Chaos Cat (loves this thing in particular)

After raising the price of COVID-19 vaccines more than four-fold this year, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told investors Monday that the company will also likely hike the price of its lifesaving COVID-19 antiviral treatment, Paxlovid, raising further concern about access and healthcare costs.

Remember when everyone on earth started shitting on Martin Shkreli for cranking up the price of AIDS medicine? Time to do the same for Albert Bourla. Everyone needs to know his name, and everyone needs to virulently and vocally hate his goddamn guts.

This guy always takes his chocolate art to the next level!!... Omg!!

(Source)

You can’t make wood out of chocolate!!

….

….

You can’t make giant matches look that tasty!!!

She's gone and become Rita Skeeter.

Red river hog

via @p0tato-kn1shes

i feel like a lotta people are wildly unhappy and resistant to the concept that the answer to most things is "well, it depends"

hello tumblr i had a dream about a cat that everyone loved named Soupy so i wanted to draw her for you

kiwi b ird held so gen tle and sweet . wonderful .

AB DEFGHI KL NO RSTU W

17/26

i dont think this bird even knows the alphabet .

i will teach her

School district book bans have been getting a lot of attention lately, but this article focuses on censorship of web media in American public schools. Schools are censoring access to a massive array of information, and not just things deemed "sexually explicit."

The thing is, right? I’m very open about the fact that I do kink art, I don’t try to hide it, and I’ve made so many friends outside of that scene, retained friends outside of that scene who have full knowledge of what I do, made friends in the scene and in others who are wonderful, kindhearted, and normal-ass people. Like- to people who aren’t fuckin’ weirdos, it’s a nothingburger, just a Thing I Do that I don’t involve them in.

And like, if we peeled away all the bullshit and the knee-jerking and all the hang-ups, I think that’s the truth- it IS a nothingburger. The people who treated me poorly for it clearly had their own hang-ups regarding their own relationship with attraction, the people who don’t know how to treat people who don’t want to be involved with respect have their own social problems that that’s a symptom of, not the cause, and the societal stigma is just… made up.

Kink is a non-factor to normal-ass, well-adjusted people, and I think it’s time we stopped stigmatizing it. If you treat someone differently because of what they do in their free time, sorry to say pal, but the one who needs to examine their heart is you.

It’s just. Stupid. Stupid to see people breathlessly putting out DNIs and giving you sidelong glances and warning people “oh I know I reblogged this from a kink account but they have a point and-”

Just. Stop it. Stop giving this thing more mythology than it deserves, we’re all just people, we’re all weird and particular and strange, and it’s fine! It’s normal and healthy to explore what makes you tick! Stop sleepwalking into a world where this fucking… puritan view of the world puts roots down again, stop sleepwalking into a world where you’re made to feel shame and feel othered and feel different for having some sliver of your greater whole focused on the sensual.

You have the right and the dignity to be allowed that! You don’t deserve to be treated like that’s all of what you are, to be made to feel ashamed of any of that by people who most certainly are like that too.

Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? We’re all kinky in some sense, we all have some sort of fixation- the sooner you stop giving something so small and so unimportant this kind of power over how fearfully you live your life, the sooner you can stop living a life defined by fear.

I pulled off that band-aid. You should too.

Anti-kink is just "I said you could be weird. I didn't say you could be weird AND have orgasms! How dare you act entitled to that too!"

There exist another dimension called The Empty World. It's very much like ours, in fact it seems to have been identical up until a few weeks ago, but it always seems that way. If you go there today, it was identical in late february, and if you go there this october, it'll have been identical until september.

It's empty, as you might guess. There's no humans, and no animals bigger than a cockroach. The sky is grey, and it slowly rains ash. It's colder than our world by a bit, enough to require a jacket even in summer. The streets are empty, the cars parked neatly in their garages or in lots, but they're all empty and abandoned, their doors locked like they expect their owners to return any minute now.

The newspapers left on stands don't mention any oncoming disaster. We have no idea what the TV or internet would have said: the power is out. The power is very, very out. Not just the grid, but batteries are drained. The cars won't start, the emergency lights are out, and anything with solar panels seems to be getting less energy than you'd expect, even with the perpetually overcast sky.

It's a very silent world, like the calm after a snowstorm. Sounds don't seem to echo as much as they should, nor does sound seem to travel as far. The radio spectrum is empty except for static, there's no one transmitting on any frequency.

There's fewer fires than you'd expect. Even places you'd expect to soon catch fire without human intervention are still standing, undamaged. Campfires can be lit but with difficulty: something is keeping them from burning as they should. Even if you pour kerosene on a campfire it'll barely grow, it's like something sucked the energy out of everything.

