#fail!

[ahedderick]

Foraging

Monday I picked dandelions and violets to experiment with flower-flavored syrups. It was time-consuming, but I just felt like trying something new. I have done violet jelly before, although the results were mediocre.

The first step after separating the petals from the greens was to pour boiling water over each kind and let them sit for a day. The violets had a greenish-blue extract by evening, and by morning it had settled into a deep blue. I tried adding a couple of drops of lemon juice, which shifted it to blue-purple. Violets have the same pigment, anthocyanin, as red cabbage, and it is pH sensitive. I am curious why my tap water (from a well) would have a pH of 9(ish), but I'll go ahead and blame limestone.

I cooked the dandelion first, adding sugar equal to the amount of liquid (1.25 cups). I cooked it for a while and then bottled it when it seemed like it had thickened up (the bubbles start to PLOP instead of 'pop', if that makes sense).

Here it is, compared with honey. The color is virtually the same!

Then I started with the violet. As I heated it, the color shifted BACK to greenish-blue. I added a little more lemon juice, and it ended up weirdly purple from some angles and blue from others, depending on how the light hit it. It's also DARK, too dark for me to photograph and show you much color. When it cooled down it a) turned a steely blue-grey and b) crystalized.

That. that is NOT what I was going for. It also doesn't really taste like anything. Just 'sweet'. Drat.

#farmblr #spring #spring flowers #foraging #foraged food #solarpunk #foragecore #flowers #dandelion #violet #FAIL!

[houseofbrat]

As someone who works in PR I am ASTONISHED at how bad Kensington Palace is at all of this. It’s the most interesting part of the whole thing for me. Well that, and how much it seemingly vindicates H&M and Harry in particular in what he’s said about the firm and the media’s role in protecting the Heir at all costs.

Yeah I work in PR for a public company and anytime we want to put something out we have to run it up the chain - we need legal and Investor relations and executive approvals.

Even if KP and BP had their individual PR teams, which makes sense, there should still be one main central PR office that everyone answers to that manages the entire royal families PR, makes sure schedules and press opportunities and STRATEGY AND MESSAGING all aligns, before running up the chain for final approvals. There’d be a social team and a crisis team and government relations team and a branding team and a general “talent rep” kind of team, all working in tandem to serve the overall strategy for the royal family.

The fact that there are so many cooks in so many different kitchens is why the royal family has had so many PR disasters honestly for decades now. They’re truly doing it all wrong. So many Worst Practices here, not Best Practices.

It really doesn't seem like there is an overall PR team. Just the separate entities

Yeah and that’s the problem IMO. They are a business that should be run like a business. They should have the individual departments I suggested, and even more, working in tandem.

The fact that there are so many separate entities with different agendas and priorities is a huge part of their problem IMO.

But Charles has been transparent for the most part!! And photographed repeatedly. It’s so bizarre when compared to KP, and feels passive aggressive to me to be honest lolol.

They’re really so so so bad at this 😭😭😭😭 but the British public and the media lets them get away with it 🙃🙃🙃

For heaven’s sake. If she’s recovering nicely, why resort to recycling old photos?

Other sources are making a pretty good case for the fact that it’s a November photo, taken after Catherine and the children visited the baby bank.

Does nobody, and I mean nobody, know how to do PR in that place anymore? Now it's pin all of this on just-recovering-from-abdominal-surgery Kate? Why not on William since they were so proud about how he was the one that took the photo? Somehow they keep making everything ten times worse.

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for a second that Kate personally edited that photo together in such a way that it had to be killed as inauthentic. The pulling of the photo is likely more about the refusal to provide metadata or the raw image for proof rather than silly Photoshop choices. That isn’t an issue of “mummy going wild on the computer,” it’s a larger organizational issue about trust, transparency, and KP’s overall poor approach to news orgs and the press lately.

Why is Kate taking the fall? Why is William such a lout to let an ill Kate put this on her own shoulders rather than admit KP made an error or say KP is going to reevaluate their practices and make a change?

Are college interns running Palace p.r.? Because I cannot understand how they're botching this so badly. If Kate couldn't/wouldn't pose for a legit photo, then just don't release anything. The Royals are basically dumping tankers of gas on the inferno by playing all these games. 

Sorry, am I going insane? After saying they wouldn’t respond to these conspiracy theories, they

a) responded by putting out a doctored image,

b) responded to the backlash of doctored image by claiming the woman recovering from a medical issue was playing around in Photoshop, and

c) responded to the backlash of editing claims by putting out an image where the person in the photo is supposed to be Kate but could LITERALLY BE ANYBODY.

