The Twilight Zone: The Obsolete Man (1961) dir. Elliot Silverstein

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Holy shit! $1.15 for unleaded?

reviews on famous novel "don't create the torment nexus" are in!

one reviewer gives a one star review, saying, "i can't believe the writer would let the torment nexus exist in this world. doesn't he realize how awful the torment nexus would be in real life?"

another reviewer, with a two star review, says "yeah, the book was okay, the characters were all great, but i just can't get over the torment nexus. why is there such a terrible thing? don't they realize they'd be better off without the torment nexus?"

a third reviewer gave five stars, saying "i'm glad this book was written. they really need to create the torment nexus, that would really improve civilization by a lot." in the comment replies to this review, the reviewer indicated that this review was not sarcasm.

overall, "don't create the torment nexus" has a rating of two stars. find it in these stores......

I have a new theory which has resulted from me writing porn on my phone which im certain is old hat to everyone but is new to me

it kinda goes like this

basically, as a person or community writes a kinky story for longer, they will kind of inevitably move up a chain of 'paradigms of justification' required to make the kink continue to make sense.

the pace will vary depending on the kink, but motion is inevitable.

---

so say you decide to write some rope bondage kink. as you continue to write, you are likely to progress through the stages as follows:

The thing is, once you have progressed through these stages, you are going to skip ahead in future stories because, let's face it, its incredibly convenient to have these structures laid out for you. If you've gotten to Stage 3 in a previous fic and then start a new one, well, you could fuck around justifying what's going on, or you could simply bring back the Federal Department of Kinky Shit and jump straight to the silk cord. It's efficient and we're all busy people.

I ended up following this trajectory with my first set of Porn On Phone stories pretty closely:

Terminal. Put me down like the dog I am.

But the dark realization I had, right about now, is that all the normie fics out there, all the boring straight stuff?

... yeah they're already at Stage 5. The straights are living at stage 5, patriarchy is their Federal Department of Kinky Shit, they believe in alphas and omegas already.

So, put that way, it's actually totally normal and okay to do this progression, right? Like, it's subversive. This is feminist! This is feminist! I scream, as I'm dragged into the van and driven down to the river to be drowned like an unwanted kitten. I'm the normal one! You're all mad!

anyway i started writing a star trek porn parody in an attempt to write 'normal' porn again, hit stage five within 3000 words, had a mental breakdown, and came here to write this.

Was prepared to leave a cheeky "this is how we got Omegaverse" comment and move on. Then I saw It.

Not only have I been beaten to the punch, the punch has been given brass knuckles and lessons in mixed martial arts. This line is more raw and impactful than anything I could possibly add. I am deceased.

[ID 1: kermit nodding gif

ID 2: james acaster on Bake Off presenting a dish to the judges with an air of accepted defeat, saying, started making it. had a breakdown. bon appetite.]

I'm sorry but I have to share these tags

dropping this here

I've been following this lady on TikTok who runs an anti-porn account out of what I can only describe as sociological curiosity. Basically, when I first encountered her videos I sniffed out pretty quickly that she was both a) very very cishet and b) a religious conservative and listening to her talk about sex and relationships has become this fascinating window for me into how The Other Side lives.

Like one of the main conceits of her content revolves around the fact that men have to constantly fight against being overcome by lust, which is hilarious to me, someone who has read fanfiction, because acting like cishet men are somehow uniquely prone to being gooners is so deeply ignorant of how anyone outside a religious conservative community lives.

I would argue that the fanfic girlies are honestly even bigger gooners than most cishet guys. The average straight dude jorks his peanits a couple times a week by going to pornhub and looking up "milf" or "big boobs". Fanfic Enjoyers meanwhile are stroking their shit nightly to a bespoke selection of niche kinks and hyperspecific scenarios drawn from their childhood trauma that would have the average person gasping and keeling over in shock like a victorian socialite who just caught a glimpse of another woman's stockings. The fact that this has bled out into mainstream erotica makes it even more laughable. You've got straight girls on TikTok posting about Penelope Douglas books and you're gonna come on Chappell Roan's internet and say men are the ones "living in lust"? Give me a break

The other thing I find fascinating about her is that the way she talks about finding out that your bf or husband watches porn frames it as on par with being cheated on and a traumatic experience from which you can never fully recover. I think this was where the sociological fascination kicked in for me because as someone in a proud gooner for gooner marriage I *needed* to get a better understanding of her perspective on this.

What I found is that, from her perspective, your partner being sexually attracted to someone other than you indicates that you are not enough for them. That if they truly loved you, if they actually meant it when they said you're the only one they need, that being attracted to you and your body would proclude them from being horny for anyone else. For her and the women who follow her, their husbands looking at porn isn't just a sin, it's an insult to them personally. To them it means that they aren't attractive enough to keep their men from looking elsewhere.

And like not to be one of those 'humans are not naturally monogamous' bitches but like what a sad, insecure way to live your life.

Like it's so funny hearing her talk about all the things that porn can lead to. She's like "oh if your man uses porn he'll cheat on you, he'll leave you for a younger woman, he'll loose interest in you" and it's like no babe, you are marying men who don't like you because you're a fucking religious conservative and you're only dating men who are religious conservatives. They do not give a shit about your feelings because they only care about having A Wife and A Family. I guarantee you if you expanded your dating pool even a little bit it would not be hard to find a man who both watches porn and respects you

"I, a woman who was raised in the Misogyny Community to believe in the Misogyny Religion, think that my husband considers me a disposable sack of meat, as our religion teaches, but I have also been taught that I am worthless without a man, so I live in absolute terror that this person who considers me a disposable meatsack will dispose of me for a younger, sexier meatsack!"

