So in light of the latest "imminent death of Tumblr predicted," I'm also lytefoot on ao3 and on Pillowfort.
Also Pillowfort has the closest to the Tumblr vibe of any of the other socials, so y'know, check it out. Provided they make their 25k goal by the end of the year to not go down.
You know what?
My ancestors would have wanted pasteurization, vaccines, antibiotics, disinfectants, birth control, psychiatric medications, pain management, anesthesia. My ancestors would have wanted to be able to keep their loved ones around longer, and not lose them too early/too soon to childbirths, injuries, bacterial infections, mental illnesses, and diseases that are curable and/or preventable in our modern day life.
Modern medicine saves lives.
The Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River superimposed on a map of Europe
…OH.
I googled it once and the only reason why the Great Lakes aren’t called inland seas is because they are entirely freshwater, not salt.
By any other metric they’d be seas. Superior especially (the big one in the upper left) behaves like a small ocean, and has claimed at least 250 ships and over 1000 people. Gordon Lightfoot wrote a frankly chilling song about her that I’ll include here:
Lake Michigan has never fully frozen. Leading to some absolutely terrifying images
Layers of ice created, shattered, and built up like this.
Hey, here’s a picture of that lighthouse in 2015, when we had a polar vortex
I love the Great Lakes, you know how all boats look like shit, like just rusty hulks, you don’t get that on the Great Lakes because it’s fresh water, like the shipwrecks are incredibly well preserved
Archive stuff.
HORUS nerds be heating their house with cat /dev/urandom > /dev/null
IMPORTANT NOTE: Do Not Do This
Okay, /dev/random and /dev/urandom are special files in Linux that act as a pseudorandom number generators. Linux usually uses them for generating cryptographically secure random numbers. It does this by cultivating an "entropy pool" using inputs from stuff like electrical noise on your computer's device drivers, which is sufficiently random and impossible to monitor unless you already have access to the parts of the machine that would render cryptographic security moot in any case. The entropy pool is finite and can be exhausted if a lot of random numbers are requested very quickly.
/dev/urandom is distinct from /dev/random in that /dev/random is "blocked" - that is, if the entropy pool is empty, it will stop generating random numbers until the entropy pool fills up again. /dev/urandom is "unblocked" - begin generating numbers by either reusing existing bits of entropy or via algorithmic means. This is less cryptographically secure in theory, but there's no practical way to exploit it. For our purposes, /dev/urandom is important because there is no reason it will stop producing random numbers. It will not ever return End Of File, because it can always create new ones.
cat is a standard POSIX terminal command that reads a file and then writes its contents to somewhere - if no destination is specified, it writes it straight into the terminal. For example, cat readme will display the entire contents of the readme file. This is useful, for example, when you have a reasonably small file that you don't want to open a separate text editor to check.
The important thing about cat is that it reads an entire file, and won't stop until it reaches the end of a file. Keep that in mind.
/dev/null is a device file on Linux and other POSIX systems that will immediately destroy any data written to it, then report that the write operation was successful. Attempting to cat /dev/null will immediately read End Of File because it contains (and can contain) no data. There are all sorts of useful reasons why it exists but I won't get into them here.
When you cat /dev/urandom > dev/null, something very funny happens: cat attempts to read the entirety of /dev/urandom. But /dev/urandom, because it's unblocked, doesn't have an "entirety" - it can just make new numbers to satisfy demand, and the demand is "all of them!" There will never be an End Of File to tell cat to stop reading. Now, in any other circumstances, this would eventually terminate due to storage limitations - it would either fill up the computer's memory and run out, or if it's writing straight to a file, run out of hard drive space.
... but we're writing all the data we read to /dev/null, which immediately destroys it. The data isn't being stored. It's just being fed directly into the digital equivalent of an industrial shredder. This means that the limitations of our machine's memory and hard drive no longer matter.
The process that /dev/urandom uses to convert its entropy pool into random numbers requires CPU cycles to execute, as does the process of cat reading numbers from it and feeding them into /dev/null. Both of these processes are not in equilibrium - cat will ask for more numbers to read, and /dev/urandom will have to generate them. Eventually, they'll occupy 100% of the CPU's resources, which will put it under full load and generate a lot of heat, causing the BIOS to spin up the cooling fans. Unless some sort of safeguard has been implemented, this process will not terminate on its own - outside action from the user (or, say, a power cut) will be necessary.
