They should invent a brain that lets you sleep

some people are so used to mostly consuming media where the women and people of color are static set dressing in stories about white men that they can't wrap their heads around the concept that female characters and characters of color can have arcs of their own. they'll see a character who's not a white man display a personality flaw that is clearly being set up to be overcome and they see it not as the setup of what promises to be an enticing character journey, but as an essential defining trait of their being, and proceed to demonize such characters for it. white men get to be dynamic and complex, women and people of color get essentialism and a pressure for likeability over good storytelling.

*in a rap battle* i wonder who your mother could have been if she never had you

My controversial game design opinion is that "environmental storytelling" should be actually, tangibly present within the game's environments. Hitting the player with a paragraph of lore every time they click on a random item in their inventory is not environmental storytelling – it's just hiding an epistolary novel in your game's UI.

Google AI Overview

Yes, some universities have a tradition of including a "snake fight" portion in thesis defenses, where students fight one of the university's snakes. The quality of the student's thesis determines the size of the snake they must fight, with better theses resulting in smaller snakes. After the committee reads the thesis, they tell the snake master how good it is, who then chooses the snake. In some northern European countries, an external examiner called the "opponent" fights the snake on the student's behalf, with the opponent's skill level based on the thesis's quality.

I have seen this posted here about 87 times, but in case you have not seen it:

And this is where the part about Northern Europe is from:

If you speak in an authoritative voice, the AI will believe it. So much like humans. I asked Google too.

pro-abortion. pro-divorce. i believe we have the god-given right to give up

when people go after no-fault divorce or abortion what they're really doing is trying to enshrine the sunk cost fallacy into law

it sounds like a joke but this is a genuine political belief of mine. you should be able to leave a situation you don't like. the government has no business trapping you in a relationship.

quitters rights!

Tumblr can never be my main means of engaging in politics and it comes down almost entirely to Tumblr's pathological need to distill The Right Opinion:tm: from any complicated issue.

It's always the most important thing. Not because it helps solve the issue or helps the people impacted, but because The Right Opinion:tm: is a proxy for you, morally, as a person. And every issue needs to be broken into the language that sets the stances of Make You Good or Make You Bad.

And I don't mean this in any generic statement about echo chambers or virtue signaling. Those are separate but related concepts. What I'm talking about is how people are nervous about a topic until one doctrine is crafted which defines the Sports Team Color of our Sports Team, so we can be identified as being on the Us Sports Team, and absolutely not on the Them Sports Team. Because this issue is actually about you and the proxy for you as a person and how people should perceive you so, really, the sooner we figure out the Home Sports Team Colors the sooner you can stop feeling worried.

The moment something new happens is usually the first and last time you'll actually see a range of opinions on it. And some of that is fueled by misinformation! Some in bad faith! When dust settles and clarity is achieved, this helps combat those things, but it's also the moment when the Loudest and most Articulate voices craft the Zeitgeist Opinion and everyone comes to roost around it.

You get people on this site pissed off at AI models that can diagnose cancer from a research paper in 2019 because The Right Opinion is that AI is bad. If you even see a post trying to articulate good uses of AI, well that's someone wearing Packers colors at a Vikings home game, and if you wanna make a point in the "wrong" direction you better be damn articulate about it.

A well-defined set of actions are transphobic. Another set are actually not transphobic, and you'd be transphobic for thinking so. Are you trans and actually your lived experiences differ? Get articulate real fast or shut up. You might be able to eek an exception for yourself, but it's going to require a 10-paragraph post justifying your claim. If you're REALLY good at it though, you might be able to rewrite the Zeitgeist and now anyone who disagrees with you is transphobic. Teams switch uniform styles every now and then, after all.

And it's such a farce because so often it's not actually about the topic at hand. It's about why you should be allowed to be perceived as a good person while toeing outside the fringes of The Right Opinion, why you aren't actually quitting the faith or committing blasphemy or deserving of exile for going off the written word. Or if someone really IS trying to make it about the topic at hand, the ensuing slapfight in the comments needs to be about whether OP has sinned against the covenant.

It's not helpful.

It's like. Is the conversation about assessing the topic or is it about assessing the people speaking about the topic?

Way too often it's the second. Way too often a topic which impacts real people, who aren't you is actually just a proxy tool that you and the people around you use to evaluate each other.

That's weird, isn't it? That feels slimy, doesn't it? To use someone else's strife as a useful little metric to scan your ingroup? And in the process, to not dare evaluate it further (in a way that might be necessary, in a way that might crack open surface-level simplifications and get into the uncomfortable pieces that need dissection to ever change) because doing so risks setting off your nice little in-group Geiger Counter.

being a fan of a female fictional character is like yes im in love with her soulfully and carnally but i am ALSO her defence attorney her ambassador her pr manager her representative her missionary her right hand arm man her silly rabbit. her scholar her explainer the last man standing in her army. phd in explaining her nuance and depth priesthood in her church. could i be talking about other things?? move on?? maybe!!! were i not the animated suit of armor in her temple bound to protect her for eternity

I know I just restating the point of that post but respecting religious freedom will sometimes require you to respect someone's belief that religious beliefs are categorically untrue, and there are a lot of people who are unable to handle this, and even more people who think they agree with this but haven't really grappled with what it means.

Something that a lot of religious folks don't seem to realize the extent to which non-religious people, more than any other religious minority, are expected to walk on eggshells around other people's beliefs at the expense of their own for the sake of social decorum, in a way which no one else is expected to do with theirs.

To name a bit of an example I have personal experience with. When I was mourning my cousin a couple years ago, I was constantly faced with the situation of people trying to comfort me from a religious perspective.

And whenever this topic comes up, the conversation is always about how "you have to be mindful of their intentions, they're trying to reach out to you and comfort you in the way they know, they're being nice, you have to appreciate the effort they're making, you have to meet them where they're at and appreciate their attempt to help you". Which is what I did, of course. In this situation, replying to their attempt to comfort you with any reminder that you don't believe in this stuff is considered a big social faux-pas that will make you look like an asshole. And to an extent I agree, it can be rude and needlessly combative.

But somethin I feel it's conspicuously absent from any conversation surrounding this type of situation like. Any interrogation of *why* is going "sorry, I don't believe in any of this, this means nothing to me" considered a bigger social faux-pas than trying to comfort a grieving person with religious beliefs you know they don't hold.

Why, even when you're literally grieving, the onus is on you as a non-religious person to be mindful of other's worldviews and tread lightly and meet them where they're at and not contradict what they believe in and never the other way around.

HELP

MY ASSIGNED ANALOG HORROR SERIES IS PENIS FILES

It really is incredible that Kamala could have taken the most milquetoast, centrist, nothing stance on Israel/Palestine and probably swung a lot of leftist votes simply on "well she'll do better than Trump" but she was apparently incapable of doing this. It was more important for her to campaign for the shareholders and to shut down actual Muslims voicing their concerns at her rallies than for her to take anything but a complete pro-Israel stance

its all so grim. It's watching a bunch of sassy parks and rec fans compete with 13yos on Xbox live for America's next top mass murderer. You can't even pretend you're anti-war? You're going to tell me you'll be tough on the border, like that's a fucking selling point? Like I should be reassured that you'll keep bombing Gaza and putting kids and cages, and oh maybe we'll do something about roe v wade if you're good.

It's all so fucking sick. It all needs to go

Yall are fucking hysterical with this.

The stats and exit polls show that this is not what "cost" her the election.

It was racism and misogynoir pure and fucking simple.

It was the huge amount of white people who went into the voting booth and chose a rapist, white supremacist over EVERYTHING that Kamala put forth.

The way you all are still trying to make this about Gaza and Palestinians, when even they were asking people to vote for Kamala Harris is wild.

Unless you have proof that the almost 18 million people who didn't vote were all abstaining due to Gaza and were all going to vote for Kamala if she said what you want to hear, then this is just more finger pointing so that no one has to address the real issue.

White supremacy ran for president and won last night.

how i met my boyfriend - the designer axe story

as promised, since we have both now graduated the statute of limitations has expired on this story and i can now share it all with you.

some notes: ra is resident assistant and this story occurred in august of 2021. i wrote this all out the day after it happened almost 2 years ago. we did not actually start dating until october 2021 after we both realized we were in love with eachother. yes, we are still together as of may 2023.

without any further ados, the much anticipated designer axe story.

so part of RA training is that we have to make door decorations and bulletin boards for our halls and buildings. i had finished my door decks at 1 am sunday morning and the bulletin boards weren't due until 9 am monday morning. so i had all of sunday to work on it.

