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A woman is outraged after she says her Ninja Crispi exploded on just the second use. And the internet is arguing over whether to blame her or the manufacturer.
TikTok user Kelsey (@kwkelsey) posted a video about the occurrence on July 2. The video shows the remains of Kelsey’s Ninja Crispi air fryer. Its glass bowl is in pieces on the counter.
the_mary_sue_feed
A flier captured footage of a Southwest Airlines worker who seemed to be online shopping while assisting a customer at a service counter.
Tricey B (@triceyb2) uploaded her video to TikTok where it accrued over 34,000 views. Folks who commented on her clip were up in arms. Mostly because of Tricey’s decision to record strangers, and not because the worker was checking out clothing wares on the internet whilst on the clock.
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Hovertext:
Really, any noise other than hatred or complete lack of interest should not be allowed.
cakewrecks_feedThere's 104 days of summer vacation
And school comes along just to end it
So the annual problem for our generation
Is finding a good way to spennnnd it...
And what better place to spend your summer vacation than at the beach? Phineas and Ferb obviously agree, and who can argue with those guys?
So snap open your lounge chairs and get ready to enjoy today's beachy-keen sweets. Starting with this lovely:
Ahhh. I actually feel more relaxed just looking at this. How people can bring themselves to eat these exquisite creations, I'll never undersand.
And you're going to love this collection of underwater friends...
By amateur baker Kristina H.
and anemones.
Let's all wave hello to this next one...
Submitted by Pearl H.and made by *JNFerrigno
'cuz I hear it brings good tidings!
(Ok, ok, I'm sorry about all the beach puns. No matter what I do they just keep rolling in. But seriously, isn't this cake swell?)
Now here's a tasteful take on a beach-themed wedding cake:
By Sheryl Brou
I love that they didn't go overboard.
(Sea what I did there?)
(Ugh, I'm sorry! I'm even annoying myself now. I'll try to reel it in.)
Here's a sweet little seahorse. I think it's totally cute:
Water you thinking a boat it?
Sorry! I can't help it. I'll just go with the flow.
Like the tiny pearl bubbles floating along the gentle waves of this cake. Simply buoy-tiful.
And I love the graduating colors of fondant here, and the dusting of "sand:"
Tangent time: I once had a good friend who enjoyed eating actual sand. Turns out she was deficient in some essential mineral. Which was a relief, since we were about to take her to the lagoony bin.
It's a shore bet she would have loved this sand castle cake though:
The "sand" is crushed Nilla wafers, should you care to recreate this look for yourself or a loved one who does not enjoy eating actual sand.
There's so much goodness in this next sandy scene, how shell I ever pick a favorite?
I love the pinwheels and the tiny picnic in the corner.
Oh, and the embossed pattern on the mini tablecloth! Great little detail.
This final cake is so incredible and realistic you'll swear it's alive. I squid you not.
By Avalon Cakes
Wow, that sucker is beautiful!
(Specifically, the third one from the bottom.)
Whale, I hope you got your fill of beach-themed sweets (and puns) today. I'm sure you're clamoring for more, but that should tide you over for a while!
Happy Sunday!
*****
P.S. If you actually go to the beach, then clearly you need a mesh tote bag that's in such high demand they couldn't even get one for the photoshoot, and had to photoshop it in (badly) later:
Oh yeah, bad Photoshop is how you know it's good. Well, that, and the 2,000+ 5-star ratings. Turns out this thing is actually pretty awesome, and also comes in blue, gray, or white. Grab yours before the manufacturer tries to snatch it up for another photoshoot.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
the_mary_sue_feed
Your home’s HVAC system is something you don’t think about much until it stops working. When the air conditioning goes on the fritz, it’s all you can think about.
Replacing or repairing an HVAC system can be very expensive, but when that first bit of air conditioning hits on a scorching hot day, most of us would agree that it’s worth every penny.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) based on large language models (LLMs) has revolutionized the industry. Of these, ChatGPT is probably the best-known and arguably the most sophisticated. Today people turn to ChatGPT to answer questions, have conversations, and share deeply personal stories.
But can you trust ChatGPT with your secrets? A creator recently posed this question in a viral TikTok.
smartbitches_feedWelcome back to Get Rec’d!
For this edition, I will warn that there are a couple titles related to tech and politics. One is fiction and the other is non-fiction. That may not be everyone’s bag right now. I also have a new mystery with a twist and Sarah popped in with a recommendation.
