Don't leave this in the tags! It's so important!
Fortunately the six different poisons cancelled each other out
please promise me fandom won't disappear entirely into discord servers, i'm too old and employed for that
Thinking about the, possibly apocryphal, story of a theologian asking scientist and biologist J. B. S. Haldane what the various species of animals in the world might tell us about the mind of the creator, to which he responded the divine must have "an inordinate fondness for beetles." I think we should do more theology like this. Let's ask some organic chemists, discrete mathematicians, and civil engineers what their areas of expertise might tell us about the mind of the divine
#if you read a lot of astronomers from the 1600s most of the conclusions they come to is that no divine geometer would allow such a universe#to be constructed#and they're not wrong (atheist opinion)#so. god is not a mathematician or a clockmaker but god is pro beetle. we're making progress (tags via @thoughtsformtheuniverse)
Just saw somebody saying that the reason gen z are better and more moral and less bigoted than millennials is that they didn't read Harry Potter.
I can't. I just can't.
Okay, I can though. This statement is one that is very very wrong from pretty much every angle. Gen z and gen alpha are not in fact less bigoted or more moral than millenials. Gen z and Gen alpha are in fact showing terrifying levels of antisemitism, a resergence of misogyny, and intensely puritainical leanings. Young American voters voted for Donald Trump in surprisingly high proportions compared to previous elections, indicating that today's young US voters are more right wing than millenials were at the same age, or more accurately, that a higher percentage of young voters are right wing. This is also holding true in Europe, for example in Germany, where much of the AfD's support is surprisingly young.
Secondly, plenty of gen z and gen alpha kids read Harry Potter, or had it read to them. They are still a very popular book series, and most parents and teachers, and certainly most ten year old readers, don't realize J. K. Rowling is a hatemongerer of the highest order, and even if they do know this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, as it wasn't for many of the adults in my life who pressed Roald Dahl books into my hands, in spite of his antisemitism and other vile views, as well as his disturbing family life.
Thirdly, the biases obvious in the Harry Potter books are not indicative of J. K. Rowling's turn toward extremist hate. Nearly all of them are in line with clueless white liberalism in the nineties and early 2000s, and very much in line with children's fantasy of the time and to a large extent still. The anti submitted troops that she uses, for example are grown task but they are not unusual in the genre, and the underlying assumptions about gender are also pretty standard. She was radicalized after she finished writing the series. And in the Harry Potter series, we can see some of the assumptions and positions that would make her more open to being radicalized in this way, but it is a mistake to read the series and go, oh yes she was always secretly evil and indoctrinating our children, and children who read the books caught her bigotry contagion.
Which is another way in which this entire premise is wrong. There is a very dubious connection between any assumptions, biases, and beliefs expressed in a work of fiction, accidentally or on purpose by the author, and the viewpoints of any adult who read that as a child. You do not catch the bigotry virus from what you read. And suggesting that reading the popular wizard school books by the Bad Lady will contaminate you forever is functionally the same logic employed by the cafeteria lady at my school, who told me that if I read them I would open myself up to demons.
day 1 at the communal puzzle club: i see a puzzle with a sign next to it that says "please help with our communal puzzle" and i say to myself "don't mind if I do" and did the whole thing
day 2 at the communal puzzle club: i get gently reprimanded for not sharing the puzzle experience with the others. in my defense I thought they needed all the help they could get
day 3 at the communal puzzle club: we start a new puzzle and i put one of the pieces in my pocket and save it for later so i can be the one who puts in the last piece
day 4 at the communal puzzle club: the puzzle is almost complete so i reach into my pocket and realize i left the last piece in my other pants which are currently in the washing machine. i feign ignorance
day 5 at the communal puzzle club: the others are suspicious but they have no proof. they check my pockets before i leave but little do they know that this time i ate the pieces
day 6 at the communal puzzle club: i put an entire bottle of miralax in my coffee to get the pieces out of my digestive system but they are too far dissolved to be usable. my stomach is in so much pain and i can't stop shitting but i rinse off what's left of the pieces and make it to puzzle club anyway, only to find out they don't meet on mondays. i am inconsolable.
day 7 at the communal puzzle club: i realized those pieces are incriminating evidence so i slipped them in someone else's pocket. i should be good as long as they don't find residual traces of my dna
day 8 at the communal puzzle club: there is an odd feeling in my gut. i feel as if something has been awoken in me
day 9 at the communal puzzle club: i am in such deep focus that the others are starting to fear me. either that or they are cowering away from the communal puzzle out of sheer respect for my skills
day 10 at the communal puzzle club: i'm getting better and better, i can now do several puzzles in one day. the others are discussing what to do about me in hushed tones. little do they know my laser focus allows me to hear everything they say. they aren't a threat.
day 11 at the communal puzzle club: the club manager unlocked the door but already i am inside. ive been here all night doing puzzles in the dark. they threaten to ban me from the club so in response i pick a 500 piece puzzle at random and complete it in under 45 minutes, just to show them who the real authority is
day 12 at the communal puzzle club: i have been officially banned from the communal puzzle club. in a fit of rage i grab as many pieces as i can and eat them, making sure to thoroughly chew and swallow every single one. if i can't do them, no one can.