All the locked buildings are still locked. Alarms don't sound if you break in (understandable, given the power situation), and of course no one comes to investigate. So The Empty World is your oyster: you can break in wherever you want (provided you can physically do it: some doors are pretty hard to pry open even with tools), take whatever you want, and bring it back here.

Everything resets when you leave. You always enter The Empty World like it's your first time there, like this just happened and you're late to the party... but the party keeps getting rescheduled. You can even take something multiple times if you want.

When you enter The Empty World you get there at the same relative position as you are on this world. If you're in New York, you show up in the empty New York. If you're in Topeka, you show up in empty Topeka. So you have to travel around this world to get to where you want, and you can't just appear in the middle of a bank vault... unless you break into the vault from this world. (So it's great if you work at a bank and want to steal from your employer without repercussions, but not so useful otherwise).

You don't just have to take things, you know. You can take computers and files and books and diaries. You will have to deal with recharging laptops and breaking through any security when you get back, but it's doable.

So, imagine you've just gotten access to The Empty World. What are you going to do with it? What will you take, and where will you go?

This is a writing prompt if you want it to be. Feel free to write/draw/whatever about this setting!

And don't worry about "canon": there's something enough weird going on with this setting that's enough to justify variation in the setting. Maybe when you go there, you eventually find out what caused the death of the world. Maybe that doesn't agree with what I find out when I go there. Maybe your world isn't as empty as it seems! This is partially based on a reoccurring dream I had, and in one instance the "empty" world was full of people hiding. Hiding from what? I never found out. Maybe you will.

Just stick "based on/Inspired by The Empty World by Foone" somewhere in/on anything you make about it. Otherwise go nuts.

Some things that might be fun to explore, ones I intentionally didn't nail down: (I have theories but I don't want to make any of them concrete)

You know what keeps me up at night, almost literally (since this is in part based on a nightmare I had)? The cars. The cars!

If everyone just disappeared with no warning, there'd be cars in streets and on highways, as they were in motion when the people vanished. If there was some great disaster that people were warned about, you'd think people would try to flee. Even if they couldn't realistically get to safety, some people would panic and flee to... Somewhere! Or they'd at least try.

But no. The Empty World has all the cars nearly parked away. This makes my hair raise on end.

It's like this world saw the end coming and spent their last hours on earth making the bed so as not to leave a mess. This is a world that knew it was going to die and didn't panic, it instead spent a while cleaning up. The masses didn't run, they didn't try to get to loved ones to spend their final hours together, they didn't crowd the churches and mosques and temples to ask for protection or forgiveness, they just... Tidied up? They put away their tools and toys and ensured not to leave a big mess for the no one to come afterwards.

What kind of end of the world is that? That's not one I can really conceive of (even though I guess I literally did).

Like I can imagine all kinds of apocalypses: Nuclear wars. Solar flares. Gamma ray bursts. Alien invasion. Out of control science experiments. Zombies. Raptures. Elder gods awakening. False vacuum collapse. Giant asteroids. Climate change. Societal breakdown. Deadly plagues. And many more!

All of these leave Earth in different states, but none of them leave it tidy.

What the fuck happened here? Even if it's not an apocalypse and no one died or disappeared, like if it only has no people because it's a copy of the universe or just planet but people weren't copied along with other things, it still wouldn't be tidy. This is like the world went to its school photo day, and wanted to be sure it had its best appearance before it was copied.

That's my biggest question. Not what's the ash, why are the batteries dead, or any hope to steal or duplicate valuable things or spy on classified government files.

How did this world die? There's no corpses but the one, big one. The whole damn planet.

It feels like the Langoliers haven’t finished tidying up yet!

Did everybody disappear at the same time?

Because I was thinking, what if people disappeared while they were sleeping? Everyone at different times, AS they fell asleep, over a 24-hour or so period.

People park their cars before they sleep, generally.

You would've had several hours of perceived normality while the people who sleep at night vanished from their beds, or maybe it started in the morning and the first to disappear were the third shift, as they slept in the daytime, and then in the evening most of the world would unknowingly follow, with only the professions expecting to be directly relieved in any position to see something wrong.

Doctors and nurses, police and dispatchers, factory managers all wondering, first annoyed and then worried as the next shift doesn't show up for work.

Is the internet already down? The phones? Electricity? Are their last hours a frantic scramble to keep patients alive in a power outage that has taken out their generators, only to realize their patients keep disappearing? Are there cops or truckers or travelers or commuters realizing that the roads are weirdly empty, stopping at a gas station or truck stop to find out what's going on, and realizing their vehicle won't start again?