NONE OF YOU ARE FINDING THIS WEIRD? NONE?!

"Kate's Back"

Well, it is indeed a picture of Kate's back

Apparently the main symptom of her mysterious medical condition is that any photo with her in it immediately becomes grainy, blurry, or with people's wrists trying to escape into a fifth dimension.

Good Lord, I haven't followed a disaster story this closely since Oceangate Titan and this one may be even worse. The narrative is out of control and the rules have gone out the window.

They already lost control of the narrative at this point. No matter what they do now, they will be scrutinized more than they've ever been before. And they seem grossly unprepared for it.

She’s not even facing camera, how is this supposed to help? This just feeds the conspiracy theorists! headdesk

It's becoming a PR nightmare that only Olivia Pope can rescue.

Maybe the better question is that people are concerned about Kate's welfare, and most WERE okay with waiting under the timeline KP initially offered that is she will likely return by or after Easter.

However KP has mismanaged the messaging, and with that concern grows over how weird some of the updates are. The article explains why this medical time out is turning into an absolute PR crisis. It isn't so much about Kates right to medical privacy (she definitely deserves that )

It now is about institutional reliability, the heir William's arguably erratic or unusual behavior or his courtiers' comments, the mess with the all kill photoshopped/Frankensteined photo (which has never happened before with a palace released photo), the very different approaches from BP vs KP, etc etc. It's become bigger than Kate sad to say.

And ultimately now people are worried for her, in a way they wouldn't have been, because things have become so irregular and bungled. So the urgency to make sure she is safe and okay has become louder and more insistent.

“CNN is now reviewing all handout photos previously provided by Kensington Palace.”

“In editorial photography, photojournalists and editors commonly adjust a photograph’s exposure or color balance in order to more accurately reflect the scene. Most news organizations, including CNN, regard it as unacceptable to move, change or manipulate the pixels of an image. To do so would alter the reality of the situation the image is intended to document.”

“In the past, the family’s amateur photographs have been well received when posted on social media. But on this occasion, this photo was also released to media organizations as a handout and the palace wasn’t transparent about the fact it had been adjusted.

That will have damaged the trust between the palace and media organizations – many of which, like CNN, will likely be assessing all royal handouts. The editing storm has undermined the existing relationship and when public interest over any possible cover up escalates, as it has done recently, many news outlets will now have take that speculation more seriously.”

#my gif #reddit #PR fail #fail! #kensington palace #palace officials #William The Prince of OWN GOALS #William The Weak #William The Terrible #prince william #William The Prince of Wales #scandal! #ESCANDALO!!! #kate middleton #Catherine The Princess of Wales #british royal family #fleet street #media

[motherofbulldogs]

More ham handed PR attempts by KP that’s going over like a lead balloon. Start around 11:50.

#british royal family #sky news #press preview #gillian joseph #stephen bush #kate andrews #kensington palace #pr fail #fail! #prince william #kate middleton #prince of wales #princess of wales #Youtube

[emo-and-emo-adjacent]

Bury me in some fashion In something fashionable With dirt and words that Sound like a song we used to know But never wrote

#fail! #rainbow kitten surprise #seven #rks #folk #alternative #have some tunes #have some lyrics #Spotify

[synthwife]

dude lmao

#FAIL!

[kelprot-old]

i get that tumblr is doing the constant “innovation” shit for a reason but it is beyond me why they decided to copy the twitter layout. it’s a different site; they have different priorities, the ui was designed For Twitter’s Purposes as a social media entity. even ignoring how much people on here despise twitter, why would blatantly stealing ANY site’s ui even work.

#you’re conflating two very similar UI designs with different purposes #fail!

[amygdalae]

YOU

#acorn enjoyer caught on film! #saw this guy start eating an acorn and then accidentally drop it on the ground #FAIL!

[f1-obsessed333]

I can’t believe the weekend is over and we didn’t even get Antonio Giovinazzi walking on the fake water.

#FAIL! #0/10 #does not pass the vibe check #f1 #antonio giovinazzi #miami gp 2022

[bunnyseahorse-blog]

personal rant/also why I haven’t updated yet..

I went to a bar like two Saturdays ago. People were smoking, so when my throat hurt the next day I was like, I’m sure that’s why. Then I got a sinus headache, which I’m like cool, I have a sinus infection, I get those fairly often and they usually sort themselves out, if not I’ll go to the doc and get antibiotics.

