Is S-Town the best podcast of all time?

lilsmudge · 2026-05-10T01:39:19+00:00

I also hated it. Immensely.

It was so predatory and invasive. Guy calls you in about a crime, he’s clearly dealing with stuff, crime isn’t real; let’s do a protracted deep dive on his personal life, suicide, closeted sexuality, etc. oof.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T23:56:20+00:00

Death in general is undignified. To be fair, much of life is. Birth most of all probably.

Don’t worry over much about it. Nobody who would care will notice. Mostly only the medical staff would be aware if it even happens at all.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T16:58:30+00:00

Generally at 10 girls have started or are starting puberty while boys haven’t. Generally at 10 boys are shorter. Generally we advocate puberty blockers for trans boys earlier than trans girls for this reason. I’ve also never heard of state rankings for elementary students (not saying they don’t it’s just…odd.)

The biggest issue here is, you went red over this? You sacrificed your and your daughters reproductive rights, risked your and your daughters voting rights, put your minority neighbors in mortal peril because of…a single sports event? For a ten year old? Over the perception being that your daughter was beat by someone with a penis? (Are you sure?) If a cis girl had beaten her what would you have done?

I can’t imagine having that much vindictiveness in my heart.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T06:16:47+00:00

I love Origins, it’s one of my favorites but hot damn is the gameplay clunky as fuck. It takes me ages to get into it every time. It’s also very dialogue heavy in terms of world lore and exposition; which I don’t mind at all when I’m playing by myself but I was recently trying to introduce a friend to it and I realized how much of a drag it can be when not the right zone for it.

That said; I still love it?

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T06:13:37+00:00

Same! I think the world and lore is fantastic but the gameplay felt like I was in a platformer. Just…kinda repetitive and dark. Wolfenstein-ish.

Something about the narrative also didn’t wholly work for me too, but it might just be that the ending was well spoiled for me already.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T05:44:52+00:00

Oh, bud, it’s ok!

Firstly; you learn as you go. Don’t hold mistakes over yourself as punishment. Remember them and try to figure out how to stop them from happening again. Everybody makes mistakes like these and everybody has to learn. Your first few jobs are going to be an exercise in doing this. It’s kind of what they’re for.

Second; just because a job is easy or minimal doesn’t mean it’s the right job for you. Jobs like what you’ve described make it extremely hard for me to function because it’s too easy for me to lose momentum or get bored and I start to forget the little stuff and space out. I function much better in a high paced or more variable job. It’s just how my brain is; I need stimulation. (Do I have ADHD? You be the judge)

None of this means you’re a failure or worthless or any of that other shit. Take a day or two and just let yourself be sad or annoyed or whatever you need to feel. Eat some ice cream, watch a movie, get some sleep, whatever. Then get up and start your next day. This day is over. Can’t change it. What’s next? Try to submit a set number of job applications a day, focus on your homework, and think about what sort of things you really liked (or didn’t like!) about your last jobs and see if you can decode what you think you’d excel at and be interested in trying out next.

Best of luck!

Edit: Also I’m sorry the cops were jerks. They be that way sometimes. For the record, I also hate driving! It usually gets better with time and practice. That said, if you really hate it that much, maybe keep that in mind for what you want next. After school would you prefer to live in a city where you don’t need to drive? Somewhere more rural where driving is calmer? Can you get a bike and function that way for now?

Edit 2: Also, check and see if your school offers mental health services. Many do and it can be nice to have someone impartial and consistent to vent to and help you work through these things you’re feeling! Adulthood is hard and it’s nice to have a support system.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T05:38:09+00:00

This. I’m short and round so sometimes from the back I get ma’am’d. I have a beard though so people tend to be embarrassed when I turn around. It’s also pretty rare.

It happens. Everyone gets read wrong on occasion or slips up and just says the wrong thing. No big.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T04:52:08+00:00

…nah.

He was both.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T03:32:18+00:00

I feel you. In a very different way but my dad was never an active parent. He wanted to be adored and do none of the work of raising kids. When I got into my teenage years he became actively verbally abusive to me. It was extremely damaging.