What recommendations have your received lately? Let us know in the comments!
I’m personally really curious about this one and how the interactive elements work out.
“Follow leads, find clues, and interrogate suspects in this intricately crafted page-turner! Will you make the right calls and catch the culprit, or will they slip through your fingers?” —G. T. Karber, author of Murdle
One murder. Six suspects. One truth for YOU to uncover.
YOU are the lead detective and it’s your job to investigate the most mysterious crime of your career.
There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness retreat set in an English country manor. You arrive to find the body of a local businessman on the lawn – with a rose placed in his mouth. It appears he was stabbed with a gardening fork and fell to his death from the balcony above. You quickly realize that balcony can only be accessed through a locked door, the key is missing, and everyone in Elysium is now a suspect… Who did it and why? It’s up to you to figure it out.
YOU gather the evidence and examine the clues.
YOU choose who to interview next, and who to accuse as your prime suspect.
But remember that every decision YOU make has consequences – and some of them will prove fatal…
Do you have what it takes? Can YOU solve the murder? Put your sleuthing skills to the test!
This is a book I can’t stop thinking about and does a great job explaining the pervasiveness of AI.
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
Named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly.
A riveting story of what it means to be human in a world changed by artificial intelligence, revealing the perils and inequities of our growing reliance on automated decision-making
On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience—unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence. In Code Dependent, Murgia shows how automated systems are reshaping our lives all over the world, from technology that marks children as future criminals, to an app that is helping to give diagnoses to a remote tribal community.
AI has already infiltrated our day-to-day, through language-generating chatbots like ChatGPT and social media. But it’s also affecting us in more insidious ways. It touches everything from our interpersonal relationships, to our kids’ education, work, finances, public services, and even our human rights.
By highlighting the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from the cozy enclave of Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often-exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Murgia exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency, and shatter our illusion of free will.
The ways in which algorithms and their effects are governed over the coming years will profoundly impact us all. Yet we can’t agree on a common path forward. We cannot decide what preferences and morals we want to encode in these entities—or what controls we may want to impose on them. And thus, we are collectively relinquishing our moral authority to machines.
In Code Dependent, Murgia not only sheds light on this chilling phenomenon, but also charts a path of resistance. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small, and Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.
This was a recommendation Sarah wanted to pass on!
Sarah: Book some of y’all might like. It’s stories about bad ass nuns
Veteran reporter Jo Piazza profiles ten extraordinary nuns and the causes to which they have dedicated their lives—from an eighty-three-year-old Ironman champion to a brave sister who rescues victims of human trafficking
Meet Sister Simone Campbell, who traversed the United States challenging a Republican budget that threatened to severely undermine the well-being of poor Americans; Sister Megan Rice, who is willing to spend the rest of her life in prison if it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; and the inimitable Sister Jeannine Gramick, who is fighting for acceptance of gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church. During a time when American nuns are under attack from the very institution to which they pledge, these sisters offer inspiring, provocative counterstories that are sure to spark debate.
Overthrowing our popular perception of nuns as killjoy schoolmarms content to live in the annals of nostalgia, Piazza defines them instead as the most vigorous catalysts of change in an otherwise constricting patriarchy.
If you’re the kind of reader who likes to read sci-fi as a reflection of what our future may look like, one of my friends believes this book gets the most right in terms of where our country could be headed.
Read Infomocracy, the first book in Campbell Award finalist Malka Older’s groundbreaking cyberpunk political thriller series The Centenal Cycle, a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Series, and the novel NPR called “Kinetic and gripping.”
• A Locus Award Finalist for Best First Novel
• The book The Huffington Post called “one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history”
• One of Kirkus’ “Best Fiction of 2016”
• One of The Washington Post’s “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016”
• One of Book Riot’s “Best Books of 2016 So Far”
It’s been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything’s on the line.
With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?
Infomocracy is Malka Older’s debut novel.
the_mary_sue_feed
Did this driver go out of their way to hit an innocent dog? You be the judge.
Most people’s instinct when they see an animal on the road—be it a household pet like a cat or dog, or a wild animal like a duck or deer—is to slow down, swerve if it’s safe, or stop entirely.
the_mary_sue_feed
The Lord of The Rings. A Song of Ice and Fire. The Wheel of Time. What do all of these critically acclaimed fantasy series have in common? They’re all old news. If you’re looking for the cutting edge, haute couture fantasy of today, these ten authors are the it-girls of the modern era. Despite many of them being middle aged, they’re a high fantasy Brat Pack. When it comes to being in style, it doesn’t matter how old you are, it matters how old you feel. These 10 best fantasy novels of the 2020’s feel like they were just born (published?) yesterday.
