The Hipsters are Appropriating Pop Culture

oh my god this New Yorker article about the Titan holy fucking shit fuck???

Some notes: 1. the electrical system was designed by engineering undergrads who were working as interns. 2. because it is illegal to take passengers on an unclassed experimental submersible, they called the passengers "mission specialists" & instead of buying tickets they made donations. 3. the satellite beacon was held onto the outside of the sub with zip ties. 4. when Lochridge (the whistleblower) quit, Stockton Rush asked HIS FINANCE DIRECTOR if she wanted to be the pilot and she was like "sir I am an accountant" and the experience of having her boss ask his accountant to be the pilot made her so freaked out that she ALSO quit the company 5. the carbon fiber used to make the hull was bought from a deep discount from Boeing because it was past its expiry date for use in airplanes

AND MUCH, MUCH MORE

Totally reccomend reading the whole thing - but here are a few bits that stood out to me.

This whole bit? I'd love to see that report... The lawsuit that became public was damning enough tho

He was right about everything - and got fired for it??

wtf wtf wtf. It's fuckin horrifying that our legal system is so "pay to play" that they could harass a guy (who was 100% right) into dropping the case because he couldn't afford to go up against the company.

This isn't the only time I've heard of that either - I personally know people who had ex-employers threaten to litigate against them, or do so. Our legal system is broken, IMO, if even with a very strong case, a person can be intimidated into dropping it just because the company they're going up against is way wealthier and vindictive.

Yeah... In one of my other posts, I noticed that it looked like he made 3 different companies to pick and choose what laws he was subject to.

Carbon fibre makes noise... Generally before failing catastrophically. That noise is structural failure of the material.

Also, tangent but I found the patent for the system that was supposed to detect a hull failure 'in time' (and was super unequipped to) and I might make another engineering post on it later.

Nooo. Holy shit. I thought the controls were bad, but actually they were worse. Did they not fuckin test if the thrusters were on the right way round before they got to the fuckin sea floor? Even at my most amateur-hour ass jobs, we were testing shit better than that.

Like genuinely wtf??? I thought this shit was pants shittingly bad before I read this article? But it was worse? I'm honestly fuckin horrified the more I read about the legal side of things - so many experts knew it was a bad idea, but the corporation was still able to intimidate a whistleblower, set up a different corporate entity to dodge laws around engineering negligence, and continue to do the shit that anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see was gonna be deadly?

I said this in my first post on all this - but if companies can do this to billionaires, they can do this to anyone. I hope this whole thing gets people looking at the laws around corporate negligence with people's safety - because to me this feels like a case study of a much broader problem.

Legal disclaimer under the cut

I was just watching a piece on lucid dreaming and remembering an old animated Batman episode where he realized he was dreaming because none of the books had words he could read in them.

I read books in my dreams all the time.

Hence tumblr poll time. Please reblog for sample size. I'm seriously curious if reading in dreams is A Thing or not, especially on a site that has a high ratio of people who tap their imagination heavily.

Having thinky thoughts about horror and monsters and the brain's initial lizard reactions VS what comes immediately after, and I've come to the realization that I would absolutely get eaten in these sorts of stories, I always wanna know if the upside-down head lady is okay

Like, yes, body horror is terrifying and that OH GOD THAT SHOULDN'T BE MOVING WHY IS IT MOVING reaction is fun and everything, but after that the monster always lunges at the person and tries to maul them or whatever--

I keep wondering if there was ever some incident where the bone crunchy body horror happens and the monster is just as surprised as you are, it panics like "WHY IS MY JAW ON MY CHEST/WHY IS MY HEAD UPSIDE-DOWN/WHERE DID ALL THESE NEW LIMBS COME FROM"

Even hauntingly sad/frightened looking cryptids just sitting there making the OnO face in some sewer or whatever, I always wonder how their face *got like that*, are they okay, what *happened*?

so yeah, no happy ending for me, I'd totally get eaten

See also:

first horror startles and scares me, and then it just makes me sad for weeks. i think the monsters are like drowning victims: they're already under, and they're pulling in anyone they can reach to drown too. they can't help it. they're in a situation that neither a rational or compassionate mind can function in. they just know to grab anything they can to get back to the light, but this is a horror story and they're already too far under, they're never going to reach the surface. they don't get any more breaths, they don't get to think again, they're already gone.

it just makes me really sad. the haunted house that's endlessly choking and spasming around the horror of what happened to her, the backrooms that are an untransversible broken mirror of reality, the villagers in late stage radiation poisoning from an interdimensional attention no primate was actually built to withstand. the monsters are dying, the monsters are dead. they're going to pull you under. they were the first victims, and they were lost before the movie even started.

horror stories are about grief, i guess, and all the monsters are already lost. you can't save them. no one can save them. you can only watch them and hurt.

