If Someone Said "show Me The Cutest Animal I've Never Seen Before", What Would You Show Them?

My mother's first home was a refugee camp. Her mother was sold on a Nazi slave market.

I have dead relatives on Ukrainian battlefields. We can't get them back because russia has colonised the regions.

One relative was taken hostage by the bastard russians and tortured for 2.5 years.

The word "slave" actually means "Slavic person". The word "genocide" was invented in Lviv.

An Amnesty International guy chased my mother through a shopping mall, yelling at her that she was a "stupid white woman who wouldn't know what a refugee is".

Ukrainians aren't allowed to talk about the racism we get every single fucking day because we're "too white".

AU where...

Aang died with the air nomads.

The next two Avatars, from water and earth, live without ever knowing who they are.

Zuko still spoke out at the meeting, he still refused to fight his father in the Agni Kai.

Zuko was banished, and in his search to find the Avatar, earth bends.

He is the Avatar and doesn’t know what to do about it.

You know, that Mythbusters post legitimately changed my life. Before seeing it, I had exponentially more guilt and stress about not being able to sleep, which of course, further exacerbated my inability to sleep.

Now, every time I wake up about three am, knowing I have to get up at 6.45, instead of stressing and panicking about how my day is going to be sleep deprived and miserable, I just tell myself 'Time to activate Mythbusters Protocol' and lie there with my eyes closed safe in the knowledge that I am measurably reducing later feelings of exhaustion.

And when this happens, about 70% of the time the reduction of guilt and stress means I actually do fall back asleep, so all in all instead of getting only three or four hours sleep, I get five to six and a half.

Which y'know, major improvement in health and energy.

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

I already made a post how russian propaganda works and why they spread specific discourse.

Now here's a scheme how they usually operate:

Another way russian trolls work is this:

Create unpolitical group (about kittens, gardening, memes, local properties, etc) -> gain followers who are interested in the topic. Create a stable following of at least 100 people -> slowly start dropping political posts or memes to test the waters. Posts would be rare and far-between, and not particularly polarizing, but a strong enough topic to get a response (likes, comments, etc) -> as engagement in these posts rises (fuelled by a bunch of fake accounts supporting the narrative and creating an illusion of community and common worldview), they increase in numbers, gradually replacing the original intent of the group. This is where some people would leave, but those more easily swayed, loyal members, or those supporting the ideas will remain -> gradually change the tone of the posts from innocently questioning to blatant push narrative and accusations, radicalizing the general view -> finally, as the final form is revealed, those who still remain in the group will be persuaded and might begin sharing some of the posts on their personal pages, further spreading disinformation and propaganda.

How would it look like in terms of, for example, anti-Ukraine propaganda?

1. A cat-owner group is created. It contains articles about cat well-being, maybe some location-specific shelter information to make it look more natural, funny memes, etc - anything that would grab attention and would be boosted by algorithms.

2. As following rises, an article or two about horrible conditions of cats in Ukraine would appear. The headline might even raise some innocent-sounding questions that would encourage reactions and discussions.

3. Gradually cat-unrelated posts about Ukraine will appear, all mildly critical or questioning. Nothing too radical nor openly negative, but enough to plant some seeds of doubt, generate discourse, and thus get further boosted by algorithms.

4. Posts about cats would slowly lose engagement while political posts will slowly replace those about cats in numbers. All done gradually so very few would notice, as they would be busy engaging in discussions.

5. Posts would become more strongly worded against Ukraine. They would feature fake news or deliberately negative information to create an overall illusion that Ukraine = bad.

6. Those who remain after all this would at the very best start questioning if Ukraine really is the victim and good. No praising of russia would be featured - no need. All that's necessary is, at the very least, to make people believe that both sides are equally bad. At worst people would start genuinely supporting russia and attempt to spread that message to their friends and relatives to "open their eyes to truth".

Very simple yet very effective.

Din carrying Grogu properly

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

Loving the idea of earth cryptids/folklore monsters being real only the humans have no idea until after first contact.