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Links: Podcasts, Cheese, & More

Welcome, everyone! My partner and I are officially homeowners and we got to sign our paperwork in a haunted law office. Absolute perfection. We won’t move in for a bit because there’s painting to do and flooring to replace, but I’m feeling very emotional (in a good way) about the whole thing. The notion of not renting anymore and being able to customize whatever I want feels so freeing! The possibilities are endless! I’m also … Continue reading Links: Podcasts, Cheese, & More





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Romantic Times Rewind: October 1988 Ads & Features

In this week’s podcast episode, we’re looking at the glorious  ads and features for the October/November 1988 issue of RT Magazine. Thank you to Amy M. for this issue! You can also find all the RTRW content at our category page for Romantic Times Rewind.  If you want to listen and follow along with this entry, we have more detail in the audio, but you can click play and listen and read and absorb all … Continue reading Romantic Times Rewind: October 1988 Ads & Features




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637. RT Rewind October 1988 Ads & Features

It’s time for the Ads & Features of the October 1988 (!!) issue of Romantic Times Magazine. Y’all. We’ve got: Vintage gossip! Blind items that are very easy to guess! Danielle Steel’s two blue Mercedes! Fuchsia covers with giant flowers and startled animals! Riverboat gambler romance heroes! And a truly paltry obituary for an extraordinary author. It’s 1988. Fuchsia. So much fuchsia. Blanket content warning for romances written in the late 80s. Be ready for … Continue reading 637. RT Rewind October 1988 Ads & Features



  • Romantic Times Rewind


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Book Beat: A Cozy Camping Romance, a Fantasy Mystery, & More

Welcome to Book Beat! Book Beat aims to highlight other books that we may hear about through friends, social media, or other sources. We could see a gorgeous ad! Or find a new-to-us author on a list of underrated romances! Think of Book Beat as Teen Beat or Tiger Beat, but for books. And no staples to open to get the fold-out poster.







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Links: Public Libraries, Lord of the Rings, & More

Welcome back, everyone! We’re having a string of warmer weather in New England and it’s really harshing my fall vibes. I also keep seeing photos or reels of people I know receiving “boo baskets.” Is anyone else familiar? It’s like an Easter basket, but for Halloween. And I kind of love it? I floated the idea by my partner and I was surprised that they wanted to exchange some. Their reasoning is that we’ve been … Continue reading Links: Public Libraries, Lord of the Rings, & More





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638. Smart Bitches After Dark – Tara interviews Sarah & Amanda

Tara Scott, staff writer at SBTB and co-host of the Queerly Recommended podcast, is in the interviewer’s chair, asking Amanda and me questions about Smart Bitches After Dark, our new community support wing. We talk about what After Dark is, and also about the larger enshittification of different parts of the internet, and how we navigate that as a 20 year old blog. Yay blogs! I was really nervous about being interviewed, and I hope … Continue reading 638. Smart Bitches After Dark – Tara interviews Sarah & Amanda






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Links: Architecture, Genre Chaos, & More

Welcome back to Wednesday Links! Tomorrow is Halloween and wow the end of October really snuck up on us. Does anyone have any fun Halloween plans or just wants to share their fun costume ideas? Last year, I was a hot dog and plan to recycle the costume. But as an added bonus, I bought our little kitty Fig a matching hot dog suit. Feel free to take bets on whether I’ll be able to … Continue reading Links: Architecture, Genre Chaos, & More











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Writer's Retreat

(it was TS Eliot)




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Should've Hired A Consultant

mmm spaghettification




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He's Just Asking Questions

Questions, questions




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What's Bugging Aurelia

house centipedes are our friends. our creepy, disturbing little friends.




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They're A Serif Sort Of Person




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She's Only Human After All

do not perceive her




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Now You're Worrying About It Too

it's probably fine




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Here's The Plan




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A Wives' Tale

nice grimace, Tai




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Who's Bi First

THAT'S WHAT I'M ASKIN' YOU




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Anh's Brush With Death




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New stickers & shirts now available!

