otfh

[otfh]

The horizon of Full-Time Work is approaching me, like the terrible front of an oncoming storm. Soon I'll run out of things to do in grad school.

There is a sense of forboding hanging over my future boss, they're supersitious. They keep rolling snake eyes at game night and they never draw community chest in Monopoly. Three mornings in a row, a seagull takes a massive dump on their car windscreen. One day, a promising young graduate shows up at the firm they own. Optimistic, smiling, corporate drone material. Something in my future boss' gut tells them that this will lead to some terrible chain of events and they shiver. Instead they choose the next applicant, a woman who seems earnest, but is in need of some experience in the finer points of business etiquette.

Of course, this eventually ends with me eating their heart. This time, I have made sure they are not my only reference.

I actually do feel like the "unemployed friend on a Tuesday" meme actually helps de-stigmatize unemployment because it frequently affirms that when you don't have a job you're more likely to be getting up to some weird shit rather than just lazing around. But I also feel like the unemployed friend is frequently up to some random shit because there's a whole pile of miscellaneous life tasks that full-time employment keeps people from. The unemployed friend is helping their cousin move, or babysitting, or checking in with a neighbor with mobility issues. The unemployed friend is a walking thesis on the inflexibility of our current labor landscape and just how much work exists outside of work.

[otfh]

Juxtaposition is the kidknapper of glee

[otfh]

Firenze 22.1.2000, Gerhard Richter

[otfh]

the hacker IS the garlic, and he has just rooted himself to the underground internet cable.

[otfh]

Awesome

My grandfather is gay, when I visit him I like to go through his photos to scan and preserve them. This is from somewhere in the 70s.

[otfh]

What a beautiful town. It's nice to see apartment blocks that do not look like every other high-rise on earth.

Apparently these high-rise buildings are made of mud-bricks and have been around since 1533.

Shibam, Yemen

[otfh]

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951. She was a historian and philosopher who studied Nazism and Stalinism. She was also, very crucially, a German Jew who escaped the Holocaust.

[otfh]

Agree. I just scraped into my postgrad courses, which have lots of hard calculus I could barely grasp. There was this difficult problem in a group project which I solved, as I remembered a couple of simple algebra tricks from high school. Somehow, even the straight-A students did not know it. Everyone at the table called me smart. I was very proud I was able to contribute, even though I was the worst student in the course.

[otfh]

You’ve gotta point there.

You've gotta love Jews more than you hate Nazis.

You've gotta love trans folks more than you hate TERFs.

You've gotta love your unhoused neighbors more than you hate the billionaires.

You've gotta love immigrants more than you hate ICE.

You've gotta love queer kids more than you hate christian fundamentalists.

You've gotta love fat people more than you hate the diet industry.

You've gotta love disabled people more than you hate the insurance companies.

You've gotta love your fellow humans more than you hate the worst that humanity has to offer. You don't have to like every person you're fighting for, and you sure as hell don't have to give up your righteous anger, but hate is ultimately corrosive.

You've gotta love.

[otfh]

Everybody loves the World Wide Web, but no-one wants to talk about Big Spider.

[otfh]

People did not often pray to Alphonse the Grudgekeeper.

He was the god of feuds. The god of long rivalries. The god of enemies you have known and hated so long, their enmity defines you. The god of hate that you have fed and nurtured for so long, that it burns with a flame so hot and life-nourishing that it may as well be love.

Instead of prayers, people would invoke Alphonse's name for curses.

Instead of hymns, people would sing bitter break-up songs in his temples.

Instead of burnt offerings, people would write hate notes to those who had wronged them.

Every time a letter that should have stayed a draft was delivered in anger, Alphonse smiled.

It is said that Alphonse keeps a book of grudges, in which you can find the name of anyone who has ever wronged another. He sorts them into categories and lists them in order of his favourites.

Justified grudges. Righteous grudges. Petty grudges. Grudges long ended and grudges and linger long as radiation.