You are now consuming electricity to dump the raw electromagnetic chaos of the universe straight into a black hole, and as a side product of the various mechanical inefficiencies inherent in computing equipment, generating a whole lot of waste heat.
You could, of course, just get a space heater. But that's not very HORUS, is it?
[tumblr] is a beautiful website where all kinds of people come to diversify their echolalia
Support your local libraries and the small businesses that are actually making the products you want. Fuck Jeff Bezos and the systemic, universal worker abuse, gaslighting, and brutality they live off of.
this seems like a good thing to bring around as people holiday shop
As an alternative to Audible for buying audiobooks, consider Libro.fm. They make your audiobooks available as DRM-free MP3 downloads so you can actually keep them, as well as having an app that's easy to use on mobile.
They also let you enter your local bookstore and do revenue sharing.
Your library is an excellent option, but sometimes you want to own things, too.
By the time the smoke had fully curled in on itself and solidified into flesh and bone, the air inside the circle was smouldering hot. It made the entry into the human realm less jarring, the demon found, and he took the time to flex his wings in the warmth before turning his eyes upon the figure in the robe.
“Speak,” he commanded. “And state why you have Summoned me.”
The figure raised her head to meet his eyes. “Is this a good time for you?”
The demon’s mind stumbled. “Excuse me?”
“Well,” the voice continued. “I did just summon you, like, out of nowhere. I checked all the spells to see if there was one to just send a message or something, but it seemed to be summon or nothing. If this is a bad time for you, I can absolutely try again later though.”
On second inspection, it wasn’t a robe his summoner was wearing. It was a long, sturdy apron. What his still adjusting sight had taken for a hood was a shawl tied round her hair. The demon stared at her with unblinking eyes. “It is as good a time as any, witch.”
“Oh good,” the witch smiled. “That’s a relief.”
“Why did you summon me?” the demon demanded again. This kind of small talk was highly irregular. He squinted at the stains on the witch’s hands, most of which he suspected were nothing more sinister than ink and juice. “What reason could you possibly have to call upon the likes of me.”
“Well, their names are Storm and Letitia and they need a babysitter.”
The demon stared at her some more. “They what-”
The witch met him with a smile of sunshine enthusiasm. “I checked your references in the Necronomicon, you are very good with kids!”
“I…” His bewilderment left him scrambling for words. “I tempted the minds of neglected children to cause them to swarm and lay waste to their town!”
“Yeah! It said in the book that they were all under ten years old and that there were at least twenty of them. That must have taken a lot of skill!”
The demon shifted his weight a little. When she put it like that… “It is one of my more infamous accomplishments.”
“Really impressive,” the witch nodded admiringly. “So I was hoping…maybe we can work something out? The kids would love getting to hang out with a demon.”
“Surely your kind has its own caretakers to hire.”
She deflated a little. “Yeah, well. Letitia has just started levitating and Storm is very focussed on animal transformations right now. Which is great! He’s so talented. But half the time he refuses to turn himself back when it’s time for dinner and, well, not everyone wants to deal with feeding a Iberian Lynx.
“Iberian Lynx?” he repeated, raising a ridged eyebrow.
“They’re both very fond of felines,” the witch clarified.
“I see.” The demon looked from the witch to the circle around him (it seemed to have been drawn with blue sidewalk chalk) and then to the room around her. There were several large diagrams on the wall with arcane symbols and occult sigils. Between them were drawings. A lot of them. Mostly of cats. Several of them had wings, or horns. He looked back at the witch again.
“Tell me,” he said, slowly sinking down into a cross-legged position on the floor. “Exactly how old are they?”
I cannot get this poem out of my head. It haunts me. Joyously, it haunts me.
This poem format is my favorite thing and this is the first time I’ve ever seen it’s origin story. I love it. Every time.
THE SACRED TEXTS!
I forgot the context! It’s beautiful!
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
Idk I feel like "Men are responsible for their own actions, women aren't to blame for men being misogynistic" and "You do not have to tolerate bigotry from others, call them out on that shit" and "People may be less likely to become radicalized if they receive kindness and compassion" don't have to contradict each other
I just got described as an "ad hating commie" by someone because I said a minute of youtube ads is unpleasant. fully spent 5 minutes arguing and defending youtube ads. insane stuff
reblog if you are an ad hating commie
