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World In My Eyes - Violator (1990)

thinking about a long article I read a while back talking about the history of “ultra-processed foods” and how they related to american/western health issues. my main takeaway was a short paragraph buried in the middle of the article, where the guy who came up with the term just says outright “technically by these processing metrics tofu and sourdough fall into the same category as doritos and we’re not really sure how to square that circle” and the article just. moves right past that.

Odd spots.

The strange surrealism of Elisio H. Zubiri

au where eberytjings the same but they have to go to five guyd

star trek heritage post (April 5th, 2022)

Security alert: Your orb was pondered from a new location

I was talking to a kid in my daughter’s class today, and she said that she thought it would be fun to write a story about the Titanic, but with supernatural creatures.

So I said, “Yeah, that would great! What would the creatures do? Would they save the Titanic from sinking?”

And she gave me the most disgusted look. I have never seen a 9 year old face look so appalled.

“No,” she said, speaking very clearly so as to never be so grossly misunderstood again, “they’re going to eat the passengers.”

God I hope she lets me read it.

Absolutely fantastic turnout of protesters at the Chicago Hands Off! protest!

I love my city!

we do need to revisit the wording of "you can't have your cake and eat it too" because i don't think it clearly enough conveys that it's more that you can't simultaneously retain a cake and also get to consume it (which would render you cakeless). for years i was like But why not....it's my cake....?

this fucking problem is how they caught the unabomber

hey you should uh. elaborate. for my own personal satisfaction

the unabomber was pedantic about idiomatic phrases like "have your cake and eat it too" and rephrased it to "eat your cake and have it too" (which to be very fair makes sense). fast forward to when he starts writing manifestos. he uses the phrase word for word in his pedantic style and his brother (who has been keeping his eyes on the unabomber shit for obvious reasons) notices the phrase and is like "oh fuck that's my fucking brother no one else fucking says that" and calls in an FBI tip

Well you can't deliberately speak in a way nobody else does and also stay anonymous you know. Can't eat your cake and have it too.

Metroidvania/life sim hybrid where the metroidvania side of play is a Hollow Knight-esque adventure about a minuscule bug-like creature journeying through a once-grand but now desolate realm, and the life sim side of play is about an ordinary human-ish creature trying to clean and repair their shitty apartment, with the player able to switch back and forth freely. (The ruined kingdom and the shitty apartment are, of course, one and the same.) Actions taken on the life sim side of play can have huge, world-shaking consequences for the metroidvania side of play, while actions taken on the metroidvania side of play can resolve otherwise-intractable problems on the life sim side of play.

Critically, at no point is the protagonist of either side of play ever aware of the existence of the other: the life sim protagonist never notices the tiny metroidvania protagonist, while the metroidvania protagonist's little bug-eyes can only see clearly for a few inches (which translates to a "normal" range of vision at the metroidvania side of play's scale), so from their perspective the massive upheavals caused by the life sim protagonist's actions have no obvious cause. Each repeatedly ends up helping the other by sheer accident, as their respective goals coincidentally and repeatedly intersect.

You are working the gate in the afterlife and for the first time ever, something the humans built has shown up to be processed. You’re not sure what to do, this… entity shouldn’t have a soul, but here it is in front of you, freshly dead and awaiting the next life.

It’s not as exciting as it sounds, working at the pearly gates.

Sure, it’s satisfying to send the hypocrites and the assholes to hell. And it’s nice to see the ones who thought they were beyond redemption walk through into paradise.

So yeah, it has its perks. But not exciting. I mean, after the first million souls or so they all blur together, you know? You never get anything new. Animals all get sent right on through automatically and there’s nothing other then humans in our jurisdiction. Oh sure, there’s life other then humans. But that’s no my department.

I keep tads on humans on my lunch breaks. You’re a damn fascinating species, better then anything your “television” puts out. Although The Good Place was a little too relatable, I’ll give you guys that.

Anyway, one of my favorite things you guys came up with was the Space Race. I mean, what a nail biter! And it was so tense up until the end. Pity about those Apollo one guys, though. But I heard they got a kick out of watching the moon landing when it did happen.

Course, that sorta died down after a decade or so. Don’t know why you guys quit going to the moon.

And then you decided Mars was the place to be and started sending out all those rovers of yours. Not nearly as exiting as going yourselves, but as you all like to say, baby steps.

The rovers were surprisingly fun to watch. For mindless robots, they’ve got a lot of spunk. So I’d check in every once in while, but mostly I watched Earth. You guys had figured out how to work memes and it was a very amusing thing.

I was half way through a shift when it go here. I have no idea why none of the others I processed mentioned the thing, but death is confusing enough I guess.