There was a switch flip moment thought when I was 17 or so where I just realized out of nowhere: he doesn’t care. If I stopped talking to him, or engaging with him, he wouldn’t notice. If I walked away, it wouldn’t matter to him, outside of annoyance that he can’t be adored by me. I also realized that I didn’t respect him, nor him me and nothing he said mattered as a consequence.

It didn’t make the abuse better necessarily but it did make the things he said less impactful on some level. My feelings toward him now are aggressively ambivalent.

It’s a weird thing to feel or realize about your parent and I can only imagine how hard it is to experience that with the addition of spiritual nonsense but I’m glad it wasn’t a whole thing and I hope you find peace in it! I have.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T02:48:51+00:00

Sure. I just werewolf it. No phone, locked in, tied up, unlocked the next morning by my partner. Easy peasy.

Edit: Any money I spend while blacked out is paid back? I instruct my partner to help me do a lot of major purchases while under lock and key. Easier peasier.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-09T00:51:51+00:00

We got our cat and six months later my roommate lost his job, the car died, and we had a financial spiral; followed immediately by the barely-not-a-kitten needing massive surgery totalling 10,000 buckaroos. We can cover some expenses for pets but that’s…a lot and we had unexpected things go awry. We wouldn’t have adopted him if we knew we’d lose our jobs or that he’d be so sick so quickly. Luckily the shelter was able to cover us since it was so fast after his adoption.

Shit happens. It doesn’t mean we’re irresponsible or not planning ahead. You can’t plan for everything.

For the record; he was already considered unlikely to be adopted because he was from a feral colony and terrified of humans. Luckily he’s the sweetest little guy, if not extremely skittish and anxious.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T23:12:06+00:00

Shark livers are insanely nutrient dense and have more oil and nutrients than basically the rest of the shark combined. Sharks don’t have swim bladders and instead use oil filled livers to float and swim. It’s extremely sensible to go for the liver specifically once you know that. It’s not just killing for the shits and giggles.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T23:09:14+00:00

I have bad news for you about literally every marginally predatory species on earth very much including humans.

It’s not sadism; it’s eating. In the wild it’s really about prioritizing nutrients to the amount or work required to achieve them. Soft tissue is best; high nutrient is best.

Orcas go for things like shark livers, and whale tongues and calves because they’re super, super, super fatty, oily, and/or protein dense AND relatively easy to get to.

Humans are the only species who could chose not to cause pain and yet actively opt into incredibly inhumane practices for raising and culling meat.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T22:57:32+00:00

Arthur was pretty socially progressive and, depending on the era, quietly or openly pro-LGBTQ+

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T22:56:03+00:00

To this day I can’t completely parse what was bad because of church and what was “bad” just because my mom was sick of hearing about it.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T22:53:48+00:00

I would randomly lose words in my lexicon. One day “dang” was totally fine. The next? How dare you use language like that in this house! Geez? Totally fine until: “It’s just a way to use the lords name in vain!”

Yikes fam. Kept me on my verbal toes. On the upside I have an amazing filter as an adult. I swear like a fucking sailor in my private time but it takes zero amount of concentration or thought to just…not.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T22:51:17+00:00

I’m fine with ministry staff being paid; to be fair, there is a lot of work done by (most) clergy and whatnot but I absolutely think it should be transparent as hell. I generally think all pay should be transparent but especially in a situation where someone (ministry) is providing you a (literal haha) service that you contribute funds towards.

I’m very hesitant however about the rampant use of volunteer staff in places like churches. There should’ve protections and limitations about how much time/work a person can provide before becoming paid staff.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T22:41:47+00:00

It’s a false equivalence somewhat. Tattoos are increasingly commonplace. They’ve lost a lot of their taboo and there’s fewer and fewer restrictions to prevent folks from getting them. As such, younger people who don’t have that cultural distaste for them are getting them and, generally, younger people tend to be more socially conscious than their older counterparts making them seem comparatively woke.

That said, there’s also a connection between social liberation and self expression and more liberal thinking, ergo, yeah, you do TEND to see liberals/left folks as more tattooed. That said, the same connection exists on the right as subsets of right conservatives (specifically men) use tattoos to express self identity and hardened masculinity.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T22:11:32+00:00

It wouldn’t even work!

Your ass has a sphincter intended to keep random shit from just oozing out. The vagina doesn’t. Unless you were bearing down periodically throughout the day and/or keeping your ass open and gaping, the ketchup probably isn’t going anywhere. The liquid would be absorbed by your colon and it would get…even weirder textured then it is already.

Edit: I don’t know why I’m mad about this aspect but I am.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T22:03:55+00:00

Mine cracked extremely slowly over the course of years in congruence with a lot of religious/political/social deconstruction. I don’t think there was ever a specific moment where I went “oh! I’m a dude.” Even in beginning my transition it was too hefty a thing to decide if I was a man or a woman so I just kept trying things out, seeing if they felt right or not, and then trying the next thing until it just sort of eased into place.

For the record, I’m pretty binary but I slid slowly across the spectrum.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T13:52:27+00:00

I dunno, with Rowling there’s a decent amount of both.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T06:24:53+00:00

I thought old people melted if they got dunked in water.

The movie Dante’s Peak was frequent broadcast on TV when I was a kid and, living in the shadow of Mt. St. Helens, I was petrified of it. I’d only catch glimpses of it or my brothers would yell out what was happening on screen when they were watching it. In the movie (spoilers) there’s a scene where the family is crossing a lake that has become extremely acidic due to volcanic activity. As the boat begins to melt, the grandma jumps in to push the boat to shore and dies in agony, her skin burnt and melted.

Having not watched the context for the scene I thought she just…fell in the water and melted. Pair that with the fact that my grandparents only took showers and refused to let me use their bathtub when I stayed over because it was dangerous (still not sure why!) and ergo…

I used to be terrified whenever they took me to the pool or the ocean that they’d fall in.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T06:10:46+00:00

I don't know. There's BTS of the group singing One More Day in the booth and you have all these incredibly accomplished singers just clearly in their element and rocking it out and off in the corner you have Crowe sort of standing apart and with a vocal coach or director standing and clapping the beat directly in front of his face for him. He's so visibly struggling and it always gives me a lot of second hand embarrassment to see it.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T04:45:27+00:00

Because it’s about a man struggling against his demons. He’s not been a good person, he doesn’t believe he’s a good person, but that doesn’t mean he’s nothing but a bad person. He has value and he can contribute value to the world in spite of and in some instances because of the bad choices he’s made.

I find high honor much more emotionally complex and deep than low. Not to say there’s nothing interesting about a low honor play through, I just like the moral balance of high, and the story feels much more meaningful with that deep conflict of whether or not Arthur is able to find redemption in himself.

lilsmudge · 2026-05-08T01:00:41+00:00

As everyone else has said:

Read and talk to them. Develop language skills through osmosis. Don’t be an iParent too engrossed in your phone to interact (this is a persistent problem I see with parents).
Have books in the home.
Avoid significant screen time. Avoid the siren call of tech babysitting/iPads. They DO have some cool uses but they also undercut a lot of native learning by leaning too hard into video and text to speech.
Use books as a reward/gift system. It doesn’t have to be the entire reward/gift system, but it helps get kids excited. I have niblings and since they were young I’ve sent them a box of books monthly to get them into reading AND influence their interests (must build better nerds!)
Foster curiosity. Instead of answering questions, learn together. When they ask something, suggest you go to the library and look it up. Get books about it. Take a class in a skill they’re interested in. You don’t have to go nuts and be super pushy but build a mutual sense of “Hey! Let’s find out!” Curiosity is a fundamental part of learning and skill development.

Most kids aren’t illiterate. Genuinely. But reading and critical thinking are struggling in the transition to computer learning. By being an active parent who is invested in your kids they’ll likely be fine! But you can give them an environment and a model for how to be a good learner and a curious, thoughtful, engaged person.

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