« A striking number of political prisoners who wrote memoirs attribute their survival to their ability to tell stories […]. In the world of the camps and the prisons, where books were scarce and films were rare, a good storyteller was highly prized.

Leonid Finkelstein says that he will be forever grateful to a thief who, “on my first prison day, recognized this potential in me, and said, ‘You’ve probably read a lot of books. Tell them to people, and you will be living very well.’ And indeed I was living better than the rest. […] I ran into people who said, ‘You are Leonchik-the-storyteller, I heard about you’ […].”

Alexander Wat retold Stendhal’s The Red and the Black to a group of bandits while in prison. Alexander Dolgun recounted the plot of Les Miserables. Janusz Bardach told the story of The Three Musketeers: “I felt my status rise with every twist of the plot.” 

Others found the same. On her hot, stuffy train to Vladivostok, Evgeniya Ginzburg learned that “there were material advantages in reciting poetry … For instance, after each act of Griboyedov’s The Misfortune of Being Clever, I was given a drink of water out of someone else’s mug as a reward for ‘services to the community.’ »

— Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History

The misuse of the "insult to life itself" quote from Miyazaki on AI burns my yams so bad bc the original context is being disgusted with how a characters movements are dehumanizing to disabled people specifically bc of his empathy for a disabled friend and it's such a sadly rare sentiment, this cognizance of how we casually inflict indignity upon disabled people and how he finds it disgusting, I hate seeing it obfuscated

In the video he sees character animation where the presenter comments on how the AI can be used to model "grotesque movements humans can't even imagine." And Miyazaki immediately mentions that he thought of his physically disabled friend, who struggles with movement, with the implication being that what's "insulting to life itself" is the degradation of people like him to grotesque monsters. Regardless of my feelings about AI art I don't think it's worth obscuring this humane thought process to have a rhetorical weapon

the sense of horror when you finish a book that was Ass Bad and you go to see what fellow haters are saying but all the reviews say it is the best thing they've ever read. feel like i just saw my reflection in the mirror move all by itself or something

I haven't seen this on Tumblr yet. Cory Booker has held the floor of the Senate for a 16 hour and counting filibuster and it's all streaming on YT. Currently almost 30k people are watching. You can become one of them without even moving from your screen. In the category of "the absolute least you can do" to support a democrat actually doing something... maybe give it a watch.

He is now at hour 20 and if he breaches 24 hours & 18 minutes he will take the record for longest filibuster, a record currently held by Strom Thurmond who used his filibuster to argue against civil rights legislation & voting rights

"It's not about right and left it's about right and wrong" - Cory Booker

and he's doing it as eloquently as I've ever heard someone speak in defense of this stupid annoying mess of a country. I'm over 40, have kept on top of the news most of my life, can remember back to speeches and debates going back to the late 1980s, and it's been a damn long time since I've been this impressed with someone's speechmaking. It really shows how much he prepared ahead of time to do this filibuster. Nothing he's doing or saying is an accident.

I haven't seen this on Tumblr yet. Cory Booker has held the floor of the Senate for a 16 hour and counting filibuster and it's all streaming on YT. Currently almost 30k people are watching. You can become one of them without even moving from your screen. In the category of "the absolute least you can do" to support a democrat actually doing something... maybe give it a watch.

He is now at hour 20 and if he breaches 24 hours & 18 minutes he will take the record for longest filibuster, a record currently held by Strom Thurmond who used his filibuster to argue against civil rights legislation & voting rights

"It's not about right and left it's about right and wrong" - Cory Booker

and he's doing it as eloquently as I've ever heard someone speak in defense of this stupid annoying mess of a country. I'm over 40, have kept on top of the news most of my life, can remember back to speeches and debates going back to the late 1980s, and it's been a damn long time since I've been this impressed with someone's speechmaking. It really shows how much he prepared ahead of time to do this filibuster. Nothing he's doing or saying is an accident.

At 7:19 EST he officially broke Strom Thurmond's record.

continually awed by how stupid stalinists are

University field station newsletter told me giant millipedes are particularly active this time of year "when they’re on the move for important millipede reasons." I think that might be scientist secret code for "nobody really knows why." All we know is the millipedes are moving for some reason and it must be important or they wouldn't do it. Important millipede reasons.

are you uncomfortable from your hands being dry? if you apply lotion, you can instead be uncomfortable with how greasy they are now. Subscribe for more tips!

Environmental Protection - Bats, Postage Stamps - Poland, 1997

we need more pathetic female characters written by authors who don't hate women

to be clear since this is making the rounds: she has to be an absolute loser in no way that can be pinned on her gender. no "i'm just a girl tee-hee" stuff. straight up just a loser (nondenominational)

addendum: she must be the most important person in the whole narrative

I decided to sit down and concentrate and properly write the list of rules that qualify a character for this role.

There's a TERF infestation in the notes. I can't personally go bug spray them all so:

The Deadhead Moth