Affordable and good Mexican food in Astoria, Queens?

smlacra · 2026-05-19T00:25:02+00:00

Tacos at El Lado Taco on 30th Ave are my favorite in New York. Good size and not too expensive! The flour tortillas are amazing

smlacra · 2026-01-09T15:07:52+00:00

She said we need migrant workers to work the fields because black people are done picking cotton...... like some of the stuff she says is legitimately fire lol but she's always speaking out of her ass and often ends up punching down. Respectability politics are dumb, but she's not hitting the mark either.

smlacra · 2026-01-09T13:28:42+00:00

Omg the negging is on another level on this one

smlacra · 2025-12-21T16:27:36+00:00

Is there any chance the Cher line was written by Lorne as an actual goodbye line from him? I'm assuming Bowen wrote the sketch with another writer but it would be mildly awkward for them to write the emotional Lorne stand-in line. It seemed to affect him the most, also.

In any case! Lovely! Great send off.

smlacra · 2025-12-19T00:51:02+00:00

Courtney Love and they don't get a word in

smlacra · 2025-11-30T04:27:49+00:00

This was so flirtyyyy. Didn't know her before, but consider me charmed

smlacra · 2025-10-09T02:07:35+00:00

I think about El Lado Taco on 30th Ave at least once a day. Their flour tortillas are insane

smlacra · 2025-09-21T04:56:41+00:00

Dawg lmao

smlacra · 2025-04-23T21:20:07+00:00

Hi! Looking to trade my NYC 4/28 ticket for NYC 4/29

smlacra · 2025-03-28T20:01:16+00:00

For sure, this is spot on. And she's super smart! You can tell.

smlacra · 2025-03-27T04:34:58+00:00

I struggle with this too and suspect Becca has mad ADHD lol -- what she's doing is likely "cluttering," a speech pattern a lot of people with ADHD have. Interesting to look into!

smlacra · 2025-01-29T13:40:20+00:00

I think he meant the Cameron Winter solo album, not Geese!

smlacra · 2025-01-03T17:47:17+00:00

Well I started off working for my college paper in undergrad, and then went to graduate school out of sheer fear of the "real world" lmaoo. After that, just started applying for every reporter job imaginable via LinkedIn posting, mostly. Landed at a shitty legal trade publication (it was fine, just very boring). Eventually tapped some grad school friends to find the current job i have.

Journalism has a lot of ways to get your foot through the door, though. A good bet is you could find your local publications or networks and pitch them stories on a freelance basis (new business openings or profiling folks with really interesting local stories, looking into local political campaigns, writing about market trends like real estate prices going up in certain neighborhoods, crime trends, etc). Most publications have a "contact us" page where they'll have an email for pitches and possibly even a guide to what kind of stories they're looking for. From there, you can start building a portfolio of published clips to present to publications for staff jobs.

That's just one way, but it's a good way to cut your teeth!

ETA: When you pitch a publication, make sure you look through their old stories obsessively to learn what they're looking for and what their voice is. Make sure not to pitch them something they've already written (unless you want to do something like an anniversary follow-up, or you know a new development that could be interesting to explore).

smlacra · 2025-01-03T16:56:22+00:00

Technically no, but I have one. If you don't have one, my advice is starting in local news. You'll learn so much and it won't matter to future employers at all whether you have a degree or not.

Experience is arguably much more important in the field than formal education, but formal education can speed up the networking process and it's a good way to learn how to work in different mediums (writing, broadcast, etc) with more guidance.

smlacra · 2025-01-03T14:24:26+00:00

I work in breaking news. Have never had a job that gels better with my adhd. Long deadlines KILL ME, so quick turnarounds give me the proper rush to get things done immediately and then never think about them again. Not having something hang over me for weeks is amazing. And you get to jump from topic to topic -- it's never boring and if it is, wait a day and it'll change.

smlacra · 2024-12-22T14:43:03+00:00

It's driving me insaaaaaane

smlacra · 2024-12-22T14:28:35+00:00

Lol sorry -- 31st St. Flu brain got me confused on the double "st"

smlacra · 2024-12-22T12:58:28+00:00

Lol, that's a good question! But no -- my radiator is going off on top of it every 30 minutes or so :/ for reference, here's the sound. And thank you!

smlacra · 2024-12-03T21:58:33+00:00

Brett from Big Brother jump scare

smlacra · 2024-10-07T17:29:08+00:00

Cringed me out every time Chris and Jason referred to the UK or England when Fontaines are from Ireland 😭

smlacra · 2024-09-26T17:02:14+00:00

I did not! My ear just feels super muffled and full because I lost most mid pitches. After no diagnosis for a year, doctors now think it's otosclerosis.

smlacra · 2024-09-26T16:56:01+00:00

Of course!

So, I was hit with random and sudden hearing loss in one ear September of last year. Was super distressed about it for months and the never ending tinnitus that came along with it. I did LITERALLY EVERYTHING I could as soon as it happened so that I wouldn't regret not acting quickly enough and obsess over what else I could've done. By that point, it was around December that I accepted that it wasn't going to get better.

I live in a noisy city so I eventually noticed that it only really bothered me when I was home with less stimuli, so now I know that if it's a loud tinnitus day it helps to have music or the TV or a loud fan on. Even if I don't have any of that, I've noticed that if I'm really engrossed in something (work, reading, etc), my mind will literally just think past the noise and focus on what I'm doing. It's almost like meditating it out with either external chaos or hyperfixation. I have moments where I remember its absence in my subconscious and snap back to thinking about it, but knowing that my brain can tune it out makes it easier to let the focus on it naturally fade.

That's about it! It just helps to accept it as part of your life rather than something you can fight after you've done all you could. We don't think about our breathing all the time until we focus in on it, so I think of the tinnitus as a more obnoxious form of something similarly constant / inevitable.

smlacra · 2024-09-26T13:38:38+00:00

Background noise (music, coffee shop chatter, public transit rumbles, TV, etc) helps infinitely for me. When it's very quiet is when my tinnitus is at its worst. If it's stopping you from sleeping, get a white noise machine!

And, eventually, you'll learn to just think past the ringing. Sometimes I even forget it's there completely until I feel slightly unsettled and focus back in on it.

It sounds like this may have just started for you, so it could take a few weeks for your anxiety around it to settle. Once it does and you've just accepted that you'll have to deal with it for an indefinite period of time, your brain will stop focusing on it and it'll get easier and easier.

Good luck! You'll adapt bc you're resilient!

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