Just Collectin'

brown sugar and cinnamon are lesbian married

hey good news

there's a specifically designated role in the naked mole rat ecology for "guy who runs off into the wilderness and fucks their way into a stranger's house"

Y'all have no idea how absurdly strange naked mole rats are as creatures They're cold-blooded mammals that live in a eusocial structure with a queen and drones, similar to ants, bees, termites and no other mammal on the planet. They barely need to breathe, with a respiration rate low enough to let them thrive in burrows with 2% oxygen, and survive with 0 oxygen whatsoever for about 20 minutes with zero lasting effects.

They live for over 30 years, which is absurdly long for a rodent, don't grow frail with age, and are basically immune to cancer because their telomeres just never shorten.

Naked Mole Rats are rodents that attempted to evolve into bugs, failed, and unlocked the secret to immortality in the process.

A neat thing about The Goblin Emperor is that while it's a classic trope of the lost heir plunged into a morass of courtly intrigue where he has no idea whom he can trust, the very first thing it does is emphasize how much he has to choose to trust anyway. Maia has to trust the head of his household to appoint his body servants, and he has to trust those servants. He has to trust the adremaza to appoint his nohecharei, and he has to trust his nohecharei. Any one of these people could kill him. Any one of them could carry gossip to his enemies, or make him look bad in public and thus weaken him in the eyes of the court. But if he so much as implies a discomfort with these choices, he'll offend powerful people without cause – and anyway, how could he possibly pick better? He has no idea what he's doing. He's forced to rely on people. He's forced to trust. The only person he actually personally chooses is Csevet, and what he chooses to do is essentially hand Csevet the keys to the empire. He got so fucking lucky there, that could have gone so incredibly badly.

But it didn't. Because, as the book emphasizes, trust is the right choice. Even when it does go badly, even when he is betrayed, that doesn't mean the trust was wrong. Because when one person betrays him, every single other person around him shows how truly loyal they are, not only by rushing to his aid, but by caring so deeply and obviously about him.

That's why this book feels so odd for its genre: there's a bunch of complex courtly intrigue going on, but Maia never plays the game. He never schemes, he's never playing 5D chess with his enemies. He has to navigate the factions of the court and try to win them to his side, but he does so by being kind and forthright. He's completely blindsided by the coup attempts, and frankly so are we, because he's just been focusing on other stuff! And he survives them, not through his own cunning, but through the love of those he placed his trust in.

Hello, today is my birthday, and I would like to share a comic I made in the last year with you. It's called Broomistega and Thrinaxodon.

This comic was originally printed with yellow, fluorescent pink, light teal, and violet risograph inks. Physical copies are available in my shop.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the only one stopping you from lurking around an ancient ruin, dressing like a disgraced nobleman, and duelling everyone who comes your way, is yourself. 

this was a comment on one of my post from a recent live event. it was photos of joyful queer buckaroos celebrating together and proving love is real through creation, community, and a trot of love. most important I AM LITERALLY IN PHOTO AS A REAL FLESH AND BLOOD HUMAN

it got me thinking about how DEEP AND VICIOUS the irony poisoning of these early internet communities goes. the way buds like this cannot fathom someone just being a sincere person unrelated to their OWN old days of cynical posting. it is fascinating, and i will admit, sad too

despite a DECADE of work, countless live events, 350 tinglers written well before large language models were a thing, there are still people who cannot imagine someone like me could exist. it is a strange place to be. not just part of me, but my entire EXISTENCE is often gatekept

it is easy to say ‘well chuck your art IS strange’ but honestly i think it is more than that. magical realism is common. there are stories about dinosaurs and bigfeet and unicorns. this scoundrel reaction is about two unspoken things: my art is neurodivergent, and my art is queer

heres the thing: I WILL BE FINE. what concerns me is not an issue of MYSELF, it is a concern for the other young outsider buckaroos who see comments like this one and think ‘is that what they will say if i express MY unique way? will i be dehumanized like this at every turn?'

i will be honest, i cannot say that WONT happen, but i CAN say this: for as deep as this irony poisoning goes, it is slowly dying. the way i was treated at the start of my career is LIGHTYEARS DIFFERENT from the way i am treated now. there is a massive shift towards sincerity