day 13 at the communal puzzle club: it's monday again. the club doesn't meet today. it's the perfect opportunity to break in and do as many puzzles as my heart desires, without any of the club's petty drama to distract me
day 14 at the communal puzzle club: i am in jail because the club manager snitched to the cops like the pathetic weakling they are. this is the worst night of my entire life there aren't any puzzles here
day 15 at the communal puzzle club: the judge let me off with a restraining order since I didn't actually steal anything. i show back up to communal puzzle club just to make a show of ripping the order to shreds. no piece of paper will dictate my life, only jigsaw-cut cardboard has that power. nothing else.
day 16 at the communal puzzle club: everyone is so quiet today when I walk in. I eat some pieces in a show of force, just to remind everyone who's in charge. I comment that they taste somewhat like strychnine, they say it's just because Ravensburger has a new method of chemically processing their pieces. sounds plausible. 30 minutes later i am convulsing violently but i beg them not to call an ambulance until i finish the puzzle i was working on. but the bastards don't listen and I'm shipped off to the hospital kicking and screaming.
day 17 at the communal puzzle club: i spent the night in the hospital. a detective comes in and says they're investigating the manager of the communal puzzle club for attempted murder and asks what i know. i tell him honestly that i ain't no snitch and spit in his face. he says they have more than enough evidence to prosecute regardless.
day 18 at the communal puzzle club: the club manager is on trial for attempted murder and i am called as a witness. i tell the judge that i ain't no snitch and spit in his face. i am held in contempt of the court
day 19 at the communal puzzle club: the defense makes a plea of justifiable self defense, citing the restraining order that isn't even 1 week old. somehow the judge buys that flimsy defense. i mean, this is the same judge who didn't even recognize me from that same case despite being the same judge. i think the poor old man has dementia so i make a motion for a mistrial. it gets shot down because the system is corrupt.
day 20 at the communal puzzle club: the judge says i should get jail time but he decided i should be in a mental facility instead. i don't know why he would think that, i have been nothing but sane my entire life. god forbid a woman have hobbies
day 1 in the psych ward: they have puzzles in here this is amazing
day 2 in the psych ward: all the puzzles are missing a few pieces. this is unacceptable. im going to go insane
day 3 in the psych ward: i have been informed that they do not use the word "insane" in here so i take back my previous statement.
day 4 in the psych ward: i need to find those missing pieces i need to find them i need to find them i have been questioning everybody all the nurses all the doctors all the patients all the miscellaneous hospital staff but nobody knows anything. this is hopeless. i will never be able to overcome this trauma. my life is over
day 5 in the psych ward: it's so boring in here. without complete puzzles there's nothing to do except watch tv but the only channel they get is the local news. i begrudgingly watch out of nothing but all-encompassing ennui. but one of the stories is about the communal puzzle club and suddenly i am overcome with nostalgia. turns out there was a series of alleged poisonings attributed to that location. strychnine was found in three people so far, one of whom was myself. but the others didn't survive. this confirms my suspicion that i am in fact the chosen one
day 6 in the psych ward: with a renewed sense of purpose i will attempt to convince the doctors of my "sanity," but i also came to the realization that they don't care about sanity, they only care about sedation. they want to supress my passion, eradicate my truth, condition me to fall in line with the rest of the "sane" people. with that knowledge, i was able to tell them everything they wanted to hear. i acted polite, pretended i was cured, i even feigned complete disinterest in puzzles! it made my stomach boil but i did it, i convinced them, and just like that, i was free.
day 28 at the communal puzzle club: i don't know why everyone was so surprised to see me again, it's only natural that i'd come to finish what i started
(i know this is supposed to be day 27 at the communal puzzle club but day 27 was a monday so nothing happened) like what am i gonna say, "day 27 i sat alone in my studio apartment eating cereal and biding my time"
day 29 at the communal puzzle club: the communal puzzle club has been disbanded, the club manager has been arrested, and the whole place is swarming with cops. i watched as they hauled off a bunch of expensive looking printers and like a billion reams of paper and loaded them onto a big police truck.
apparently, the communal puzzle club was just a front for document forgery and counterfeit cash, and i had been inadvertently sabotaging them this entire time. which is sad because i support both of those things. but it also explains why they met 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and why they had their own building despite having no profit model and also why i was the only one who seemed to actually care about the puzzles. everyone else was too busy making fake passports to care.
in hindsight, i always knew they were all a bunch of casuals. but i didn't mind because they had so many excellent puzzles. I asked one of the officers if i could at least have the puzzles but he said they were already taken and locked away in the evidence room. the thought sickens me- all those puzzles, gathering dust, never to be assembled again. or maybe the pigs just took them for themselves! so they could have all the puzzles they want while the rest of us ordinary, law-abiding citizens have nothing to do except die of boredom!
the moral of the story is that we can never have nice things because of the fucking pigs. fuck the police.
