Syd Mead, Hypervan - Crimson Plaza, 2003.

(Future Pastime/Syd Mead Official)

November 15, 2021. A new dwarf planet has been discovered in our solar neighbourhood. It was given the provisional name Xipe Totec. It has gone unnoticed due to its small size and complex orbit, but it recently passed close enough for this first image to be captured.

August 7, 2022. Xipe Totec has completed an unexpectedly close orbit of the Earth, grazing its Roche radius. Tidal waves are expected in the coming days. Authorities are warning not to approach the falling debris that was torn from the planet by Earth’s gravity.

May 30, 2023. Concerns are mounting worldwide as flesh organisms grow unchecked. Seeds that fell on Earth during close encounter with the living planetoid Xipe Totec appear to be fusing and consuming everything around them. Large swaths of the ocean floor being covered in flesh may lead to ecological disaster, warns biologist.

Controlled fires are being deployed to slow down the growth of the flesh superorganism that is quickly taking over large areas of land around the planet, consuming all organic matter.

Though the measure is proving ineffective at curbing the spread, it may buy Earth some time.

The uncontrolled advance of the superorganism spawned from planetoid Xipe Totec already claims millions of lives worldwide and untold property damage.

Leaders warn "worst is yet to come" as large populations crowd the increasingly shrinking habitable surface of our planet.

BREAKING

Global crisis has been averted as people realize the flesh superorganism taking over Earth could “simply be cooked”.

Massive cookouts have been organized around the world to consume the beast and celebrate humanity's salvation. “How did we not think about this before” claims befuddled citizen through mouthful of meat.

I want to try so many little hobbies. Candle making, soap making, basket weaving, wood carving, book binding, baking, weaving, I want to try them all.

I almost made a post about this the other day (unless i actually did and totally forgot) but there’s so many

I was going to make a list, but then i realized this is a good time to share this book

Making Stuff and Doing things is a whole collection of old punk DIY zines about making and doing just about anything, even things you probably never knew you wanted to do.

Book binding? In there.

Making bowls from old vinyl records? I made a whole ton for my brother’s grad party last year.

Basics of guitar? Making rubber stamps? Silk screening? Composting? Homemade beer, root beer, and wine? Soymilk?? Quill pens??? All in there.

Since it’s more punk, it doesn’t have a ton of the folksy, cottage vibes/hobbies, but it’s all about being resourceful and sustainable, which they both have in common.

If i ever need to do anything I’m not sure of, I double check this book to see if there’s anything in there. It’s one of the only books on diy I’ve ever needed.

You can download the entire book as a PDF in the link above.

Hey, babies, if we're going to get dragged into an era of darkness, lies, economic ruin, and authoritarianism, we all need to know that we have an obligation to get weird and loud in our self expression. Modern fashion is not doing it, it never will, so it's time for us to go ahead and do it ourselves.

Now is not the time to just blend in.

NJ Democrat senator Cory Booker takes the floor in protest of Trump/Musk, "saying that he will keep going “'as long as I am physically able'.”

“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” Booker said at the outset of his remarks. “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.”

“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety; financial stability; the core foundations of our democracy. “These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.” -source

I am posting this at 2:30am EST. He has been speaking since 7PM EST. This link (at this moment) is to a live stream.

FUCK YEAH, JERSEY!

So very proud of my state at the moment.

Reblogging and adding the livestream link from Senator Booker's YouTube (the other one was glitching) . It is almost 4am. He is still going STRONG. If you are watching and plan to go to sleep, turn the volume down and leave it up so that the "watching" number reflects the involvement of people supporting him.

If he can LITERALLY stand and protest as a single voice, we can keep it playing and symbolically stand with him.

Senator Booker is on Hour 13 and going STRONG

Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about. No business as usual! Slow the Fascists down! He should get some Democrat colleagues to join him so they can periodically cede to each other and spell each other off to keep it up longer!

STILL GOING! If you can open up the livestream to show support.

Folks, he's still going - and importantly, he's talking about his own shortcomings, his own failures and the things he wants to do better because he knows he fucked up the last time.

If your disdain for Democrats has been rooted largely in their reluctance to meet the moment, then I heartily encourage you to watch the livestream — other Democratic senators are asking long-winded "questions (which is part of the rules and allows Booker to take the occasional break for a drink of water or to rest his feet or whatnot) and helping however they can.

Booker's going to hit 24 hours at 7 pm and it's worth watching a few minutes, don't you think?

Bravo, Cory Booker. Let the resistance take the momentum started by AOC and Bernie, add Cory and Chris Murphy, encourage all Democrats to speak out, and keep these fascist Republicans on their heels.

Punch back.

“Magneto’s backstory should be changed, it’s unrealistic that he’d still be alive after all this time!” Have you forgotten what franchise he’s from?

You can suspend your disbelief for the man transformed into sentient rocks by space radiation, the interdimensional bird, and the flaming biker skeletons, but one guy being a little old is where you draw the line?

It's the ~antisemitism~

#its also worth noting that marvel *DID* change magneto's backstory#he was originally presented as someone who had survived the shoah as an adult#and marvel retconned it to him surviving it as a child#iirc his original debut backstory involved him losing a wife and two kids??

Well, no, not really. When Magneto was made to be a Holocaust survivor, he was a survivor from childhood, though by the end of the Holocaust he was in his teens. His daughter Anya was killed by an antisemitic mob after the Holocaust, at some point in the 1950s.

