Food For Thought

WMUR

United States Postal Service to cut workforce by 10,000 by voluntary buyouts

The United States Postal Service is the latest federal agency looking to reduce its staff, according to a letter sent to Congress by the Pos

Next time you're around when the mail gets delivered, ask your delivery person if they're understaffed or not.

But don't hold them up too much, they have a lot of work to do.

The original 'virgin vs chad' meme

I feel like everyone is sick of those stupid soyjack vs Chad "my opinion is good and based and correct, your opinion bad and wrong and stinky" memes by this point, as they're some of the lowest forms of current internet 'humor.' But precisely because those memes are so bad and also everywhere, I feel it's worth giving some credit to the fact that the original "The Virgin Walk / The Chad Stride" was actually a brilliant meme.

"The Virgin Walk" image showed up first, and it was standard 4chan stuff - which is to say, highly negative. Just a whole bunch of random small traits that people can have, bundled together in an accusatory way to try and make people insecure about them having "virgin" posture, by the kind of people who genuinely worries about being an "alpha male" (Or possibly pointing out their own flaws as a form of self-hatred, flip a coin when it comes to 4chan)

And then, on another thread, someone made the Chad Stride edit to go along with it.

It's a great piece of satire by how simple it is. Just by taking the traits listed in the original image, then inverting and exaggerating them, the result is an absurd caricature of a man who does not (and should not) exist. Through exaggeration, it demonstrates how the people who constantly worry about seeming 'Chad-like' are chasing after behaviour that is utterly unhinged and disconnected from reality.

I think this gif demonstrates it perfectly by putting it in motion:

Virgin is a normal, if insecure dude. Chad is an absolute fucking maniac. (Not to mention all the references to violence in the image)

So, while it did degrade into those awful soyjak memes we all know and hate because that is the nature of the internet, I feel like it's worth remembering that in the original image that spawned this entire trend, you're supposed to laugh at Chad. You shouldn't want to be Chad, because he's the menace to society [ credit to the gif's creator: https://x.com/art_miguelito/status/1107313740033212417 ; thanks to @softwaring for linking it ]

Just reminder:

Fuck ICE

Death to Trump and his billionaire buddies

Always punch Nazis

(X)

We were watching the glass blowing competition show on netflix because it's really cool to see those talented artists do their thing...

But I will NEVER forgive the judges for eliminating an amazing artist who's concept was that plastic hamster tubes are actually dangerous for hamsters yet they are normalized in our society so they made a beautiful glass rendition of an endless loop of colorful hamster tubes as an expression of how we can be trapped by society in a loop of behavior that is normalized but actually killing us

And the judges were like "this isnt DEEP ENOUGH" because they dont care enough about hamsters to learn and interpret the artist's statement at the level it was meant for.

They literally saw the glass renditions of colorful tubes that represent suffering and being trapped in a glossy predesigned hell and went "this is too normal and isnt saying anything important actually" Fuck them!!!!

Anyways Gemma should have won and I'm so happy to see that she didn't let it stop her amazing concept and she continued with it outside of the time constraints of the show. Fuck yes Gemma

It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.

(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)

In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).

To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)

Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.

Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.

Happy Birthday to my mother Lynne!

At 80, my mom published a murder mystery novel based on her years as a clinical psychologist.: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Right-Lynne-Bravo-Rosewater/dp/B0D82BXDZR (When a psychologist is killed, her daughter has to figure out which of her former cases led to her murder.)

dear usamerican high schoolers looking for a way to resist fascism: sit through the pledge of allegiance.

no getting up. no looking at the flag.

everyone will be looking at you. you'll be sweating like a fucking hippopotamus. your teacher will sternly tell you to get up. you'll feel stupid and that maybe its not worth it because you're just a kid in a classroom. but I'm here to remind you that there are no real life consequences to detention. there are however real life consequences to resisting a thoughtless performance of nationalism.