The thing is that the most interesting and novel invention of the MCU is a universe where billions of people turned into dust and then were physically reconstituted on the spot five years later, in a world that had just barely adapted to their absence.

That is wild. That is intense! That is a series of pathos-ridden emotionally complex doorstoppers waiting to happen. Half the entire world! All dead! And somehow we coped with that! And now we have to cope with them all being back?

A whole street of empty houses--surely not everyone there became ash. Some of them moved to better places, now opened by the mass mortality. Some of them died afterward. Who will live there now? Even if inheritances are reversed by resurrection, surely leases aren't renewed. What the fuck happens to everyone who remarried?

What happens to the children snapped back to a world where their parents didn't survive, or the reverse?

But they had to then hastily smooth over this utterly batshit sci-fi premise and get the world mostly back to normal working order as rapidly as possible, without too much emphasis on how literally every person in existence has been placed in a mason jar by a narcissist and shaken twice in five years.

So they could get on with more superhero whack-blam business, which is customarily done against a background of Normality.

This is, tragically, the most Comics thing these movies have ever done.

It is beyond satire that they did this immediately before and during a worldwide pandemic that everyone was pressured to smooth over and 'return to normal' about within 2 years if not sooner.

brooo it was so fucked up at the club last night bro the dj was playing straight bangers like “babbling brook ft. deep woods” and “mourning dove remix” and everyone on the dance floor stood still completely at peace with and within themselves, all still trees in the envelope of the world. at some point in the night i sat and contemplated the beauty of all things it was sick as hell man

May the 4th be with you ! Heathrow airport

I hope May is more than good to you.

Please look at the native range of this truly rare tree called Florida Torreya...how did you even make it

It's not even a situation where humans cut them all down, they just only live right there. This is probably the result of a glacier: the species used to be more common, but almost the entire range was wiped out during the ice age and only the southernmost ones survived. They're very rare in the wild today and threatened by disease but you can buy them for yourself pretty cheap (USA endangered plant law is weird). There's also a rogue effort to introduce them back into other places in Eastern USA. It's a fun read on Wikipedia if you're interested in some Major Plant Drama.

When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.

#these tests always do shit like this#and its just like why would you phrase it like this when its specifically a symptom to misinterpret this (via @tbhliteraltrash )

ok hold on actually i rb'd this before with just tags but im going to come back in on this again

any medical diagnostic you will ever undergo does not mean "always 100% Every Time Ever you have this problem". And it sucks because they will phrase it in a way that SOUNDS like 100% Every Time including on the testing for being a person who has trouble with how specific phrasing is supposed to be.

literally the example I always use is I spent way longer without glasses then I should have because the eyesight chart diagnostic is "identify the letter", so I went 'ok the point of this is to do good identifying letters'. Then i realized

they want to know if I can see. Not if I can identify that a blurry shape is an A because of its unique outline.

So i started qualifying my answers with "blurry". Blurry A, Blurry Y, Blurry Z. Now I have glasses.

they do not make this clear. I do not know why. But you can more or less apply this to any medical diagnostic, and if it's a written diagnostic if your answer is 'sometimes' and the only answers are 'yes or no' you put Yes.

Do I have trouble getting out of bed? Sometimes, yes. So the answer is Yes.

Regrettably tests are made for and by non-autistic people and aimed at non-autistic caregivers and medical experts, which isnt how it should be, and makes it one more complicated thing to navigate. World a hell.

URGENT

KOSA is now being discussed to go into the FAA Reauthorization Bill so I BEG you guys to MAKE A LOT OF NOISE ABOUT KOSA TO SHOW THAT WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT HOW BAD THESE BILLS ARE. THE CHANCES ARE NOT 0 SO BE LOUD

https://www.stopkosa.com/ Sarah from Fight for the future has updated the call tool in the site above with a better call script, so that you can take 5 minutes of your time TODAY to please call Jeffries, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Johnson, and Frank Pallone (they are all set up on the call tool) and stress that KOSA must NOT be attached to must pass legislation. Please also take the tim to contact Blumenthal or Blackburn office as they are attempting to attach it to must pass legislation. Remain polite and civil. PLEASE REBLOG !

The "Whoops, didn't see THAT coming!" Sale

This afternoon's email has brought us unexpected news of a sudden expense that we, well, weren't expecting. :/

As a result, we're doing the only thing we can do on short notice: throwing a sale!