Then I get like a really gross cough. and I’m like.... do people cough this badly with a sinus infection? So I call my Doc last Friday and am like “I’ve been sick almost a week or about that, can I come in?

“No appointments, but if you can do an online appointment Monday we have that.” So I’m like, how are you going to look inside my nose and hear my breathing if I’m online, but I take it because I sort of have to.

My mom is like “you can’t wait, you need to get some relief” and she gave me money to go to Urgent Care, cause my mommy is the greatest. And my sister took me there, because she too is the best.

Urgent Care swabs me for the flu, and tests me for Covid, and goes, here let’s get you an inhaler, try some over the counter decongestant stuff. And I’m like cool. I don’t have Covid or the flu, so it’s probably a cold. (They didn’t check for a sinus infection, or bronchitis, which my mom had at the time. And like, we are together a lot so... it could have been either, and I did mention that both could be possible so idk..”

Cough continues, so when i get to the Monday online appointment, they are like, honestly we had appointments on Friday when you asked for one, it’s so weird we couldn’t get you in. You are for sure sick! If you aren’t better by the next three days, CALL again. And like they gave me a RX for a steroid pack for the cough and inflammation and I’m like YAY! I’m already in an episode, and steroids in the past make me really manic. But thanks to my countries health care system, I have been sick for almost a week and a half, been to two different doctors, paid (or someone else has paid) $70 in copays, and finally have received the right treatment.

I’m kinda laying low. I wanna update soon, I’m just so blah... I’m sorry

Sorry for the wait. I hope i feel up to it soon, in the meant time, thanks for your support, and wish me luck

#health and wellness #health care #health care system #fail!

[dlasta]

So, I finally watched the new Spiderman with the extra spidermen. 

(I watched the previous ones too, just to remember what was going on.) Been trying to think how to put in words how I feel about the whole franchise and MCU without doing an actual review or a rant. 

All I got is that I really really wish they’d trust the main character to be enough. That just Peter Parker is well enough. The bells and whistles are unnecessary and more often than not they hinder the story. There is so much going on, so many characters, so much action scenes yet the actual strenghts of Holland!Spiderman are left in the background. Like, we really do need to see Aunt May more, she should be a central character, but instead we get Happy Hogan?? I get that Favreau is everybody’s buddy and whatever, but it makes no sense to fuck up a movie so he can play a bumbling and borderline creepy idiot. I genuinely hate the actor and the character now.

Too many villains mean we can’t actually focus on them and they might as well be played by no name actors. Also, so many villains means we don’t get to see the *spidermen* as much as we’d like/need to. It was so insanely frustrating to watch the movie I can’t even. So many times they ruined the impact of a moment with that obnoxious action movie structure. Holland’s acting sold so much of it but the story was just build wrong. 

Anyway, I don’t think the makers know why people keep reading the comics. I don’t think they read the comics themselves so they just assume things about comics. Or they think comic book readers don’t matter, since it’s MCU and people watch superhero movies for action anyway. 

It’s an ok movie, not Endgame again, but it could have been great. The material is there. Why not write is sharp and really use the oscar winning actors you have? Why not embrace the one character who is especially relevant *now*? Why the weird victim blame thing?

ps. I still don’t get MCU Strange at all. He’s there to make big effects but the sharacter is just flat. It’s all style, no substance. He’s so room temperature I can’t even hate him any more? The few moments where he’s more real is with Wong...so obviously Wong is there to walk by him once or twice. So basically he’s a plot device for big special effects and nothing else. 

#caveat: spiderman is my longest read comic book #though I'm not married to a specific peter parker or spiderman #it's all valid as long as the point is remembered #with spiderman the story is always moral and a bit mean #and new york loves him #you cannot kill aunt may or mj #everybody else is fair game #basic things #spiderman #spiderman no way home #/annoyed #not a review #yeah I ended up ranting tho #fail! #still don't care even a little about strange

[cemeterything]

it's such a bummer that losing control of your emotions only makes the entire situation worse in really embarrassing personal ways. losing control of my emotions should give me pyrokinesis.

#🐉 #guess who just had another goddamn breakdown #caused by trying not to have a breakdown and failing no less

[houseofbrat]

As time goes on, this is looking more and more likely, no matter how much people want to deny it.

This is why I said--back when the news first came out on 17 Jan 2024:

Someone isn’t being honest about what is going on, and it’s definitely not me. It sounds to me that The Princess of Wales had a nervous/mental breakdown and needed to be hospitalized. Except that they can’t say that, so they’re going with “planned” “abdominal surgery.”

