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Lmao how is this real, "the ambient sounds of the world were wrong, sir"

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Also to note, because of desegregation, I lived in a city where black kids were bussed into predominantly white neighborhoods, sometimes riding the bus for an hour each way. Because of the distance and the legal requirement to meet certain racial quotas, a school bus system was important to have.

But yes, the buses are shit. I HATED them. Sometimes they'd cram us in 3 to a seat, and God forbid you get stuck over the wheel because you literally have nowhere to put your feet. You'd occasionally find chewing gum stuck under the windows and sometimes people wrote on the seats in pen. They don't have air conditioning either, so if you wear shorts when it's hot, your sweaty thighs stick to the cheap vinyl seats and hurt like hell when you pull them off. And they make you jump out the back at least once a year for a fire drill, and it's a fucking high jump. It terrified me. I would actually sit down on the edge and hop off. The fact that foreigners evidently look fondly on these buses is hysterical to me. Like, I'm in my 40's and I'm still mildly traumatized by them.

I wonder: Do Americans know about american school buses? Not their existence in general, but how they're seen overseas.

Over here, they're one of the symbols of America, on par with the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the Eagle, and well ahead of any chain restaurant you can name. People won't know any US states, but they will know these vehicles.

The thing is, here in Germany, we don't have dedicated school buses. The general idea is that kids go to school on their own. When that's not practical, they're expected to use (and given free tickets for) public transit. Public transit is designed around this requirement; there are many places where there is a bus, and anyone can get on it, but the route and timetable really only makes sense for school children. In case a dedicated school bus is really needed, that's generally subcontracted out, and the lines either use something like a Sprinter Van for smaller routes, or a normal city or interurban bus (often a used one that's a bit older). School trips are normal public transit, or a rented bus, typically a coach or regional bus.

It's not a perfect system, in the past couple of years there's been an epidemic of people bringing their kids to school in their cars instead of letting them walk, which is less than ideal. It is what it is. But building a dedicated network of public transit lines only for students, and building dedicated vehicles only for that, has never occurred to anyone here.

Of course we know about these buses, from movies and such, but they're as foreign here as cacti or pick-up trucks (actually we're seeing more and more of these here) or yellow cabs (all europeans will assume all cabs in the US are yellow until they actually visit).

You do see these buses here at times, because people still generally like the idea of the US, even if they have a lot of issues with a lot of details, and so folks bring them over, along with stretch limos and stuff (also not really a thing here). And of course, if someone goes to all that trouble, they don't do it to haul school kids, they rent it out for city tours or as a party bus or whatever.

So you see these yellow things as a symbol of faraway places, scenic vistas, some vague undefined idea of freedom that doesn't necessarily hold up to any contact with reality, and it's just a huge part of the whole US aesthetic.

And then you go to a student exchange with the US, and you finally get the chance: You yourself get to ride in one of these iconic chrome yellow buses! It looks just like in the movies! You get in, you drive in them a little…

…and you realise they're shit. Just the worst buses in the western world. Terrible suspension. Uncomfortable seats with weirdly high backs (so they don't have to put seatbelts in, they just restrict how far kids can fly in an accident). Everything made out of the cheapest materials. Turns out the reason why the US uses school buses like that instead of normal modern city buses, which the US has, is to save money and because they just hate kids.

And then it hits you why US Americans say "as American as apple pie", a dish that is made and enjoyed literally anywhere in the world, instead of "as American as yellow school buses". Of course the Americans already knew all this. They got tortured by these things forever. It would never occur to them to see this as a symbol of America, it's just a normal part of life for them. It's a symbol of school and school life and sometimes normalcy, and tells us that these actors getting out of it are supposed to be teenagers, nothing more.

But most people in Europe have, of course, never ridden on these buses. So when they see them in movies and TV, that's a giant big yellow signifier that we're not in Hessen or Wallonia or wherever anymore. A symbol of a different world, one that may be at most a once-in-a-lifetime-experience for most people, just like a picture of a tropical beach, Incan Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or Hildesheim (there's no reason to go there twice). And I think Americans don't know that, and that's fascinating.

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I think the success of the ten minute version of "All Too Well" encouraged her to edit less, so this is kinda the Swifties fault too. She's a people pleaser and this is what she thought you wanted.

Back in the 90's, you released an album and then trickled out extra tracks as b-sides to singles. Tori Amos released a whole album worth of b-sides for each of her first four albums, but she did it slowly. That might have been a more effective strategy than dumping 31 songs at once, but I think the streaming economy encourages that approach, unfortunately.

