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all the poise of a cannonball

@catsandrocks

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beetledrink

I love it when I click on a recipe link because it sounds yummy and instead of a recipe I get a several page dissertation on a food blogger’s boredom with her marriage and lies she was told in childhood

this ending in a recipe literally changed my fucking life i thought i was being spread some fucking truisms abt the ugliness of marriage but it was literally a preamble to creme brulee brownies. writing is fake

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catsandrocks

What the fuck did I just read

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Deep Frog

do you think this is what lovecraft meant whenever he described something as being beyond description

“It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.”

— H. P. Lovecraft,

At the Mountains of Madness

This.. actually makes a fine reference to what a lovecraftian eldritch abomination SHOULD BE. not just.. tentacles and darkness. Perpetually changing, not cemented in form, with an otherworldly feel to it. Completely unrecognizable by most human descriptions, and only able to be viable perceived by those fine enough to be an adept wordsmith.

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canofstars

I think that this is very nearly an ideal representation of a lovecraftian eldritch horror, because the video that we see is (I’m fairly certain) footage that has been fed through Google deep dream.

The reason the frog looks so weird is because the program is trying to look at the frog, figure out what it is, and then overlay other images of the same thing.

The the thing about lovecraftian horrors issn’t just that they look conventionally weird or gross or scary. Instead, they are things that are so utterly alien that the human mind cannot properly comprehend what it is looking at. They defy description because they defy understanding.

And here we have a video of a computer, a simple silicon substitute for the human mind, struggling to understand what it is looking at, in much the same way that you would be hard pressed to understand a shoggoth.

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catsandrocks

This is what warlock spells look like...

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D&D 5e Warlock Subclass: Clippy Patron

Clippet or “Clippy” is the eldritch entity that resides in the Office Plane, a demiplane that takes the form of an infinitely tall office building filled with cubicles. Each cubicle houses a damned soul bound by chains of paper clips as they perform mundane paperwork for the lower planes as their eternal torment. The demiplane is reachable through the door of a brutalistic building in the city of Dis on Baator. Clippy does not profit from his work but simply enjoys helping others at the expense of his eternally damned employees. He will often seek out warlocks to aid in hopes that they will seek business with him in the afterlife.

Clippy Patron Warlock Features

Assistance: At 1st level, you can use your action to focus on one humanoid creature of your choice other than yourself within 30 ft. of you. Using your concentration, you provide aid to that creature. That creature may add 1d6 to any one damage roll of their choice during each of their turns.

Desktop Divination: Also at 1st level, you can automatically detect when a creature within 300 ft. of you is writing something and the nature of the inscription, but not its precise contents. For instance, you can determine that someone is writing a letter but not the contents of the letter or to whom the letter is addressed. You instantly learn the direction and distance to each writer in range relative to you.

Template: At 6th level, you can create templates of your spells to easily replicate them. Each time you complete a short or long rest, you may instantly create a spell scroll of any one spell from your list of spells known called a template. Any creature can use the template to use the spell scroll, even if they cannot normally cast spells. You can only have one template created at a time but you can change the spell stored in the template whenever you finish a rest.

Save Your Changes: Starting at 10th level, when you cast a spell with a duration of 1 minute or longer, you may immediately take 5 points of psychic damage to double the duration of that spell (up to a maximum of 1 hour).

Don’t Show Me This Tip Again: At 14th level, you can use your action to attempt to banish a creature. You target a living creature with an Intelligence score 4 or greater using your action. That creature must make an INT saving throw. On a failed save, the creature vanishes and reappears in the Office Plane (the home of your arcane patron). The creature remains there as long as you maintain concentration up to 1 minute. While banished in this way, the creature takes 3d10 psychic damage at the start of each of their turns. The target can attempt a new saving throw at the end of each of their turns, escaping on a success. During each of your turns, you can use your action to impose disadvantage on the creature’s next saving throw. If the creature is reduced to 0 hit points while banished or if they are banished for an entire minute, the creature becomes eternally trapped on the Office Plane where they are slowly transformed into a paper clip, one of the many that form the endless paper clip chains that weigh down the souls of the damned. Once you use this ability you must finish a long rest before using it again.

Spells

Chains of the Office Plane

  • 3rd level conjuration
  • Casting Time: 1 Action
  • Range: 120 ft.
  • Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
  • Components: V, S

You call upon the paper clip chains of Clippy to bind your foes. You choose up to five large or smaller creatures within range, each no more than 10 ft. apart from at least one other target. The creatures become linked to one another in one long chain. Each creatures becomes linked to the nearest other target. If two targets are the same distance from one another, you choose which ones are linked and how, as long as it produces one unbroken chain. All linked creatures move at once when one target moves and cannot move more than 10 ft. away from a target they are linked to. This unique movement expends the movement speed of all creatures in the chain until their next turn. An affected creature can attempt a STR saving throw using their action during their turn to break themselves free from the chain. On a successful saving throw, all creatures linked to that creature are no longer linked to that creature.

