Always rising from the ashes; Stronger than before

Guy who’s only ever seen Rocky Horror Picture Show watching his second movie with the word “horror” on the cover.

These are increasingly like horror movies.

I love these so much. Do I know what they're putting in there? No. Does it matter? Also no.

They're fuckin tinctures in those bottles.

I support freelance potionmakers and apothecaries.

I liked the one showing off her rock collection. I thought she was going to eat that geode.

I don't think this guy knows what an equation is.

washing machine

R(ule)emember these words of wisdom, in these trying times

Ever since I got a job as a security guard I can’t take heist movies seriously anymore.

Why is that?

Accurate heist movie: The Team is sneaking into a high security facility. An alarm is triggered, they freeze, prepared to knock out whoever responds to the alarm. It takes 40 minutes for someone to respond. When they finally do show up, they shuffle along, annoyed, arms full of 16 bags of pretzels for some reason, and reset the alarm without bothering to check their surroundings. They report that the alarm went off in error. Security control starts a fight about the correct designation of the door. The guard announces that they’re leaving the alarm key in the alarm because it’s always going off for no reason. No one challenges them on this. They shuffle away, leaving an alarm key and several bags of pretzels behind.

The Team knocks out a security guard and steals their radio. The team mimic can perfectly replicate the knocked out guard’s voice. They get caught because they pronounced the name of the company correctly.

The Team disables an alarm. The only way to do this is to rip it out of the wall and disassemble it until it physically can’t make noise anymore. This very loud process is clearly heard by the posted security guard nearby, who rolls their eyes and text their supervisor that the logistics contractors are fooling with the alarms again.

The Team breaks into the facility at night. There they meet a single security guard who is chanting potential names for NPCs in their DnD campaign out loud while they do their patrols. They encounter a fire extinguisher. They pause in their chanting to check that it is properly charged and to apply a sticker that reads, “Anal use only”. This guy is disgustingly good at their job. There’s no way around it, they’re going to catch you. And you’re going to have to deal with the fact that you’ve been had by someone who has a supply of stickers that say “Anal use only” and who unironically wanted to name their NPC shopkeep Mammogrammus.

The Team attempts to bribe a security guard. This is its own post but know there’s no way in hell that would work.

The Team breaks into the high security room and disables all the alarms. Security control sends several guards to investigate why there are no alarms going off.

The Team attempts to break into the high security room but can’t because it’s randomly decided not to let anyone at all in today.

The Team steals a keycard with “””””unlimited””””” access to the facility and gets caught because the computer system that manages keycards randomly revokes access for no reason.

The Team walks past a security guard in broad daylight wearing T-shirts that say, “We are here to rob you”. The security guard does nothing, having seen several people in logistics wearing that exact shirt two days prior.

This sounds like a great movie, honestly

I will always remember that when I worked for a pharmaceutical company in IT, there were massive security procedures, systems with air gaps, locations with biometric scanners and metal detectors and locking revolving doors, but the highest level of security was a human being in a bulletproof proof room with line of sight to the door and a button. To /get/ to the door, you had to go through tons of other layers and badge access and identity verification, but the final lock was a dual physical key (which required two people to open) and a human being with a book of photographs and a button to push.

At the onset of the 2008-onward recession it became more or less impossible to get the sort of summer gig that college students traditionally get. I couldn’t get a callback from any of the area fast food restaurants, the babysitting gigs were gone, I drew blanks on waitressing, dishwashing, landscaping, car washes, summer camps, you name it. The big local summer attraction near me is a horse racetrack, and I put in apps for every position from betting clerk to horse manure removal tech. I got one (1) job offer that summer, and it was to be a security guard. I was a 19 year old girl with a perky ponytail, big ol’ doe eyes, and no experience or interest whatsoever in policing, so I genuinely thought I’d gotten the offer because they’d confused my application with someone else’s… until the first day of training.

Training consisted of a number of retired high ranking New York State Troopers very earnestly trying to convince a room of “dudes who desperately wanted to be a cop but couldn’t jump even that low hurdle” and also “one increasingly incredulous 19 year old girl who could only hear a loud high pitched note in one ear because she stood too close to her amps at the punk show last night” not to bring swords, shurukens, or butterfly knives into work.