my building has no less than seven bulletin boards per floor and an additional 4 on the entrance floor. i dont know who the hell built this building but we need to have a serious talk about when too many bulletin boards is too many fucking bulletin boards.

so i was in charge of three on my floor. one about me, one covid policies and one sloth (his name is sam and i love him). and i am a chronic procrastinator. so i finished my about me and got through about 95% of my covid one by like 9pm and had to go back to the res life office to cut out a few more letters and get some scrapbook paper.

at this point its probably important to know that the only people on campus at this point were the RAs, some students getting mentoring training, and a few random first years here for an early arrival program. plus some staff.

now, i need you all to understand that there are 42 RAs. all of us have the same deadline. all of us had between 2 and 5 bulletin boards to complete. plus door decks. and room condition reports. so we were all moving at literally 600 frames per second, 120 miles per hour, or about as fast as a child does when they are told there's cake.

which is to say, we were all frazzled and stressed out of our minds.

so i open the door to the res life office at around 9 pm to cut out the word "but" in orange construction paper and grab 2 sheets of purple scrapbooking paper. in the office are the four RAs that were on duty that night, plus a good 7 other people are running around asking about glue sticks and construction paper and keys.

i knew that i only had my sloth board left to complete so i decided to take my sweet ass time, knowing that i was in need of a good break (and also im just a procrastinator) so i cut my letters and grabbed my paper and stood at the desk for no less than an hour talking to everyone about things like the fact that i fell out of a suitcase when i was 2 and that tamper proof lids exist because of the chicago poison pill murders and the flagship l.l. bean store in maine. it was very productive.

so i finally slink back to my dorm at around 10pm, very confident that i would finish by midnight and could watch some netflix or something before i went to bed. if only i knew what was in store for me.

i enter my dorm building and walk to the elevators. and then. one of the RAs from the third floor was like "oh saph. [another RA in the building] is looking for you."

and me, of course, didnt bring my phone to the res life office so i didnt know this.

i go up to the second floor and see one of the RAs from the second floor and another from one of the other buildings working on a bulletin board. they say "oh saph. [the same RA in the building] is looking for you."

i run up to my dorm and discover that somehow we missed the bulletin board by the downstairs elevator. seriously there's too fucking many bulletin boards. and they were asking me to do it. because they wanted to put covid policies on it.

and i know i said this story was about axe body spray. and it is. we are getting there.

so panic sets in because its 10pm and i still have two whole bulletin boards to make now. one of which i have nothing planned for. so i threw some soup in the microwave (because i had forgotten that dinner existed) and opened my laptop.

thankfully, i could reuse some of the same stuff from my own covid policies board in my common room. i just had to print it. which meant, yep you guessed it, another trip back to the res life office!!

at this point i think i had taken a grand total of at least 7 trips to the res life office that day alone. its a good 5 minute walk. not terrible, but just annoying enough that you hate yourself a little more every time that you have to do it. and now its 10:30pm. i am starving. i have two boards to complete. it was crunch time.

i make it to the office and this time i had no time to sit around and debate how popular l.l. bean is. i had policies to print and letters to cut.

as im struggling with the printer (because those fucking things can smell fear), someone else in the office starts loudly discussing timothee chalamet.

and now, this is where you want to actually pay attention because this man would be the reason i ended up only getting 4.5 hours of sleep.

said man in question is quite the character. he's in my grade and im pretty sure he's a polisci major (and maybe creative writing? there's some kind of writing) and he plays lacrosse. i dont really know how to describe him other than the fact that the first interaction i ever had with him was two years ago at freshman orientation when he complained to me in the dining hall that there was no milk for his protein powder.

that interaction is in my top 10 favorite interactions ive had in college.

but the one we are about to unpack definitely takes all of the cake.

so here i am, struggling with the printer and my tiny knock off dongle. the other RA on my floor starts discussing timothee chalamet's outfits with the protein powder RA.

and so apparently the protein powder RA worked in some major fashion designer brand corporate something or other thing over the pandemic. he told me which one but i was so shot and only thinking in construction paper and glue and staples that i didnt process any of it. but it was a fancy one. the store that is.

and so here's what happened:

me: "timothee chalamet? isn't he like, 17?"

protein powder RA and the other RA on my floor: "nah he's like 25. ive checked."

yet another RA: "yeah i just googled it."

me, a wimbo: "oh im thinking of finn wolfhard. but i dont think he's 17 either."

listen before you slam me, remember it is like 11pm and i have to still do 2 bulletin boards and we have training at 9am the next morning.

