home for the swarm

I once wrote a 1500 word essay on something I'd forgotten to read in the 40 minutes before class. Including the time it took to read the thing I'd forgotten to read.

I got an A on that paper.

Writing is a skill. Skill is muscle. If you don't use a muscle, it atrophies. If you are a student and you are tempted to use genAI to cheese an assignment, I am begging you for your own sake to not do it.

This is not a moral stance about genAI (which is shit at what it's ostensibly for, and full of lies and evil, and fueled by art theft and burning rainforests, and there is no good reason to ever use it for anything; that's the moral reason for why you shouldn't use it), it is a purely pragmatic stance based on the fact that if you use it you will never learn the single most essential skill that is used in every single workplace.

You will never learn to bullshit.

And if you cannot bullshit, you will not understand when you are being fed bullshit by others.

For your own sake you must learn to do your own thinking, your own bullshitting, because our trashfire society runs on bullshit and for your own good you must become fluent in it, because very few people will bother to translate it for you. It was asinine in the late 90s, and it is asinine today, but it is the central truth of adult society: everything is bullshit, and you need to know what is going on beneath the bullshit, and you need to be able to bullshit back if necessary.

I know that the expectations being placed on you are ever-increasing, and I know that it does not seem rational to put effort into explaining the plot of a Charles Dickens novel to someone who has read the thing 50 times and will read 50 identical essays about it over the weekend. I know you are being handed ever-greater heaps of what is functionally mindless busywork because of an institutional obsession with metrics that don't actually measure learning in a useful way. High school was nightmarish in the 90s and I am fully aware that it has only gotten worse.

Nevertheless, you must try, if only for your own sake. Curiosity is your best hope, and dogged determination your best weapon. Learn, please, if only out of spite.

I was able to get an A on that paper because I was able to skim the reading, figure out what it was about, and bullshit for 1500 words in the space of 40 minutes.

Imagine what you can do if you learn to bullshit like I can bullshit.

For my senior year of AP English, I was assigned reading over Easter break. We were instructed to read The Old Man And The Sea, and save the rest of the short stories in the book for the first week back.

Unfortunately, what I heard was "read everything BUT The Old Man And The Sea."

Double unfortunately: the first day back was a test, on The Old Man And The Sea. Which I had read exactly zero words of. It was, notably, a short essay test. It wasn't multiple choice or fill in the blank. It was designed to require deliberate answers from scratch, entirely out of your own head, with nothing to go on BUT what was in your head.

And in the course of about 45 minutes, I was able to use the questions of the test itself to piece together a vague enough sense of how the story went to bullshit my way through other questions. I gave wide, thematic answers that were extremely light on details, since I did not know any of them, and did not even know this test would be happening until it was in front of me. An essay test for an AP-level English class.

I had a starting point of zero information, and an essay test about the thing I was supposed to have read.

I bullshitted my way to a B+ on it.

On a test I should have gotten a ZERO on.

It's been 16 years since I took that test.

I couldn't tell you a damn thing about The Old Man And The Sea.

But you better fucking believe I still know how to bullshit, and when someone is trying to bullshit me.

The power and utility of knowing how bullshit works CANNOT be overstated. It is one of the most important skills you can ever have.

My favorite part of this is the little “Yet I’m still failing” at the bottom of the screencap. It’s not yet occurred to you to change something you’re doing? Maybe try not using ChatGPT?

Now that Matt has fired half of tumblr's employees, leaving this massive site with a skeleton crew of 25 people, it seems inevitable that tumblr's remaining lifespan can be counted in months. I doubt it'll die overnight, few sites do, but it'll probably gradually lose functionality until, in a year or two or three, they decide to shut it down for good.

When that happens, I will not move to bluesky or instagram or xitter. I'm an internet troglodyte, I'm not adapted for standard social media. Instead I'll create a forum and stay there, like I did before I discovered tumblr in 2013. And you can find me there, continuing my horse figure hobby, until the sun burns out or my body gives in, whichever comes first.

