On a lighter note, I do love that it takes...about five minutes of shared screentime here for Angelus and Spike to be at each other's throats. Previously, the impression of their relationship seemed a lot rosier - Spike's pleased to have Angelus back, and before that in School Hard seemed delighted to see him again and genuinely betrayed when it turns out he's on the other side...but as soon as they end up working together, the cracks start to show almost instantaneously. Which is interesting. I wonder if this was a case of absence making the heart grow fonder - easier to reminisce about the good times and forget the most-of-the-time when things weren't good.

Personal pet theory is it’s because Darla is dead. This is largely based off the further backstory revealed in Angel s2, where we see Angelus & Darla had a very intense relationship — very toxic but also very romantic and it worked for them. So when Darla was around she ate up a lot of Angelus’s attention meaning he was less likely to seek Drusilla out, allowing Spike to maintain the illusion of them being two separate couples (that maybe also fucked each other on occasion). It also meant that if Angelus was seeking out Spike, it was genuinely because he wanted to spend some guy time with him rather than because he had nothing better to do and tormenting Spike sounded like his idea of a fun time.

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats. The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems destroyed and purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government, an unmarried abortion rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House. Five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history.

On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state.

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! THERE IS A REPRESENTATIVE FOR MALAIYAHA TAMILS IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY AND IT'S A YOUNG WOMAN! This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, these people are not Marxists or anything near; they're mild social democrats who would only be threatening to like, USAmerican liberals, who are now center-right. The actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is extremely high.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

A 22 yr old in my org got drunk tuesday night and kinda shit on the fact that I'm running a community cleanup for our chapter. Said something along the lines of "i didn't join up to pick trash." Which really bothers me and it took me a while to figure out why. The whole point of the community cleanup is that we're returning to the neighborhoods where we knocked doors for A4 to help clean up their streets and provide material improvement for free in an effort to build inroads with those neighbors.

Like... if your socialism doesn't include picking uo trash, I'm guessing it also doesn't include doing the dishes, babysitting, or anything else that is important but not prestigious. Idk man, fuck off with that shit. You'll pick up trash and you'll like it until you understand why picking up trash isn't anyone's job but your own. I hate that attitude. If helping and doing activism was always fun and visible and impressive, everyone you know would already be doing it.

Had a dream/nightmare once where I died and I was a ghost.

And it was great, actually! I was having fun! I could fly around (felt like fast swimming) and listen in on people, just couldn’t touch physical objects.

And I had the bright idea of “HEY, WHAT IF I FLY UP TO SPACE???”

So I did.

All the way up.

I watched the Earth spinning and spinning below me.

And then… spinning away from me.

Spinning away from me fast.

Too fast for me to catch up.

And I realized. Even as a ghost, I had mass. I was affected by gravity. Until I wasn’t. Until I carelessly flung myself out of gravity’s reach.

And the Earth went away. Far into the distance. Out of sight. Just another blip of light in the distance, like all the stars and planets, and I couldn’t catch up. I was so small and powerless to move myself without the gravity of a planet to cling to.

I was just… drifting. In space. In nothing. Stars and planets surrounding me, but all so far away and out of reach.

And I realized that I must not be the first ghost who thought of this. Who got curious or bored and decided to fly straight up just to see what would happen. And maybe this was why I never saw any other ghosts on Earth before I left it.

I realized I probably would never see any other ghosts. Nor would I ever see Earth or any other planet again. Not for a very, very long time.

Space is big.

It is simultaneously true that it’s best to give trans kids puberty blockers if they need them and that if you went through a first puberty you’re not doomed forever like both of these things are true

Kinda like how breast milk is the best case scenario for a baby but if you give them formula they’ll still be fine you know. Like it should always be possible for trans kids to get the care they need but if you didn’t transition as a kid you’re not doomed you’ll still get great results that you want

Like it’s probably better in many respects to transition before puberty but also it’s not too late to transition until you’re dead.

If the only thing stopping you from transitioning is that you didn’t transition as a kid then that’s not strong enough of a reason, bud. Come out when you’re ready but you can still transition very successfully at any time you want.

If you’re a teen in a situation that doesn’t let you medically transition whether because of your parents or because of the laws where you live, don’t lose heart. It sucks that closed minded adults are making you go through that but you’ll still make it there one day and it will be even more beautiful than you imagined.

horror timeloop game where an entire group gets timelooped and have to work together to break out but realize in horror after a really good loop that one of them no longer remembers any of the progress made and now does the same thing every loop. they have to get out individually. they cant escape together. making progress means reducing the amount of people you have with you

One of the things I love about Buffy is that it presents knowledge and research as an absolutely vital part of the process of world saveage. So much of the show is dedicated to the characters sitting around doing research. And that’s pretty rare. Usually if research is a plot device in these kind of shows, it happens off screen. Which does kind of make sense on a storytelling level - it’s not usually that interesting to watch people look stuff up. But I really like that BtVS finds a way to make it interesting, not only because it leads to a lot of great group scenes, but also because it foregrounds the value of educating oneself about something before engaging with it. Which, you know, is an excellent value to foreground.