Are there people realizing that you disappear when you fall asleep, and slugging down cold coffee and warm energy drinks stolen from deserted convenience stores in a desperate bid to keep awake? Strangers banding together, terrified, slapping each other awake until someone's too tired to wake, or too tired to slap, and not noticing when each other disappears?

In any case I'm robbing the La Brea Tar Pits museum for skulls. I particularly want one of a sabertooth kitten with the big adult teeth growing in next to the existing baby canines.

But as many skulls as I can carry without worrying about dropping any.

There exist another dimension called The Empty World. It's very much like ours, in fact it seems to have been identical up until a few weeks ago, but it always seems that way. If you go there today, it was identical in late february, and if you go there this october, it'll have been identical until september.

It's empty, as you might guess. There's no humans, and no animals bigger than a cockroach. The sky is grey, and it slowly rains ash. It's colder than our world by a bit, enough to require a jacket even in summer. The streets are empty, the cars parked neatly in their garages or in lots, but they're all empty and abandoned, their doors locked like they expect their owners to return any minute now.

The newspapers left on stands don't mention any oncoming disaster. We have no idea what the TV or internet would have said: the power is out. The power is very, very out. Not just the grid, but batteries are drained. The cars won't start, the emergency lights are out, and anything with solar panels seems to be getting less energy than you'd expect, even with the perpetually overcast sky.

It's a very silent world, like the calm after a snowstorm. Sounds don't seem to echo as much as they should, nor does sound seem to travel as far. The radio spectrum is empty except for static, there's no one transmitting on any frequency.

There's fewer fires than you'd expect. Even places you'd expect to soon catch fire without human intervention are still standing, undamaged. Campfires can be lit but with difficulty: something is keeping them from burning as they should. Even if you pour kerosene on a campfire it'll barely grow, it's like something sucked the energy out of everything.

All the locked buildings are still locked. Alarms don't sound if you break in (understandable, given the power situation), and of course no one comes to investigate. So The Empty World is your oyster: you can break in wherever you want (provided you can physically do it: some doors are pretty hard to pry open even with tools), take whatever you want, and bring it back here.

Everything resets when you leave. You always enter The Empty World like it's your first time there, like this just happened and you're late to the party... but the party keeps getting rescheduled. You can even take something multiple times if you want.

When you enter The Empty World you get there at the same relative position as you are on this world. If you're in New York, you show up in the empty New York. If you're in Topeka, you show up in empty Topeka. So you have to travel around this world to get to where you want, and you can't just appear in the middle of a bank vault... unless you break into the vault from this world. (So it's great if you work at a bank and want to steal from your employer without repercussions, but not so useful otherwise).

You don't just have to take things, you know. You can take computers and files and books and diaries. You will have to deal with recharging laptops and breaking through any security when you get back, but it's doable.

So, imagine you've just gotten access to The Empty World. What are you going to do with it? What will you take, and where will you go?

This is a writing prompt if you want it to be. Feel free to write/draw/whatever about this setting!

And don't worry about "canon": there's something enough weird going on with this setting that's enough to justify variation in the setting. Maybe when you go there, you eventually find out what caused the death of the world. Maybe that doesn't agree with what I find out when I go there. Maybe your world isn't as empty as it seems! This is partially based on a reoccurring dream I had, and in one instance the "empty" world was full of people hiding. Hiding from what? I never found out. Maybe you will.

Just stick "based on/Inspired by The Empty World by Foone" somewhere in/on anything you make about it. Otherwise go nuts.

Some things that might be fun to explore, ones I intentionally didn't nail down: (I have theories but I don't want to make any of them concrete)

You know what keeps me up at night, almost literally (since this is in part based on a nightmare I had)? The cars. The cars!

If everyone just disappeared with no warning, there'd be cars in streets and on highways, as they were in motion when the people vanished. If there was some great disaster that people were warned about, you'd think people would try to flee. Even if they couldn't realistically get to safety, some people would panic and flee to... Somewhere! Or they'd at least try.

But no. The Empty World has all the cars nearly parked away. This makes my hair raise on end.

It's like this world saw the end coming and spent their last hours on earth making the bed so as not to leave a mess. This is a world that knew it was going to die and didn't panic, it instead spent a while cleaning up. The masses didn't run, they didn't try to get to loved ones to spend their final hours together, they didn't crowd the churches and mosques and temples to ask for protection or forgiveness, they just... Tidied up? They put away their tools and toys and ensured not to leave a big mess for the no one to come afterwards.