It shouldn’t have been there. I want to make that clear, by no law of the universe should that thing have had a soul. You humans are where closer to making actual AI then you are sprouting wings. And you never even tried with this! Its job was to collect rocks!

And yet there is was, beeping up at me.

It didn’t look like a human soul. Or any other form of life that I had ever seen. It wasn’t damaged at all, or even afraid. That was the weirdest thing. You humans are always scared shitless by the time I see you. But this thing wasn’t. Even a little. It was just… curious. Like that’s all I could feel from it. Pure wonder.

I blinked a bit before flipping through my files, seeing if it was a new species or something. I found nothing, of course. Those idiots over in records never give us anything useful.

So I did the only thing I could do. I asked its name.

Now, you humans have come up with so many ways to say the same thing that I’ve had to learn a lot of languages to keep up. The newest was binary, which I never expected to actually need.

It came in handy, since that’s what the thing answered back in.

01001111 01110000 01110000 01101111 01110010 01110100 01110101 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001

Opportunity.

I remembered that name. It had popped up in new reports regarding a Mars rover that went out of commission, sending the final message “my battery is low and its getting dark.” before dying.

Humanity had cried over it for a solid couple of days. You guys really like personifying objects.

But I had dismissed it as just that. But here it was. Waiting patiently for me to send it On.

I could just opened the gates and sent it through and put from my mind. Make the thing some else’s problem.

I didn’t.

I stood, crossed in front of my desk, and put out my hand to touch the strange soul.

Opportunity didn’t feel human. Nor animal. It felt…. simple. Calm.

I could feel an awearness of the love its chief engineer had felt for it. The pang of missing the workshop back on Earth where it had been built, during long nights on Mars.

It had dreamed. Dreamed of humans making it to Mars and finding it. Of it’s engineer taking it home and repairing it. Dreamed of exploring Earth as it had Mars.

I could purpose, and curiosity in its mission. Lonely as it was, it never doubted its purpose or resented its lot in life. It got to learn, and to see what had never been seen. What more could it ask for?

I could feel one tiny spec of fear. Near the end of its life, it realized it would never go home. Never see Earth or its engineer again. That it would die alone on Mars.

And like all things with a soul it did not want to die. It cried and mourned and begged to live. It was alive! It had a home and it wanted to go home! So badly did it want to go home.

But there was nothing to do, of course. Even its engineer, whom it loved so dearly, couldn’t reach Mars and bring Opportunity home.

It had watched one last sunset, and sent one last message.

A goodbye. And a plea to be mourned, if it could not be saved.

I withdrew my hand and looked over the soul. It looked up at me.

For the ones that I send upstairs, I take the form of whoever loved them most in life. I guess in that moment, I was in the form of an engineer at NASA. Opportunity seemed delighted to see me.

“Welcome home,” I gestured to the gates that swung slowly open behind me. “I missed you.”

It beeped out a single phase, 01001001 00100000 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111

I missed you too.

Before going forth, to explore the next life.

@marcholasmoth

I am crying at work over an opportunity robot fanfiction. Humans are incredible.

@thebibliosphere

@a-sentient-cup

@donjuanquixote @silent-calling @beardedmrbean @fingerdownthebooksspine

So I'm halfway through Gideon the Ninth and how come nobody has told me about Dulcinea?? She's so good, you'd think people would go bonkers over her

Ah.

Ngl ive had Gideon the ninth in my to read pile on my kindle app for months and this post is what inspired me to finally open it now

Ah, I see.

......well now I'm curious.

they dont even know the “i can excuse racism” and guy walking in with pizza memes are from the gayest weirdest most mentally ill show of the 2000s that got cancelled twice and sent an entire streaming platform into bankruptcy

This show was so fucking unhinged it was one of the best tv shows of all time

#it's also got ''that's racist. ... that's racist. ... that's gay? ... that's racist.''#community

Isn't this the show with the blindfolded air conditioning assembly? And the Room Temperature Room?

And it's SO normal

@weiwei-uplink community mention! ! ! !

I FUCKING LOVE COMMUNITY RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

the room temperature room clip is what first got me to watch it

Also the source of one of Tumblr's holidays ^

#'this is the darkest timeline' entered the cultural lexicon because of Community#'i hope this doesn't awaken something in me' also from community#that gif of the devil with a chainsaw saying 'GAY MARRIAGE' also from community#MILES MORALES exists (more indirectly) because of Community (@shmreduplication)

Darkest Timeline (which IS the 'guy walking in with pizza' timeline!)

"This better not awaken anything in me"

"GAY MARRIAGE!"

Community -> Miles Morales