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One of the few comedians i've ever seen with a genuine sense of whimsy, vitality and wit.

some dudes like to talk a big game about how comedy suffers when people are afraid to offend but man, Mitch Hedberg was a white dude working in the era of peak offensive edgelord and his shit holds the fuck up so while most comedians will never come up with anything as timeless as “if carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up” they could at least make an effort

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A wish bounced off the moon and broke up on reentry, blanketing the southwestern USA in shards of high velocity desire.

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Wait, Dee *wasn't* focused on trapping spirits and demanding stuff from them? What was all that Enochian business about, then?

Dee Lowkey saw himself as a prophet. You can think of his whole system as like, placing increasingly high-level phone calls up the angelic hierarchy to request special access to divine knowledge. Each successive rank of angels comes with its own requirements and tests and guardians. The sigils and whatnot are part of the "passwords" you need to input to make the phones work.

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I covered this jar of old pond water to keep mosquitoes out, didn't realize there were that many mosquito larvae already inside...

An entire generation apparently

....who couldn't get out, but still mated and made another generation.

It is true that they don't actually require blood to at least lay SOME eggs. I always thought maybe they still needed some nectar but I guess not, the adults are ready to mate the instant they emerge so I guess in an enclosed space they find mates well before they run out of nutrient fuel.

I can never open this. I wonder how long it can keep going. Larvae just feed on bacteria and algae, which are fed by a combination of sunlight and the dead adults.

Just happens to be a jar I'd put this custom sticker on when I was keeping leeches in it. (centuries old japanese art of a "bug" that causes illness)

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What do you think defines a "demon"? While vampires have been interpreted in various ways that differ significantly, at least they all generally share the same trait of "acts as a parasite towards humans", or your definition of "feeds in unusual ways".

But the definition of demon is even more nebulous: they might be based on the Christian idea of demons, or a different religious and cultural tradition alltogether: various supernatural creatures in asian folklore are also called "demons", the yaksha from buddhism and hinduism have been translated as "demons" in english.

Or they might just be strange-looking monsters like in The Owl House.

Demons and trolls might be the mythical creatures with the widest variety of interpretations in fiction.

Yeah, once you get outside of one specific culture, the word "demon" is pretty nebulous. If I was pressed to come with a definition that tries to encompass everything that's been given the label, I'd say a demon is a creature from another world that is antagonistic towards humans. Note that there is a lot of flexibility in how your interpret this definition. The other world can be the afterlife, or simply a parallel world, or even just a piece of land that humans haven't colonized yet. The creature in question being "from" there can have multiple meaning - they could have been born in this other world, or they could have immigrated to it (as souls do when they travel to the land of the dead), or they could be manifestations of that other world itself, more personifications than people. And "antagonistic" doesn't necessarily mean evil - demons can be nuanced, they could be mischievous tricksters, they could even possibly have some justification for disliking humanity. The fact is that demons must be on rocky terms with humans at best - otherwise they wouldn't be demonized.

All of this said... I don't really like how the word "demon" is used to cover so many different concepts from so many different mythologies, especially because of how prominent the Christian connotations of the word are and how often they end up coloring how we interpret mythic figures from non-Christian cultures. Like, the word "yokai" is often translated as "demon," and there are a lot of Western works that treat Yokai as the same kind of always evil punishers of sin that Christian demons tend to be - but yokai are a lot more complicated in morality than that, being a lot closer to fairies than anything else from the Western world's mythologies. Calling an oni or a kappa a "demon" may catch the attention of a Western audience faster than calling them yokai, but I don't think it helps spread an accurate idea of what those creatures are supposed to be like.

(this is the same problem I have with calling all reptilian monsters in various world mythologies "dragons," BTW)

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my prison abolition post continues to generate incredibly stupid comments already addressed in my prison abolition post.

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shoots a beam which turns you gay and makes you believe in shintoism. shoots a beam which turns you 1) homosexual and 2) causes you to believe in the shinto religion. what if i shot a beam that had two effects; the first effect was to make you attracted, principally, to other women, and the second effect was to cause you to see the kami inhabiting all natural phenomena? suppose that I fired some kind of weapon or device at a you, a "beam", which cause you to lust for dames and also to adopt the beliefs of the "shin-to" cult from far off Japan?

so I was thingking about this idea: what if I used a beam to turn you shinto and gay? what if I fired a beam that made you gay and shinto? what if I used some kind of beam to make you gay and shinto, I'm wondering? so I was wondering: what if I turned you gay and shinto (with a beam). me: uses a beam, you: gay and shintoist. me (using a beam) changes your religion (shinto) and sexuality (gay).