We went over the “do not bring in your own weapons” lecture for the majority of day 1 of training. Day 2 was also “do not bring in your own weapons” for a lot of the day, then we moved onto “identifying the different types of fire extinguisher,” and wrapped up the day with “wasp stings.” Well, actually during “wasp stings” we had a sidebar when this one guard who looked like Ben Franklin raised his hand and shared that he, personally, took care of wasps by blowing their nests up with improvised gasoline-based explosives, so technically we wrapped up the day with “do not bring in your own weapons even if those weapons are to harm a wasp.”

Day 3 was a half day, where we reviewed everything we’d learned about no weapons, fire extinguishers, and wasps, and then we took a written test, which I finished with a perfect score in three minutes so Sargeant Minetti made me grade everyone else’s. After that, I was a full ass security guard; I picked up my fake cop uniform, badge(!!!), tiny notebook, strapped a walkie to my belt, and was given my assignment. My beat was very very literally the most public facing one that existed; while most of my colleagues were posted at gates that might never get opened for the entire summer, I had “the wholeass quarter mile of pavement abutting the chain link fence that separated the public from the ponies.” My responsibilities were simple:

1. tell people to move their rolling coolers out of the fire lane

2. take people with wasp stings to the nurse

and oh yeah

3. every time a clerk at a betting window in my section accumulated more than $10,000 dollars in cash, I had to escort them for ½ of a mile through the incredibly dense crowd of drunk people, any of whom might be interested in stealing more than $10,000 dollars, and get the money safely into the giant vault.

I remember the very first run i made. The betting clerk looked at me, the 19 year old responsible for protecting both them and $10,000. I looked back at him through the mirrored aviators that I’d bought at a gas station for 5 bucks because I thought it was very very funny and good fake cop cosplay. My walkie hissed ominously.

“…Uh, so if someone tries to take the money, what are you going to do?” He asked.

“Well, I get paid 12 bucks an hour, so… nothing.” I responded. “How about you?”

We quickly arrived at an understanding.

Two of the guards from my training group got fired that summer for bringing in their own weapons, and at least one of them had both a butterfly knife and at least one shuruken. Many more dropped out as they discovered that they would not actually be doing Die Hard shit. As for me, I did literally nothing to prevent crime all summer, but I also halfheartedly cleared a path through the crowd at the front of a very sad “St. Patrick’s Day In July” parade, which made me enough of a success story that they actually called me unprompted to ask if I’d come back the next year… with one caveat.

See, the next year I returned as a weathered veteran with a spotless disciplinary record, so they gave me three hours of additional training to get a certification to become a peace officer. As a result, from ages 20-23 (when my license expired) I had the same legal powers of arrest as a police officer.

Me. They just gave me that.

In conclusion, if you’re a highly qualified team of heistmen looking to rob an entity that accumulates wealth by convincing drunk desperate people to give them their money and you pick a fucking casino when the racetrack is right there, you’re either thinking way too inside the box… or you have a healthy fear of shurukens I guess.

Only valid response to this post, everyone else can go home.

Please, never let this meme die.

This is the best one I’ve seen so far

What kind of quantum fucking memeing from 2056 are you people beaming to us

It’s fucking back

shooting star. i can’t believe i’m hearing shooting star again in the year 2020

Actors and Animators should go on strike next tbh. Especially cgi animators. Put the fear back into Hollywood

Animators? Yes. Actors? If youre talking ppl like RDJ or Jamie Lee Curtis or what have you. They have more than enough fucking money. Take a look at one production cost and see how much these people are paid.

My dad is an actor/playwrite. He has to constantly search for new gigs to make ends meet, and even then ends up doing retail or lyft or doordash a lot of the time between gigs.

And my parents don't live in a huge house in New York or LA, it's a tiny townhouse in a really small city. My mom's the one who really pays the mortgage with her events organizer and house manager jobs at local theatres, and even then they struggle to afford living expenses. They used food stamps when I was a kid - not every month, but enough that I see it as a normal thing to do.

