soundoflaughingwind

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If T makes you gain weight and E and antidepressants do it too, and so does enjoying good food and not being hungry all the time, then perhaps maybe sometimes joy & weight gain come hand in hand and that's good

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when jorge luis borges wrote in a copy of beowulf that he was working on translating, “beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.”

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hirosensei said: I still don’t understand what ads are supposed to do besides let me know that something exists if I didn’t already know about it.

advertising does let you know that something exists, but obviously the way it's traditionally applied goes way beyond that: in your daily life you're already gonna see people driving BMWs and drinking Coke and wearing Nike and yet still get reminders of the existence of these products every day for the rest of your life, why?

the folk explanation of advertising is that it conveys a message, typically explicit in the text and reinforced in the subtext, that the product in question will make you happy and successful and admired and sexy and people respond to that by buying the product, but that's obviously still too simplistic as we've all seen advertising for products we have no interest in and no intention of ever buying and most markets are competitive and there's more than one option and they all advertise, so what gives?

we can get more sophisticated by considering advertising as a dynamic equilibrium like an arms race or an ecosystem where Coke and Pepsi both need to keep advertising even though it isn't helping them gain an edge over the other simply because if they stopped they would fall behind, like trees wasting energy competing to be the tallest for sunlight when in an ideal world they would all agree to keep the forest canopy as low as possible.

or you can see advertising as akin to a potlatch, where the amount spent on it is a costly signal of the power and wealth of the brand, in itself demonstrating confidence and success more than anything that might be in the actual ad itself; corporations burning wealth to convince you that they are winners and you would be wise to affiliate with them.

or we can get a little introspective and consider that advertising isn't just to convince you to buy the product, it's to convince the people who do buy the product that you're convinced that they are cool people, such that they buy it not because advertising works on them (they're too cool to be won over!) but because they believe it works on you (you're impressionable!) except of course that all happens at the subconscious level as it sounds silly when spelled out explicitly.

other explanations for advertising (besides that it works) are that it makes the people running the brand feel good about themselves and is another form of compensation for them, either by boosting their image or giving them the excuse to dabble in the creative arts or liaise with actors or musicians or athletes they normally would have no reason to contact.

and similar analysis applies to all forms of design and marketing, not just obvious stuff like TV ads but logos, color schemes, custom corporate fonts, web design, everything orthogonal to a product that costs money and shapes the way that it is perceived in the market.

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pro-tip: don't ever use the sentence "thousands of years" in your worldbuilding unless you really know what a thousand years is like

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Being a fish in highly oxygenated water must feel so fucking good

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listen, fuck "to each their own", sometimes your mutual gets into some batshit insane rarepair that they're a little embarrassed about and it becomes your sworn duty to put on your jester bells and jingle jangle proudly by their side for moral support. don't be a pussy. it's ride or die motherfucker

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Just remembering the time @confusinglyamusingly took me to a disused former nuclear bunker in Essex for my birthday and we saw the most ominous fucking sign I’ve ever seen in my life

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Incredible things happening on tumblr

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Sleipnir doesn’t make sense

One thing I never really understood was Sleipnir (meaning “slippery one” fyi) in depictions of Norse mythology. Sleipnir is an eight-legged horse, the steed of Odin and the son of Loki, and he is commonly depicted like this:

(image not mine)

But why would you depict an eight-legged horse like this? Horses gallop the same way most other mammals run, with all feet leaving the ground at one point, so having extra feet here doesn’t seem like it could make the horse any faster. I’m also not sure it would give it any more stable footing, since it doesn’t have a wider base.

If you want a stable eight-legged form that can reach great speeds for its size, wouldn’t you want to start with what nature has already provided? Wouldn’t you want something more like… this?

(my drawing)

“But wait!” you might say, “Sleipnir was conceived when Loki, in horse-form, seduced another horse! That’s why it looks all horsey, just with extra bits!”

Well, that’s a good point, but consider that Loki as a deity was originally based off the spider, and his name even derives from the old Swedish word for spider (source). Therefore, it’s not too hard to believe Sleipnir inherited his horse half from his mother and the more spidery half from his father. In conclusion:

Spider-Horse, Spider-Horse, He does spider-things of course! Weaves a web, Makes you gawk, Riding round ‘til Ragnarok! Look out! Here comes the Spider-Horse.

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For me this isn't even about empathy or sympathy (though there's value in those as well), it is just straight-up a human rights thing. Once you have decided that there is *any* category of human that can be treated as less-than-human you've said that humanity is conditional, and so are the rights that come with it. You've already lost, you've granted the fascists their point because *you agree with them* that some people don't deserve to be treated like humans.

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Joy Sullivan, "State of Emergency", Instructions for Traveling West

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idk about you all but the horrors at the lowest depths of the ocean are completely within my comprehension. it's just some weird fish with sharp teeth or like, a big squid or whatever. maybe some huge sea bug. why is this so existentially terrifying to you all

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I love going viral on tumblr.com. It’s like if you stood in a field and said some of the stupidest shit a human being is capable of and then like fifty thousand crows attacked you

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Naeem Khan | Fall/Winter 2025

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I truly hate the word "unalive." There are so many other euphemisms that fictional Italian mobsters worked so hard to provide you with and you just ignore them.

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hello beloveds ☺️

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happy "closer to 2050 than 2000" day everyone