were I to create an original piece of media I would create bait so queer in order to create a fanfic environment I like. I find you guys do your best work under duress.
I’d say “jeez can two people not be friends anymore?” and then I’d give one of them amnesia in which they only recognize the other above anyone else
I've acquired a creature that stares at you no matter which direction you look at it from
I’m hypnotized
If your goals basically amount to "after The Revolution everything will be great because people will all have the Good Ethics and work together in my Perfect System and the Evil People with Bad Morals and Bad Behaviour who are making this world bad will be gone (killed/imprisoned/exiled/all converted to agree with us when they see our Perfect System)" then that's just fascism. I hate to say it but you've put a gay socialist hat on fascism.
The MAGA people are still gonna be around in your Perfect System and a very large proportion of them are still gonna be Like That. We can discourage antisocial behaviour through laws and education and changing cultural norms, but if plans for future society involve [group I'm opposed to] magically not being part of it so the Good People can Do Things Right, well.
✨No Bad Guys Here✨ - how do you want to enforce that.
Honestly, I think this concept of The Revolution is to some leftists what Armageddon is to some Christians: an easy excuse to not try and grapple with difficult problems like hunger or poverty or injustice or climate, because any day now the Great Reckoning will come and wipe the slate clean.
Not letting these tags (from @captainjonnitkessler) get buried
I know it's unfair vilification and stuff but it's also a lot of fun to see old media and stuff where people were SO scared of big animals like lions, sharks, crocodiles and wolves were fully expected to just come and eat you the moment you stepped into their territory. In older media we also made that assumption about gorillas and in still older we thought it'd be whales.
But some animals that will actually fuck you up got left behind. Boars will kill you and eat you. They're way more likely to do so than any of those other things actually. Hippos, obviously, got off like bandits always being depicted as cute and dopey. And then there's the squids. Not giant kraken size squids. The eight foot squids that hunt in packs and will fuck you up if you fall in the water at night. I can't BELIEVE people slept on that. It's like all they cared about were the huge deep sea ones we never see. The medium size wolf pack squids were right there.
Oh some of you don't know about the squids. I talked about them in another thread that went kinda viral somewhere or other but one of the reasons you should not swim in the open ocean at night in many parts of the world is that the water starts teeming with these:
And as you can see it is not like instant death, they too are just animals and they are often just gently curious about the presence of humans!
But people who study and dive with sharks will tell you you're safe as long as you stay calm and know what you're doing. The world's leading professional night divers and experts on these squids, specifically??? Stress in every interview and article and paper they write in that you simply do not fuck around with these squids. They know what they're doing and they still all have at least one story of being attacked, in some cases having to be hospitalized. Considering just how rarely anybody puts themselves in the pitch dark nighttime ocean on purpose, let alone during a squid feeding frenzy, it sounds like they're quite a bit more likely to consider you potential food than other marine predators.
We also don't know how many fatal attacks might have ever happened, because what humboldt squid like to do with large prey is just drag it away into the darkness forever. The two worst attacks ever proven involved two or three squid at a time latching on to a diver (in BOTH cases they were professionals and knew the risk!) and jetting straight downward with enough force that both divers suffered injury from the sudden pressure change alone, including burst eardrums, nearly passed out and they probably would have died if they hadn't broken free.
In general, people who die drowning in the dark open ocean are either never found, or they're found in pieces picked over by enough scavengers that the precise cause of death can only be narrowed down to "the sea." But now you know ONE of "the sea's" possible murder weapons :)
There's a short section on Humboldt squid in Wikipedia's entry for Cephalopod attacks on humans:
And if you can get past some of Animal Planet's hokey presentation style, this video includes a bit of interview with one of those professional experts who still got nearly squidded from existence:
There is of course some debate about all this, with some arguing that all proven documented attacks occurred on people with reflective diving equipment, which they say the squid must have mistaken for the shine of fish. However, there are lots and lots of people who have to fish around these squids to survive, who do not have access to that kind of equipment, and also have a consensus that if you fall in the water when big squids are out hunting you might disappear without a trace or perhaps just get your head bitten open. With many modern science guys agreeing with this sentiment, this is one case where the "they're just misunderstood sea friends" crowd is kind of outnumbered.
The sea at night is theirs and not ours is all. It's not ours during the day either but since we are neither marine nor nocturnal animals we are double fools in the eyes of the squids, which by the way are these eyes:
No for real:
Absolutely! Also, the Humboldt squid will hunt in packs, sometimes with one flashing brightly to draw attention while the others approach in near unseeable camoflage!