And when he does get gigs, especially like big tv gigs, working conditions are CRAP. He nearly got severe hypothermia once for having to jump in a freezing cold river in early winter from 11pm-3am, repeatedly, for a shot they didn't even end up USING.

Scheduling is abysmal, overtime is never properly compensated for, the jobs are DANGEROUS (mostly on a physical fatigue level), and work is contractual by nature. Are there some contracts that are ridiculously good? Yes, that's how contract-based work tends to happen for a lucky few.

But getting a contract like that is like winning the lottery, and even then they can be really exploitative if you don't have a kickass agent and/or a really good entertainment lawyer. There aren't really steady 9-5 full time acting jobs with benefits the way there are with other jobs. It's difficult to get any gigs in the first place, I cannot emphasize enough how much it is a constant job search.

And that's not even getting into the horrendous conditions and disrespect for voice actors. Actors should ABSOLUTELY go on strike

I fucking hope RDJ and Will Smith and everyone on top strike too. You want a real impact? Let's see what happens when top names refuse to work until the people on the bottom are compensated fairly too.

Being able to pretend it's just some uppity character actors or commercial actors lets studios distract. When there's no star for the next blockbuster to be, they can't ignore the demands.

Production houses: but if the writers stay on strike we can't guarantee the future safety of your favorite shows 🥺🥺😭😭

Viewers who 1, have already lost their favorite shows because they were cancelled in spite of good ratings and good reviews or 2, have stopped watching new content entirely until the entire series has aired and concluded as a result of so many good shows getting cancelled on cliffhangers and thus leaving said viewers unable to gain closure with those characters and with a hollow viewing experience, so they've begun a, watching older shows they know came to a planned conclusion or b, revisiting their old favorites and enjoying the nostalgia or c, reading new books or fanfic instead: YOU ALREADY CAN'T GUARANTEE THE FUTURE OF OUR SHOWS SO GET FUCKING WRECKED AND PAY WRITERS WHAT THEY DESERVE!

Part of what the WGA is asking for is residuals prior to season 3. Netflix especially keeps canceling shows before they hit season 3 because they want to avoid paying residuals.

The WGA strike, if successful, will guarantee the future of shows. It will fix the problem. Production houses, if left to their own devices, won’t.

when i was a freshman in college i wanted to dress up for halloween because i thought surely college students would have the spirit. so i elected to put a whole entire Skull Kid from legend of zelda majora’s mask cosplay together and wear that fucking ensemble to college on halloween.

i step on campus and realize immediately that not one other person is dressed up. not so much as a cat ear headband. so imagine this fucking dude sitting in a class of otherwise normally dressed people looking like this. that was me. this was my 9/11

I laughed so fucking hard at this

We are not going to let that fuckwad DeSantis gain a foothold in the 2024 election.

You are going to fucking vote for Joe Biden, and you are going to give us a fucking chance to save our country from fascism, and you aren't going to fucking complain about it, because there is literally no other choice.

We will not let another election be a close call. Are you listening?

Vote for Biden. Vote for whatever Democrat is most popular in your local elections. Our system sucks, but this is what we're working with. Just fucking vote.

"But he's --"

It doesn't matter. It does. not. matter.

Not every battle is about progress. Sometimes it's just holding the line until we get reinforcements. And they are coming. The Gen Z vote was monumental in stopping the red wave, and there are increasing numbers as more and more come of age.

Hold the line.

And Biden has actually done quite a bit even with a divided congress?

Just…a simple google for biden's accomplishments.

Every last one of these things republicans stand against. Every single one. Better to take two steps forward than twenty steps back, right?

And here I am again, back in 2016 I kept yelling at everyone some variation of this:

One party wants me dead. It wants women, racial minorities, queer people of all stripes and poor people dead. It does not see us as human.

One party sees us all as people and generally wants us to live and even thrive. The difference is that stark. Everything that's happened since trump got elected has only reinforced that. The past two years of the right digging in, of a queer and specifically trans genocide....

We have to hold the line. If Republicans take the presidency and the senate in 2024, our democracy dies, and a lot of marginalized people die with it.