so protein powder RA pulls up some photo of timothee chalamet and starts telling me about all the brands he's wearing and i literally said "i understand all of the words that you're saying separately."

and he said "exactly!! he's just so great that when you put it all together you can't understand it!! he's just too perfect!!"

and the i made a detrimental decision.

there is life before this decision and life after.

i said "well. bring your fashion designer knowledge into the lounge and help me decide what color to cut my letters."

and he said okay.

so after severely debating the different color purples that we had and listening to the finer points of the fashion industry, i noticed something important.

he smelled like axe body spray.

see i bet you thought i forgot the point of the story. i did not.

let it be known that we are juniors in college (that's 20-21 years old if you dont know). axe is very common in middle and high school boys locker rooms. i have vivid memories of avoiding that hallway so i wouldn't be choked.

so im trying not to inhale too deeply because the smell has permeated my mask as i cut my "covid safety" letters in the color this man has dubbed "light lilac" and half listening to him talk about the fashion industry.

but i finish quickly, somehow escape the smell of axe, and grab my laptop and print outs before tagging along with the same protein powder RA and the other lax player RA back to the dorms. its now 11:15 pm. i still have 2 bulletin boards to complete. my soup is sitting in my microwave in my dorm, almost forgotten about.

halfway back from the office i realize that i forgot my dongle. i say so out loud and protein power RA says that he will go back and look because he's just that guy who likes to help. i say okay fine. and i sprint to my dorm building, drop the print outs and letters downstairs for later, and start the sloth board.

several minutes later, my soup has been inhaled, my papers glued, a sloth cut out, and im sitting in a mess of construction paper and staples in the hallway when i get a text from protein powder RA that quite simply said:

"its not there. do you need help with your boards?"

and me, being me, because i am exhausted and in need of company, say "yeah sure."

by the time he finally shows up, he's changed his outfit.

as a side note, every time ive seen this man during the last 5 days of training, he's been wearing a different outfit. oh and he works for lulu lemon. forgot to mention that.

but alas, here he came, holding my papers and reeking of axe as he walked down the hall to me, who is failing to staple a sloth to my bulletin board.

so for the next two hours i did my boards and he sat and talked. he wasn't physically helping me, but he was helping me stay awake, cause this man is a ball of fucking energy, and that was very important.

i only remember about half of what he said but essentially he was talking about how he was trying to be a better person than the one that he was freshman year. which is admirable. but he does still reek of axe.

at around 1 am i finished my last board and went upstairs to clean up. he came with me and sat on the floor and continued to talk while i cleaned up my disaster of paper and staples and glue among other things. at this point i was so relieved that i had finished that i was actually able to engage in the conversation, which was surprisingly deep and interesting.

and then. its about 1:45 am. i am about to wash my dishes so i can shower and go to bed. because remember that i need to be at training at 9 am the next morning.

and he says something about trying to be a better person again. and me, in all my sleep deprived glory, says:

drum roll

"and yet you still wear axe body spray."

and all hell broke loose.

i would like to preface by saying that he freaked out in a very joking matter and was not actually mad at me. but he was definitely disappointed and in shock. the next hour pretty much consisted of:

"are you kidding me? this is prada something something cologne and all these celebrities wear it!! how dare- it could not POSSIBLY SMELL LIKE AXE!!! well i guess its a little dry and axe is kind of dry smelling...bUT I SPENT SO MUCH ON THIS BOTTLE and the lady sold me on the larger one and it was like 150 bucks and UGH i cannot smell like axe! you know i got four compliments on how i smelled today??! and you're telling me i smell like fucking- *sniffs shirt* no! there's no way!! well i mean... no i cannot. i cannot smell like designer axe. damnit saph! im gonna have to sell this whole bottle now cause i can't use it! BUT ITS PRADA!!"

for an hour.

but it was very entertaining.

eventually i dragged him to the common room cause i needed to do my dishes and sleep and he continued ranting about it there, going as far as to call his best friend (who was asleep) and another RA and ask them if he smelled like axe. i meanwhile was laughing my ass off and 12 kinds of tired but couldn't find it in myself to care.

eventually he decided he needed yet another opinion. so he went to find the other RA on my floor, which, if you remember, is the same one who was thirsting over timothee chalamet with him in the res life office all of those fateful hours before. but that RA was nowhere to be found. so he ran down to the common room below us and scared the shit out of three freshmen.