Creative & DIY

SO THAT’S HOW THEY FUCKING DO IT

Reblogging this because my entire life, all of my bows have looked like my shoelaces. Wrapping presents is going to be so much more aesthetically pleasing now

Reblogging to make your dysphoria hoodie A FUCKING TRANS VIBE.

TIL “Yankee Doodle” was written by the British to mock americans. “Doodle” is thought to come from the German “dödel”, meaning “fool” or “simpleton” and “macaroni,” a flamboyantly stylish type of dress, painting the Yankees as morons who thought placing a feather in one’s cap made them a “dandy.”

via reddit.com

so you’re telling me that “stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni” would be like saying “wrote a G on his belt and called it gucci”

that’s…a pretty good analogy actually

US moron came to town

Hunting for some coochie

Wrote a G up on his belt

And this bitch called it Gucci

Seeing my notifications get flooded with this every July 4th is the only thing I respect about America

Ok just for curiosity reasons

I genuinely hate to say this but please reblog if you hit the like button for a larger sample size thank you <3

the results are SO FRICKING FUNNY

I have something I want to check, but the answer may scare me. Alright, here it goes:

Please reblog, though I'm pretty sure it's gonna be pretty conclusive regardless of sample size.

Hey so I got a commission for THE ARCHIVE UNDYING and it has straight-up killed me. The unsettling fleshy hue of the coral that melds perfectly into the luminous flowers... The serrated teeth on the cogs... The hands, the grasping hands... Can't fucking wait for people to read the book and indulge in the details!!

But also, pease please please go check out the artist @drawingkit and her print store, where you can buy a print! Of this piece! (but also may i recommend LITERALLY ANY OF HER OTHER PIECES, they are BREATHTAKING)

And if you're game, consider a preorder of THE ARCHIVE UNDYING -- out in JUST ONE WEEK (6/27/23), it is good, queer, unwholesome fun in a world of feral mecha, divine cities, and totally solid plans to assassinated resurrected robot gods.

tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow

TODAY TODAY TODAY

tumblr-meaningful things to share about the book that is out Today:

and MORE

CHARACTERS

WHO I CAN'T WAIT TO DUNK ON IN PUBLIC

COME GET IN THE ROBOT? IT IS MAYBE AFRAID OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU DO BUT THAT JUST MAKES IT MORE FUN FOR EVERYONE.

Sorry, no free space on this one. I want real answers because I believe this question is at the heart of what makes us people. Reblog (please and thank you <3) for larger sample size, etc.

Those are baby black chickens.

These are baby crows:

i think i downloaded some kind of computer virus

Oh dear. Are you just getting annoying popup ads, or is it worse than that?

Much worse.

Gremlin.exe is super hard to uninstall i hear. Good luck!

It's spreading, evolving--

Modern problems require ancient solutions.

I have given the viruses a stick.

Please kiss carrot on his dumb little head

Reblog to escape containment, just curious here!!

I've got a new book out today!

Burn Rate is the fifth Rachel Peng novel. Broadly, this series is what happens when five hundred idealistic youngsters allow an evil tech billionaire to stick computer chips in their brains.

Rachel Peng is **really** looking forward to killing him.

As for Burn Rate?

This is a book about mistakes and grief, loss and despair. About what happens when death cuts you open and leaves you to bleed out while life expects you to pick yourself up and move on.

It's also about a blind lesbian detective who uses her cybernetic implants as her assistive devices, and who swears. A lot.

I'm aiming to close out the series in 2023, so two more books will hit between now and the end of the year. This is the sad book; the one after this is scheduled for Sept 30 and that's basically catharsis via extreme violence.

Links to all vendors are here.

*taps the glass* hey, y'all know that what you might want isn't necessarily what's best to legislate?

Explanation:

- You cannot be judge, jury and executioner because the division of powers was created for a reason; to remain impartial and try to keep corruption to a minimum.

- Every single living person has human rights. Including the most evil people you could ever meet. Those people have a right to live, to get healthcare, to eat and to have a job. YES, even evil people.

