Agent of Chaos

Some things are better seen from Earth

Visual development for Atlantis: The Lost Empire by Marcelo Vignali

Once I spoke with a girl who told me a friend had invited her to a pool party, but she didn't want to go because the friend's mom had HIV.

I told her that this was a common concern, but HIV can't be transmitted by sharing a pool, and in fact HIV is such a weak virus that it can't even survive on a table for more than a few hours, and it can be killed entirely by bleach.

She asked me, "if you can kill HIV with bleach, why haven't we cured it yet?"

I told her, "because we can't put Bleach into people without killing them".

She said that this was interesting, but she still wasn't going to go.

(We did not become friends.)

The other day, I saw a group of teenage boys climbing all over an electrical box in town.

I walked over and asked if they were aware this was an electrocution risk.

One of them asked what I meant. I pointed to the large yellow image of a stick man with a lightning bolt through its chest and repeated, "it has an electrocution warning on it. Don't get blown up."

The kid laughed and said, "hey, play at your own risk, right?" And went back to his buddies.

I went back to what I was doing, but kept an eye out, and did notice that within the next five minutes, the whole group had removed themselves from the box and were now gathered several feet away from it.

I can't make people do things. I can inform, and support, but I cannot make their choices.

This is something that is hard to learn.

The second story is also a great example of the way people can seem completely resistant to what you say to them, but with a bit of time away from you they take it on board and act on it. I work in guidance and sometimes see this happening, but often you don’t get to know what lasting impact your words have on someone once they go their own way.

Okay, since the Spielberg post blew up, I need to clear up something because I can see in the notes that pple think that Spielberg owns the rights to MLK speeches and I don't want to spread any misinformation. This is what the Vice article says:

This means that while the MLK estate still owns the original copyright for the speeches, Spielberg actually bought and now owns the film rights to MLK's speeches. However, this doesn't erase how problematic it it is since this means that Spielberg is the only filmmaker legally allowed to use MLK's speeches word for word in his films. A White filmmaker is essentially holding onto the film rights, at the expense of Black filmmakers. The article talks about how Ava Duvernay had to write original speeches from scratch for Selma.

The article also mentioned that Spielberg bought life rights and according to this Forbes article, this means that Spielberg also bought the rights to MLK's life.

Hope this clarifies everything!

- mod sodapop

well. in honor of the halloween spirit. i would like to formally reintroduce everyone to the only good tweet i ever made

(& CoolBoxArt posted a tribute to it a year later)

remember .io games? that was 8 years ago

nowadays the only people that use the .io domain are technology sites

ok so .io is a "fun" lesson in colonialism and technology, like all two letter top level domains (yes all of them) it's a country domain belonging to a country, io being the british indian oceans territory, an archipelago in the indian ocean. .io domains became so trendy because they're easily marketable to tech people (io can stand for input/output), it looks kinda cool and at the time domains with .io were highly available with not many websites being created on the islands.

however .io is not like other small islands with highly wanted tlds such as .ai or .to, where the islands make millions off of domain sales and can rely on them as a big pillar of their economy. all profits from .io sales go to the UK, and despite a fight to get control over their tld the islands get nothing, not only did the native population get displaced in land deals and colonialism but their colonizer also heavily profits off of the territories sudden (indirect) trendyness with tech startups.

don't buy .io domains, don't support the british empire.

Thought I'd throw that pic into a deuteranopia color blindness simulator, and yeah, I can see why they'd think Doctor Princess was human.

miguel made miles feel like the scared little kid who just watched spiderman die, who had no idea how to fill his shoes. miguel took all the time and effort miles had put into building his self-confidence and individuality and crumpled it up into a little ball. he told miles he didn’t matter, and it took everything in miles not to believe him.

I just saw a post implying that Tumblr is doing scab work by promoting OnePiece during the strike because ~Tumblr accepted money to make this promotion and that's against SAG-AFTRA rules~

the strike prohibits union writers and actors--and writers and actors who may someday like to join the union--from engaging in and promoting their work in movies, television, and streaming (they can actually still do stage, commercials, and even soap operas, because those are different unions)

Tumblr is not part of or planning to be part of the writer or actor unions

what Tumblr is doing is just regular advertising

if regular advertising were against the strike, then there would not have been any promotion at all allowed for any movie over the last two months

I mean, yes, I completely understand being irritated with how this One Piece promotion is going

but Tumblr isn't breaking the rules of a union, which it's not now and never will be part of, by running annoying ads

Just saw a different post where that same person added that same take again, and this time I saw that the notes were full of people very firmly correcting them

but then I saw someone saying, more or less, "Yeah, they're not crossing the picket line, but they are violating the fact that you must disclose when you're doing paid advertising!"

and, once again, that's not how that works, either--the rules about stating when you're doing a promotion for which you were compensated applies to individuals, especially in social media posts that may otherwise give the appearance of someone just casually chatting with their besties about something new they tried

Tumblr is basically a corporate media entity running commercials and billboards

which by their very nature are known to have been paid for

You don't watch the SuperBowl then report the NFL to the FTC for not having a disclaimer on every commercial and stadium-side sign about being a paid promotion.

Like, yes, I absolutely get being irritated by this particular advertising campaign. But that doesn't mean there's something morally reprehensible at the core of it. It's just annoying. You don't need any deeper reason to dislike it.

God damn people really do keep looking for "virtuous" reasons to dislike things

How about it's fucking annoying

Along the lines of Crowley's living situation, when he's parked the Bentley in that little curved cobblestone street, is that supposed to be somewhere near London? Because I know that the real life location is in Edinburgh (I happened to visit it last November, not knowing it would end up being a filming location!), so when I watched the show I thought it was weird that Crowley would drive all the way from Edinburgh to London and then back again, but then it occurred to me that maybe the in-show location is supposed to be closer. So, where is that curved street supposed to be in the GO universe?

Take a look at the background of the street. It’s not in Edinburgh any longer.

Crowley is not living in the bookshop in S2 because he's trying to protect Aziraphale. He's lost his flat and he's got Shax popping up unannounced everywhere and he knows that Heaven and Hell might be leaving them alone but it won't be forever. He's afraid of what could happen if Heaven and Hell find out that he and Aziraphale are living together. Aziraphale asked him to stay in the bookshop-- and Crowley does on some nights-- but he makes sure Hell knows that he's living in his car as a way of trying to protect them.

Aziraphale has been trying to convince Crowley that he doesn't need to do this. S2 suggests he's been trying to get Crowley to just move in already. His look of irritation when Crowley moves his plants back into The Bentley upon Aziraphale returning from Edinburgh suggests he was hoping that Crowley would just leave them in the shop and leave himself in there while he was at it. He later tries to calm Crowley-- who is talking about having been up all night with anxiety-- by telling him to go relax in the bookshop, illustrating that he knows that the demon-free zone is a calming place for Crowley and trying to remind him that it's his home, too.

I don't think it's that Aziraphale didn't ask. I think it's that Crowley said no as a way of trying to protect Aziraphale and Aziraphale loves the gentlemanly-ness of it but he's also just like oh, Crowley, will you just come inside and get under some tartan blankets and let me make you a cocoa already? Every night? Forever?

[image has alt text]

i'm no use to you anymore

Oh my god