azdak

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/07/14/perversion-of-justice-revisited/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=70970

A look back at what we've previously written here about Jeffrey Epstein, now that we're told he never actually existed.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/07/14/perversion-of-justice-revisited/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=70970

Nonstandard and informal are not synonyms. Dialectal and informal are not synonyms. Regional and informal are not synonyms. You can speak formally even if you're speaking a nonstandard regional dialect.

Everybody needs to stop saying that dialect words are, ipso facto, informal.

Edit: On a different note, omfg this dude.

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Dear Miss Manners: The neighbor who lives directly across the street from me parks in front of my house. If this was occasional, I wouldn’t care, but it’s become the daily routine. I can’t imagine consistently doing this.

I enjoy looking out my window in the evening, but now my view is a car every night.

Today a work truck parked in front of my house, so the neighbor parked in their own driveway (which is always clear, as is their curb). When the truck left, they moved their car back to my curb, leaving their driveway empty the rest of the day.

I realize this could sound petty, but our other neighbors respect this unwritten rule.

In addition to unwritten, the rule is possibly unknown to this neighbor. Miss Manners trusts that you don’t think the car is purposely parked with the intention of blocking your view, and that you realize that others have a legal right to park on a public street.

Therefore, the neighbor would be doing you a favor by refraining from parking there. And to ask a favor requires purging any annoyance you feel and admitting that complying would be a voluntary kindness.

An amusing confession of your staring-out-the-window habit would be more effective than an admonishment for violating neighborhood expectations.

Too bad there's not a spell where you can go into someone's consciousness like in Paradox Live to wake them up.

Somehow Anne being upset was more upsetting to me than anyone else. :'(

...Now I want to see everyone taking turns giving Catarina water mouth-to-mouth. I don't really like Geordo x Catarina. Honestly I really only like Catarina/Maria. Of course polyam would be number 1 but a couple of them would hate that, mainly Geordo.

I spoke too soon, Sophia/Acchan did go into Catarina's consciousness. I teared up at Acchan and Catarina's parting ahh. But how are Sophia and Acchan connected exactly??

I'm never gonna take the name 'Sirius Dick Dieke' seriously with the way it's pronounced in Japanese.

but it turned out to be a big bag of dog food.

This is... not so great, really.

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Challenge #4

Fun House
Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

1. Ellita
2. Feeling hopeful about work (but also nervous)
3. Watching Ted Lasso with E (y’all were SO right! Thank you for encouraging me to stick with it)
4. My plants/garden
5. Sitting in the hammock with Ellita and talking with E
6. Having the time and energy to read
7. HEB Peach Guava sparkling water
8. Postcrossing
9. Changing up my work wardrobe
10. Having my ear piercings reopened so that I can wear earrings again

Instructional and Educational VHS Tapes on the Internet Archive - Scrolling through these is wild.

jp users learning about 'fujoshing out'

Vimm's old school games - I got the first Persona game from here!

Trope Talk: Timeloops

What happened to bridges in pop songs? - I don't keep up with what's popular but this is interesting and I need to get some of the songs used in this video!

How “This Didn’t Age Well” Destroyed Media Literacy - A thousand times THIS. I need everyone to watch this.

and completion of orientation. They really are taking anybody with a pulse, as judged by the extremely detailed list of instructions for appropriate behavior during orientation. I'd be more insulted, but that's good for me, I really need a job. If they had higher standards they would hire somebody with formal work experience, or at least an associate's degree.

(Don't think I've stopped applying other places, mind you, but I'm really not in a position to be picky, either.)

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Well... if you're interested in reading a book about how living in an over-privileged Connecticut town is terrible and nobody should ever do it (especially if that's going to intersect badly with their terrible childhood) then this is a book you'll like. I preferred Dreadful - the realism : magic ratio in this book leaned a little too realistic, also, I just do not believe that the only school choices are a. fancy schools for wealthy overachievers that have massively high standards and high stakes testing b. xenophobic schools with very low standards and c. homeschooling. Even if there are no public school options there still have to be artsy fartsy schools for wealthy people who know that their kids cannot do the pressure cooker thing starting in kindy.

The weekly chat posts are intended for just that, chatting among each other. What are you currently watching? Reading? What actor/idol are you currently following? What are you looking forward to? Are you busy writing, creating art? Or did you have no time at all for anything, and are bemoaning that fact?

Whatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
<b>Highlight for spoilers!</b> *<span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Write your spoilery text here.</span>* or <details> <summary>Write a non-spoilery summary of what's hidden under the arrow here.</summary> Write your spoilery text here. </details>

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/07/11/lbcf-fizzbinsationalism/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=70964

Rapture Christianity claims the Bible it true for YOU, but that it wasn't true for every Christian who ever lived and died before special, oh so special, you.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2025/07/11/lbcf-fizzbinsationalism/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=70964

I started playing Persona 5: The Phantom X and am enjoying it but I have a confession to make...I've never played any of the original games. I have watched some of a let's play for P5, watched the anime for that and for P4 and read a little of the P3 manga but I think that's it (besides reading AkeShu fic). I never planned to actually play the games for reasons I don't remember (though P5 made me consider it). Now I've changed my mind and am diving in with the first game. I got it through Vimms which gathers old school games.

So far? It's good to know that the music was good from the beginning! Navigating the school's hallways makes me dizzy, does it go that fast on the original console?? I hope I didn't miss anything because I kept getting lost lol

The designs are very interesting, they all look American or English. In JP Masao's mom calls calls him Maa-kun so the EN version called him 'Mark' as a nickname. Looks like Hidehiko's nickname is the same in the JP.

Masao is sweet with Maki, seems he can be reliable. :)

I don't normally play with English voices but beggars can't be choosers and the voices aren't bad here.

Yamaoka and Nanjou's relationship is funny and sweet too.

Oh no you have to pick your stats in this game? I'll just follow this.

In a hospital full of doctors Yamaoka still wasn't helped by anyone. 😵 Also that promise he made Nanjou make...may as well ask him to become the emperor;; Agh poor Nanjou, I hope this group all become close so he doesn't feel so alone.

I don't like that it's not clear what you're supposed to be doing at any given time. No quest log or tracking. If you stop playing for a while it can take a bit to remember what you're doing. Sometimes characters remind you but...Instead of safe rooms there are 'Agastya trees' where you can save.

Maki showed up at the school with no memory, she probably didn't even realize her mom was injured in the infirmary. Masao get captured by the demons and apparently they just put him in jail instead of killing him?? They even put the key in the key box lol

Oh ok apparently demons can take over humans??

I'm curious how the earthquake, Maki's waking and the DEVA system are connected, plus Maki's missing friend? And of course Personas. Apparently anyone can have them, not just heroes.

Noo, using Persona skills isn't part of auto?!

I love how irritable the characters get when you don't go to the next quest point fast enough. Sorry but exploration is life!!

In the Abandoned Werehouse, how do they know Ayase doesn't have a Persona too, since it's happened to the last few people who joined before?? Now she's in danger on her own. Also with the school going under, I hope Maki's mom is okay.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is amazingly hit-or-miss for me, but this looks like it's coming up "hit". The sapient arthropods are a swarm of bees. If there are any spiders, I haven't met them yet!

While doing very boring work, I listen to spoken radio, which because BBC Sounds recommendations and "your next episode" are rubbish*, means going back through the schedules of Radio 4 and Radio 4 extra day by day and seeing what's been on. Yes I could Subscribe to Podcasts but I've been listening to speech radio since I was recording it on my cassette player I was given when I was 7 so I could listen to it again, and I like being in control and searching for what I want rather than having things piling up like an external obligation. So using this method, recently I have listened to:

1977 by Sarah Wooley
Which is a play about Angela Morley composing the music for Watership Down. Before transitioning, Angela Morley had written and arranged music for the Goon Show and wrote the theme tune to Hancock's Half Hour, and the play begins when Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen's Music is overwhelmed with writing music for the Queen's Silver Jubilee and has totally forgotten he is supposed to also be writing the soundtrack to Watership Down. Several times in this play people say something like "Oh God, the rabbits!" Malcolm Williamson is really not in a good place and stops answering the door and then runs away to the Carmargue with his (male) publisher, leaving not very many minutes of not arranged music with the symphony orchestra and the recording studio booked for something like 10 days' time. And people go "oh shit" and "the only person who can do this is Angela Morley" and go and grovel and promise it's not going to be about her, it's all for the sake of the rabbits and persuade her to just watch the film, no strings, and of course she does it and it's brilliant. 

Limelight: Pretender Prince
about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the 1745 Jacobite rebellion
This is part drama and part author (Colin MacDonald) telling us why he has dramatised it the way he has, and part interjections from historians, which worked much better across all the episodes than I thought it would the first time the drama was interrupted by the writer or the historians. Bonnie Prince Charlie doesn't come out of it all very well. The only Stuart history I did at school (in England) was James I to Civil War and death of Charles I (A-level) so all I really know about that bit comes from folk songs. So it was good and I enjoyed it.

As it's a Limelight drama it might be available as a podcast other than on BBC Sounds which now won't let you listen to it outside the UK. I've liked a lot of the Limelight ones, though they tend to be tense thrillers and not about Bonnie Prince Charlie, but I dislike the way BBC Sounds views all of them as a series and is now telling me to continue listening to my "next episode", which is about the CIA and not at all the same thing.


*You listened to a play. Now listen to another play that was on at the same time the next day.