Beautiful footage of the nefarious sea demons also :)
Also because I can't reblog every addition together:
Okay where's the other 1199
I absolutely adore Humboldt squid. I saw a doc once where a scientist was cage diving to study them, and one of the squid squeezed it's entire massive body through the cage bars, bit the guy and squeezed right back out.
Why isnt this an animal that's already long gone viral like honey badgers once did. This is the animal that actually gives no fucks. People really are just that obsessed with bigger squids I guess? But the bigger ones frankly come across as big softies in comparison. One big sea monster can never be as intimidating as a thousand coordinated man sized sea monsters.
This is why I thought that if mermaids had a cultural equivalent to lycanthropy it'd be weresquids. Fun fact nocturnal marine life increases activity on the brightest nights ie the full moon.
This is all fascinating but I'm reblogging it exclusively for the phrase "got nearly squidded from existence."
nothing funnier to me than when AI does math wrong. like I get why it happens, it's a language model that's treating the numbers you feed it as words rather than integers and then giving you an answer based on how those words typically appear in a block of text instead of actually performing a calculation. but the one thing computers are genuinely incredible at. you fucked up a perfectly good calculator is what you did, look at it it's got hallucinations
what ppl defending kids on ipads don’t seem to understand is that there are other ways to keep kids occupied. my mom had a whole bag full of little toys and games for me to play with while waiting in lines at disney world. once your kid is like 7 or 8 they can read a book. they can color. or they can literally just sit there and imagine things. i did that a lot as a kid.
thanks for putting your wrong and bad commentary in the tags where i still have to read all of it. most of what you said is untrue.
OP: giving children too young to process things so much access to ipads isn’t good for them maybe.
People in the notes: So you hate moms??? You’re ableist?? You think we should go back to the Dark Ages?? (My personal favorite because it makes no sense) you’re poor shaming??
Why is it so difficult to explain that children not developing fine motor skills and losing their attention spans is bad actually??
Genuine question? Why do IPad parents act like there's nothing else you can give your child to play with. Ok maybe they don't like reading, or coloring and want to play something. Tetris consoles are still available, so are those handheld water game thingies ( where you have two buttons and the air pushes plastic rings around). These will occupy your kid for longer but still it won't make them what to rip your throat if you decide to take it from them.
Like your child should learn how to be bored but if you truly need a break there are better options than allowing them access to endless TikTok videos.
Know what's cheaper than an IPad? A fuckin etch-a-sketch, a little fidget toy, a stick.
you guys know about the hobby lobby smuggling scandal right
hobby lobby’s hammurabi robbing hobby
i demonstrated great social competence at the bar recently when the bartended mentioned shopping at hobby lobby and i said i never did this because of the trafficking in looted antiquities.
They are extremely homophobic and transphobic - each year they give millions of dollars to the National Christian Foundation. The NCA then uses that money to fund 23 different non-proffits which have been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups, they also make huge campaign donations to conservative Christian political candidates, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
They have funded successful campaigns in other countries to make homosexuality illegal and punishable by death. They strongly support conversion therapy.
They went to court and won the right to only offer employee insurance that does not pay for birth control or abortion, and because of this lawsuit any business can also deny women the right to control their own bodies because "religious beliefs".
so I saw someone just today, re: the Joann Fabrics closings, saying "you're not a bad person if you shop at hobby lobby because you don't have anywhere else nearby to buy craft goods in person"
and like. I don't think shopping at shitty stores makes you a bad person. but consider that in order to live according to our principles sometimes it may be necessary to accept inconveniences. whether that means shopping online or driving a further distance than we'd like, or saving up to buy more expensive supplies, or whatever.
I'm the first to say hobbies are important to our well-being but also we will not shrivel up and die if we have to wait an extra couple weeks for more yarn. I'm also the first to say there's no ethical consumption in late capitalism but there is also definitely a difference between standard shitty corporations and these weird imperialist fucks.
Some alternatives:
For yarn:
https://hobbii.com/yarn
https://www.yarn.com/pages/yarn
Art supplies:
Also, you can find supplies on places like Facebook Marketplace & craigslist! Also search Mercari! Plenty of gently used or brand new stuff out there if you know what you're looking for!!
And at I've noticed a few local shops outside main citys. Check your suburbs!
Another place you can check- thrift stores! I see brand new craft supplies every time I go to the salvo because people buy them thinking that they're definitely gonna get into a craft and then... don't. /stares at needlefelting supplies in the corner...
FB buy nothing groups are sometimes helpful, and your area may have an art materials exchange, like CCRX and The WasteShed here in Chicago.
Hobby lobby is so Puritan they stopped selling anything Halloween related, and so anti-Semitic they stop selling anything Hanukkah related.