I have submitted the manufacturing order for my new set of pins! They are at the factory now — I should be receiving my stock in the month of August sometime. Here are the final designs. Pre-orders are still open! This project has been really fun! I enjoyed the challenge of designing a bunch of new stuff (which I haven’t done in a while), and it’s been really interesting seeing which designs have hit and which are are little less popular. I can already tell that a few of these are going to be one print run only. So, this ... Read more



  • Blog
  • blog: product announcements

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'My ex cheated, so I refunded a gift': Scorned ex revokes $600 gift card

Cheaters never win, as this woman found out the hard way after deceiving her boyfriend. 

Breaking up is never easy, no matter what the reason. But when one partner cheats, it can certainly make the decision easier for the other person! Instead of breaking up with someone they adore, they now can move along to someone who treats them with dignity. And they're often left wondering how they can make their ex's life just slightly less convenient than it was before. In this person's case, they managed to steal back a $600 gift card from that cheater. Too bad, too sad! And, as this person proudly proclaimed in the aftermath of their plan, "Mission accomplished." 

This person shared their own story of petty revenge on a cheating ex. Commenters loved the story, and a few even chimed in with their own excellent stories of times they got even with their exes. Keep scrolling to check out a handful of the petty revenge stories

Up next, read about these employees who were fired quickly after getting sassy with customers, like one employee who dared say, "If I have to talk to you again, you have to sit in time out for 10 minutes.




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'As the breadwinner, you hold all the leverage': Husband refuses to spend $2,000 on wedding gift for wife's friend, wife tallies up his recreational finances

It seems that both parties are at fault here. On the one hand, you have the Redditor, who is the breadwinner of the family. He recently brought home a bonus of $3,000, a bonus that his wife wanted to be mostly used to pay for a wedding gift for her friend. Now, this friend frequently extends financial generosity to the Redditor's wife when they socialize together. It makes logical sense that the wife would want to pay her friend back for all the meals and financial assistance her friend provided to her over the years during difficult times. However, spending $2K out of your husband's $3K bonus on a necklace does not seem like the kind of idea her husband would be happy with. Naturally, this started a heated argument between the two spouses.

This conflict led to the wife tallying up all her husband's expenses on recreational activities, such as hobbies or the two cars he owns. Clearly, he is not the most generous spouse either, especially since his wife still needs help with her personal finances from her friend. Keep scrolling below to see what people had to say to this guy in the comments section. For more, check out this post about a 40-year-old who was passed over for a promotion in favor of a younger coworker.




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'Not a single person ever paid me back': Man loans friends over $18,000, friends avoid repaying him for years

This person is lending out way too much money to their friends! There's only so much you can do for your friends before you're officially the one being taken advantage of. After all, friendship is supposed to be a give-and-take. You laugh together and cry together. You listen to their troubles and they listen to yours. If it's not reciprocal, it can leave one or both of you with conflicting feelings. You might start to wonder why you're always the one who has to pay the bill at the end of a meal because your friend keeps insisting they've fallen on hard times. Or in this person's case, you might accidentally loan your friends thousands of dollars over time, leaving you with an entire friend group who owes you big.

This person, u/mastagoose, has learned the hard way that they need to be cautious when mixing money with friendship. There's that common rule that states that if you're going to loan someone money, just give it as a gift, and don't expect to get it back. That way, there won't be any hard feelings when you notice your friend wearing a new outfit or buying an expensive meal, knowing that they haven't paid you back. This guy not only hasn't forgotten about their numerous loans to friends, but they made a list about it, and the people of the internet were not exactly kind to them. Instead, they were repeatedly told that they should stop lending people money ASAP. Maybe they'll take the internet's advice! 

Up next, read about one 22-year-old employee who "decided to start including the Chairman/CEO…on all emails" in order to get their coworkers to reply to their emails. 




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Mother bans adult daughter from family Thanksgiving after she refuses to host the event: 'I made it very clear she needed to stay true to her word and if she dumped it on someone else she wouldn't be going to Thanksgiving'

Hosting events is a lot of work; there's a house to be cleaned, food to be prepped, and a lot of general setup that needs to be taken care of. When it's family, it's even more so to do—it's probably a good idea to hide the things your family won't approve of and save yourself the judgment.

