“If you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary. I ain’t giving up. I swear.” 

Spotted in Clackamas, Oregon

I can’t stop thinking about this message, so I spent a while trying to isolate just the writing and make it transparent. I might order a shirt with it

Whoever in Clackamas wrote this message on their bus stop, I love you

[ if you promise to stay alive just a little bit longer I promise that we are going to make this world a place worth living in by any means necessary.  I ain’t giving up. I swear. end caption ]  

We are going to make this world a place worth living in. Each in our own ways. As Mr. Rogers said:

We are gonna be ok. We are going to thrive. We are going to make this world a place worth living in.

And then we’re gonna live in it.

my universes sphinx lore 🐈

normally I don't post lore stuff cuz I assume people don't really care but fuck it I show you the boobie cats anyway........

lore dump since ppl are asking: basically sphinxes live under the rule of black quartz, who protects them and possesses all the riches that people desire. normally the queen is very caring and kind despite her intimidating appearance, but if you hurt her son(Artemis) or subjects then you're fucked (cat food basically)😭

we have already. They don't know exactly what is up with it, other than the sweat being slightly more acidic than normal and the acidic mantle being thicker and Way more acidic than normal, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with acidosis. As far as we have tested, our family has had this since at least my great grandpa, and the guy lived to be 93 years old.

What the fuck.

op is a xenomorph descendant from that one time ripley fucked the queen

Because in its younger days it used to have RGB lights:

Some of them still work, when they want:

Though I've long forgotten how to change the color settings

NEVERMIND I JUST REMEMBERED HOW

Imagine trying to claim op is wasteful for using a plastic keyboard after they show off something that looks like it belongs at Old Friends Senior Keyboard Sanctuary.

Hey OP is that a mechanical keyboard because I can give you Many Options on some replacement keycaps.

Also, respect.

Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.

Why do we say that capitalism must be “dismantled”?

You’ll hear phrases like “Smash the state!” “Eat the rich!” and “Smash capitalism!”

And, yes, of course, but… :)

However relevant those sayings are, our work must be careful, highly organized and above all planned.

Because capitalism and all of its associated systems are not discrete, abstracted entities we can attack independently.

It is a structure, like a complicated machine with many thousands of working parts…

And right now it is connected to absolutely everything.

If we do this… [picks up huge hammer and smashes the machine]

Then a lot of vulnerable people will die.

The machine was built and improved and redesigned and patched over the course of generations. It is very good at its intended purpose, which is ultimately to generate profit.

Every human being alive today relies on the byproducts of the machine to survive, without exception.

The machine’s engineers want it to keep working like it does. In fact, they want to optimise it.

That will kill all remaining life on Earth.

So, we must destroy the machine, quickly and carefully

We must examine its deadly programs and mechanics and replace them with alternatives we built together.

The engineers don’t want us tampering with the machine.

However, we make it run…

So we can make it STOP. Together.

How will YOU help us to safely dismantle the machine?

iww.org

p.s. My computer is on its last legs. If you would like me to draw you a little cartoon and help me get a new computer, learn more at this post.

Oh fuck I just realized that since Ghost is federating soon, and a lot of people moved their newsletters from substack to Ghost ... The means you will be able to get your newsletters as regular posts in Goblin 😍

what is ghost? oh fuck another service to test federation with

Ghost is a blogging platform, pretty big. Think Wordpress but more modern. When Substack uncovered itself as a Nazi den a few months ago, a lot of big newsletters moved there.

Today the CEO announced they are joining the fediverse:

https://mastodon.xyz/@johnonolan/112315231711519319

I am never going to finish Smolblog at this rate.

What you say?

Humans are unstoppable...Until they aren’t.

I’m not the most eloquent writer, but I’ve had this idea kicking around for a while and figured I’d put it out into the universe.

A lot of the basis for the “humans are space orcs” stuff is the idea that we’re pretty durable compared to many species, yeah? When it comes to physical trauma, we can bounce back from most things that don’t kill us outright, especially given the benefit of hypothetical space-age technology, and adrenaline is one heck of a drug when it comes to functioning under stress. 

But that doesn’t make us unkillable, and even though we can survive debilitating injuries and not die from shock, it doesn’t mean it’s fun. Dying of shock sucks, but at least it’s probably quick.

So - Imagine a ship, adrift in space, slowly being drawn into a star or something. In order to save the ship, someone has to repair the hyper-quantum-relay-majig on the hull or in the engine or whatever. Bit of a problem though- there’s a ton of deadly, deadly radiation (Wrath of Khan style) or poisonous fumes or, I dunno, electrical current, between the crew and the repair. Like, enough to kill most species instantly, so the crew is just like, ‘welp, guess we’ll die then’. But then.

BUT THEN

They ask the human. Because everyone’s heard the stories - you’re basically unkillable, right? Could you survive long enough in there to fix it? And their human goes real quiet for a second, but still says ‘Yeah, I could fix it’. And the rest of the crew is like, ‘Whaaaaaa, it won’t kill you?’ and the human repeats “I can fix it” (which isn’t an answer, but no one catches that, not yet at least), so they send ‘em in. And the human fixes it, they come back, the ship flies to safety, and the crew is thrilled to survive. If the human is a little quiet, well, they’re entitled after pulling off a miracle. Everyone else is just excited to get to the nearest station’s bar to tell their very own human story, cuz, ‘those crazy humans, amiright?’.

