women being gay

Hell yea great food they know IT

Miles O'Brien strikes again

I literally love that pork fat was sacred to Hestia. Goddess of Workin' the Grill, Goddess of Throwin' Some Honey Mustard On that Bad Buoy, Goddess of Autism Be Damned.

In my heart of hearts Hestia is some grungy looking creole tgirl with a beer belly and an outdoor grill.

Pics that go hard

feel free to screenshot

i am (re)taking the raads-r autism test and the unclear unnuanced wording of some of these questions combined with the all-or-nothing answer options is setting my teeth on edge. they should have let me design this quiz

The X-Files

Art by Anjohink

Just gonna include some of my favourite Dwarf Fortress patch notes and bugs over the years:

Dwarves also used to be able to drink other dwarves

dwarves are just containers of liquids when you think about it

My favourite was a note from Toady as he was developing Jumping, where due to a math(?) error he jumped, rocketed forwards at 30mph, hit a cliff and instagibbed.

Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.

The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.

And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.

I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.

Let me tell you a story.

Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.

Seaside, FL

Seahaven

And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.

crit role fandom is off the shits in ways I can't comprehend and I don't even have to be in the fandom to know this. every CR drama I have the displeasure of tangentially encountering is a labyrinthine web of bizarre allegations that seemingly have nothing behind them but stretch on forever. The cast has cultivated such an intensely parasocial connection with their fanbase that people act like they've had their house broken into and every piece of furniture removed like that scene in the fresh prince of bel air every time roy mustang or jaina proudmore or whoever the fuck is on that show does something with their character that rustles their jimmies. I saw fanart rolling in as the first episode of C3 was premiering for characters that had been revealed literal minutes ago - the kind of insane turnaround normally only seen from pokemon porn artists when a new female character drops. no one seems even the slightest bit perturbed by the fact that every epsisode is four hours long, that's just a normal amount of content to both watch on a weekly basis and get caught up on. I'm never sure if I'm horrified or in awe

ah the astrology tango

"no one really takes it seriously, we're just having fun" -> "okay so people take it seriously but they're right to take it seriously because it's such a good tool for understanding yourself" -> "okay so it might cause you to make bad predictions about people based on the month they were born in and might foreclose on important life opportunities but it's not like it can cause structural harm" -> "okay so sometimes astrology leads to ungrounded discrimination in housing, dating, and employment but those people would be assholes anyway" -> "okay so i have no way of showing that and it does give people conceptual resources to justify certain forms of discrimination and more widespread cultural buy-in would make that problem worse but i like it" -> "shut the fuck up redditor and let people have fun"

do you have any sorces for people getting discriminated against? because the whole point of astrology is that there are no "bad" placements, if you're using the more western personality based understanding of astrology. (in other cultures, the "bad" placements are more of a prediction of things that could happen in your life, therefore they can be technically bad.) at the end of the day, someones astrology is only a piece of the puzzle, and if someone doesn't like you just because of your sun sign, yeah they're probably being unreasonable. but, to me, its more like saying, "oh i dont date plumbers, usually our personalities don't mesh well." you're not saying plumbers are evil, but that you typically wouldn't choose that for yourself. dismissing people because of their sun sign isn't too uncommon i suppose, but housing and employment? i would really like to see a source for that lol

have you ever heard of Portland, Oregon?

but seriously, it's not a super common phenomenon because it doesn't have a lot of buy-in but it does happen. Here's what a quick google search turns up:

yeah, i've never heard of this before lmao, my bad. i like astrology, and this is a fundamental misunderstanding of it, the kind thats peddled by like. teeny bopper girl rags. i guarantee most of the people who do this type of shit don't even know you have a whole planetary chart unless they've checked it on snapchat 🙄. your sun sign is literally the tinest facet of your personality, and even "problematic" placements in you chart can still be worked on or affected by a persons experiences. for me, it really is just a fun and lighthearted hobby, that i rarely even bring up unless im talking with someone else into it.

tbh, i would say this is more of a general problem with the general western approach to spirituality, as something that is out of a harry potter book rather than just suggestions. if you. ever meet someone like this, i genuinely recommend telling them they're a moron who doesn't even understand what they're talking about, because they don't.

also, a lot of people write articles online talking about how evil a specific zodiac sign is because it gets a lot of clicks, because chances are you know at least one bad person who has that sun sign so you can tut and nod along. please don't take these seriously 💗 people who understand astrology think they're dumb cunts and people who don't believe in astrology think they're dumb cunts. i would say here the danger is misinformation rather than astrology itself, but i can definitely see why this behaviour would leave a bad taste in your mouth lol

You are currently in this step:

I realize this is my bugbear here and my followers might get sick of me talking about this issue, but I genuinely think it’s worth restating, because it is always wrong to ignore science and make up your own version of reality based on what’s convenient for you, no matter the reason. It is inherently regressive to do so and justifying it by pretending it’s only spirituality ignores the very real effects it can have on the real world to believe objectively untrue things.