Family hosting schedules help to ease the burden of any one person having to host too often, and the reality is that for a member of the family to drop from hosting duties places a disproportionate amount of responsibility on the other members of the family to host additional events.

The problem is this assumes that each member of the family is equally able to host in the first place. The reality is this is never the case. Some people, usually older members of the family, have homes with more space for hosting more people and the space to store the things necessary for hosting a large family. Many of us, particularly in our younger adult years, live in spaces that we'd be horrified to let our family into.




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'It was nonsense': Entitled employee constantly takes credit for other's work, coworker gets revenge by making a fake presentation for her to present in front of boss

There's always that one coworker who knows how to get away with taking credit for everyone else's hard work. You put in the effort, lose sleep over the details, and then they swoop in, ready to present it all like they thought of it themselves. This exact situation happened in one office until one clever employee decided to turn the tables. After watching his entitled coworker repeatedly swipe his projects and pass them off as her own, he put together a presentation just for her. Packed with confusing data points and meaningless buzzwords, the presentation was just convincing enough to look important…until you actually tried to explain it. And sure enough, the coworker snagged it and confidently presented it in front of their boss. The employee watched with quiet satisfaction as she stumbled through, each buzzword making less sense than the last. When the boss turned to him for clarification, he threw her under the bus, telling the boss she had no idea what she was talking about. Sweet, sweet office justice.




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Ex-boss freaks out after reading former employee's online review, sends her essay-long messages: 'Block and move on'

It must have been challenging for this boss to read about how her own lack of professionalism. However, as Justin Timberlake himself once sang and then experienced, "what goes around… comes around." 

Here, we have a former employee who quit after experiencing a severe case of burnout. Their horrible boss established a workplace environment that discouraged calling in sick because that only meant having to do more work down the road. Eventually, there was a final straw and the employee left before having another job lined up. They decided to pen an anonymous review of their experience at the company, mostly focusing on organizational flaws and less on personal grievances. 

Still, however, their boss took the review very personally and figured out who the author was. As many folks in the comments section pointed out, the Redditor is under no obligation to respond to their ex-boss's ridiculous messages; if anything, they should "deny, deny, deny."

For more stories like this, check out this post about another who employee who quit during the first week.




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After being denied a raise, employee resigns and accepts job at rival company, boss rejects the resignation and offers a 50% raise instead: ‘I couldn't refuse’

When you know you are a valued employee, one your company cannot afford to lose, you have a lot of leverage when negotiating benefits and pay. The problem is, unless you actually threaten to quit, companies will not be in a rush to give you more than they think you deserve, which is usually much less than what you do deserve. 

So employees threaten to quit, and some manage to get what they want from their current company, and some end up actually quitting and getting a better deal somewhere else.

The employee in this Reddit story (OP, original poster) got the best of both worlds, since they already had another job lining up when they handed in their resignation letter. Their boss, who previously refused to give OP a raise, decided to reject the resignation and offer OP exactly what they wanted, which meant OP now had two offers, and a big decision to make.

Scroll down to read how the story ends. After you are done, click here for a story of a food company that refused to listen to their QAs' advice, and launched a terrible new sauce nobody wanted.




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‘So I ruined him’: Landlord neighbor siphons water from man's water supply for over a year so the man cleverly cuts off the supply, resulting in tenant complaints and a hefty fine

Moving to a new place has its pros and cons. You might've caught a good deal on a nice home and are looking for a change of scenery. Most of the time, everything seems perfect on paper until you actually get to your new neighborhood. Once you settle into your humble abode, you start noticing some strange, not-so-coincidental things going on.

Aside from the one-off neighbors parking their bikes in front of your gate, you might notice that your water pressure isn't up to par. You think that, maybe, you might need to call a plumber to get the issue looked at so it doesn't get worse. The thing about observant people is that they really see things for what they are. The homeowner in this story realizes soon enough that his neighbor, who is a landlord to two tenants, has been hooked up to his water supply for who knows how long.

The man's water pressure would only work well when he noticed his neighbors were not using water, and he waited a while before he made real accusations. When he was sure his suspicions were correct, he cuts of the supply, which leads to a chain reaction of issues at his next-door neighbor's building, including: no water, ruining of electrical wiring, and some very angry tenants.