As I said, most did not pray to him by name, but every sweetly distilled and long-brewed enmity was ambrosia to him.

Still, on just the right occasion, it was appropriate to invoke the god's name directly.

If your grudge was coming to an end. If you finally faced your nemesis on the killing grounds. If you would, at long last, discover which if you would end the other.

Then you would begin your reckoning by saying:

"Let this settle it, once and ... for Al."

[otfh]

This is a very cool creature.

heart eater

twitter/ insta/cara/ store

merry christmas and happy holidays~

[otfh]

They say that Reagan's views were often at odds with his actions. He is often described as contra dick tory.

[otfh]

It is strange going into a profession where you are considered Good At Math by much of the population because you can do stuff with derivatives, but my actual understanding of maths is limited to a narrow toolset, where if I tried to do anything at all with outside of that I’d be completely floored.

Like if you say the word “proof” at me I just cannot. Pure maths to me is this incomprehensible, majestic beast which I can only approach from a great distance. Its practitioners are almost as mysterious to me as they are to the average person.

[otfh]

It is true, dear soul, that you have come to nothing. Luckily for you, nothing matters.

[otfh]

Unfortunately, Don Quixote lost the fight to the windmills the first time.

Wind deers :] weird mimic-esque animals that look like wind turbines. they settle down in one spot and open their face panels during the day to absorb solar energy & they often camp out for weeks by windmill farms before moving on. People sort of just leave them alone when they show up

[otfh]

If you are to undertake this journey into the Fitful Lands, where the Dream encroaches onto this world, then beware the Subego Tree.

It is a pernicious creature, for it has not distinct shape or bark or pattern of leaf. It mimics whatever forest or glade it grows in. You can tell it from the others for it will offer the greatest shade, hold the most raindrops from your back, promise you the sweetest shelter.

You must learn to read these signs if you will travel close to the realm of Hypnos. That which has crawled from those territories will feel as real as anything Waking, for a party of your mind will always recognise it as familiar. As *known*.

This is the trick, you must learn to loosen your perceptions and listen when dreamlings whisper too loud that they are true.

You might also know the Tree by the dreams you have when you rest beneath it. But, of course, by then it will be too late. When you sleep under its boughs, your subconscious will spin stories that are ... not quite prophecies. They are paths you can walk. Journeys you could take. The shadow you could cast if only you grew into your best self.

You will wake feeling full of potential and possibility.

This is a tragic lie, for this is exactly what the Subego steals from you.

It plants its seeds like burrs in your mind. And as they begin to spread their psychic roots, they will reach out through probability for the direction with the most energy.

It is not just a cognito-hazard. It is a farivore. A devourer of destiny.

Left to its own devices, it will spread through the whole landscape of your psyche, replacing your strand in the web of fate with a bright green shoot.

You will find yourself thinking hubristic thoughts. You will make choices that sow narrative. You will be twisted into a lesson.

Somehow, your story will end with you walking alone into a quiet natural place. And whether it is a punishment, an escape or an ascension, you will become a tree.

And then, someday, another poor traveller will sleep beneath your branches.

If you catch this infection in time, however, there is a cure. Though it barely deserves the name.

You see, the seed is too aggressive and too tenacious. Wound all around the core of you, and the core of the you-that-will-be, if you tear it out then it will extend its thorns and rip your mind to shreds.

So the treatment is this: surgical psychic removal of the entire ego.

Luckily, the mind is complex and the mind is malleable. The sense of inner self the Tree has planted its seed in is an illusion. A composite of soul and needs and memory; a hodgepodge of living burning data stored in electricity, spirit and meat-chemistry.

But the seed believes this illusion. It relies on it.

So when you remove it, the seed will not even notice it has lost its prey.

Then all that's left is the harrowing work of rebuilding your identity, feeling like a stranger in the jagged cavern of body and soul that remains. Wondering if your destiny even still belongs to you.

Oh, and of course, you should probably also kill whatever grows out of the seed that is eating your old ego.