TJ Klune’s The House In The Cerulean Sea is anything but drab grimdark, it’s an all the rage new style called cozy fantasy – fantasy that hits like a hot cup up of coffee and a slow kiss on the face. It’s the story of Linus Baker, a bureaucrat who works an agency responsible for the care of magical children – except his bosses only really care about whether or not he gets his paperwork done right. Things change for Linus when he’s sent to investigate a titular seaside house where a group of magical orphans live along with their charismatic caretaker. What he’s supposed to be looking for are clerical errors are procedural discrepancies, but what he finds is the found family that he didn’t know he needed. This book is the warm hug you didn’t know you needed (or maybe you did, poor baby).
the_mary_sue_feed
A woman who bought a house with a stubborn oil stain in the driveway is shocked when the homeowners association (HOA) sends her a bill for the infraction.
TikTok user @luciferlovesmexx posted a video detailing her conundrum on July 2. The video shows her scrubbing the oil slick on her driveway with a brush. It doesn’t appear that she’s making any progress in cleaning the stain.
the_mary_sue_feed
A Target drive-up enthusiast was worried to learn that some employees of the chain dislike fulfilling orders for able-bodied customers.
Madi Swegle (@sweglestory) posted a viral TikTok detailing how the store’s drive-up option wasn’t temporarily unavailable. In the clip, which garnered over 491,000 views, Swegle detailed how she happened upon a Reddit post with commentary from store employees on drive-up users. She was shocked to see their disdain for folks the workers believed should be getting their own groceries.
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Hovertext:
Prediction: in 15 years, nobody under the age of 20 will see why this was supposed to be funny.
the_mary_sue_feed
When it comes to returning purchased products, there’s no one who who does it better than Costco. At least, that’s according to its members who tout the warehouse club’s extremely generous return policy. However, is everyone on board with its leniency–and do shoppers go too far?
In a viral TikTok, Evelyn Juarez (@evelynjuarezofficial) records herself arriving at Costco to return an item. She pulls out a rug, which she said is stained with slime, from her truck and places it on the cart. Evelyn walks into the store, trying to see if they will give her “a new carpet.”
the_mary_sue_feed
When a parent gives a child candy, the last thing they expect is for the kid to cry about it. But that was one Five Below shopper’s experience after they realized what was inside her daughter’s Fun Works candy. Now, the mother is demanding answers from the discount retailer in a viral TikTok.
In the clip, Sarah (@sarahwithanh.eth) shares her child’s horror at discovering there was more than just edible gel inside her Fun Works pen.
smartbitches_feed
For this month’s After Dark at the Movies, I’m writing about The Damned, a folk horror film about 19th century Icelandic fishers who find themselves in desperate straits and faced with the consequences of a terrible choice. I found it interesting that the small crew included two women – an older woman who cooks for the crew and a younger woman who manages the site and the crew, and whose gender never seems to be an issue when it comes to exerting authority and leadership.
This movie sent me down an internet rabbit hole where I found that women were an integral part of Iceland’s fishing industry for centuries.
Iceland women show up in ancient sagas as seafarers. Gudrid the Far Traveller, who was probably born around 985, voyaged over much of Europe and visited Greenland, Vinland, Norway, and Rome. Aud the Deep-Minded lived even earlier, and shows up in several sagas as a woman who captained her own boat on a journey from Scotland to Iceland.
Many Icelandic women achieved legendary status. Thurídur Einarsdóttir was famous for never losing a single crew member and for having a side business as a private detective.
Anna Björnsdóttir kept fishing even while pregnant.
Rósamunda Sigmundsdóttir is famous for wearing red skirts to attract seals.
Halldóra Clubfoot filled her boat with exclusively female rowers and beat men in countless rowing challenges.
Icelandic fishing in the 18th and 19th centuries was not particularly segregated by gender.
In a review of Sea Women of Iceland, Jane Nadel-Klein states:
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it seems, fishing provided some relief and women played key roles as crew and even as boat captains.
Roberta Kwok wrote an essay about this same book in which she quotes the author:
Willson’s team combed through historical archives and publications to gather examples ranging from a female captain who led crews made up entirely of women, to expectant mothers who rowed late into pregnancy.