i beat myself up for not knowing enough about my special interests a lot but then i remember the average person off the street has no idea what the carboniferous is and i feel better
are you really bad at it or are you in "good at it" spaces
Me: ah shit, I misidentified that yellow rumped warbler as a female goldfinch, I should literally be hung at the gallows for this. I'm such an IDIOT
My friend, pointing at a vulture: check out that fucked up crow lol
every day i think about how wild vaporeon would live mostly in the water but come to shore to have their pups (eevee), and then would probably groom their pups in a special way to trap air bubbles in their soft fur to make them more bouyant so they can float unaided on the water. and then as soon as the eevee have control of their little legs they're being taught how to swim, so you could come to a lake at a certain time of year ans see a vaporeon swimming around with a tiny soaked eevee paddling along behind it like
hey @molabuddy this was such a cute mental image that wanted to try and draw it :D
GWUHH THIS IS SO CUTE yes!!!! yess!!!!! baby swimmi !!!!!
sorry I beat the shit out of you I have a really big crush on you and I got nervous
This is a semi spinoff of this post, but really its own thought.
When a job pays less than a living wage, it generally attracts one of two types of employees:
- Desperate people (usually poor and/or otherwise marginalized or with barriers to employment), who will take any job, no matter how bad, because they need the money, or
- Independently wealthy people (usually well-off retirees, students being supported by their families, or women with well-off husbands*), who don't care about the pay scale because they don't need the money anyway.**
And sometimes, organizations will intentionally keep a job low-paying or non-paying with the deliberate intent of narrowing their pool to that second category.
People sometimes bring this up when discussing the salaries of elected officials -- yes, most politicians are paid more than most "regular people," but they're not paid enough to sustain the expensive lifestyle politicians have to maintain, and that's on purpose. It's not an oversight, and it's not primarily about cost-cutting. It's a deliberate barrier to ensure that only rich people can run for office.
The same is true, albeit to less severe effect, of unpaid internships -- the benefit of "hiring" an unpaid intern isn't (just) that you don't have to pay them; it's also that you can ensure that all your workers are rich, or at least middle-class.
When nonprofits brag about how little of their budget goes to "overhead" and "salaries", as if those terms were synonymous with "waste," what they're really saying is "All our employees are financially comfortable enough that they don't worry about being underpaid. Our staff has no socioeconomic diversity, and probably very little ethnic or cultural diversity." ***
This isn't a secret. I'm not blowing anything wide open here. People very openly admit that they think underpaid workers are better, because they're "not in it for the money." This is frequently cited as a reason, for example, that private school teachers are "better" than public school teachers -- they're paid less, so they're not "in it for the money," so they must be working out of the goodness of their hearts. I keep seeing these cursed ads for a pet-sitting service where the petsitters aren't paid, which is a selling point, because they're "not in it for the money."
"In it for the money" is the worst thing a worker could be, of course. Heaven forbid they be so greedy and entitled and selfish as to expect their full-time labor to enable them to pay for basic living expenses. I get this all the time as a public library worker, when I point out how underfunded and underpaid we are. "But... you're not doing it for the money, right?" And I'm supposed to laugh and say "No, no, I'd do it for free, of course!"
Except, see, I have these pesky little human needs, like food. And I can't get a cart full of groceries and explain to the cashier that I don't have any money, but I have just so much job satisfaction!
And it's gendered, of course it's gendered. The subtext of "But you're not doing it for the money, of course" is "But how much pin money do you really need, little lady? Doesn't your husband give you a proper allowance?"
Conceptually, it's just an extension of the upper-class cultural norm that "polite" (rich) people "don't talk about money" (because if you have to think about how much money you have or how much you need, you're insufficiently rich).
*Gendered language very much intentional.
**Disabled people are more likely to be in the first category (most disabled people are poor, and being disabled is expensive), but are usually talked about as if they're in the second category. We're told that disabled people sorting clothing for $1.03 an hour are "So happy to be here" and "Just want to be included," and it's not like they need the money, since, as we all know, disability benefits are ample and generous [heavy sarcasm].
***Unless, of course, they're a nonprofit whose "mission" involves "job placement," in which case what they're saying is "We exploit the poor and desperate people we're purporting to help."
Either way, "We pay our employees like crap" is nothing to brag about.
2- Mikko Harvey / 3- @beetlejuices / 4- Ocean Vuong / 5- Sarah Kay and Philip Kaye / 6- Franz von Stuck / 7- Cortes Edouard Leon
the yugioh wiki list of deaths is funny because its like a list of all the insane fucked things that happen in the manga and it's always like "was sent to the shadow realm in the 4kids anime" like the localization team looked at that and was like we're not even gonna go there
like what else would you even do with this
yugioh heritage post
Me: "I'm not that into this character"
Fanartists with powerful horny magics: "Are you SURE?"
Me: "…"
Me: "No"
Our sacred grove is being desecrated!
- Joseph Smith circa 1830
sorry man. this was about the sexy blue elves in warcraft 3 i think you need to find a different post to be mormon on