First, I’m going to add some more evidence that serious harm discrimination over astrology exists, because I think it’s being unfairly overlooked and dismissed here

This is a link to an article discussing “Forensic Astrologers” being used in real cases, and I think this should fucking terrify any reasonable human being that this insane bullshit is literally influencing people in criminology, considering the history of horrible prejudice already inherent in that field. If you don’t find this a disgusting and horrifying precedent, that literally objectively disprovable space magic is affecting whether people enter our horrific prison system, I think you’re being deliberately obtuse and ignorant of the effects of your ideology on others.

Job discrimination due to astrology genuinely exists and must be acknowledged. Again, I cannot overstate how we have objectively, repeatedly, statistically proven that there is no validity behind astrology’s predictions and it has always performed no better than chance in its assessments of people’s personalities.

This isn’t just “western” astrology that’s a genuinely regressive and dangerous force. Arguably, the governmental push in India for legitimizing astrology makes it even more dangerous to society as a whole. Medical astrology is literally being fucking taught in schools. I understand that I’m getting quite pressed about this and you may mock me for that at your pleasure, but that is genuinely fucking absurd, dangerous, and will get people fucking killed.

I am genuinely fucking pissed about this, and I need to hammer this into people’s skulls; astrology is being falsely legitimized in real fucking places in our world and that has legitimate consequences. People are being taught this nonsense for real. How many patients will end up misdiagnosed because of these inane beliefs? How many will receive improper treatment? How many will die due to medical malpractice being legitimized by your ‘harmless’ beliefs? How many can you justify as worthwhile collateral for your fun silly personality charts? You can’t argue this isn’t real or ‘not true astrology’, because it is. That’s the same as arguing that evangelists ‘aren’t real Christians’ for spreading hate, when that doesn’t matter if they’re using their faith to justify this shit.

But wait, there’s more!

Oh, look, astrology being used in matchmaking! That can’t go fucking wrong! Nobody could be told that their abuser is their one true love and the only one for them, and that they have to stay with them because their star signs or whatever the fuck they’re called align! This is dangerous! It is legitimately fucking dangerous!

I know I love to bring it up, but it extends even to Japan, where the sexagenary cycle dictates that, according to superstition, a woman born in the year of the Fire Horse will grow up to murder her husband, which was so widely believed that the last year of the Fire Horse, 1966, the birth rate dropped 25%. People believed in this bullshit so much they chose not to have kids or abort them due to the fear they might dare be women. 25 fucking percent. That is absurd.

I’m sorry I’m getting so damn pissed, but I legitimately think that astrology is a dangerous and regressive force in the world. Not the most dangerous, for certain, but still regressive nonetheless. It has been tested objectively to not have any predictive power, and that should be the fucking end of it. We’ve proven it wrong, time to pack up the bags and go home! We have science now, idiots!

And you say, well, faith is important! Well, how about pick a fucking faith that doesn’t pretend to make objective fact statements about the world so you can keep your spirituality to your damn self and leave the real world the fuck alone. Religion has decided to stick to the afterlife these days because that’s where that shit belongs. Explaining the unexplainable, not fucking birthday racism.

If you want to defend astrology, you have to prove how it fucking works. Nothing in this world can go untested forever. If astrology is a real, true phenomenon, it can be proven. How does it work? How does it do things? Why do the constellations behave this way when they’re arbitrary and made up collections of stars? Why has it failed every objective test that’s tried to test if it works? Is it gravity? Light? Why are people born in the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere the same signs when the stars are different on both sides? Explain how this shit even remotely is supposed to be plausible or accept that you’re just justifying your decisions by making up space magic that says it’s the right choice

Ok, that was way too mean, I’m sorry, I’m kind of feverish right now and I’m cranky because of it. But literally. Science exists. We can test shit. We’ve proven astrology objectively does not work at the things it claims to do. Case fucking closed. Get a new hobby. Stop clinging to shit we should have left in the dark ages to fill a void in your life and pick something that isn’t literally just bigotry based on immutable unchangeable facts about a person’s birth.

And, as I always end these posts; if the best defense of an ideology any of its practitioners can come up with is that they know that it’s stupid and wrong, that’s honestly already the most damning indictment I can even conceive of.  If your claim in support of an ideology is that it’s so obviously wrongheaded on the face of it that only a moron would take it seriously, what does that say about you for knowing that and supporting it anyway?

A collection

this is the teaser image and actual title of an upcoming horror movie, by a director who thinks cgi is overused and too fake looking already so it’s probably going to be pretty funny

This went from “funny meta joke” to actually top tier monster concept the moment I just learned that the gator is canonically made of bad cgi in-universe. It is created when laptops get dumped in the swamp. The characters will recognize that it is a CGI entity and it will presumably have powers and abilities in accordance with that.

Speculation: it clips through the boat or wall at some point.

If anyone else was wondering about the slutty battle pants:

If anyone else

was wondering about the

slutty battle pants:

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

There’s a guy in the notes calling modern Germany “weak and gay”. I don’t think there’s enough time in one lifetime to fully unpack that.

Anyways, my favorite part of German history is where they just decided to replant an entire giant old growth forest and it worked.