They will never let another party gain power again.

I'm in Santa Fe so of course I went down to the picket line outside a local studio. George RR Martin was there too, and I got to see Paris, George's better half, as well. So was incredible author Nnedi Okorafor who had driven in from Arizona to be on the picket line.

George RR Martin is such a good supporter he's been on strike from writing his books for years.

Until the strike is over, anybody making this joke has to donate to the Entertainment Community Fund. I'm sorry. I don't make the rules.

My boyfriend made this joke yesterday. Today I saw this post and texted him a screenshot of it with the comment, "Neil Gaiman says your joke is bad and you should feel bad."

He texted back, "He said no such thing. He simply informed us of the rules." And then send a pic of his donation confirmation.

I had dinner with George tonight and informed him of the low-hanging joke and the rule. Your boyfriend is spot on.

Leverage meme ≡ quotes [5/5] → from Nathan Ford

#hmm thanks  for reminding me that I actually rather love this character#leverage#nathan ford#he’s not a good man really#(though by some terrifying metrics he is indeed a Good Man)#but he has aligned himself with good and he will get there come hell or high water#the thing is#he is the hell and he is the high water#he is the monster that hunts monsters#the abyss consumed him long ago and that’s just. how it is. he just lives here now#because that’s the thing#the abyss consumes you and everything…doesn’t end#you keep living#you keep living even though you are nothing but howling rage in the shell of a man#but then you turn that rage and that abyss upon the monsters that made you#and you bring the abyss to them (via @aethersea)

#nate’s scarier than anyone else on that team #even though all of them could run circles around him in thief skills 

#he doesn’t run circles around anyone #he just builds the track #and watches cooly while everyone else runs

There are moments when Nate goes completely cold and he is way scarier than any of them, or all the rest of them combined, like a reminder of what is sitting there under the surface - an incomparably brilliant mind with no heart to anchor it and nothing to believe in.

you can tell that Nate is an ex-Jesuit, or perhaps more accurately an almost-Jesuit He has this Catholic self-hatred coupled with this deeply rooted sense he’s better than others and it’s all tied together with a large amount of ‘here, hold my beer’

“My father would buy me an ice-cream” is just the the most terrifying thing anyone in the show says.

He says, in one line, that he was raised to be bad, knows how to be bad, chose to be good, fell, chose to be good by doing bad, but his gut reflex, the one he’s been supressing for his entire life, is just to be a walking nightmare, exactly what you’d expect if you rewarded a child for lying, cheating, swindling, and hurting for fun and profit.

Nate Ford is not a nice man. But he’s all that’s standing between us and Jimmy Ford’s Son, so let’s be thankful for that.

What the everliving hell?

Your not friendly reminder that cops stole more monetary value then all burglaries in 2020, and that is only dwarfed by time theft by American businesses.

MURICA

This is basically what my physical therapist had me do for my back problems last year and it helped with the pain so much! Also walk for at least thirty minutes a day, even if it's just in small chunks throughout the day.

Also a must if you bind!!!

I like to think that at least once, the Avatar cycle seemed to skip the Water Tribe—like people knew it was the water tribe’s turn, everyone was looking for them, the tests are done on all the kids, but like 60-80 years go by and no avatar until some Earth Kingdom kid shows up. People wonder if the cycle skipped a generation or what, but nothing serious was going on at that time so they shrug and move on.

It’s only many many years later that someone is researching Swampbender oral history and someone tells the story of “Ol Stinky Jess, she was a funny one, could light the swamp on fire an’ all sorts o’ shenanigans! Best catfishgator catcher in the tribe, she was” and thats literally it, she just lived a totally chill life in the swamp and nobody knew what an avatar was at the time so they just rolled with that funny gal’s odd bending ways.

Researcher, equally eager and afraid to ask: “So…so why was she called Stinky Jess?”