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'The manager [said], "You really want to burn this bridge?" I said, "Yes"': 20+ Employees who quit their jobs as fast as possible

There's no need to double down on a bad bet, especially when your career is on the line. Although it can be a letdown to try and start a new job only to leave immediately, it's better than staying somewhere you hate for years only to regret it each day. 

 Some workplaces have working conditions that are completely unacceptable, and a lot of folks cited that as their reasons for leaving. For example, one person found themself working in a propane tank factory, but they realized they were working in the second-hottest room possible. They were stationed right next to a kiln room, and the room they were in was often at 130 degrees! They rightfully refused to return to that job. 

Other people were dealing with some really incompetent management situations. As one worker shared, their management at a small retail shop barely bothered to train them, and they spent their entire second day on the job alone. This was the deciding factor for that person, and they called it quits. At least some of the people who shared their stories moved onto way better jobs after learning from these bad ones. 

After that, read about this job candidate who chose the wrong interviewer to lie to, because at the job he claimed to work at, "Nobody knew him." 




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'She has a temper [...] I hate her': 16-year-old girl refuses to tutor her terrible 15-year old sister despite parents' threats of punishment

We're often taught that we have an obligation to love our family and that "blood is thicker than water." While this is overly simplistic, I think it remains true that we should try harder to make things work with our family than we would with other random people. We should seek to resolve issues that reasonably can be resolved with a higher obligation than we would with friends and acquaintances. But even with family, there is a point where cutting ties becomes the only option.

Still, these sisters may come to find they grow closer as they grow older and as whatever chip this younger sister has on her shoulder subsides and she matures—or they may never come to find common ground, with old deep cuts festering and becoming impossible to resolve and move past. But, for now, it's hard to say that the older sister is wrong for not wanting to help her sister out. Siblings are going to fight, but there's a point where things go way too far, and the parents desperately need to intervene. Perhaps the parents would be better off just hiring a tutor to help her with the subjects she's falling behind in.




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Prying Karen criticizes a baby-faced 20-year-old mom at the store and lectures her about 'teen pregnancy,' the mom snaps and teaches her a lesson of her own: ‘I made her regret it’

Moms are usually an infinite pit of mercy, grace, and patience, but when a new mom is just released from the hospital post-birth and some old bat at the store decides to give her a hard time about her precious tiny human, the gloves might come off a little.

Perhaps a mother's grace is earned throughout their child's life. Untrained in the ways of well-grounded motherhood, this 20-year-old mom, u/Feathers137 the original poster (OP) of this story, was in the grocery store trying to buy some formula for her newborn when an older woman came over to her. Expecting the older lady to coo over her new baby–as many older folks do–she smiled and allowed her to approach, but what this uncouth Karen said in return shocked everyone standing in Aisle 18. 

Quite frankly, if anyone said this sort of comment to me (unprompted) in public, I think I'd need to be escorted out of the premises by security to avoid some sort of physical altercation. But maybe that's because I don't possess that uber-top-secret mom patience potion yet… So when OP encountered the rudest, most shamelessly abrasive woman in the world who was fixated on forcing her beliefs on a new mom in the dairy section, she dropped an epic comeback that made this Karen cry over spilled milk.




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25-year-old employee requests off to attend a funeral, micromanager demands for proof of the service: 'After this, I want to quit'

The last thing anyone wants when they are going through a family emergency is to have to deal with your micromanaging boss simultaneously. Here, we have an employee who took one day off to attend the funeral service of a family member. He did not request any bereavement leave or anything more than just the one day of paid time off he was certainly entitled to based on his contract. 

However, upon his return to the office, his micromanaging supervisor demanded for proof that he did, in fact, take time off to attend a funeral service. Apparently, this was because he also had to dip out early one day due to a dentist appointment. The supervisor's own boss was skeptical about the whole thing and forced the supervisor to request for proof. Now, all the employee wants to do is leave the company with no notice instead.

Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from folks in the comments section. For more, check out this post about a 40-year-old company man who was passed over for a promotion in favor of a much younger coworker.