Lose your local forest? Simply put it back.

Want another piece of wild German history that isn’t secret fascist worship?

The story of the Pied Piper is at least partially real and documentation of it goes back to the early 1300s.

Yeah. The Hamelin town records literally begin in 1384 with the phrase “it is 100 years since our children left.” The first known record, dating circa 1300, was a stained glass window in a local church commemorating the event. It was destroyed in the 1660s, but enough written and even painted records survive that it was possible to make a reconstruction of it:

(Credit to Hans Dobberton.)

To give you an idea of how accurate this reconstruction might be, by the way, here’s a drawing from 1592 in which the Piper shown is the one from the window:

Written references to the story up through the 1500s are astonishing in number. “Astonishing?” Well. This wasn’t London or Rome. These people were not royalty, nobility, or even gentry. They were peasants and working people. And yet we have this commissioned window only sixteen years after the event, plus a further three either surviving or “we don’t have the original original but we have copies or attestations of the original” written records, and also the records of Hamelin itself. All agree on the date–1284–and the number of taken children–130. In 1816 we see the Brothers Grimm documenting the story in their first compilation of folktales*, which drew on eleven different past sources (which is more than the total amount I’ve found in research, meaning they either had more sources in German, some of their sources are now lost, or both). A now-lost choirbook actually contained a written eyewitness account, which we can no longer check against the other surviving records (because it was, you know, lost), but which is attested in other sources. We even know who it belonged to: Johannes de Lüde, whose mother was the eyewitness.

The oldest known surviving account–beyond that heartbreaking line at the beginning of the Hamelin town history–dates to 1440-50, and actually used the inscription on that stained-glass window to affirm the exact date–the children left or were taken from the town on 26 June 1284. I would like to pause here to say that the amount of documentation we have for the story is frankly insane, given the time period and the fact that Hamelin was just a town built around a monastery (that doesn’t even seem to have still existed at the time of the story). The earliest record we have of its population is in 1689, when it had just 2400 people; it’s reasonable to assume that at the time of the tale, there were only a few hundred. And there were seven hundred years for these texts to get lost, and many probably did–it’s reasonable to assume the local church had birth and death records that would have told us whether the children died or just vanished, for example, but those records were probably destroyed along with the church in 1660. Hamelin has been invaded due to acts of war several times. Being a German town, there’s literally no telling what records of the place Hitler might have destroyed. That we still have this much record of a single event in a small town speaks to how catastrophic the event truly was, given the time period. Like just so we’re clear, England wasn’t yet fully unified when this was happening and the age of Vikings was only 200 years past. When I say it’s astonishing we have this many records (especially coming out of Europe at the time), it’s fucking astonishing.

So what actually happened to the children? Unfortunately, this is the point at which we know it’s nonfiction because fiction would never have such an unsatisfying ending: we don’t know. Some research has been done that suggests the lost “children” were actually teenagers who just…migrated somewhere else, or went on a Children’s Crusade, and there is some evidence to support both these theories. Earlier theories that the children died in a plague don’t hold up–this theory says that the place from which “they were not seen again” would have been their mass grave, but there’s no indication of any such grave existing, and also, let’s not insult the medieval Germans that way, shall we? They knew the difference between “left” and “died.” If it was a mass death (somehow, of only children), they would have said “our children died.” Or, if they were feeling poetic, something like “our children were taken from us by the hand of the Lord.” Any theory that relies on our medieval counterparts being fucking morons doesn’t hold a whole lot of weight. Now. Regardless of whether I was able to give you an actual end to the story, isn’t that a whole fucking lot more interesting than Heinrich Himmler?

*I know we think of them as writing fairy tales, but actually they were more in the business of writing them down. The Grimms were actually scholars.

trans fado stuffs

Ruby Bridges is 68. This is not ancient history. Not even close.

I know Ruby. She's a really nice person. The idea that they would try and write what she did as a girl out of history is shocking to me on so many levels, the simplest of which is just, but don't they know how lovely she is?

Ruby was in Tucson, AZ last Thanksgiving. I wasn't able to attend due to illness, but I appreciated the opportunity.

real talk why do so many fantasy universes think giant spiders are necessary

The sad part is there’s a decent chance a large proportion of them can be blamed on one spider.

The tarantula that bit JRR Tolkien as a child.

He swore he didn’t have a spider phobia and the experience had nothing to do with the man-eating giant spiders in The Hobbit, the even more giant and even more man-eating spider in Lord of the Rings, or the unholy eldritch spider from outside creation that plunged the world into darkness and made literal Satan scream like a little kid in the Silmarillion. Very few people believe him.

Given LotR’s influence in the fantasy genre, there is a high probability that tarantula is the progenitor of even more fictional spiders than Ungoliant was.

wow fuck that one tarantula

“fantasy universes have too many spiders” factoid actually just statistical error. Georgs Spider, who bit JRR Tolkein & is to blame for menacing over 10,000 fantasy universes, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

The way you phrased it implies that every fantasy world has the same giant spider who just walks around and attacks protagonists