The sea “wasn’t a male space,” says Willson, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Washington in Seattle and a former seawoman. “It was not a feminist act in any way for them to go to sea.” It was just part of everyday life.
As the articles linked below describe in detail, women eventually became less involved on boats but deeply integral to fish processing which bolstered Iceland’s economy from 1903 to the 1969. Síldarstúlkur, also known as herring girls, poured into coastal towns to process fish directly from the boats. These young women changed Iceland’s economic world and found independence financially and socially.
While the herring girls enjoyed financial independence and a lively social life in dock towns that exploded into large cities, their work was difficult. The herring girls worked long hours, called at any time of day and night whenever a boat came in. The conditions were miserable and many started very young. One woman describes starting at work on the docks alongside her mother on her seventh birthday and being “an independent herring girl” by age eleven. The herring girls were passionate and savvy labor organizers who fought in strikes and demonstrations for pay equity and better working conditions.
Elizabeth Heath relates how this independence helped advance women’s suffrage and other rights for women in Iceland:
Herring girls’ organizing efforts took place around the same time that women won suffrage in Iceland. The country’s first women’s rights organization formed in 1894 and collected signatures on voting rights petitions. By 1907, 11,000 women and men—more than 12 percent of the population—had signed on. In 1915, women over 40 were granted the right to vote, and in 1920, the country introduced suffrage for all citizens ages 18 and up.
Later she relates:
In 1968, the Arctic Ocean herring fishery collapsed as a direct result of overfishing. The once-plentiful Atlantic herring was on the verge of extinction, and Iceland’s economy took a sharp tumble. Siglufjörður and dozens of towns like it emptied out. Fish processing plants were abandoned, boats sat idle in harbors and docks no longer hosted lively gatherings. But even as many herring girls returned to domestic duties, their impact on Icelandic politics and society continued to resonate.
Today only a small percentage of Icelandic women work on boats, but even the pervasive sexism in the industry has never driven them away altogether.
I fell into this topic because of my interest in The Damned, set in the 1800s. Sea Fever is another excellent independent horror movie. Set in 2017, it features an Irish fishing crew captained by a woman. The tiny crew includes another woman as well as a female biologist.
Real life fishing captain Linda Greenlaw became famous following the 2000 film adaptation of the nonfiction book A Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. She published her own memoir, The Hungry Ocean in 1999 and has published several subsequent nonfiction books as well as novels.
Back in Iceland, the 2025 documentary Strengur (also released as Tightlines) tells of young women learning to be fishing guides on Iceland’s rivers. Perhaps the depiction of women at sea and in the other roles within the fishing industry will bring women new recognition and opportunities within a changing social and environmental world.
Iceland’s Forgotten Fisherwomen
Seawomen of Iceland: Survival on the Edge by Margaret Willson (a review by Jane Nadel-Klein)
How Iceland’s Herring Girls Helped Bring Equality to the Island Nation
Women of the Seas: A Brief History
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by Emily Bleeker
October 22, 2024 · Lake Union Publishing
Historical: AmericanRomance
This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.
…
When I picked up When We Chased The Light, I had no idea it’s a continuation of Bleeker’s previous New York Times bestseller When We Were Enemies. That’s not the author’s fault, but Lake Union has to know this is going to cut into buys from confused newbies to the series, who have no idea that the first chunk of Vivian’s story happens in the previous book. How did she become an Italian translator at a POW camp? Previous book. How did she become a USO dancer? Previous book. How she met the secret love of her life, Father Antonio Trombello? Previous book. I won’t count that against this volume but it’s going to be quite a struggle if the reader hasn’t picked up the first volume.
Post-World War II, all-American sweetheart Vivian Snow became a major Hollywood icon. Living with the fact that her soldier husband has been declared MIA after going AWOL, she focuses on her career, leaving her daughter to be raised by her much put-upon sister. Vivian would do anything to be famous, unaware of the turbulence her romantic life bestows upon her future-actress daughter. Rumors that she had her abusive hubby bumped off during his disappearance do not help.
All the while, Vivian holds on to a close relationship with Father Trombello. Whispers of an affair linger in the air, but have never been proven. Did the priest break his vows? The truth lies in postcards sent between them – set to be auctioned off by Christies as part of Vivian’s estate.
I definitely recommend reading the first book, well, first. But once you do, the continuing adventures of Vivian are fascinating to follow. She’s a staunch, interesting character who rather reminds me of the “Marvelous” Midge Maisel, only minus the sense of humor. Vivian could’ve used more laughs in her life.
