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Professional Bullshitter

@valhelos / valhelos.tumblr.com

Valhelos | 29 | They/them | Nonbinary | ๐Ÿ”ž+18๐Ÿ”ž Quality shitpost provider

me @ the demons that stand at the end of my bed:

itโ€™s a lot warmer under the covers if you wanna come cuddle

grizzled mercenaries are always being like "I'm sick and tired of being a pawn in someone elses game" like their job isn't literally rent-a-pawn

"I hate being a pawn in someone elses game" yeah sure thing grandpa, I'll give you $50 if you move to D4

Nothing exposes the inability of people to navigate power imbalances quite like the relationship between drivers and pedestrians.

For example, I just had a driver get screaming-at-me mad because I stopped walking at a slip lane to make sure he was going to stop. And like, buddy, I know I have the right of way, but if I assume you are going to stop and I guess wrong, I will literally die. Whereas if I wait to see if you're actually going to slow down, I am just delaying both of us by a couple of seconds. And that might have more to do with why I made the choice that I did than my being a stupid bitch who needs to learn the rules. Like, if you can't understand why the fact that you could effortlessly accidentally kill me (and likely face no consequences) means I am reticent to assume the best from you, maybe you just shouldn't have any power over anyone ever.

*places an orange just outside a fairy ring to see what comes out* science is more of an art than a science

*the orange grows legs and skitters away*

Fascinating results *places a banana in the same spot*

*clawed hand reaches out of the ether and drags it into the ring, leaving ragged claw marks in the soil as it disappears, back into the ether from whence it came*

โ€œletโ€™s go to the extreme.โ€ *places a pineapple in the same spot*

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trashmonkey-mcgee

Real scientists would keep putting an orange in the same spot to make sure the results are consistent before moving on to other fruits or different spots.

The only valid response to this post.

Weโ€™re working up the complexity levels of fruit until we feel there is enough evidence to support the judicious placement of a volunteer twink

You sit down, we havenโ€™t seen whatโ€™s happened to the pineapple

This is Tumblr; weโ€™ve ALL seen what happened to the pineapple. O_O

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tockthewatchdog-deactivated2020
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feathersescapism

Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.

One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, โ€œWho here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?โ€

I happen to know but Iโ€™m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, โ€œLower,โ€ and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, โ€œYou know, donโ€™t you.โ€

โ€œMy momโ€™s a doc,โ€ I said. He gave me a โ€œso say itโ€ gesture and I said, โ€œFour to ten percent depending on your sources.โ€

Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.

And the paramedic said, โ€œWeโ€™re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?โ€

The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.

โ€œWhat do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?โ€

The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, โ€œA corpse.โ€

โ€œRight,โ€ says the paramedic. โ€œSomeone who isnโ€™t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what Iโ€™m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.โ€

So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.

But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflรฉ - well.

Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where weโ€™d be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.

What the whole world would look like.

Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time - more than nine times out of ten - CPR will do nothing, but that one time youโ€™ll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.

If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they werenโ€™t there.

(*if youโ€™re curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)

That Vonnegut quote brings this particular moment to mind:

Yes, itโ€™s just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesnโ€™t do much direct damage in the grand scheme of things. But the pie is resistance, and resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival. Throwing pies sometimes starts a movement. Throwing pies sometimes saves lives.

And of course, we havenโ€™t spoken about the inherent morality of throwing pies at oppressors in a world where oppressors have outlawed pie throwing. At the very least, pie throwing is a reminder to the oppressors that no matter how much money they have, no matter how much power they have, there are still some people, some moments they canโ€™t control.

Iโ€™d rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isnโ€™t going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesnโ€™t immediately solve the problem, but it doesnโ€™t have to because itโ€™s just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.

So throw the damn pie

Applying this concept to my very pro-trans, gender-diverse approach to forensic anthro research is HELPING holy carp.

thing is, every person who opposed the Vietnam war contributed in some way to one more draft dodger, one more person trying to do the right thing, etc. and every draft dodger was one less young man about to die in a war, and one less man shooting at people half a world away. Itโ€™s not nothing

It's so nice being on tumblr because you don't even have to make your own post but people would still follow you anyways if you're good at rebloging posts they like

โ€œi also choose this guyโ€™s dead wifeโ€ was easily the #1 funniest thing to ever be written on the internet.

you can know the punchline but you canโ€™t stop it from punching you.

i do also feel the need to add that phil8248 really liked the joke. he said his wife had always had a dark sense of humour, even about her illness and death, and seeing the joke made him feel like he was laughing with her one last time.

results of tumblr vs 4chan war

  1. thousands of SJWs lost in Tumblrs army due to conflicts within the ranks about fanfiction censorship
  2. thousands of Neo-Nazis lost in 4chans army due to being arrested in "real life", a higher plane that few can access and is rumored to maybe not be real
  3. underground advanced trade system established to covertly deliver memes between parties with minimal contact, which facilitates the transfer of language. tumblr notably begins to publish content written in "Greentext", a dialect originating from 4chan
  4. Tumblr splinters into hundreds upon hundreds of sub-factions, though the two most powerful are the Darkly Chics and the Bluey Adults. the factions are largely in opposition to eachother, but none of them agree to leave Tumblr
  5. 4chan splinters a more violent and intense clique, whom after many heated conflicts with 4chan's main userbase are run out of 4chan and seemingly disappear into the cold mist for years
  6. the 4chan splinter clique becomes its own nation while nobody is looking, choosing to be called the Soyjacks (based on a popular style of abstractionist art that originated in 4chan but quickly spread elsewhere)
  7. earlier in the war, Tumblr's governing body, known as "Staff" (possibly originating from the name for a type of halting rod used by level 25 and above wizards), issued a ban on all pornography, leading to many notable artists fleeing to a neighboring site known originally as Twitter. later in the war, Twitter would enter the infamous X Period, and users from Tumblr either rejoined or moved to the newly formed Bluesky
  8. several large scale rifts between Tumblr Staff and the common people occur, causing widespread fear and doubt about the longevity of Tumblr. talks about Bluesky and its success begin circulating, though most remain skeptical
  9. out of basically nowhere, the Soyjacks launch an attack on 4chan's entire main perimeter of operation, which turns out to have actually been very poorly guarded, and reinstate the board they were thrown out of before taking down 4chan. those who were able to escape in time reported the last words they heard being "CHICKEN JOCKEYYYY". this is said to have been a message from God
  10. the Soyjacks, after bringing 4chan to its knees, reveal that spies have been collecting information from within 4chan in the time since their banishment, and several private logins of members of 4chans governing force (known as the "Janitors") are leaked, effectively spelling the end of the site as it once existed

result: tumblr wins by doing nothing

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