Things have been tough...

For most people, and I’m one of those. My rent has gone up, my alternator in the car has died (I can’t even focus on that yet, sigh), and this has been on a chain of setbacks and illnesses both with myself and my family. Energy and food prices… it all piles up.

On top of this, my depression (and covid fog probably) has been extra rough, keeping my freelance work slow.

Anyhow, I could use help and any is appreciated. I need $300 to make rent by the 5th and basic expenses beyond that. 

Thank you. I am sorry to ask. 

Circulating again, as my main freelance gig is still out of commission and burnout and pain have been making the gap hard to close.

If nothing else we have to kill all billionaires to restore hippos to their rightful throne

I know I wasn't supposed to.

But I went into the woods.

Another me came out.

We seem to be equally suspicious that the other is the imposter. I keep checking him for roots and he keeps doing the same to me. Is it a double bluff? Is he gaslighting me into thinking I'm the neverwas thing and he's the human being with organs and anxiety? Is he truly unaware he's a mockery given shape? If he can be unaware of it, I can be too.

That's kind of a lonely thought, really.

-

It's been several days and the tests are all inconclusive. We both bleed normal blood that doesn't turn into a spider and jump to the ceiling when you touch it with a hot wire. We know the same trivia. We pretended to know the same stuff we forgot that we were embarrassed not to remember. We both got uncomfortable at the exact same time when we walked into the cathedral.

We arm wrestled and didn't tie somehow, but we weren't sure if winning meant he was more likely to be fake or less likely.

I worry that we don't really know anything about accursed other selves from the woods.

Wikipedia has been less than helpful.

-

Mom claims she knows which one of us is her 'first boy' but refuses to tell us on the basis that she loves us both and thinks we should get along.

He thinks she can't tell and is too embarrassed to tell us. I think its because she wants to double her chance at grandkids. The difference in opinion is interesting, but is it a sign of an imposter, or the divergence of our experiences?

-

We've decided to flip for the job. I won, so I don't have to find new work. I don't know if that's a win.

I think the curse is that neither one of us is an unnatural imposter out to kill the other. Or else whichever one of us is the monster has realized they don't think my life is worth killing to steal.

I know I think about smashing that copy of my own face open with a rusty fire axe, a gush of sea water and blasphemous screams roiling from the empty hole that should contain bone and brains, and it just seems like a lot of trouble and effort.

I think I'm going to start going by my middle name.

-

Another me just showed up on our doorstep.

He's caked in mud, sticks and twigs in his hair, babbling about harrowing experiences. I'm fixing him some tea while the other-other me hands him the pamphlet we made just in case.

Now he's telling us about the Night King. Like we don't know.

I need a bigger place.

THISSSSSS 👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼

Reading darkfic only gives me empathy for the characters, doesn't make me evil.

How's this for a hot take?

Consuming dark fiction, though it allows the audience to empathise with morally dubious or outright evil characters, nonetheless increases their overall amount of internal empathy towards other people. Not just bad people benefit from an overall increase in empathy.

Consuming exclusively sanitised, fluffy feel-good fiction with no counterbalancing dark sides does not increase the audience's empathy, because anyone who cannot empathise with The Littlest Cinnamon Roll, who has adventures dealing with happiness and friendship and harmony, is already a lost cause. Rather, such fiction, when all other kinds are excluded, normalises the idea that the only people worth empathising with are the morally pure cinnamon rolls who have never done anything wrong in their entire lives. The normalisation, and reinforcement of same through the standard life cycle of a fandom, reaches such a point that as soon as the characters in question step outside the boundaries of that bubble of innocence by doing (1) problematic thing, they are cancelled for crimes against humanity and the fandom tears itself apart.

This is my explanation for not only why fandoms for fun kids' shows tear themselves apart over the slightest perceived creative slip-up, but also why the most passionately engaged fans of these things (who more often than not precipitate the rot/collapse) tend to be such toxic people in all other spheres of life as well.

Scalding. I dare say boiling. Bravo

The new live laugh love

I think we need to appreciate this part of Brennan Lee Mulligan's WIRED interview a lot more:

"The evangelical right in this country needs to manufacture outrage to hold onto its voting block. [The satanic panic about DnD] was arbitrary, as the targets of their outrage always are. Fight the power."

don't forget all the Nazi fucking

us tv: reviewed 

Hey did you know there's a tell all book about the behind the scenes of Meta and the author is forbidden from promoting it?

The good news is however that it's already published and can't be stifled and whoever didn't sign the NDA can promote it as much as they want.

You mean Careless People, written by Sarah Wynn-Williams?

Available from Macmillan Press?

I read this in one sitting last night, and it is WILD. Whatever fucked-up stuff you think Meta has done is NOTHING compared to what’s in this book.

how are you people alive.

theres an old cold war joke that goes like this: a KGB agent and a CIA agent meet up for drinks off the clock, and after a few drinks they start to talk shop. the CIA agent extols the strength of the Party's propaganda, "All your citizens believe the propaganda! it's incredible! So little dissent." and the KGB responds, "No my friend no, we are good at what we do, but you are the true masters of the art. No one at all questions your propaganda!" to which the CIA agent says, confused, "What do you mean? We don't have propaganda?"

I don't know a thing about polyamory but some journalist wrote a whole huge impassioned spiel for the atlantic about how it's a sign of upper class bourgeoisie privilege and is getting entertainingly ripped apart for it. Even I know that's a wacky take

More often than not I see "Polyamory because it takes three incomes to afford rent".

The legends were true

Seen someone say “I can’t die, I got graves to dance on that hasn’t been dug yet.” And honestly, that goes hard. We need to keep that energy.

I hear you

ink: ferris wheel press, "Sugar and Spite"

highly influential piece of Web media that relied heavily on Adobe flash, stars a character who's skin is pure #ffffff white, who walks around without any arms. title starts with "homest"

I love Josh’s anti-classism so much. I grew up in a single parent household that didn’t have time/the ability to cook. I taught myself as an adult and ended up loving it. I cook with this stuff a lot. Shit, the RealLemon juice ends up in a lot of my cocktails. Sure, I like fancy ingredients when I can afford them and I have things I get picky about using - but I have bad hands, mincing garlic is painful as fuck. There’s a lot to be said for knowing how to work with what you have. Don’t shame people for trying, don’t shame people for feeding their families things that they enjoy.

if you are only a good cook if you have access to premium ingredients at whole foods or above prices then you arent really a good cook

The conditions under which I can make eggplant parmigiana would curdle your blood.