All our ebook bundles at the Ebooks Direct store are now 50% off until the end of the local Spring Bank Holiday Weekend (at 23:59 Irish time on Monday, May 7th).

This includes the Whole Store Package—the entire DRM-free contents of our store—which with the 50% discount is reduced to $35.00 (for 36 ebooks. Plainly we need our heads felt... but needs must, etc.). The discount also includes the All The Wizardry bundle (all our Young Wizards ebooks), the Feline Wizardry bundle, and the 2023 Pride Month Bundle.* And naturally when you buy from us, you're also buying our guarantee of free replacement of your ebooks should you lose them or change platforms.

Interested?

Please use this link (which has the discount baked in) to go to the store, choose a bundle, and put it in your shopping basket. The discount will apply itself once it's in the basket. All you need to do then is check out using your preferred method of payment.

For those who take advantage of this brief sale: thanks so much! You're lifesavers. :)

And if you've already got all our stuff, or aren't interested, would you consider reblogging this for the possible attention of those who might like to grab a bargain?

Please & thank you! :)

*Also: I was looking at this page and thinking "That's weird... why don't we have an 'All The Middle Kingdoms Stuff' bundle? Must do something about that." It'll be added over the course of the weekend, and the same discount will apply.

anyway the actual point of fandom is to inspire each other. reading each other's fics and admiring each other's art and saying wow i love this and i feel something and i want to invoke this in other people, i want to write a sentence that feels like a meteor shower, i want to paint a kiss with such tenderness it makes you ache, i want to create something that someone else somewhere will see it and think oh, i need to do that too, right now. i am embracing being a corny cunt on main to say inspiring each other is one of the things humanity is best at and one of the things fandom is built for and i think that's beautiful

I'm re-reading the Discworld series for reasons, and honestly the most relatable part of reading these as an adult is how many of the protagonists start out being tired, used to their little routine and vaguely disgruntled by the interruption of the Plot. Sam Vimes wants to lie drunk in a gutter and absolutely doesn't want to be arresting dragons. Rincewind is yanked into every situation he's ever encountered, though he'd much rather be lying in a gutter too. (Minus the alcohol. Plus regretting everything he's ever done said witnessed or even heard about fourth-hand in his whole life.) Granny Weatherwax is deeply suspicious of foreign parts and that includes the next town over; Nanny has leaned into the armor of "nothing ever happens to jolly grannies who terrorize their daughters-in-law and make Saucy Jokes"

Only the young people don't seem to have picked up on this---and that's fortunate, because someone has to run around making things happen, if only so Vimes and Granny and Rincewind have a reason to get up (complaining bitterly the whole time) and put it all to rights. Without Carrot, Margrat, Eric, etc. these characters don't have that reason; they're likely to stay in the metaphorical gutter and keep wondering where it all went wrong or why anything has to change.

............well, that's not quite true. You get the sense that Vetinari knows how much certain people hate the Plot. And as the person sitting behind the metaphorical lighting board of Ankh-Morpork, he takes no small pleasure in forcing the Plot-haters specifically to stand up, and say some lines.

#vetinari is the bugs bunny of discworld but with a knife

omg

Tiffany couldn't quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They'd walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn't stopped there. But they'd spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who'd been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit. 

It didn't seem fair.

“Oh, it evens out,” said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. 

“You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he's as mean as a cat, but there'll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week's end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I'll get more brawn, ham, bacon and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.”

“You do? What do you do with all that food?”

“Store it,” said Miss Level. 

“But you-”

“I store it in other people. It's amazing what you can store in other people.” Miss Level laughed at Tiffany's expression. “I mean, I take what I don't need round to those who don't have a pig, or who're going through a bad patch, or who don't have anyone to remember them.”

“But that means they'll owe you a favour!”

“Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out.”

“I bet some people are too mean to pay-”

“Not pay,” said Miss Level, severely. “A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But, sadly, you are right.”

“And then what happens?"

“What do you mean?”

“You stop helping them, do you?”

“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone's poor round here. If I don't help them, who will?”

thanks @determinate-negation for more resources

link 1

link 2

reblog to give the person you reblogged it from a good night’s sleep (maybe)(please)(I’m begging the universe)