This post was very much inspired by this tweet.

[image: two tweets by andrealongchu, transcribed below:]

My fellow Americans, act accordingly.

[image: 2024 September 2 tweet by fesshole: "As a teenager in Neustrelitz (East Germany), I painted small stones purple and left them all over town. Did it for years. It drove the police and Stasi nuts. It meant nothing. It just felt good to do something they couldn't control or understand."]

Psychosis is so much more than hallucinations and delusions.

It's disorganizing phrases and sentences. Instead of saying "I lost my bag" you end up saying "I bag my lost".

It's saying something out loud and hearing it echo in your head, only to completely forget what you said, or why.

It's lacking words and the ability to organize them in a sentence so that they make sense.

It's thinking you wrote something only to find out you wrote something else.

It's suddenly losing track of what you were telling someone, or thinking.

It's unknowingly misreading words, somehow sensing the sentence doesn't make sense, reading it again and realizing you read half the word or a completely different word.

It's your mind going blank and feeling a need to stay still and stare at nothing in particular.

It's repeating words and phrases for no apparent reason.

It's having an insight or remembering something you want/have to do only to lose it within seconds.

It's not being able to tell if something actually happened or it was a dream.

It's not being able to tell if a memory was a dream, a made up story/memory, or an actual situation in which you were experiencing positive symptoms.

It's losing track of time, feeling it goes too slow or too fast, or that it freezes.

Clarification: These are cognitive symptoms, which are not exclusive from psychosis, schizophrenia or Cluster A disorders. They can happen in many other disorders. Having them does not necessarily mean you have psychosis, specially if you already have other disorders. The main reason why I created this post is because cognitive symptoms are rarely/never mentioned within psychosis.

It’s a rare day when I’m actually Interested In Cooking, so allow me to share this horrendous mashed potatoes and vegetable recipe that I made up recently and now affectionately call…

Step One: Slow cooker

Step Two: Potato. One layer in bottom of crock. No peel, no chop, just dump em in

Step Three: Veggies. Any combo, any ratio, frozen or fresh, but I’ve had good success with cauliflower, broccoli, bell peppers, onions, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes. Enough to fill slow cooker between potato and the top of the crock

Step Four: Garlic powder, onion powder, and one little block of chicken bouillon. No measure, just dump in. Add other seasonings as desired

Step Five: Add water. Small bit, not much needed, just pour in like a drinking glass full

Step Six: Cooker on high for five or six hours

Step Seven: MASH!!!! (note: depending on veggies, The Mash will turn interesting colors)

Step Eight: While still hot, add half a stick butter and BIG dollop of sour cream. Stir stir stir until it looks tasty

Step Nine: It WILL be lumpy, it WILL have bits in it, that’s THE POINT. I am Ross, I like lumpy potatoes, it’s How My Mom Makes Them. (But if you must puree them, I get it, no judgment, you can do that step in a blender after it’s all cooled)

Step Ten: Eat your potatoes and feel good that you’re eating veggies with them! Add any protein if desired, it reheats just fine ❤️

Hey so fun new scam just dropped! I got a call earlier today from someone spoofing the local police department's desk number, asking me if there was a reason I'd missed my jury summons this morning.

Friends, I had not received a jury summons for this month. Which I told him, at which point his previously clear diction suddenly turned into a rapid mumble, only becoming clear for scary words like 'federal' and then asking to confirm my address, at which point I hung up and decided to call the police department later.

When I called the police department the desk officer sounded so tired y'all. All I had to say was "Hey I got a call earlier saying I missed jury duty this morning?" and she immediately sighed and told me that yes it was a scam that was going around and thanked me for calling to confirm.

So this is your periodic reminder that law enforcement agencies will not call you to tell you that you're in trouble. If you need to pay a fine of some sort they will mail you a physical invoice. Anyone calling you saying they're from the police or any other law enforcement organization (up to the CIA and yes I have heard of scammers attempting to impersonate CIA agents over the phone) who then tries to get financial information from you over the phone is a scammer.

I know I actually bang on about this a weird amount, but it is my fervent hope that the information will stick in peoples' brains if they get randomly selected for the adrenaline spike lottery. Scammers use scary words to get you to panic in order to shut down your critical thinking, and if even one person's brain spits out "Tumblr user waterhobbit said the cops/CIA/federal marshalls don't call about this shit" before their bank account routing number is in the hands of assholes I will consider it a job well done.

The person in this post follows my rule of thumb that protects me from 99.9% of all phone scams, and i'd like to highlight it here

For ANY "important" call you actually think might be real, get the name of the agency or institution involved, (and here is the important part:) look up the phone number to that agency or institution on your own, and call back about it.