The good mood keeps up until the human is late for their next shift. At first it’s just faint unease, but- but they earned a bit of a lie-in, right? No reason to begrudge them some extra rest, even if it is a little weird for them to oversleep. They’ll be fine. Humans are always fine. 

(Right?)

(…Wrong.)

- What is… help. Help!-

- ake up! You have t-

- been days. You need sleep, you-

- nother transfusion. We could-

- out of sedatives!-

A week later, the crew finally reaches the station. They stumble into the bar, haggard and haunted. And over the next months and years a new rumor about humans starts to make its way through space. A rumor unlike any before.

‘Be careful with your humans’ it whispers. ‘Their strength is not always a blessing. Be sure they don’t do something they can’t come back from, because when a human dies… they die slowly.’

The thing is, humans can be tricky. And if they’re sufficiently pack-bonded with a ship’s crew? And that crew is in danger? They’ll willingly offer themselves up to make sure the crew survives.

They won’t tell their crewmates that whatever danger it is will just kill them slowly, that they can endure the exposure but not the long-term effects.

But the idea that humans can be fragile? Can die later from exposure to radiation or toxins or electricity or even smoke inhalation?

It seems preposterous!

There are too many stories about humans surviving all sorts of conditions that would kill their other crewmates. A human dying slowly, later, lingering and in agony? It’s a creepy story but of course it’s not true.

But then… another crew shares their own story. Their human volunteered to go into the danger zone to fix what needed to be fixed. Or maybe she had to retrieve a critical component or resource. And she lingered. Wasted away. Later the human doctors told their medical team there was nothing they could do but make sure she was comfortable, ease her pain before the end.

And yet another crew, whose human plunged through smoke and ash to make sure his crew could escape. He choked and coughed and couldn’t get enough air. Their medical commander performed an autopsy and found his lungs and throat and sinuses all coated in black soot and blackened mucus and red blood.

So the stories spread. Just because they don’t die of shock, just because they don’t die right away doesn’t mean it won’t kill them. They linger in agony or unconscious or waste away slowly.

But what’s most horrifying of all?

When other humans hear the stories from the traumatized crewmembers?

They aren’t surprised or horrified.

They say “Of course”

They say “I would have done the same”

They say “it was the Right Thing to do”

And they’ll smile (what the crew’s human would have called a sad smile) and toast to the dead. For making “The ultimate sacrifice for the folks they loved” and every human listening will say the name and drink a shot of liquor.

you're going about your normal day when, suddenly, surprise! you've been pokémon mystery dungeon'd!

unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the pokémon assigning quiz has been canceled. instead, you must spin THE WHEEL, assigning you a random, unevolved, non-legendary and non-mythical pokémon. you must now go on some sort of world-saving adventure as this pokémon. good luck!

tell me in the tags what you rolled, and how you feel about it - for bonus points, you can spin the wheel again for (or just take your pick of) a pokémon to be your partner.

bonus rules:

Salandit!

“It is not anti-semitic”.

Bravissimo. Parole chiare, dure, vere.

The wild thing about being obsessed with your own DnD campaign is that there's absolutely NO fandom content for it except the stuff that you make

Like, what do you mean only six other people in the entire world have heard of Dave the Ice Elemental whose job is Freezer at the Fantasy Starbucks?

Gee I wonder what movie I've been watching 💙❤️

i humbly offer: more kitsune... 🦊

i changed mind i love ads now

They're so good now.

ads for enjoying life

these could be fake for a joke and I'd never know

I wonder if it’s like one of those campaigns put on by the newspaper/billboard company that makes up a fake company and then after a month says “hey, this company doesn’t even exist look how good advertising can be for your business that does!”

Except the fake company is always something like “Pullham Family Dentistry” or bottled water called “Outhouse Springs” (complete with ads like “it’s #1 not #2”) and it’s like okay how is this supposed to help my actual business that is not a literal joke?

Anyway.

I love this phenomenon. I'm sure there's a better terminology for it than my ramblings, but I see it everywhere, it goes beyond foreshadowing and into things like subtext, and I don't think it's necessarily accidental.

A very common example you see in online spaces are trans folks drawing themselves as the opposite sex long before the realize years after the fact that that might mean something.

Hayao Miyazaki has the most chaotic way of making films that I've ever seen. He has no idea how the story is going to end when production starts. In Spirited Away he described the flooding at the end as a fortunate accident. He wanted the train scene to be completely barren in contrast to all the previous visual noise, and was relieved when he realized he had foreshadowed it.

There's a fun interview with spielburg about close encounters of the third kind where he's confronted with the interpretation that the movie ends with music and computer science coming together which were the respective professions of his parents, so it was a scene about him reaching out to communicate with his parents, and he laughs because he didn't realize that when he made it.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton said “Talent does what it can: Genius does what it must.” and I think that describes this perfectly. You know what a 4 act structure is in basic terms, and there's nothing particularly superhuman about recreating that formula, but there's this small but significant part of you that, unbeknownst to you, is intentionally calling shots and turning that work into something more than you intended.

You could call it accidental, but you did it. Another good quote from red letter media: "You may not have noticed, but your brain did."