spoekelse - Tumblr blog

[spoekelse]

I low-key love the fact that sci-fi has so conditioned us to expect to be hanging out with a bunch of cool space aliens, that legitimate, actual scientists keep proposing the most bizarre, three-blunts-into-the-rotation "theories" to explain the fact we're not.

Some of my favourites include:

Zoo Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they're not talking to us because of the Prime Directive from Star Trek? (Or because they're doing experiments on us???)

Dark Forest Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they all hate us and each other so they're all just waiting with a shotgun pointed at the door, ready to open fire on anything that moves?

Planetarium Theory: What if there's at least one alien with mastery over light and matter that's just making it seem to us that the universe is empty to us as, like, a joke?

Berserker Theory: What if there were loads of aliens, but one of them made infinite killer robots that murdered everyone and are coming for us next?!!

Like, the universe is at least 13,700,000,000 years old and 46,000,000,000 light years big. We have had the ability to transmit and receive signals for, what, 100 years, and our signals have so far travelled 200 light years?

The fact is biological life almost certainly has, does, or will develop elsewhere in the universe, and it's not impossible that a tiny amount of it has, does, or will develop in a way that we would understand as "intelligent". But, like, we're realistically never going to know because of the scale of the things involved.

So I'm proposing my own hypothesis. I call it the "Fool in a Field" hypothesis. It goes like this:

Humanity is a guy standing in the middle of a field at midnight. It's pitch black, he can't move, and he's been standing there for ages. He's just had the thought to swing his arms. He swings one of his arms, once, and does not hit another person. "Oh no!" He says. "Robots have killed them all!"

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“Nguyen Thi Hien, 19, head of the militia squad in Yen Vuc in Thanh Hoa Province, survived more than 800 airstrikes and was buried alive four times in B‑52 bomber attacks. 1966. Mai Nam/Patrick Chauvel Foundation” (x)

[spoekelse]

The discourse on terrorism is generally devoid of historical perspectives (‘terrorists are pure evil’ is one popular trope) and lacks any positionality because, it is assumed, terrorists simply live outside of morality and social norms. But such ahistorical and essentialist attitudes came to haunt this discourse when a former terrorist, Nelson Mandela, became a Nobel Peace Prize winner, or, more recently, when Osama bin Laden, a former American ally, ‘turned’ terrorist. The discourse on terrorism also does not account for state terrorism, whereby state institutions such as the army or police inflict violence on civilian populations, as was the case in Nicaragua and Chechnya (and by the US via the Contras). This last point is particularly missing from the discourse on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. All attacks on Israelis, whether inside the 1967 border or outside, whether targeting soldiers or civilians, are dubbed terrorist attacks. But dropping a one-ton bomb from an Israeli airplane on a five-story Palestinian house, in which a militant may be present, knowing full well that dozens of civilians will be killed, is hardly ever described in Western media as terrorism.

Dorit Naaman, 2007

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vote green no matter wheen 🫵

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"the 5th celebrity you have saved on your phone -" you and i live in vastly different worlds

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Walking around the apartment going "butter dog... he's the one with the butter" in my best anime dub boy protagonist voice until my roommate kills me oppa gruesome style

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"The 'stretchy dog test' might be a better test, rather than sending a biopsy."

- on diagnosing Ehlers-Danlos in dogs

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You know when someone goes through your blog on a mass like-spree for a fandom? I love those like, 19 notifications in a row. it’s like “Ah, I see you’re well into a fixation. God bless.”

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SEMEN RETENTION-- WRAPPED!

You conserved 137ml of fluid!

You didn't jack off 140,346,824 times!

The thing that got you most horny was... The rich loam by the river delta!

Your warrior essence grew by 84%! WOW!

The thought that kept you from masturbating the most was... The hard red clay of the valley!

Your male spirit takes the form of the Conquering Lion, and its element is the Roaring Thunder!

If you jerked off now, you could save all of us

[spoekelse]

mailed flower 🌼

find me on twitter @/driftwoodwoof

[spoekelse]

it's funny, I was talking to someone last night who didn't really know what an illustrator was. so when I introduced myself as one, he gave a speech that would've probably gone over well with a gallery artist, but which was precision-tailored to make any illustrator within a 50 mile radius go into eyes-glowing-red kill mode.

his speech was about how there is a difference between craft and art, and how people can practice craft (as in, skillfully execute a painting) without it having any artistic merit.

so I'm someone who gets paid to paint waffles for restaurant menus and dinosaurs for museums exhibits, and AHHHHHH! AHHHHHHH! you can't make art without it being something something you've made. does that make sense? like every illustrator I know has an individual way of approaching any given imagery that is informed by a lifetime of inspiration, and of passive intake of culture, and of the specific mistakes they make because of whatever their particular mass of grey matter deems as important thing to render or unimportant, just fuck it up.

I can make something that is informed by both a century of Canadian print-making and by my own particular neurosis, and it can also be commissioned commercial imagery that I regurgitate without care because I want to pay my mortgage. everything is art, nothing isn't art, art is something sticky and impossible to shake off of you.

anyway he got very wide-eyed and said "I'm sorry if I offended you," so today I feel a bit bad for having gotten so, uh.... excited.

[spoekelse]

As usual, any donation to the cause above is eligible to receive an art commission from me of equal monetary value, see pinned for details!

Another fundraiser I trust!

He has a tumblr, and it seems he's very new to it and doesn't know how to use it properly so he ends up looking like a bot but dw he is legit. I had a long conversation with Mahmoud over DM's just to go over everything. It all checks out. Please consider donating to get his family out of Ghazzah! Additionally, his brother-in-law is special needs and cannot be taken care of in a tent!

[spoekelse]

making posts about how beer tastes bad is a lot like that painting of a jester harassing a bunch of dogs while leaning over a wall, except the jester is below the dogs and trying so hard to reach them, and all the dogs are extremely beautiful and strong, and have a wonderful community built on love, and they never want for anything. they never want for anything.

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i wanted to draw falin again after yesterday's ep 😭

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Listen man by not voting for Jill Stein you are handing Trump the presidency, there is zero chance of Biden winning and your democratic purity politics are going to make the orange man win again. Vote green no matter wheen