"Nervous/mental breakdown" is a substitution for a different, two-word phrase that I'd rather not use at the moment.

If Kate really did end up having surgery, it was emergency surgery, and the real question is what happened beforehand that led her to having such a serious, emergency surgery.

Because that's why they've been lying about her surgery being "planned."

It wasn't planned.

That's why there isn't a real Mother's Day photo that they can give to the photo agencies for verification. Because as Tina Brown said today, the photo they produced on Sunday was "a jigsaw."

There is no real photo because the kids are too upset & freaked out to pose for photos right now. That is why "a jigsaw" of the kids posing with someone else was used and spliced with an old image of Kate. Kate also probably can't fake being happy enough for a photo right now too.

Because eventually, the questions are going to arise about what led to this situation. Questions William is definitely going to avoid. For the rest of his life.

#twitter #media #my gif #scandal! #ESCANDALO!!! #PR fail #fail! #kensington palace #palace officials #sads #kate middleton #Catherine The Princess of Wales #british royal family #William The Terrible #William The Weak #William The Prince of OWN GOALS #prince william #William The Prince of Wales

[theabstruseone]

I slept in and just woke up, so here's what I've been able to figure out while sipping coffee:

Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.

The official branding is that a tweet is now called "an X", for which there are too many jokes to make.

The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn't reclaim the username first.

The logo is 𝕏 which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.

Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name "X" in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for "X" in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.

The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term "X Japan" is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.

Elon had workers taking down the "Twitter" name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says "er".

He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as "Xvideo". Nobody tell him.

This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.

Edit to add further developments:

Yes, this is all real. Check the notes and people have pictures. I understand the skepticism because it feels like a joke, but to the best of my knowledge, everything in the above is accurate.

Microsoft also owns the trademark on X for chatting and gaming because, y'know, X-box.

The logo came from a random podcaster who tweeted it at Musk.

The act of sending a tweet is now known as "Xeet". They even added a guide for how to Xeet.

The branding change is inconsistent. Some icons have changed, some have not, and the words "tweet" and "Twitter" are still all over the place on the site.

TweetDeck is currently unaffected and I hope it's because they forgot that it exists again. The complete negligence toward that tool and just leaving it the hell alone is the only thing that makes the site usable (and some of us are stuck on there for work).

This is likely because Musk was forced out of PayPal due to a failed credit line project and because he wanted to rename the site to "X-Paypal" and eventually just to "X".

This became a big deal behind the scenes as Musk paid over $1 million for the domain X.com and wanted to rebrand the company that already had the brand awareness people were using it as a verb to "pay online" (as in "I'll paypal you the money")

X.com is not currently owned by Musk. It is held by a domain registrar (I believe GoDaddy but I'm not entirely sure). Meaning as long as he's hung onto this idea of making X Corp a thing, he couldn't be arsed to pay the $15/year domain renewal.

Bloomberg estimates the rebranding wiped between $4 to $20 billion from the valuation of Twitter due to the loss of brand awareness.

The company was already worth less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for it in the first place, meaning this may end up a worse deal than when Yahoo bought Tumblr.

One estimation (though this is with a grain of salt) said that Twitter is three months from defaulting on its loans taken out to buy the site. Those loans were secured with Tesla stock. Meaning the bank will seize that stock and, since it won't be enough to pay the debt (since it's worth around 50-75% of what it was at the time of the loan), they can start seizing personal assets of Elon Musk including the Twitter company itself and his interest in SpaceX.

Sesame Street's official accounts mocked the rebranding.

#twitter #twitterpocalypse #twitter fail #elon musk #fuck elon musk

[brightlotusmoon]

#heavy sigh #skipping a grade for english yet failing math #gifted kid burnout #twice exceptional

[tastefullyoffensive]

#funny #memes #tweets #fails

[burnt-squid]

if we get some kind of reunion between these two in btsv i’ll bawl my eyes out

#i cannot stop thinking about how HOBIE. OF ALL PEOPLE. stood up for someone he met a few hours ago (who was destined to fail in that system) #had miles's back the entirety of the film knowing what was going to happen #punk culture is about standing up for the underdog. it’s about community #it’s about SOLIDARITY #spiderverse #atsv #across the spiderverse #across the spider verse #spiderman across the spiderverse #spiderman: across the spiderverse #hobie brown #hobart brown #miles morales #squid draws #artists on tumblr #edit: added some dimension to miles’s hair