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY. to young artists trotting up, the things that i am harassed over and doubted for and made fun of for are NOT tangental to what has made me successful, THEY ARE LITERALLY THE SAME THINGS THAT HAVE MADE ME SUCCESSFUL. YES I AM STRANGE, WHAT OF IT?

the things that you tuck away for fear of a review that says ‘there is a PROBLEM with this art because it has always been done another way’ THOSE ARE YOUR SUPERPOWERS. the gatekeepers want you to tuck those parts of yourself away because THEY TUCKED AWAY THOSE PART OF THEMSELVES

never forget that your unique way is PURE UNFILTERED 100 PERCENT ROCKET FUEL. it will stick out (maybe, if you are lucky, scoundrels will even say that someone like you could never actually be real), but sticking out isnt so bad when you are waving the flag of love.

in fact, when youre waving the flag of love, sticking out is pretty dang cool. what are flags for, after all? LOVE IS REAL BUCKAROOS. thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed this long post then please consider preordering BURY YOUR GAYS.

LETS TROT

"con artist" is maybe the profession with the biggest gap between How Cool They Are In Media and How Cool They Are In Real Life

fictional con artist: I've gathered you all here because you each have unique skills and specialties that will be required for the Ultimate Heist: psychologically destroying the richest man in the world, and taking his mansions, his yacht, and his wife in the process.

real life con artist: plan A is to scare an old lady who barely speaks English. plan B, is to trick unemployed people into giving us money, which they famously have a lot of, in exchange for broadly-defined Career Services. plan C is we try to make NFTs a thing again

Book #67 of 2024:

When I Was Your Age: Life Lessons, Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professional Clown by Kenan Thompson

An entertaining if disjointed memoir from the lifelong sketch comic, currently enjoying an unprecedented third decade at Saturday Night Live. I’ll repeat that: at 21 seasons on the show and counting, author Kenan Thompson has blown past the previous record of 14 years set by former cast member Darrell Hammond back in 2009, and despite saying in this book that he might finally be leaving soon himself, he apparently has no specific departure plan that he’s ready to share just yet.

Given that degree of longevity on the program, this title is honestly a bit of a missed opportunity. Although the writer shares plenty of charming backstage anecdotes, there’s no real effort here to critique it seriously or capture how the series has changed over the course of his tenure, in a long-term view that he’d be uniquely positioned to offer. He likewise doesn’t really address the underlying question of why he’s stayed on SNL all this time, while so many other talented performers have continued to come and go from its soundstage. An introspective exploration of that topic could have been particularly interesting and insightful, but the text instead steers smoothly around it.

In its place, we’re offered the nuts and bolts of Thompson’s upbringing in Atlanta, his big break as a child actor on Nickelodeon’s All That, subsequent TV and movie projects, and ultimately, the revered late-night institution at NBC. The amount of celebrity name-dropping is unavoidable / expected in a work like this, and it’s neat to learn about the comedy touchstones that Kenan idolized and how they influenced his own approach to the business, not to mention the difficulties he faced as a short Black kid “on the rounder side of things” in an industry so focused on biased superficial beauty standards. We also hear some about his two daughters and his philosophies on parenting them — inspired heavily by the peers he’s lost to gun violence, drug abuse, and suicide — as well as his complicated feelings on Bill Cosby, whose squeaky-clean comedic persona was so formative for the young man before all his horrendous sex crimes came to light. (And a weird focus on the zodiac, too. The author doesn’t list the astrological sign of every single person he mentions, but he includes way more of them than you’d think and seems to genuinely believe they’re indicative of people’s behavioral patterns or something.)

Anyway. Not a bad read overall, but nothing too exceptional, either.

★★★☆☆

Like this review? –Throw me a quick one-time donation here! https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke –Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next! https://patreon.com/lesserjoke –Follow along on Goodreads here! https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler –Or click here to browse through all my reviews! https://lesserjoke.home.blog

Street art in Melbourne, Australia.