It's also an attempt to pretend that the Shoah is ancient history, when it's really not.

"It's unrealistic for a Holocaust survivor to still be alive."

Assholes, there are Holocaust survivors still alive in the real world.

They're really telling on themselves because Wolverine is like 170 years old.

wolverine being a hundred and fucking seventy: normal

magneto being the same age as currently alive holocaust survivors: impossible

While there are definitely living Holocaust survivors today, most of them aren't up to doing half the shit Magneto does, and it seems to be affecting the impact his stories have on audiences. I remember reading Magneto stories as a kid in the 90s, knowing he was a little younger than my grandparents, and getting hit with a truckload of sympathy for the dude. He just wanted to have a normal life like Grandma and Granddad, and then the war happened and oh FUCK. Younger readers now are much less likely to have that personal connection; that's just how human lifespans work. And it's only going to get worse. Magneto does need some future-proofing.

That's not to say I think Magneto's origin should be changed, or that he should be permanently killed off. Far from it. This is comics; all kinds of timeline bullshit happens all the time. As someone pointed out above, Wolverine is most of the way into his second century of life.

What I'd do--and what I'm shocked Marvel writers don't seem to have done yet--is wave the mutant bullshit wand and make Magneto functionally immortal. Secondary mutation, maybe. Something something magnetic fields. The mechanics don't matter any more than "Wolverine is functionally immortal because healing factor" does. What matters is this:

At some point, Magneto will be the last living Holocaust survivor. And he will not let the world forget.

There was a story I read as a kid where Magneto took a handful of soil from the camp where his family died and spread it on the surface of the moon, where he was building a mutant haven of some kind. The image of him on his knees with soil running through his fingers and an agonized look on his face has haunted me ever since. To some part of him, it's always 1945. Never again is quite literally now.

I want to see Magneto as the furious conscience of the Marvel universe. I want him to rip a hole in the UN General Assembly building and stride in with his full regalia on--except for one sleeve, stripped to the forearm to show his tattooed number--and read the UN the riot act in all his nigh-unkillable glory. I want him to storm into summits between warring planets, atomize the ferrous metal in everyone's weapons, and lay down the galactic law that is There Will Be No More Genocides On My Watch, And My Watch Is Eternal. And I want future writers to use his story, and his enduring popularity as a character, to make sure that audiences don't forget either.

Magneto being a Holocaust survivor is only a flaw in the storytelling if you're a goddamn coward.

This machine kills AI

This is the most satisfying story I've read in a long time

Two Billboards Outside Jackson Mississippi

I used to pass by these billboards frequently. Seeing this on Tumblr gave me an aneurysm. Anyway, I feel like the building doesn't get enough appreciation for how fucking ugly yet wonderful it looks.

Fucking Christ.

HEL-lo!

Senator Cory Booker is holding the floor of the Senate and says he “will speak for as long as I’m physically able to lift the voices of Americans who are being harmed and not being heard in this moment of crisis”.

Livestream here:

Why do we need an April Fool’s Day when I’m a Fool Everyday

(Image Credit)

You can’t deserve a person’s love. You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking like that. They either love you, or they don’t. That doesn’t mean you weren’t good enough for them to love you, because love isn’t something you earn by being good enough. It isn’t something that can be quantified or doled out. Don’t blame yourself for not being loved how you need to, just teach yourself how to look for love where love lives.

This isn’t just about romantic love, or even skewed towards romantic love, although it does apply there too. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to accept is that my mother simply wasn’t someone who was capable of loving me, and there is no version of me that I could have ever been that would have earned that love. But with acceptance came healing. I was able to love myself more instead of resenting myself for not being more than any one person could be.

Are you listening? Even love for yourself isn’t earned. It is a kindness you give yourself.

A Chinese Water Deer taking a swim with her fawn 

Photograph by  Hans Watson

As a former librarian I'm actually required to remind you that many libraries that subscribe to Libby are opted into a program that lets you subscribe and access magazines for free with no wait

And that this is actually a really fun, low cost way to not only access news and larger cultural magazines, but also to get free patterns for many different crafts that you can screenshot if need be and that lower the financial barriers to entry for trying new things

From my experience working in both academic and public libraries, many libraries are use it or lose it funding-- I have to say this because a lot of patrons feel guilty for how much they use the library and how often they're using it funny enough, but the worst thing you can do for libraries is not try out new features and not use what's already given to you as much as possible.

The numbers that come as a result of your patronage are how most libraries justify their continued existence in times of financial hardship, which sucks but, go check out some magazines on Libby!

Use your library! Go to their website, look at everything they offer that you didn't even know about (power tools? Wifi hotspots? free music downloads?), use Hoopla and Kanopy and Libby and EVERYTHING!! And, if you can, send them a donation, most of them have a charitable foundation that helps to buy more books!

Hi hello I just wanna share a fun fact as a user of Libby!! You can subscribe to magazines you think are neat and it will email you if there’s a new issue!!! If you don’t wanna read it yet you can delete the email immediately and nothing happens. If you do wanna you go to the app and click a button and it gives you access to the issue for 7 days!! You don’t have to read it right away but it’s right there waiting for you!! And then you can screenshot patterns or articles, etc. and thats really nice. When you’re done you can return it with the press of another button, or at the end of 7 days it will be returned automatically. It’s super easy and it has no downsides or penalties for using it!! Like the previous lovely people have mentioned, it’s an easy way to support your local library!