What kind of end of the world is that? That's not one I can really conceive of (even though I guess I literally did).

Like I can imagine all kinds of apocalypses: Nuclear wars. Solar flares. Gamma ray bursts. Alien invasion. Out of control science experiments. Zombies. Raptures. Elder gods awakening. False vacuum collapse. Giant asteroids. Climate change. Societal breakdown. Deadly plagues. And many more!

All of these leave Earth in different states, but none of them leave it tidy.

What the fuck happened here? Even if it's not an apocalypse and no one died or disappeared, like if it only has no people because it's a copy of the universe or just planet but people weren't copied along with other things, it still wouldn't be tidy. This is like the world went to its school photo day, and wanted to be sure it had its best appearance before it was copied.

That's my biggest question. Not what's the ash, why are the batteries dead, or any hope to steal or duplicate valuable things or spy on classified government files.

How did this world die? There's no corpses but the one, big one. The whole damn planet.

It feels like the Langoliers haven’t finished tidying up yet!

Did everybody disappear at the same time?

Because I was thinking, what if people disappeared while they were sleeping? Everyone at different times, AS they fell asleep, over a 24-hour or so period.

People park their cars before they sleep, generally.

You would've had several hours of perceived normality while the people who sleep at night vanished from their beds, or maybe it started in the morning and the first to disappear were the third shift, as they slept in the daytime, and then in the evening most of the world would unknowingly follow, with only the professions expecting to be directly relieved in any position to see something wrong.

Doctors and nurses, police and dispatchers, factory managers all wondering, first annoyed and then worried as the next shift doesn't show up for work.

Is the internet already down? The phones? Electricity? Are their last hours a frantic scramble to keep patients alive in a power outage that has taken out their generators, only to realize their patients keep disappearing? Are there cops or truckers or travelers or commuters realizing that the roads are weirdly empty, stopping at a gas station or truck stop to find out what's going on, and realizing their vehicle won't start again?

Are there people realizing that you disappear when you fall asleep, and slugging down cold coffee and warm energy drinks stolen from deserted convenience stores in a desperate bid to keep awake? Strangers banding together, terrified, slapping each other awake until someone's too tired to wake, or too tired to slap, and not noticing when each other disappears?

you know how people say soup is round and so it's messed up to put it in a square tupperware? that's how I feel every time I see a square watch

curious what your thoughts on this are then

It says guess bcs you're more likely to actually figure out what time it is that way.

How do you feel about Qlocktwo?

You know given my dyscaculia this is actually easier for me to read than a regular analog clock AND it's giving old school cheesy secret agent vibes so I think it's so ridiculous that it loops back around to being cool again. Still, wish it was round.

Okay this one I think you will probably like then

Reveal by Projects

Super easy to read

I have an addition:

"How do these clocks make you feel?"

Someone brought me this beauty for a battery change a few months ago

It wraps around your wrist and it's probably the coolest watch I've ever seen at work

That's actually the coolest watch I've ever seen in my entire life, thank you for sharing!

time is not a circle she is so obviously a spiral

its so sad that radfem just means transphobe and not like. this

I have to double-check every blog name with “rad” or “radical”, and I HATE IT, because rad/radical were some of my favorite words! people who don’t respect trans men/women aren’t radical, they’re tragical!!!

YOU ARE SO RIGHT HOMIE we gotta reclaim rad and radical as phrases only trans people can use forever now

Think we could get some drag queens to form an eighties revival band/dance team called The Radicals and see if we can make the TERFS abandon the word?

mine would probs be: one direction, taylor swift, ed sheeran, the script and coldplay 

The Spice Girls, Weird Al, System of a Down, Don McLean (because I kept American Pie going on repeat), and Rob Zombie (who I didn't actually know about until some time after graduation; I just really loved two particular songs I kept hearing on the radio, which turned out to be Dragula and More Human Than Human and performed by the same guy once I figured out how to look up the lyrics on the internet).

For every modern trans girl who wishes she could return to the days of being a sumerian eunuch temple priestess, there was a sumerian eunuch temple priestess afflicted by an inexplicable desire to play the synthesizer. These were interpreted as prophetic visions

Ive actually made myself kind of sad now contemplating the poor sumerian eunuch temple priestess having to make do with some sort of Flintstonian bone xylophone instead of a proper eurorack or 808

Inanna banging out the sad tunes.

— “59. it’s beautiful, but I don’t like it” from 100 essays I don’t have time to write: on umbrellas and sword fights, parades and dogs, fire alarms, children, and theater, sarah ruhl