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'A masterclass in how not to get hired': 18-year-old writes unflattering pitch for themself on social media job page

This person is young and aspirational, but their methods of finding a new job could use some fine-tuning. 

Creating your very first resume is both intimidating and kind of embarrassing. Because you have zero job experience, you have to write about the clubs you participated in school, or your hobbies where you have leadership qualities, or even just the classes you're currently taking. None of that life experience is going to wow a hiring manager. But that's why kids start small, picking up jobs at fast food chains or clothing stores and working for minimum wage. 

This 18-year-old had a different idea of how they think their first jobs should go. They wrote in to a Facebook group for job offerings with an interesting paragraph about their own experience. Instead of highlighting their best attributes, they insisted on avoiding jobs where they have to work with customers (even though they claim to be outgoing in the same breath). The internet found this all very funny, and had some notes for this kid about better ways to find a job. 

Up next, have a laugh at some employees who got fired after getting petty with their most entitled customers, like one who informed a customer that, "If I have to talk to you again, you have to sit in time-out for 10 minutes."




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'Hang up the phone, Karen': Entitled couple brake-checks catering delivery vehicle, blames the driver and tries to get free catering out of it

It's always shocking when people who are so clearly in the wrong forcibly double down on their behavior. Of course, that kind of entitlement among the Karens and Kevins of the world comes as no surprise, and yet to see this kind of audacity unfold in real-time is still a sight to behold.

Here, we have an entitled couple that brake-checked a catering delivery vehicle. The driver reported the incident to his supervisor, and the camera footage that was captured clearly showed that the couple was at fault. And yet, the couple willingly called up the catering service to accuse the driver of wrongdoing, threatening to call the policy and sue the company unless they got free catering for an upcoming event they were hosting. Thankfully, the supervisor did not fall for this entitled behavior and proceeded to show them the footage that was captured. Let's just say that Karen and Kevin quickly hung up after the evidence presented itself.

For more stories like this, check out this post about an entitled boss whose behavior caused their new hire to quit immediately.




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'My dad’s beautiful brain started thinking': Karen neighbor insists HOA remove neighbor's boat from view, neighbor maliciously complies with her demands

Minding your business? This woman has never heard of such a thing. She's being a rather nosy neighbor, as u/Ok-One-3240 shared in their family's story of malicious compliance

Some people just can't help being busybodies. They have too much time on their hands, and they're going to make it everyone else's problem, too. This person shares that their family enjoyed living in a gated community, and they spent a good amount of time using their boat. Each weekend, they'd take the boat out for a few days, then store it again for the rest of the week. As long as the boat wasn't within view of the street, their local HOA had no problem with it. That's a common issue that people seem to have with their HOAs… who cares if you can see someone's boat? It's a pretty frivolous rule in the first place, and this person mentions that their HOA didn't really enforce the rule too strongly.

Then along comes this busybody neighbor who decides to make it her mission to bug the boat family. Read the whole dramatic story below. 

Up next, read about what happened when this 17-year-old babysat her aunt's kids and helped herself to a piece of cake… from a dessert that cost $90! 




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'[He] was on 24/7 call, so unplugging the phone wasn't an option': Tech support guy gets revenge on an angry IT customer by programming the office phone to call him at 2, 3, and 4 AM every night

We learned from a young age that you should be nice to the other kids on the playground. Share the bouncy rubber ball, don't pull a girl's pigtails, and include everyone in your fun games! That's how it should be in the working world–the adult world–because if you make an enemy on the blacktop, you might just get destroyed in the next game of dodgeball. 

This IT customer learned never to mess with their tech support crew after being a total buffoon on the phone. He was known for screaming at the guys who were just trying to help him troubleshoot his modem, but finally, after being placed with the same phone support guy one too many times, he snapped and decided to get some revenge. 

Frankly, I think this guy's sleep schedule became a little more precious to him after he got completely pwned by the dude he was used to screaming at–I guess now it looks like the phone is the only thing screaming at 2 AM… 3 AM… and 4 AM. Do you think he'll be nicer to his next customer service rep after this? You be the judge.