#ADDRESS OF

[hamletthedane]

I just found the earliest email I ever sent from my email address, and it’s the funniest goddamn thing I can possibly imagine a fourth grader sending her teacher:

(Context - my fourth grade teacher was on maternity leave, and the class had conferenced at recess regarding the poor state of the classroom goldfish’s tank. We decided to inform our (24yo, new mother) former teacher of the dire situation, and I was selected as the duly appointed representative for this solemn communication.)

[chongoblog]

WAIT

I JUST REMEMBERED HEARING AN ELON MUSK QUOTE WHERE HE TALKS ABOUT HOW HE BELIEVES CHESS IS "TOO SIMPLE" OR WHATEVER AND HE SAID HIS FAVORITE GAME WAS A GAME CALLED "POLYTOPIA"

I JUST REMEMBERED THAT IVE PLAYED POLYTOPIA

It being Elon's favorite game (or at least one so important to him that his biographer dedicates a lot of time to it) is.....really really funny.

Basically, imagine Civilization, but as a mobile game. So like if Civilization Revolution was even more dumbed down (that's a Civilization insult. That's devastating. It's devastated right now). For what it's worth, it's not a bad game. On the contrary, from what I could tell in the little bit of time I played it, it's a perfectly competent game with good design. But it's not a deep game by any means. I played through it once, won easily on my first go, then saw that the other playable characters had barely any differences between them.

Like, not to imply you can judge a book by its cover, but here's what it looks like

I came across an article by Dave Karpf discussing this exact thing, and I think it describes it wonderfully

[girldraki]

this is insane

[monstermonger]

We'll meet again someday

[c-rowlesdraws]

Hey tumblr.

I want to share a post from The Guardian that was published today.

“Inside the building, staffers said that Doge cultivated a culture of fear.

“It’s an extreme version of ‘who do you trust, when and how?’” said Kristina Drye, a speechwriter at the agency, who watched dozens of senior colleagues escorted out of the building by security. “It felt like the Soviet stories that one day someone is beside you and the next day they’re not.”

People started meeting for coffee blocks away because “they didn’t feel safe in the coffee shops here to even talk about what’s going on”, she added.

“I was in the elevator one morning and there was an older lady standing beside me and she had glasses on and I could see tears coming down under her glasses and before she got off her elevator she took her glasses off, wiped her eyes, and walked out,” she said. “Because if they see you crying, they know where you stand.””

Everyone should read this article about “DOGE” tearing apart USAID (and then read more reporting about how they are being allowed to do the same to other US federal entities). Elon Musk and his minions are violating our highest laws and destroying lives and livelihoods in the US and abroad. USAID is less than 1% of the federal budget— this isn’t about cost-cutting or “investigating fraud”. It’s about cruelty and seeing how much unlawful devastation and psychological warfare they can get away with, with the intention to repeat this process at one federal agency after another. They already have access to IT systems at the Treasury, NOAA, and other agencies, and have taken over OPM (essentially HR for the federal government), using the latter to send demeaning and threatening e-mail blasts to civil servants.

I’m urging everyone who reads this to recognize what’s happening here and how abhorrent and frightening it is. I wager that even most people who wanted Trump back didn’t want a centibillionaire technocrat making unilateral decisions on which parts of the federal government to “feed into the wood chipper” (as he has described his team’s actions at USAID in a recent post on X, The Everything App).

Please call your elected representatives and urge them to act against Musk now— before his actions make our legislative branch totally irrelevant.

I’ve been seeing posts about Musk’s coup-in-progress going around on here, but I feel like a lot of people still aren’t aware of the extent of it, and I really want to help get the word out. I’m heartsick for all the civil servants at USAID and beyond. Some of them, their unions, and some Democratic congresspeople and others are speaking out, but these workers need us everyday Americans to speak out for them, too.

Thank you for reading. And anyone who isn’t American, please keep us in your thoughts.

[haveihitanerve]

I don’t think we, as a fandom, discuss how absolutely WILD it must have been for Tim to switch from idolizing Dick to having him literally being his brother who will casually chug a gallon of milk just to prevent Tim from getting any.

Like personally if fucking Zendaya or like Orlando Bloom showed up at my house and started treating me as a sister I would get WHIPLASH

[hippiedippieblondie]

Wikipedia editors performing an invaluable service to society

[ellorgast]

The thing that I think really sets Murderbot apart from a lot of other robot media (particularly mainstream entries like the I, Robot movie) is that bots and constructs aren't a uniquely oppressed class, and humans aren't a uniquely privileged one. A lot of robot media rings a bit hollow because it portrays humans as all living a lavish, comfortable lifestyle, free from the burden of physical labor or control by their corporate overlords, and it's like. I think if the rise of generative AI has proven anything, it's that corporations and billionaires have absolutely no interest in making life easier for anybody, but will gleefully use new technology to make life infinitely worse if it means an extra buck in their pocket.

We are shown over and over again throughout the Murderbot Diaries that humans are mistreated just as badly as (or sometimes, in MB's own opinion, even worse than) bots and constructs. We see humans stripped of their rights, reduced to corporate assets to be bought and sold, sent into suicidal situations, abandoned and discarded as things. We see humans trapped in multigenerational labor contracts -- people born into an indentured servitude that requires them to pay back their food and lodging to the same company that will not let them leave.

None of these are hypothetical scenarios. These are all things that happen to real people in our world today.