Fun project for writers: figure out what Taylor should have edited. What songs weren't album ready? Which lyrics should have been cut or polished? We can call the result TTPD: The Editor's Cut.

quite possibly my favorite pitchfork review ever…. the whole thing is good go read

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I didn't realize ChatGPT usage was already so rampent. If I were a teacher, I'd be tempted to set up some sort of bounty system and reward informers with extra credit, but that might be a bit too Big Brother.

it's so fucking frustrating to be in college and know everyone uses chatgpt and to be tempted by it constantly while also knowing intellectually that it doesn't work and it's a bad idea. like, i hang out in the library a lot, and i see people using chatgpt on assignments almost every day. and i know it isn't a good way to learn, because it's not really "artificial intelligence" so much as it is an auto text generator. and it gives you wrong information or badly worded sentences all the time. but every week i stare down assignments i don't want to do and i think man. if only i could type this prompt into a text generator and have it done in 10 minutes flat. and i know it wouldn't work. it wouldn't synthesize information from the text the way professors want, it wouldn't know how to answer questions, it just spits out vaguely related words for a couple paragraphs. but knowing my classmates get their work done in 10 minutes flat with it while i fight every ounce of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in my body is infuriating.

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It would be nice if my grandparents were still alive for many reasons, but a new one is that I would have loved to see Grandpa's reaction when I called him a farmer's husband, LOL! And it's true too. Grandma did a ton of work on that farm. The vegetable garden was HUGE, she sold eggs off the front porch, and kitchen duty was insane.

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I'm sad there won't be a movie, but I'm relieved they finally admitted it. Sounds like there were creative differences, and when commerce meets art, sometimes good things get squashed. At least we still have a beautiful show to watch as many times as we want!

though the movie might be cancelled, yuri on ice will live forever in our hearts. thank you yoi fandom, it's been real ♡

#yuri on ice #yoi #ice adolescence

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>> Maybe hope looks like a ring around a blackened sun

Always read the tags because sometimes the best lines are there.

You know, the solar eclipse is bringing out something in humanity that I always love to see. Humans making a big deal out of something we can't change, celebrating and laying picknicks out to see a giant rock pass in front of our light source, passing around special glasses so we can all observe the sky being different for a few hours together...

The cuteness of it all, the child-like wonder of it all, the feeling so small of it all...

The world isn't perfect but humans try their best to enjoy what we can when we can.

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Solar eclipse shadows

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Don’t forget we invade the Fire Nation today

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Wow, this really changes the meaning of that Coldplay song.

Also, I have studied color theory and I'm amazed I never learned this before.

rb this with ur opinion on this shade of pink:

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Happy March 32nd!

COMMUNITY | “The Science of Illusion”

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Are video fanfics a thing? If not, maybe they should be. It'd be like telling stories around a fire. But we'd need a way to hide our true identities. AO3 should get on this.

New idea: instead of writing the fic, you come over to my house and I tell you the entire plot while I pace my tiny kitchen. There’s a cup of tea, warm in your hands. The words don’t stop and the affection never leaves your expression.

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Ernie Bushmiller kind of predicted the Internet in this early 1950's Fritzi Ritz comic

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#if drug dealers start adopting a bunch of cats this will be why #if the drug dog alerts on them you can blame species prejudice

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love how the moment ao3 goes down we all start acting like housewives waiting for their husbands to come back from war

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I still have an old denial letter if anyone doubts this. Thankfully, my state had a high-risk insurance pool, but in order to qualify for it I needed a denial letter, so I had to go through this farce of applying for insurance I knew I wouldn't get, which seemed like a big waste of time for all of us. I had to fill out a ten page application listing my medical history whereas now you just have to fill out 2-3 pages and tell them if you smoke.

Oh, and women used to get charged more for insurance too. Almost twice as much sometimes, depending on age. Not exaggerating. For a while there I was buying six-month long short term policies to scrape by and they were more expensive because I'm female.

i think a big reason that I get frustrated with the "liberals have never made anybody's lives better" is that in the US it used to be legal for insurance companies to charge you more if you were sick or even just straight up deny you the ability to sign up for them if you already had a "pre-existing condition", and this was only stopped by the passage of the ACA during Obama's term. but a lot of people who talk about politics on here are too young to really be affected by that since they would have been on their parents insurance (which the ACA required insurers extend until you're 26). and this was all done via politicking and not blowing up insurance CEOs mansions or whatever.

I'm not saying that the ACA fixed insurance forever, god no. but "you can't deny someone insurance for being sick" is a massive change and people don't realize it!

Most adults want the law’s prohibition on insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions to stay. Two thirds (67%) of the public say that it is “very important” that this provision remain in place, including most Republicans (54%) However, only about 4 in 10 people (39%) are aware that that provision is part of the ACA.

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This comic was inspired by a post that I cannot find [redacted rant about how much tumblr's search function is the closest there is tho pure evil]. So you know, if anyone has that post hand it I will actually make you a silly litltle doodle.