you trans. That’s called being agender’ and another portion of people are going ‘this is how the majority of cis ppl feel and it’s NOT agender’ and personally I feel like both of them are missing the point here. Yes a lot of people identify as agender because of this feeling. Yes a lot of people with this same feeling still identify as cis. These are not mutually exclusive experiences and it doesn’t mean the agender people are secretly cis or the cis people are secretly agender. It just means they have very similar experiences of gender that they choose to conceptualize and label differently, and neither of them are mistaken or wrong to do so.
if you don’t want people watching you, filming you and following you, you shouldn’t become a member of law enforcement. lol. ICE agents seething and not coping at all with the slightest amount of public pressure. if you’re that private, maybe you should stay at home. like the immigrants you’re harassing would like to do.
in today’s society, security cameras and license plate readers track your every move. but god forbid a 38 year old mother of 3 drinking an iced coffee is filming you make this ‘arrest’ from 6 feet away. that’s soooo scary. what an invasion of your privacy.
Murderbot is probably the most embarrassing hyperfixation to have because oh really? You’re hyperfixated on the ‘hyperfixates on media to avoid the real world stress and anxiety’ media? Is it. Is it to avoid your real world stress and anxiety, perhaps??
A few years ago while trying to find ways to commit suicide as painlessly as possible, I came across a PDF of Dr. Paul Quinnett’s The Forever Decision. Thinking it might go into actual methods of suicide (I read an article once that actually did that and was trying to find it again) I started to read it, and I think I only got about two pages in before I was crying too much to actually see the words.
I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I’m feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.
All the book really does is [I’m pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I’ve read no more than 5 pages] “discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help.”
But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I’m compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it’s saved my life at least a few times now.
It’s intentionally legal to copy and redistribute this book to keep it as accessible as possible, and it’s very easy to find, but here’s a link for it anyways.
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