Cheerful Swamp Elder: “Well y’see, them gases what come out of the swamp in the real dank places, they’s as smelly as a skunkcoon’s hind end, and Stinky Jess, so the legend goes, well she were a bit of a prankster, an’ she’d find a real ripe part o’ the swamp, and then she’d whip up her wind magic an’ waft them stinky smells right into yer house and get er’body hollerin’. They say no one annoyed Stinky Jess for fear o’ being visited by her stink in the night! O’ course, Ol’ Stinky Jess also taught us that soma them gasses are flammable, on account o’ the time she sneezed durin’ a stinkup an’ set half the town on fire, an’ that’s the story o’ how our tribe learned ter harness methane and ter fireproof things even when they’s surrounded by water—”

Researcher: (scribbling notes so fast his quill is smoking)

Lost followers after reblogging that whole thing about JKR being radicalized over the years, and that disturbs me.

Like if you think saying that people can be radicalized and manipulated into hate is somehow justifying it, yikes. And if you think that people are somehow just good or evil and that you are not at risk of buying into propaganda, have I got some very red flag news about that!

Idk if its because I am an older Millennial maybe (most who unfollowed were younger) but I watched a ton of that generation slide from one of the most progressive to the far right before my every eyes. Hell, my dad fought alongside his black friends in the Detroit race riots and now he watches Fox News 24/7 and talks about the border wall. Yet still claims he could never be racist because of how he used to be. He doesn’t even realize what he has become.

JKR isn’t a deluded old woman or innately evil, but in fact THE prime example of how well-meaning ignorance and privilege can be weaponized and encouraged down a pipeline, until it turns into a force of hate, and should be a cautionary tale about why educating and being open about these issues are necessary. Because there are those out there who will use those divisions and ignorance to their own ends. And just digging in our heels and saying “that could never be me!” is the very thing that puts you more at risk. I’ve lost so many loved ones down that pipeline and it is more slippery than most realize.

Stay alert, stay compassionate, stay humble, and make sure you move through life guided by reason rather than reaction. I love y’all and don’t want to see your passion twisted to get used against the world.

Thinking "I could never be a bigot" is the first prerequisite for becoming a bigot.

In the UK we've seen a few people ride this crazy train to the end of the line in the last few years. Perhaps because our political landscape is different from that of the US, it's easier to see it happening. There has never been an expectation here that being a conservative means you will hold insane views. It might mean you have some objectionable political ideologies, but you are still expected to be a somewhat normal human being who occupies the same planet as the rest of us.

So when we see somebody make the transition from being just a bit right-wing in their thinking, to being a full-on conspiracy lunatic, it really shows. We've seen it with a lot of our politicians and other public figures.

There's a guy called Neil Oliver who used to present historical TV. His views were always a bit weird and biased (historians and archaeologists did not like him at all), but he wasn't an actual crazy person. But he rode that crazy train to the end of the line and became a fully-fledged antivaxx COVID denier, who is now babbling about one world government and peddling antisemitic conspiracy theories. It happens.

JK Rowling's radicalisation has really disturbed people, because she was famous for books which championed ideas of equality and rights for marginalised groups. In retrospect, those books had some biases and prejudices in them as well, but they were ones that most white Britons carry without realising it. So the seemingly sudden change from that to being someone spreading hatred of trans people and seeming to consciously back antisemitic ideas was a massive whiplash. A real shock. Even more of a shock than the fact she seems to have forgotten how to write a readable book.

Now, I'm a pro-independence Scot who was active on Twitter in the years after 2014. So I already knew she was disingenuous, a bit of a troll, and had some fairly reactionary views. Perhaps her further radicalisation was less of a shock for me. But it still took me aback.

This happens. It happens to people who are too secure in their own self-concept as a Good And Progressive Person. They feel that because they are a Good And Progressive Person, all their thoughts and feelings and biases must also be Good And Progressive, because Good People don't have Bad Thoughts, and of course, Bad People never have Good Thoughts.

By painting JK Rowling as having always been a secretly Bad Person, and Harry Potter as having always been secretly propaganda for Bad Thoughts, we make ourselves vulnerable to the same kind of radicalisation. The truth is that she is just a person, a white cis woman with some unexamined biases, who wrote a series of books that were good-hearted and had good messages, and also reflected some of those biases. And now she has taken a ride on the crazy train, and it's scary to see.

Because it could happen to any of us.