A good half of my childcare strategy at my job is just enabling harmless mischievous activities. Oh yes we should “steal” extra tangerines, quick I’ll cover you while you sneak in and do it. You’re all having a pointless and goofy competition? Let me judge it, I’ll even throw in a prize 😈 (usually something like a daisy chain I make real quick or a dime from my pocket). And the kids all giggle and cackle because they’re doing a fun thing I’ve framed as mischievous, while I giggle and cackle because they’re doing a totally harmless activity with adult supervision that’s gonna engross them for way longer than it would’ve before.
After all your searching, you actually did it. Did what? Became a mother.
Thinking about how none of the Hells stopped Laudna from giving in to that dark power, to that spark of fire we know is Delilah--
And what could have changed if she'd been with the other group instead. Yes, Imogen is the one who immediately comes to mind, but I think someone else would have reached out to her too. Thinking about--Fearne yelling for Imogen to wake up, as loud and fierce as she can, shaking her from Ruidus' hold.
Thinking of the aftermath, when FCG suggests maybe she give in, succumb to that tide of all consuming power that calls to her like a beacon. How vehemently Fearne bites back, "No! We shouldn't have let her go!" The allure of giving in, of surrender, a wave of euphoria in the face of even so much visceral pain and terrifying power and self-destruction--and Fearne holding her back, anchoring her home. Reminding her to stay herself.
Thinking of how Orym encouraged Laudna to give in, even after seeing what succumbing to Delilah's power could potentially do to her. Thinking of...Fearne burning down that nightmarish sun tree with Imogen. The implications of what it could mean if Fearne had been there, had yelled for her to stop, and what it would say about Fearne and Orym and the headspace they're both in right now--
Happy Disability Pride to the people who have illnesses that get dismissed in the medical world, like fibromyalgia, hypermobility syndrome, etc. Here’s to us for our bodies injuring us and then not being believed about the injury. Here’s to having to fight with every nurse just to get to the doctor and hope that the doctor will take it seriously. Here’s to the clear rudeness and disbelief we hear from receptionists over the phone when we explain our injury, to the dismissive emergency orthopedics who look at us like we have two heads.
And here’s to hopefully finding a good rheumatologist who wants to help, and to finding a good physical therapist who wants the very same.
Since July is Disability Pride Month
(as opposed to every other month when we're all demure about disability rights /gentle sarcasm)
I wanted to highlight one of my favorite artists: Liberal Jane.
doomed by the narrative and haunted by the narrative and a secret third thing (narrating the narrative)
YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON I RESPECT
where's that quote abt like. being embarrassed abt the thinness of ur life the way ur embarrassed by a threadbare piece of clothing. bc like yeah
Olivia Laing
writing sci-fi sucks ‘cause on one hand it seems like this character would say “son of a bitch” but then you have to pause and think, do they have dogs in space? Does this character know about dog breeding? Is it insulting to be compared to a dog in space? Is there misogyny in space? Do space people use misogynistic slurs? Does this character say bitch because they’ve absorbed a low level misogyny and it’s just part of the cultural lexicon of their world?
and then you shrug and give them all lasers because life is short and death is imminent
I keep making stories with cultures who are primarily areligious and have little history or cultural awareness of religion, and you would not believe how many swears this cuts out of your available vocabulary
on the plus side you do come up with some really fun alternatives
My Guy Who Grew Up On A Genetically Engineered Floating Forest has SO MANY plant-ecology-based curse words
I am so relieved Han Solo said "Then I guess I'll see you in Hell" in The Empire Strikes Back, because it really opened a lot of doors for me.
Not enough doors that I could use the word "canape". But still a lot of doors.
I have never felt so validated in never having given up on Tumblr.
IT GETS WORSE!
"This is hilarious. It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself. The Twitter home feed's been down for most of this morning. Even though nothing loads, the Twitter website never stops trying and trying. In the first video, notice the error message that I'm being rate limited. Then notice the jiggling scrollbar on the right. The second video shows why it's jiggling. Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon's latest genius innovation is to block people from being able to read Twitter without logging in. This likely created some hellish conditions that the engineers never envisioned and so we get this comedy of errors resulting in the most epic of self-owns, the self-DDOS. Unbelievable. It's amateur hour."
So he artificially limited the number of tweets you can see per day with a "free" account.
Once you hit your limit, it stops you from loading the page. But it also doesn't know WHY it isn't loading, so it keeps TRYING.
Twitter is literally hitting itself in the face ten times per second per user.
This is so completely amateurish it's unbelievable. It's like putting your car in neutral and slamming your foot on the gas until your engine redlines and then wondering why it's making a horrible noise and a terrible smell but not going anywhere.
He really thought everyone would buy a membership instead of just...open one of the 17 other, free, working social media apps already on their phones 😂😂
Literally got a BlueSky code yesterday, never left Tumblr...
It’s been years since the last time I used Twitter with any semblance of regularity. This… this is not exactly inspiring me to go back, much less actually pay to use it.
Oh no you shouldn't. It's literally imploding.
Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*
My cat: Father is…evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.
The spiritual successor to Miette
Might I also add
May i add the piece from artist Verbal Vomit
Glad to see we’re all in agreement that cats talk like disparaged victorian children
I am so incredibly glad we finally moved on from “i can has”. Cats are clearly smart enough for advanced sentence structure and dumb enough to draw entirely incorrect conclusions about what they’re talking about.
My cat, banging the cabnet door over and over and over: bang bang bang
Me: you will not earn what you desire by banging the cabinet door.
My cat: This is a test of wills, is it not? We shall see if your ability to put up with my incessant banging outlasts my eternal lust for snackie treats. Years of conditioning have hardened me for this purpose. bang bang bang
Me: ksst!
My cat, throwing herself to the ground like she’s been shot: Oh! Oh I have been assailed in my own home! Have mercy, have pity! Surely in the cruel darkness of your heart there is some mote of goodness that might stay your hand! Do not strike me, I pray you!
Me: ok
My cat, after waiting about 3 minutes: bang bang bang
Can haz snackytreat
This post is the most reblogged post of the year! Congratulations!
you’re absolutely correct it was
friendlyneighborhooddemi-girl
Hell yeah
i’m sorry but you’re just dumb as fuck about social realities if you really think that the conversation about AI needs to be nuanced or whatever due to the select positive use cases. in fact you are being disingenuous when you patronize people who see a tool that will severely escalate their own exploitation by being like ‘but what if it helps find cancer faster??’ bitch that’s obviously not what people are upset about… and how naive can you be if you think any of the positive use cases for AI under the contraints of capitalism could possibly trump the infinite negative social side effects in a society motivated to cut costs and create profit no matter what. it stuns me actually.
like.....AI is being used to sexually exploit women and children as we speak. CEOs are hoping to use AI to completely undercut all of creative labor from writers to animators to voice actors to live action actors. AI is being used to further the surveillance state. At the center of all "good" uses of AI is bias automation anyways. I've seen them write sexist scripts and I've seen them automate phrenology by saying only white men were ideal candidates for a job based on face and skull structure. What good is an AI that supposedly "finds cancer" if it'll likely only detect it in white men/white people in general and the cure won't even be easily available to everyone?