The book is overall a solid piece of fiction, if too focused on all of the men who abuse Vivian in a huge variety of ways. After awhile, the total lack of decent men in her life leaves one yearning for some kind of divine intervention to defrock Father Trombello. Then it becomes generational trauma, with Vivian’s little girl becoming a great actress with a messy series of relationships. The misogynistic mess that was Old Hollywood is enervating but also feels quite real.
When We Chased the Light should involve pre-reading its opening volume, but it’s a fairly decent overall experience even with its flaws.
the_mary_sue_feed
Some fantasy books feel like a breath of fresh air! Others feel like a gnome farted in your mouth. While we always hope to be transported to a better world after cracking open a work of fantasy, sometimes we just wanna call our moms and have her pick us up when we get there. These fantasy books are a bummer for different reasons. Some are bad. Some are unfinished. Some are ruined by the author’s reputation. Nevertheless, they’re all a bit of a downer. Here are the 10 most disappointing fantasy books of all time.
As an unashamed lover of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, I am majorly bummed to put this series at the top of this list… where it belongs. When A Game of Thrones hit the shelves in the 90’s, Martin was hailed as the second coming of J.R.R. Tolkien. He even had the double R’s in his name! But as the series continued through the years, readers were disappointed to discover that despite Stark family mantra, winter is probably not coming. Martin’s next book The Winds of Winter has been delayed for over a decade, with no release date in site. Fans are devastated, fearful that Martin’s magnum opus, and one of the greatest fantasy series ever penned, will sputter out like the flame it’s named for.
the_mary_sue_feed
When it comes to shopping for household essentials like batteries, you may think it doesn’t matter where they come from, as long as they work. One expert says you might want to think again. If you buy your batteries at places like Dollar Tree to save a buck, you may be spending more in the long run.
In a viral TikTok, a self-proclaimed guide on “insider tricks” to save money, Rossen (@rossen.reports), warns against Dollar Tree batteries.
the_mary_sue_feed
Summer is here, A/Cs are blasting, and an HVAC technician’s advice in a widely viewed TikTok has sparked a surprisingly heated debate. On June 24, a Fayetteville-based HVAC technician (@acmanheatingandair) claimed that you should never place a bed under an A/C vent. However, it left viewers with questions. The video has garnered over 95,400 views as of Friday.
“Never install a vent over a bed,” said the technician. “You’ll make the residents very uncomfortable.”
the_mary_sue_feed - ‘Where is the recall on this?’: Woman buys new Ninja Crispi. Then it explodes on her second usethe_mary_sue_feed - ‘God forbid a working lady multitask’: Woman tries to get help at Southwest Airlines customer servicsmbc_comics_feed - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Tonecakewrecks_feed - Sunday Sweets Goes To The Beachthe_mary_sue_feed - ‘Yeah, I charge $220 for a $20 part’: HVAC technician tries to charge customer. Then the customer puthe_mary_sue_feed - ‘Imagine picking up a book in a bookstore…’: Can ChatGPT really share your conversations with othersmartbitches_feed - Sunday Sale Digest!smartbitches_feed - Get Rec’d with Amanda – Volume 93the_mary_sue_feed - ‘They was finna hit him on purpose’: Man catches truck about to run over dog. Then the driver spotsthe_mary_sue_feed - The 10 Best Fantasy Novels Of The 2020’s (So Far)the_mary_sue_feed - ‘Coca-Cola does well on those’: Woman buys a house that already has oil stain on the driveway. Thenthe_mary_sue_feed - ‘Should young, able-bodied people use drive-up???’: Woman uses Target drive-up. Then she finds out wsmbc_comics_feed - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Annihilatethe_mary_sue_feed - ‘Ugh you’re one of THOSE customers’: Woman’s rug from Costco gets slime on it. Then she returns itthe_mary_sue_feed - ‘My daughter was eating it and she was crying’: Mom buys Fun Works edible paper and pen from Five Besmartbitches_feed - Kickass Women in History: Icelandic Women at Seasmartbitches_feed - When We Chased The Light by Emily Bleekerthe_mary_sue_feed - 10 Of The Most Disappointing Fantasy Booksthe_mary_sue_feed - ‘These aren’t like the Duracell or Energizer’: Expert reveals why batteries may be the worst thing ythe_mary_sue_feed - ‘Noted’: Expert says never put a bed under an A/C vent. Here’s why![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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