If you never use a phone number they give you and always look up the number on your own, they can never scam you. Here's how it looks.

"hi, i'm from your bank and your account has just been charged, just, so much money, we're worried it might be fraud."

"Thank you for letting me know, I'll call back later, goodbye"

Then i look up my bank's phone number, and call that number, and tell them i received a call about suspicious activity on my account.

If it's real, they'll help me with it, and if it's not they'll confirm it's not true. Either way, i know i'm talking to the actual bank and not a scammer.

This works for ALL phone scammers, no matter how scary or time sensitive they try to tell you it is. If it's real, something like "i'm driving right now but i'll call back in a few minutes, no thank you i already have the contact information for your agency/business" is ALWAYS an acceptable answer, at most they will want to give you some kind of a case number before you hang up. The more they resist you calling them back from a number you look up, the more likely they are to be a scam.

It's important that YOU call the number of the agency/business. Don't let them "call you back from the main number", it's possible to spoof caller IDs including government numbers.

and don't use google search results, go to the actual agency website

I've been seeing a lot of this on Discord.

*total stranger shows up in my DMs* "I see you have the Writer role selected... you must be looking for an artist! I can draw any style"

(Cue: samples of art of drastically different styles obviously stolen from a dozen different places online.)

"I'd just need a small amount to get started..."

wizard college is going to kill me I swear to god. I just saw someone without a component satchel reach into their pocket and pull out a handful of LOOSE tapioca to use as a substitute for blood in their fell ritual. and it worked. I've never been so fucking mad.

This is why it works, by the way - it's not about the blood itself, but the blood's metaphysical properties. Now traditionally, blood is about sacrifice, life and death, inheritance, etc, but obviously for this ritual it was about the disgust and revulsion it invokes - a sensation that loose pocket tapioca is admirably suited for. It's actually a pretty clever workaround.

I really don't think the settings on my computer should be able to change without my input

or at the very least tell me what's changed whenever it happens

No, it just shouldn't happen. None of that.

Apple propaganda notwithstanding, the reason tower PCs are big isn’t because they’re outdated. The reason tower PCs are so bulky is because they’re designed to be user serviceable. The case has lots of open space so your big, meaty hands can easily access all of the components, and everything is secured with friction-fit tabs and standard machine screws to minimise the need for specialised tools. A properly laid out tower PC is fully serviceable with a single Phillips-head screwdriver and no greater manual skill than your average Lego playset – heck, for some of the more modern case layouts you don’t even need the screwdriver, unless you’re performing major surgery like a full motherboard replacement.

Like, think about who benefits from convincing you that a fully modular computing device that can be serviced and repaired with your bare hands and minimal technical skill is unfashionable.

Watch this guy who just played Portal for the first time absolutely lose his mind at the end credits song

#god it's so great to see someone that somehow never interacted with ANY part of the portal hype#and just see them having as much fun as back then when it came out#it feels like a time capsule but it's happening today#god

He calls Valve "the Steam company" and points out that they've also released video games as if it's a little known interesting side fact, so this might just be an age issue. He could've been a little kid when we were all hyped as fuck and memeing the shit out of this game.

#OH MY GOD????#THIS SONG?????#IS INSANE???????!!!!!#WHAT THE FUCK????!!!!?#?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!!?!#i have to play portal. oh my god i HAVE to play portal#AAAAAAAAAAA#gr2103

Yeah we all went pretty feral over this when it came out. You remember Undertale? The hype was a lot like that.

At it's peak Portal was maybe bigger even than Undertale. "Still Alive" was the "Let It Go" of nerd culture 2013

And it deserved to be. It's such a banger.

I'm up to the "I dunno maybe children working 13 hour shifts is bad, guys" part of Capital and it feels important to inform people that haven't read it yet that capitalists in the 19th century were not by any means wringing their hands and twirling their mustaches about employing children to squeeze out profits, they were hiring "experts" to write newspaper articles for them, explaining how "well, the socialists have these big demands about an 8-hour work day, and taking Saturdays off, but it's actually just so complicated, it's too complicated for most people to understand, we just NEED to hire children for night shifts because the stamina of their strong, youthful bodies is the only way we can survive as a business! It's science, you see. Economics doesn't work like that, just ask our economics professors at Oxford. You CAN'T turn a profit only working people 8 hours! Trust the experts, they know. It's just so complicated..."

That exact infuriating cadence that you read in New York Times articles, in the Atlantic Monthly, in the WaPo and all the other bourgeois rags where "everything is so complicated, and it's actually a lot more complicated than you think.." that has been around since the beginning. It is nothing new. So the next time you see some op-ed from Matt Yglesias or any of those other guys huffing their own farts about how "complicated" everything is, and how "unrealistic" a 30-hour work week is, remember that Marx was dealing with that exact class of "intellectuals" "explaining" how working 13 hours at age 10 was "vital" to the "moral fibre" of those poor kids.