and he asked these freshmen if he smelled like axe.

the answer was yes.

after that he left because it was 2:30 in the morning, and all the while he was yelling about how he was going to come to training tomorrow with different shirts with all his different colognes on them and have me sniff them because he couldn't smell like designer axe.

and i did the only logical thing. went upstairs to my my dorm and made him a door deck that looked like a bottle of axe that had a post it on the front that said "designer."

and so. now you all know not to buy cologne because its expensive because there's a good chance it will just end up smelling like axe.

and i didn't get to smell his other colognes because i almost passed out in training and left to take a nap. but maybe that was a blessing in disguise.

we’ve been dating for a year and seven months and just graduated college :) and in a fun twist of events, prada no longer makes that cologne anymore.

I believe the Mormon church has more sway on US law and politics than any other religious organization

Like they’re the flag bearer and strategy think tank for the strongest examples of religious interference in the law even if you see evangelicals and catholics making moves they’re using the LDS playbook

The LDS church is directly responsible for organizing a decent chunk of "religious freedom" coalitions over the years. The primary reason why they don't get more flak for it is that they're primarily seen as a regional power both by outsiders and those living within the mormon corridor. Pretty much everyone who looks at Utah for even a couple of seconds understands that it's Like That because the mormons have to sign off on any proposed legislation, but then they'll just assume that this phenomenon is limited to Utah and that the church doesn't have any meaningful impact on anything outside of that bubble.

Ensign Peak alone is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, and the church regularly pours massive sums of cash into PACs throughout the nation in support of conservative political campaigns. The most tangible impact the LDS church has is on the wider political landscape of the US via its spearheading of attempts to replace public education with charters or home schooling, and yet the biggest criticism most people have about it is that those poor bastards in Utah will never get to experience the joys of recreational THC. Like, girl, one of the wealthiest, least financially transparent nonprofit organizations on the continent is constantly pouring money into the Heritage Foundation.

YES EXACTLY

I cannot emphasize enough that the Church quite literally has overthrown election results in Utah. Like you all know this, right? Utah voted for some of the best, healthiest marijuana laws in the country that would have made chronic pain for millions disappear overnight and it passed by a LARGE margin. People were ecstatic. The election results came out and people were beyond excited. And the state refused to honor the fact that it passed because the Church simply told them not to. My friend was in the Capitol building and watched the legislator she worked for see before his very eyes that the law did not apply to these men and watched the election be overturned quietly. Politely. The law shifted and adjusted just enough that people wouldn't riot, but not in any way what was actually passed. Utah is the testing ground for controlling the narrative. The goddamn NSA has one of its biggest offices there.

You all know this, right? You know that when you mock people in Western states like Utah you're talking about people who live under theocratic laws that they didn't vote for and can't vote out of and gerrymandering so severe that despite the majority of voters in Utah being registered Democrats, it's blood red because they built it that way... right? You know this? Please tell me you know this.

And then once you tell me you know this, promise me that you will actually internalize that the red states are not your enemy, they are being held hostage.

poc will make a post about how racism negatively effects them and then white people will reblog the post like "as a white person, and i mean im WHITE WHITE, like im the color of a sheet of paper im so white i burn if im in the sun for 1 millisecond and i can trick people into thinking im a dead ghost im so horrifically white, im also autistic, trans, bisexual, fat, and failed math class in middle school. i know it's important to discuss racism, but also claiming that white people cant face any oppression whatsoever is sooooo hurtful to me and other white people with similar issues </3 im aware im privileged for being white, and trust me, like i said im the whitest person you know like. i dont even like spicy food im so white. but i think it's important to talk about the oppression of EVERYONE, not just people of color ❤ lets make a better world together. this post is sooo important and i respect op sooo much for making it 🙏, but i just think it is important to discuss all the oppression white people can also face and i know this post was specifically about racism but i just felt the need to add my two cents.. also DEAR MY FELLOW WHITE PEOPLE, lets all make sure we listen to poc voices together!!! #fuck racism #just a reminder that being white and having white privilege doesnt invalidate all the other struggles i face ☹ #as a white person who has constantly faced oppression i cant imagine how difficult other people who arent white have it omg"

"do i ship it" chart but its pure hatred instead. do i hate seeing those bitches together

this sucks but whatevr

if you have proship in your bio please go outside and reconsider how you spend your time and what things you should value in life