Conjure Office Supplies

  • Conjuration cantrip
  • Casting Time: 1 Action
  • Range: 5 ft.
  • Duration: 1 hour
  • Components: V, S

You summon your choice of either Calligrapher’s Supplies, Cartographer’s Tools, or a Forgery Kit. You also conjure a writing desk in a space within range. Only one set of tools and one desk can be summoned using this spell at a time. You may dismiss the summoned objects using a bonus action.

Clippet’s Magnificent Cubicle

  • 7th level conjuration
  • Casting Time: 1 minute
  • Range: 5 ft.
  • Duration: 8 hours plus half an hour for lunch
  • Components: V, S

You create an extradimensional doorway to a cubicle of Clippy’s Office Plane. The door will only open for creatures that speak the passphrase you determine as you cast the spell. The doorway leads to a 10 ft. by 10 ft. room. The room contains an ordinary desk with plenty of paper and writing implements. A medium sized humanoid employee wearing a collared shirt and khakis and the paper clip chains of the damned also appears in the room. The employee follows your commands to the letter, but at half the speed of a regular person. There are also various magical tools available which allow you to do one of the following:

  • Shred any one paper or parchment using your action.
  • Make a copy of any paper or parchment using your action .
  • Bind up to 100 pieces of paper or parchment together into a book using your action.
  • Cast Scrying (save DC 17) on a crystal cube located on the desk.

Invocations

Clippy’s Binding Blade: (Clippy Patron, Pact of the Blade feature) You can summon a pact weapon that takes the appearance of sharpened paper clip with a hilt. Whenever you deal damage to a creature using this pact weapon, the creature must make a STR saving throw against your spell save DC or become restrained until the start of your next turn and take an additional 1d6 bludgeoning damage from the attack. Summoning this weapon takes a warlock spell slot and lasts for 10 minutes.

Paper Clip Familiar: (Clippy Patron, Pact of the Chain feature) You can summon an avatar of Clippy for your familiar when you cast Find Familiar. The avatar takes the form of a paper clip with eyeballs riding a floating sheet of paper. The familiar has the same statistics as an Imp but also grants you a +2 bonus to all INT, WIS, and CHA ability checks while it remains within 5 ft. of you as it provides you with useful assistance.

Page Navigation: (Clippy Patron, Pact of the Tome feature) You can detect paper and parchment within 300 ft. of you at will. You can use your action to teleport using your book of shadows to any piece of paper or parchment within 300 ft. of you by spending a warlock spell slot.

Why have you done this

This is so clever

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theisb

WONDERFUL!

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catsandrocks

Love and hate simultaneously

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I’m crying at how cute baby griffin mcelroy and his dad are in this anti-violence PSA program from the 90s (x)

featuring: 

-griffin constantly having no clue what to do with his hands

-clint giving some good goofs along with some wise, chill Fatherly Advice

-*with a lot of feeling* ANGER

I’d like to add, Griffin’s constant and intense staring into the camera

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catsandrocks

?!?!?!

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westfailia

i don’t need to come up with dystopian imagery for cybrpnk 2064 because the defence industry does it for me

Who makes an image like this and thinks “these are the good guys im advertising here”

This is real?!

yes, it’s marketing material for the rheinmetall defence survivor r protected multirole vehicle from the eu police congress https://www.rheinmetall-defence.com/en/rheinmetall_defence/public_relations/news/archiv/archive2012/aktuellesdetailansicht_4_12484.php

“Despite its excellent survivability, the vehicle’s outer appearance is unthreatening and deescalating”

The next time someone talks about Germany as a liberal paradise just remember this shit is considered non threatening.

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not to be a tinhat but the whole iphone face scanning thing is legitimately like, one of the scariest fucking things i’ve heard abt in technological developments recently and like i’m not deluding myself into thinking we don’t already live in a surveillance state but like, how does apple not think “we scan your face to identify you and that’s how you unlock your iphone,” especially when no one asked for that, doesn’t sound like, beyond insidious just on its very surface level

like what marketing genius at apple thought this was a clever slogan and not like, a vague dystopian sounding threat

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catsandrocks

This whole king is ffffuuuuuccckkeddd.

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There’s a book out there that’s either one of the last great unsolved cyphers or a massive medieval hoax. Welcome to the weird world of the Voynich Manuscript. And no, it isn’t solved yet.

I did this comic for The Nib last year (The Nib is an amazingly great place for comics on Medium if you don’t know that already). You can follow all my work on Medium here.

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moonblossom

I fucking love the Voynich Manuscript you guys

Personally, I’ve always loved xkcd’s theory.

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