And that is a huge part of why it resonates so much. The overarching theme of "capitalism is hell" actually means something because it isn't only applied to the fictional dynamic of bots vs humans. The theme is constantly reiterated through the humans themselves.

And that's also why it's so important that MB demonstrates empathy for and solidarity with humans who are themselves victims of the system. Because ultimately, that's one of the main things the series is about. It's about what it's like to be simultaneously a product, and victim, of a corporate hellscape.

That theme simply can't work if the humans aren't also forced to navigate that issue. If the story can't acknowledge that right now, in our own world, there are humans facing these same problems, and that these human rights matter quite a bit.

[specialagentartemis]

My feelings about queernormative worlds in SFF is that I can often enjoy it, but I rarely believe it.

Almost everything surrounding gender, sex, and sexuality, and all the different social norms and expectations that different cultures build up around them, derive ultimately from the various realities of sexual activity and pregnancy: who can have it, who can’t, for how long, who does have it, who doesn’t, and what that means for society. I’m not being bioessentialist here, because human bodies are all quite different and different cultures develop different ways to react to that, and rates of and reactions to fertility can be different, and what different sexual and gender roles mean in different cultures and who can and can’t embody them can get extremely different. (Hell, how pregnancy itself even works can be different depending on where you live, what your lifestyle is like, and what your diet consists of!) But like, the reason gender even matters, historically, has been because of reproduction. And the reason reproduction matters, in agricultural societies anyway, has very often been because of property ownership and the need to work on farms.

So I’m totally here for queernormative worlds. But to interest me you have to answer the questions of: okay, but how does your culture work though, and how is kinship structured, and how is reproduction seen, and how is property inheritance understood, and how does gender fit into all this, for me to feel like you’ve actually tried. (And don’t say that there ARE no norms, so no one falls outside of them. There’s no culture where that’s true.)

Sci-fi worlds can get away with this easier than fantasy worlds, imo. Partially because they can posit that it is our future but we’ve gone through all of the Social Justice Struggles already and solved them, but also because technology can really alter all of these topics. The Vorkosigan Saga, for instance, makes it clear that Beta Colony is as gender-egalitarian and free-love as it is because of contraception and uterine replicators, which FULLY decouple “the ability to have children” from “the need for anyone to be pregnant.” This is huge, and the Vorkosigan Saga treats it as appropriately so! Ancillary Justice is another one that thinks a lot about how the genderless culture that decenters romance as a core social organizing principle works. But I read so many low-ish-tech fantasy worlds that are happily queernormative and gender doesn’t matter and they just feel shallow. I don’t believe this world. I don’t dislike it, exactly, I just don’t believe it, I don’t believe people would be like this because you’ve put no effort into imagining a world that works like this makes any sense.

Which is totally fine for people’s D&D games and cute oneshot comics and personal works and such, but when you want me to take your worldbuilding seriously, you’re going to have to convince me! And a lot of it is not convincing.

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

H... hello billford people...

If I didn't have commissions to work on, I swear I'd be drawing nothing but these two all day. I'd have a fucking graphic novella by now dksjhjskgh

But these are some doodles I've done while slacking off. I really hope you like them, I've honestly been excited to throw my stuff into the tumblr billford pile (seriously, there are SO many of you making artwork, and you're all so talented?? It's wild. It's like christmas every day.)

So.. I hope you like these! I like to think about Ford when he's all gullible and infatuated with his muse... before he wises up to bills bs.

[oncillabrigade]

Finally read Robins!

I have a lot of thoughts, but I just want to say this panel is the funniest thing I've ever seen:

[verday]

It was so important to me that Stolas was able to be sad throughout the entire episode. Usually media likes to rush a character's grief/depression/sadness. Like "Stop moping around" or "get over it already." Depression doesn't just go away. It is a persistent feeling of sadness.

His depression was also presented through various emotions/emotional states.

Lethargy

Crying

Anger / frustration

Self-blame

Not wanting company and being emotionally drained and unable to reciprocate

We even see him Smiling / Laughing which is so important because we see that he is still in there behind the sadness and tears. His laugh is not as lively as it once but he is still capable of smiling and finding joy.

His problems weren't fix in the end and his sadness didn't go away even if he has someone who loves him by his side (and even if he loves him too). And I think this is one of the best depictions I have seen of a depressed character in media in a long time.

[uncanny-tranny]

[charitydingle]

What We Do in the Shadows — 2.03 “Brain Scramblies”

[empressofthewind]

what's funny to me about Death Note is how casually the authors will drop the most insane lore you've ever heard and then just move on as if it never happened. like here's a girl whose parents were killed in front of her and who also would have been murdered by a crazed fan if he hadn't mysteriously dropped dead before her eyes. yes we WILL proceed to call her stupid and annoying for the rest of the series and never address how this affected her. btw did we ever mention that L is an orphan who has been working as a detective since he was 10? and that the orphanage where he grew up is now dedicated to raising child prodigies on the principle that their entire existence is worthless if they can't live up to L's standard? no? well he's dead now so here are his successors. yeah one of them joined the mafia at 17 and commits violent crimes because he believes it's the only way to prove that he's worth anything. yeah the other one had to take on the only case L couldn't solve entirely from scratch at age 13 with no prior detective experience. no the implications of this won't be addressed. also one of the new anti-Kira investigators has a vendetta against Kira because someone close to her was killed by him. will that ever be explored in canon, you ask? well you're not going to believe this-