I've seen a lot of people talk about abolishing prison, because it's the cool, new hip thing that everyone is talking about. And instead of understand what it means, they think it's the liberation of wrongfully imprisoned minorities - which it is. But also:

Prison abolition means setting up a system of psychological and physical help for the people whom are deemed dangerous to society. Yes, that includes Evil Fucking People. Recovery and rehabilitation should be the goal, not incarceration. THAT is abolishing prison.

Of course I want that abusive piece of shit father who abused his children to die. I want him dead! DEAD. But it does not mean that that's what I want as an official law, because as much as I'd love to see him dead, the betterment of society and the rehabilitation and development of a human fucking being is important.

The benefits to prison abolition are ENDLESS. But it is also a struggle, and y'all can't keep going through life with a 5 year old's justice mentality. I swear, fandom has rotted your fucking brains off, because we NEED ACTIVISTS. We NEED TO KNOW WHY WE WANT WHAT WE WANT, AND WHAT IT ENTAILS.

You believe in something? Look up the activists who are doing work there. Read up on it. Look up videos. Follow them on their social media. Work in your communities, if you've the opportunity.

And stop being so fucking stupid about abolishing human rights. You're doing the work for the far right when you call on all pedophiles to be executed on sight. Not even twenty years ago, gay people were mostly thought of as PEDOPHILES.

You see how this shit goes? Yeah?

Then figure yourself the fuck out.

“I really want that fucker to suffer, but I don’t want a society run by my worst impulses” is a really important moral principle that more people need to learn.

Again, I really really do like it when Vulcans actually are able to regulate their emotions really well and do appear as completely blank to other species

But I also have a weakness for like, Vulcans seeing a Human being really distressed because they have something that terrifies them happening, like a spider or a species that resembles spiders but really fucking large crawling on them, but the Human is obviously trying to calm themselves down and relax

Meanwhile there’s another Human next to them, making things worse, like saying stuff like “oh god what if it lays eggs on you” (not even in a cruel way, just in the unhelpful way people are like sometimes), and undoing the work the previous Human was doing to calm themselves

And the Vulcans just. snap a tiny bit, like a tiny “cease speaking.” a little more clipped than usual as they go to help the distressed Human

I just got a tiny weakness for Vulcans being a bit defensive and protective over emotional Humans still trying their best to be practical in situations despite their obvious emotions

okay so since nobody else jumped to make this, here we go

(there's a 'see results' option for those who did read svsss at the end of the poll btw!)

(also i ask humbly to reblog if this poll caught your fancy. because most of my followers are from danmei fandoms and likely have read svsss)

Everyone's so upset about what's going on on my normal and functional space ship.

Excellent you can join ranks with that one doctor who this story made late for surgery

#same#started reading suddenly it was 5 fucking am

Read about my normal and functional spaceship to absolutely destroy your sleep schedule

This happened to me with their (now finished) serial novel Curse Words, and then their (currently unfinished) story Charlie MacNamara, Galactic Ace when I caught up to Curse Words while it was still in progress.

Simply put, it’s just a thing that happens when it comes to reading Derin’s stories.

I've been reliably informed by many, many readers that these stories are specifically crack for ADHD people who usually have difficulty reading and I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. That's such a random demographic.

Look it happens

#cannot start reading it is already Late

Do you have to do surgery tomorrow? No? Then how bad could it be to start reading.

#me watching horror movies: noooo why would you open the door covered in warnings not to do that!#me reading thos blog post: I should start reading time to orbit

You should do it, nothing will go wrong. You are the master of your sleep schedule and will get plenty of rest. It'll be fine.

#I am one sentence in and my suspected adhd brain started to fucking. VIBRATE#what the FUCK#I am so happy and am going to get a normal amount of sleep tonight

Ahaha yes another one

Join the ADHD Reader Army

Congratulations, you did invent time travel after all! Unfortunately, instead of the Soviet moon conspiracy thing, all it’s good for is warping your readers several hours into the future.

... I'll take it.

#what the fuck#started reading and this took the better part of yesterday's workday and many hours of night and almost all of today's workday#jesus fucking christ DO NOT START THIS IF U HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO DO IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS

Counterpoint: reading this story is the important thing you have to do in the next 48 hours.

It's ok, that other thing can wait.

Just a couple of chapters to see what it's like, then you can stop and do the other thing.

It'll be fine.

#um hi oh my fucking gods this is true#I started reading at 9 am and then just kept reading and reading#and then suddenly it's 1 pm except it's the next day. whoopsie?

This is the funniest one yet STOP AND EAT SOMETHING

Hey besties help a weird ND guy out