I was thinking about shooting a beam at you and changing your religion (to shinto) and you sexuality (to gay). I've decided to shoot a beam at you to turn you gay and shinto. what if I turned you gay and shinto with a beam.

have you ever heard of this religion, shintoism? well in this religion they believe that there are mysterious beings called "kami" which inhabit the world and specifically, natural phenomena. the wind might be a kami, or a mountain might be a kami. and one of the greatest kami is the sun goddess, amaterasu. have you heard of this sexual orientation, gay? when you're gay, that means you're attracted to people of the same gender as yourself. you might want to have sex with them, or form relationships with them. have you heard of this physical, phenomenon, a beam? a beam is a stream of radiation traveling in one direction. for example, a laser is a "beam" of light. have you ever heard of this concept, changing? that's when one thing becomes another thing, that is wasn't before. for example, a caterpillar "changes" into a butterfly. have you ever heard of this other concept, causality? that's when one thing happens, and makes another thing happen. if the first thing hadn't happened, the second thing might not have either. for example, when you hit a baseball with a baseball bat, you're "causing" the baseball to fly through the air. when one thing causes another, we say that the second thing happened "because" of the first.

now put that all together. I'm going to use a beam to cause your sexuality to change into gay and your religion to change into shintoism.

you know about the religion of shinto, from the nation of japan, do you not? you know what gay is, do you not? you know what a religion is, right? you better. you know what a beam is, I bet. you've heard of "becoming", right? do you have an ontology of becoming? you know what cause is for sure. everybody and their dog knows that. you know what sexuality is?

but here are some more. you know what the self is, you are yourself. and you know what others are, right? you're not a solipsist? and you may have heard of the past, but have you heard of the future? annd just one last question, how do you feel about, uhm, conjunction? and you're familiar with the concept of USAGE, right? the instrumental?

well guess what: I'm going to USE my beam to cause your sexuality to become gay and your religion to become shinto.

I'm going to turn you gay and shinto with my beam. what if I turned you gay and shinto with a beam? how about, with a beam, I turn you gay and shinto. I was thinking about turning you gay and shinto with a beam. I was thinknging about using a beam to turn you gay and shinto. lately I've been turning people gay and shinto with beams of mine and I'm considering doing it to you. I will turn you gay and shinto with my mean. I might turn you gay and shinto with my beam. using my beam, turn you gay and shinto.

my beam -> [(you -> gay) and (you -> shinto)]

you gay and shinto with my beam. my beam you gay and shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. I beam you gay shinto. Ibeam you gay shinto. Ibeam you gay shinto. ieam yougay shinto. ieam yougay shinto. Ieam yougayinto. Ieamyougayshinto. Ieamyay shinto. ieamyaynto. ieamyaynto ieamyaynto ieamyaynto ieamyaynto ieamyaynto ieamyaynto emyaynto emyaynto emyaynto emyaynto emyaynto emyayntoemyayntomyayntomyayntomyanomyanomyanomyanomyanomyanomyanomyanamyanomyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyanamyana

myana

myana

myana

nice

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Not immune to little ceramic animals

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blocked someone for having "strong opinions" on how much they hate tofu . she isnt a joke to me thats my fucking wife youre talking about

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teeny tiny textured glaze testers

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Koki Tsujimoto — Auspicious Moon Rabbit (mineral pigments and japanese paper, mounted on wood panel, 2023)

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Riding the subway is a lot like being in the airport, which is to say pleasantly powerless. You could try to get work done but it's not actually plausible. Read a book! People-watch! Sit placidly while listening to music! It is not exactly heavenly but it is the only way heaven could actually be, the only eternal pleasure, without drama, without conflict, without disappointment, that the human mind is capable of, in my humble opinion. Heaven is an uncrowded train car, peopled with amnesiacs, who all think they've got about 10 stops left til they get home, which is just enough time to get a couple of pages in on a book.

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