So today I got a rather unkind comment on AO3 (one could call it hate), but I believe it to be a bot for several reasons:

I'm curious, did anyone else get comments like this? Let me know.

And to those who have gotten rude comments and are now worried/upset: Maybe it was just a bot too. Either way: You're awesome for putting your writing out there for others to enjoy and you don't deserve to get rude comments for it. If you want feel free to message me to compare cases and discuss details :)

For comparison, this is the one I received.

Here are some more examples fellow writers allowed me to share:

As you can see, these comments all the match the description above. Also they seem to be weirdly obsessed with AI and this entire operation may be an attempt to promote writing AI - which, if true, is disgusting on several levels.

(If any of the people with the AO3 usernames in question happen to see this: Don't worry, we're all sure it wasn't you, no hard feelings and sorry that a bot stole your name for hate comments. The names are only shown as proof that they are indeed stolen)

Oh I was just wondering why I got a weird comment today!

This is mine. Looking at the pattern, it is definitely a bot. Stealing usernames and posting as guests under that.

I was upset for a hot minute, replied asking what did they mean... Turns out I shouldn't have bothered.

Thank you for the addition! This certainly paints a picture - they're claiming that the work of actual human authors is subpar (the toddler comment on mine and the human comment on yours) and/or bring up AI.

Sorry this happened and I hope you're feeling better now💕 personally, I do believe this work was written by a human being and a lovely too!🫂💗

I don't think they're so much trying to get people to use AI to write fics - there seems to be some sort of a scam where the bots encourage commenters to put a fic through their 'AI scanner' to check if it was written by a robot.

They're literally trying to get readers to do the work of scraping fics for them.

I'm sure other folks have added this already in different reblog chains, but AO3 has disabled guest comments for now.

Just in case, I would recommend not going to any of the AI writing sites these comments mention since it's possible they have malware on them. Or maybe the comments are just intended to get people searching for the terms and then that might make them pop up in google search's autofill?? I have no idea 😑

Locking your fics and comments to registered users eliminates this issue-- and hopefully limits bot scraping of the works themselves.

A whisper in the wind.

(x)

Nice consequences, did your actions pick them out for you ?

and how odd it is to be haunted by someone that is still alive.

my apologies if this has already been posted here but im sharing this. here is what someone said on twitter along w this image:

the central image text reads: “@everyone I HAVE BEEN RELIABLY INFORMED GUARDIAN JOURNALISTS ARE SNOOPING AROUND ASKING FOR TRANS PEOPLE TO TALK TO THEM ABOUT DIY HRT. THEY ARE PARTICULARLY LOOKING FOR UNDER-18S DOING DIY. SHOULDN'T NEED TO BE SAID, BUT DO. NOT. ENGAGE. SPREAD WIDELY. DO NOT ENGAGE. WE NEED THIS NOTICE SPREAD OUT VIA EVERY GRASSROOTS SUPPORT GROUP AND SOCIAL CIRCLE IN THE COUNTRY.

URGENT. IF THEY GET EVEN ONE TO TAKE PART IT BECOMES A NATIONAL CONVERSATION. TOP ALERT.

- https://x.com/TownTattle/status/1781045092049928551

reblogging to add the Trans Safety Network guidelines for media engagement

do not engage with the Guardian if you’re trans and a minor. do not speak with the Guardian on DIY HRT.

heck, unless the journalist is reputable and has a track record of good reporting on trans issues, do not speak with them about DIY HRT. seek out your local organisation if you are approached by a journalist.

BDSM gets a bad rep as like a violent (male) dom pushing the boundaries of a reluctant (female) sub but in my experience it's a lot of subs with wildly elaborate fantasies screaming shit like "PUT MY ASS IN THE CHILI" while a new dom is like "Okay I think, we are reaching yellow for me,"

Sub: Okay so before we begin how familiar are you with the ancien régime? It's not super important but it does help contextualize this. Essentially I'd like for you to be a ravenous, semi-cannibalistic Antoine Barnave-esque figure

Dom, holding a pen and notebook: Yeah okay

sub: can you drug me and perform fucked up surgeries on my unconscious body without telling what you did

dom: