INTJ* Confessions

so real

downside: going to have to include a picture of the Giza pyramids in the slides for the lecture upside: i get to give people a crash course in why perspective matters in two frames, because

followed by

is such a funny sequence

i find most people who haven't seen it in person don't know that cairo is RIGHT THERE

I loved these perspectives so I took some of my own when I was in Cairo and yeah, they're literally just. Right there. Pass em on your way to work, nbd

No, y'all don't even understand.

There is literally a Pizza Hut across the street from the pyramids.

That Pizza Hut among other things is why Egyptologists laugh their asses off when we see another piece of media where the protagonists get "lost in the desert near the pyramids", because it's like... just turn around my dudes you're only a seven min walk away from the nearest fastfood shop

Yall don't know how much I adore all of this

Pay heed to Klaudia Amenábar's words! Don't let the executives weaponize fandoms. WGA Strong.

My guys it is starting to work, I've seen some people I know complaining about the writer's strike and turning against them because their favorite shows and/or movie got put on hold. Please do not be fooled like this, this is exactly what the corporations want. It can wait, I promise you will find other things to focus, but writers need this.

Reword every headline they put out. “Due to not wanting to give writers money, Marvel has shut down pre-production on…” You can end this strike any time you want to, pal.

Did I just employ the "Treat Them Like You are A Kindergarten Teacher Again" method with my insurance company today? I surely did. Did it work? Probably better than intended because I made an actual doctor feel contrite.

So, my insurance has been trying to not cover my SNRI because it is new on the market and no generic available yet, so pricey.

I apply for a refill and the request gets locked for review. Again. For the 3rd time.

This time I call and immediately ask to speak to the actual doctor making these clinical decisions. Very politely. Must be a slow day because they allow it.

ME: [Teacher voice] I'm calling in regards to the SNRI you have placed a lock on. Why was this decision made?

DOC: Well, there are dozens of other medications on the market in that tier, and far cheaper for you and [insurer]. We have sent a request to your doctor to consider alternatives.

ME: I am aware of that. So, can you do me a HUGE favor and look up my prescription history really quickly and tell me how many SSRIs and SNRIs were only filled once in 2022 for me, showing they were poorly tolerated?

DOC: It looks like eight.

ME: Great job! Now, can you please look at my genetic test for psychiatric drug tolerance and tell me how many medications are listed in the safe category?

DOC: Two.

ME: Awesome! Now, can you tell me what type that other drug is that I'm not taking?

DOC: Yeah, totally, it's an MAOI.

ME: That's correct, you're really knowledgeable! Should I be taking something as dangerous as an MAOI with my other medications, or even just in general?

DOC: It's contraindicated for sure.

ME: It is! So true! So, last question since you've been incredibly smart and helpful. Is it less expensive for [insurer] to pay out for the medication knowing they already get a huge manufacturer discount anyway, or is it more expensive for them to pay for me to need potentially long-term inpatient psychiatric care?

DOC: I'll clear the code, ma'am and flag it as medically necessary. I'm sorry about this.

ME: I appreciate you SO MUCH. You have a great day now.

WALGREENS PHARMACY TECH WITH 5 NOSE RINGS AND PURPLE HAIR STARING AT ME: ........... OKAY! It'll be ready in five minutes. You wanna come work here?

it's amazing how ordinary objects can become so significant to only the owner

when my aunt's best friend passed away, my younger brother was four years old. at his funeral, my brother went up to her and gave her a nickel. he told her very solemnly that it would make her feel better. she smiled for the first time in days, and tucked it in her wallet.

when my brother was 22, his best friend passed away unexpectedly. my aunt drove three hours to be there for him at the funeral. she went up to my brother, gave him a big hug, and then gave him a nickel. it was the same nickel; she had kept it in her wallet for 18 years, and now it's on a necklace that he never takes off.

what i'm trying to say is that the love you put into the world will always find its way back to you.

i will never complain about a book seeming like a fanfic with the serial numbers filed off because that means the author had the invaluable ability to tell when their au had diverged enough that these were just straight-up different characters now

even as we speak there is probably someone out there writing a delightful 100k+ word gay romance novel about a genderqueer bisexual single parent who lives in a beach town and fixes classic cars and falls in love with the sexy tentacle monster mermaid that saved their life, and that writer could probably make pretty good money self-publishing it, but they won't because that would mean admitting that they aren't really writing destiel anymore

love that despite not being in the fandom i hit the middle of the venn diagram of 'characters that the average person would never in a million years recognize as dean winchester' and 'characters that a certain subset of fans would immediately think are dean winchester' so perfectly that i've since been told i described multiple popular fics

car conversations so good bc of removal of eye contact expectation. let us all learn from this

There's a lesson here

@is-the-snake-video-cute

What the hell? Is this normal? Is the snake ok?

Thanks for tagging me!

So, this isn't good, and it's not normal, but this is something that can happen in even healthy snakes, with a few big qualifiers. This only really happens on ophiophagus (snake-eating) snakes, like this kingsnake, and it happens because they think they smell food and wind up biting themselves. This snake happened to bite at just the right angle to swallow their tail, and as they kept going, any pain they felt was dismissed as being from their "prey" biting them.

This snake is probably okay. As you can see in the video, they let go as soon as some hand sanitizer got in their mouth - snakes hate the smell and taste of the stuff.

Situations like this are very rare. This snake's keeper did the right thing - it looks like they brought them to to the vet based on the table, and some hand sanitizer got them to let go with no issues.

📷 from focra

[image description: tweet by Netchimen’s Reverie that reads “Tolkien describing places that are evil: no trees grow there” /end description]

This is doubtless because of his experience of the trenches in the Great War.

Like, this is what things looked like to soldiers who fought in that war (image in black and white of a solitary soldier walking across a muddy wasteland pocked with puddles):

Here’s Delville Wood, the site of a battle in 1916 (sepia image of a wasteland dotted with broken and dead trees):

Here’s an image from the Battle of the Somme, in which Tolkien participated (image of soldiers standing above and inside a trench or earthwork in a grey wasteland; smoke from artillery is on the horizon)

So yeah: no trees = evil was Tolkien’s own direct lived experience. It’s precisely why Mordor and the wastelands around it look like they do in his books.

the plateau of gorgoroth, the heartland of mordor, is described as being scarred by countless pits dug by orcs the true seat of evil is full of foxholes and trenches

There’s a lesson to be learned here.

I hope Tolkien would be happy to learn that a hundred years on, trees grow again here:

From The Atlantic.

I think that Tolkien would be very happy to see that.

imagine what it must be like to do scholarship on the odyssey when your name is odysseus. big brain move like who is going to disagree w odysseus’ takes on the odyssey. nobody

accidentally ran into the literal coolest person on this earth

superpizzaman.com

this guy is a hypnospace outlaw website given a human body

although they have a reputation as scavengers, hyenas are known to take down prey many times bigger than they are

I like how this implies the hyena took down the airplane.

She did.

women can do anything

“the only flowers a man will get are at his funeral” wrong and stupid. tell your girl you like flowers. name 3 flowers you like. put vases full of flowers around your house. everyone will catch on.

Hey. Thank you for posting this. I asked my partner if he liked flowers and I am buying him a dwarf rose bush today!!! I’m so happy you were there to remind me to ask him!

It never hurts to ask! You might find out they love flowers or you might find out they’re allergic.

Best wishes to your man and his dwarf rose. I wish them post longevity. There is a dwarf rose at my childhood home that is grown from the cuttings of a rose that belonged to my great grandmother. Did you know the oldest rosebush in the world is over 1,000 years old?

Wait this is funny

This humor is so fucking advanced yet so fucking simple at the same time

My dad was an aviation engineer and used to spray paint his tools the most obnoxious hot pink he could find. Not only did it make it easy to find his tools, but the amount of guys who wanted to use them went down drastically, and they always made sure to bring them back to my dad so they wouldn’t be caught with pink tools.

My dad always got a kick out if it, and to this day a good chunk of his tools at home are a beautiful shade of hot pink.

Use toxic masculinity against itself

Writing about a child rapist did not make Vladimir Nabokov a child rapist.

Writing about an authoritarian theocracy did not make Margaret Atwood an authoritarian theocrat.

Writing about adultery did not make Leo Tolstoy an adulterer.

Writing about a ghost did not make Toni Morrison a ghost.

Writing about a murderer did not make Fyodor Dostoevsky a murderer.

Writing about a teenage addict did not make Isabel Allende a teenage addict.

Writing about dragons and ice zombies did not make George R.R. Martin either of those things.

Writing about rich heiresses, socially awkward bachelors, and cougar widows did not make Jane Austen any of those things.

Writing about people who can control earthquakes did not make N.K. Jemisin able to control earthquakes.

Writing about your favorite characters and/or ships in situations that you choose does not make you a bad person.

It’s a shame that in this day and age these things need to be said.

Or, in short: the narrator =/ the author.

You know what else is a shame? This nowadays tendency of putting on the author the responsibility of teaching their readers morality.

Authors are allowed to write morally ambiguous characters.

Authors are allowed to write downright despicable characters - and guess what they are even allowed to make despicable characters charismatic and likeble and the protagonists of their stories if they wish - because absolute monsters exist only under the bed.

It is not up to the author to spoonfeed the readers about morality and Yes I know this character did a bad thing and I am going going to show it in the story and make other characters call them out of it and– Bullshit.

The authors should be able to write what they want without having thousands of people jumping and their throats claiming to know them, their ideas and their morality based on what they write.

It’s not up to the author to teach you about what is right and what is wrong.

It’s not up to the author to teach you about what is right and what is wrong.

I admire this thread with everything in me.

As an author- this.