🎂
in 2020, i decided i ::needed:: to learn how to make and frost a layer cake at home. i ordered the piping tools and cake spinner, watched YouTube videos, practiced my technique to get the perfect crumb and frosting texture.
fast forward to when we could finally safely gather in person, cooking and baking just felt better when i did it for others. especially making special birthday cakes, like this one here—chocolate cake with brown butter frosting and naturally dyed sprinkles.
Jan 18, 2025
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that cake is beautiful! love that you naturally dyed the sprinkles! do you have any videos or youtube accounts that you'd recommend to learn?
radiant_r4ve_bab3 i wish i made them! purchased Watkins Rainbow Sprinkles (no artificial coloring) at a cute shop in Chicago. They look and taste great, very cute muted colors
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these last few months, I’ve been really into baking, intricate tiered cakes. I’m just kind of figuring it out as I go along. I’ve been making my friends cakes for their birthday. This is the most recent one I made. I’m trying to keep it as a fun, hobby and not monetize it like I do with all my other hobbies lol
Feb 21, 2025
🎂
I love baking cakes for people. Store bought cakes are so boring. What do they show? That you have fifty bucks and a half hour to kill? Who even needs a cake at all at that point. Cakeake isn’t about being a cake, it’s about thoughtfulness, decorum, and perseverance. I will exhaust myself and push myself to limits I didn’t know existed in order to make elaborate cakes for my friends’ birthdays. The funny thing is, I always run excessively late at finishing them, barely getting the frosting on… And by the time the cake reaches its destination, it inevitably falls apart. But they always taste good. People think they can’t bake, even people who like to cook think they can’t bake… And I guess I kind of just explained how baking is hard and I’m not great at it, but that’s exactly why you should do it! It’s good to not be good at things and who knows, you could be really great at it. And if you aren’t it’s still fun and makes people happy.
Oct 13, 2022
Bake for your family! Bake for your friends! Bake for birthdays and holidays and to mark successes! A real labour of love, and such a gift to feed people!
Mar 31, 2024
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i canceled my Spotify account over the summer and have spent the last few months rebuilding my digital music library on a refurbished iPod Touch. reading critiques of the app (and it’s enshittification), i realized i wasn’t even sure of my own musical tastes and preferences. i had stopped picking for myself, stopped seeking out new music, ceasing to know how to choose what i wanted or articulate what i like.
breaking free from the algorithm has been such a joy! i’m borrowing gobs of music from the library, rebuilding my old playlists, and consuming more music than i have in years. and better yet, my data isn’t being tracked by Spotify and i own what’s in my personal library. further, my receptors are more open when i’m out in the world exposed to music, searching for recommendations in an organic way.
Jan 16, 2025
i’ve been trying to articulate why i enjoy this space so much. yes, the UX is reminiscent of Tumblr and the early days of the internet. and there’s genuine sincerity and vulnerability on here that makes it feel really cozy and real, which i haven’t felt online in at least a decade.
but i think what’s undergirding my love of this space is how anti-capitalist it feels. most of the recs everyone shares are vibe-checks, quality of life shifts, meditations and offers, music and movies, just plain good art. i don’t feel compelled to buy anything when i come here. i feel excited and pumped to be a cheerleader, find connection, find common ground. and FWIW the recs i’ve shared that have gotten the most traction are my suggestions for leading a less capitalistic / consumerist life (quitting Amazon, getting off of Spotify, building community to take care of you and your things).
all of this is to say, i love it here and i love you guys.
Feb 7, 2025
hear me out—this one might feel impossible, but i quit purchasing items on Amazon in 2018 and cancelled my GoodReads account shortly after.
i did some serious reflection and realized i’d become super reliant upon, and frankly, quite used to the instant gratification of purchasing something and knowing i’d have it within a day. that’s not normal. the labor practices, economics, and environmental impacts of getting what you want from the internet delivered quickly and right to your door are skewed. i was filling a void in myself with mindless purchases.
i’m aware that they service a huge swath of the internet (Amazon Web Services), own Whole Foods and Abe Books, and will likely take over more businesses we like and rely on. weaning off and avoiding entirely is very very hard, but it can also be a measured decision. that said, i know that it is a privilege to abstain from Amazon. i am able bodied, i don’t have kids, i have access to a car, i live in an urban environment with access to a lot of stuff at my fingertips. but making the choice to break out of the Amazon loop has ultimately been better for my pocketbook and better for my relationship to these mega-tech-companies that have their fingers in everything.
in contrast, i’m becoming more interested in alternate economies, like bartering and sharing. i love the idea of having commonly shared tools and items (tool libraries are very cool). we don’t need to own it all, we have each other.
interested in exploring more? the zine pictured below is a great start, and summarizes a much larger book by the same author on how to resist the leviathan that is Amazon.
Jan 22, 2025