Anyways, this is a reminder for you to turn on desktop mode for your blog so it can be scraped by archivists when the time comes.

I also have a website which will probably get MUCH more frequent updates once tumblr dies

(Though honestly my hope is still that some day someone will recreate the Elfwood forums)

Anyone want to quick shout out what desktop mode is/how to do the thing?

Ah, my bad, it's called "custom theme" in the settings. It's only available in browser (not in app) and it'll allow people who aren't logged in to visit your blog, including archivists

They're having a 2 for 1 Who gives a Fuck special at the Shove It up your Ass store

Numb // Linkin Park 80s Remix

[guy with the Cant Focus Disorder] why the fuck can't I focus

i just need to focus

the world’s shyest dj just worked up the courage to sniff the microphone and whimper quietly

It's not just to have a "do over" that doesn't involve the original cast, it's to cut them out of the royalties. Literally the entire point is to make sure all the money made by Harry Potter goes to transphobes or people willing to work with transphobes.

If you watch it, you are supporting bigotry, hate, and oppression. That's just objective reality. All for a story that you probably have already seen in movie and book form.

#the last point is especially true since the old cast receives royalties for anything with their likeness on it#meaning the original trio still gets money for every mug with their 14 year old faces on it#if they stop making those and replace them with the new cast which they will the old cast gets cut off completely#which is again exactly what rowling wants because she cannot stand those 'ungrateful brats' as she would likely put it#and as she has last say in anything that gets made in harry potter paraphernalia this might also explain the decrease in faces on products

via @discipleofkleio

I hate Rowling so much.

it fucking sucks being a disabled person who can't work and having to see these fuckass posts where someone's like "ahaha jobless people have no life and that's why everyone shitty online has No Job" and everyone and their mother reblogs it joyfully onto my dash for me to see. yes unemployed and unemployable people are truly without exception dogshit people with no hobbies and no redeeming qualities. you're so right. anyway if you'll excuse me i have to start my shift at the I'll Never Be Employed Because Of Permanent Disability And I Love Knowing How You Really See Me store

if ur able to work can u reblog this i am seriously SO sick of it.

btw this isn't solely a disability rights issue or an issue about people who are entirely unable to work. you should also be thinking about the people who are regarded as unhireable. transfems are hugely discriminated against in this way, people of color are passed over for less qualified white people, anyone who has any difficulty playing the interview game is less hireable... frankly anyone who made the mistake of pursuing the things they love and now has a degree for a niche field. if you still joke about Jobless People it's because you've fundamentally connected the worth of people to their labor, and specific labor, work that you see as valuable. and while i'm at it stop making fun of people who still live with their parents. asshole.

Thank you Angel @fitmc for this. Because

I hate the phrase "pregnant pause" but I love the phrase "aborted gesture." tells you everything you need to know about MY politics

why do some companies send whole emails just to say someone opened your resume. what use is this information to me. i opened a jug of orange juice this morning and i didnt feel the need to alert tropicana

sorry for accidentally phrasing this exactly like a seinfeld bit

dude ADHD sucks so bad, it's like one of those audience input twitch streams where people can add new parameters to the game to screw you over for fun. "puddingtruck49 just paid 8 dollars to make you forget your debit card pin in the checkout line"

I need someone to do a video essay-length deep dive into how 75% of the BG3 fandom fell so hard for Astarion's manipulative seductor act that they believe that's his actual personality. This man has to practice his lines and still fumbles them constantly. He flat-out says it's all a front because he believes his sex appeal is the only reason anyone would keep him around, which is tragic. When he drops the act, he becomes this kind of silly man rediscovering what it means to be himself, and what it means to both love and be loved. He says "I'm all pointy ears, love." while turning his head to show off those pointy ears. Let him be silly, let him be awkward! It's so much more authentic then him being a walking innuendo.

He has a mid charisma stat with a bonus for deception and rolled a nat 20 on all y'all.

I made this meme two years ago for this exact topic and I'm so happy I get to use it