You gotta feel sorry for them, really.

character misses their shot and the villain goes "ha! you missed." and the main character goes "did i?" and then shoots the villain again while they're frantically looking around the room for what the hero could possibly have aiming for instead

i hate the notes on this so much so many people are saying shit like "and then the hero shoots the villain while they're looking around!! XD" THAT'S WHAT THE POST ALREADY SAID. THAT'S THE ENTIRE JOKE.

There's a Pukicho post like this I need to find it

Edit: found it

maybe... they DIDN'T miss part of the post...! (starts frantically looking around)

i'm afraid i've never been one for mercy. die. (i shoot at you and miss

im afraid youve missed !!! i live another day

did i? 😏

hmmm...... i feel as if i have heard this story before.... surely it wouldn't hurt to turn around

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

Can I show you some unicorns 🦄

So, I saw this image on Facebook, and it was supposedly showing what Queen Nefertiti would have looked like in real life:

Now, I thought this AI generated garbage was just truly terrible on a number of levels; first off, she looks wayyyyyy too modern - her makeup is very “Hollywood glamour”, she looks airbrushed and de-aged, and as far as I’m aware, Ancient Egyptians didn’t have mascara, glitter-based eyeshadows and lip gloss. Secondly, her features are exceptionally whitewashed in every sense - this is pretty standard for AI as racial bias is prevalent in feeding AI algorithms, but I genuinely thought a depiction of such a known individual would not exhibit such euro-centric features. Thirdly, the outfit was massively desaturated and didn’t take pigment loss into consideration, and while I *do* like the look of the neck attire, it's not at all accurate (plus, again, AI confusion on the detailing is evident).

So, this inspired me to alter the image on the left to be more accurate based off the sculpture’s features. I looked into Ancient Egyptian makeup and looked at references for kohl eyeliner and clay-based facial pigment (rouge was used on cheeks, charcoal-based powder/paste was used to darken and elongate eyebrows), and I looked at pre-existing images of Nefertiti, both her mummy and other reconstructions. While doing this, I found photos of a 3D scanned sculpture made by scientists at the University of Bristol and chose to collage the neck jewellery over the painting (and edited the lighting and shadows as best as I could).

Something I see a lot of in facial recreations of mummies is maintaining the elongated and skinny facial features as seen on preserved bodies - however, fat, muscle and cartilage shrink/disappear post mortem, regardless of preservation quality; Queen Nefertiti had art created of her in life, and these pieces are invaluable to developing an accurate portrayal of her, whether stylistic or realistic in nature.

And hey, while I don't think my adjustments are perfect (especially the neck area), I *do* believe it is a huge improvement to the original image I chose to work on top of.

I really liked working on this project for the last few days, and I think I may continue to work on it further to perfect it. But, until then, I hope you enjoy!

I know this happens and it looks suspicious but

this image? we have every reason to think it is a cucumber, like it was made in clay models in burials period, it's painted green, it's on the small side of things (9.6 cm or 3 3/4 inch)

oh right and it was placed on a model offering table with small model bread and drinking cup

sometimes a cucumber really is a cucumber.

Some poor sculptor went through the effort to make this shape look as much as possible like a cucumber and avoid the incredibly slippery slope to dick, and this is how people treat their efforts.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” -Fred Rogers Donate to the ACLU

Gonna set up a recurring donation to the ACLU in the morning. 

Currently, I think, a judge has stayed the order and people are coming through.

hey, just a reminder that this was the first week of Trump’s presidency

i dont usually make pot roast, but that mushroom hotpot soup base tip sounds absolutely outstanding.

fucking australia’s trying to get everyone to link their government id to their social media accounts else you cant use them anymore, the actual fuck is wrong with this country

please, actually, get fucking mad over this, the entirety of australia basically just banned all social media for anyone who doesnt want to give up their privacy to the government, there was no vote on this, no nothing, they just went ahead and fucking passed this ridiculously privy law and barely anybody’s talking about it the actual fuck

okay so to actually explain what exactly is happening, it’s an age thing. theyve used ‘protect the children’ and ‘let kids be kids’ as a weapon again. anyone under 16 is banned from social media, but to enforce this they have openly admitted everyone will need to link their government id to their social media. this whole ‘protect the kids’ thing was a very obvious trojan horse for getting ppl to give up their privacy.

and yknow, that alone is a very shitty law even without the whole surrendering your private information to the government thing.

theyve made outside uninhabitable, there’s nowhere left to go. public areas have degenerated, theyve turned hanging out into a crime with loitering, streets feel unwalkable sometimes, parents are more wary of letting their kids walk around on their own than they used to be, and now theyre trying to ban one of the main ways kids manage to distract themselves inside the house.

when i was 15 i was depressed and lonely, unable to leave the house very far, no friends, nobody. the one place that helped me feel less alone was online communities. i wouldve killed myself if it werent for the support i recieved on there. and now theyre trying to ban that for future generations, in a world that hates them being both outside and inside.

and even still, this is still a fucking trojan horse to get you to give up your privacy.

some proper info on this bullshit

this is the best possible addition to this post I am losing my shit over here can you IMAGINE