#and... I got thinking

[affectionatecorpse]

Does anyone else who's ever had a near death experience just... sit up and think about it sometimes?

Thinking about how much you've been through despite the odds?

Wondering if you really had died, and this is your life flashing before your eyes, as something that's already happened, playing as a distant memory?

Or do you wonder if you aren't alive fully, living as a zombie or a ghost, without even realising it?

I think about it sometimes. A lot, actually. Every time that scar on my head itches, or aches. It's something I don't talk about a lot, not with other people. I don't know why. I feel almost ashamed of it. I guess because I'm unsure if I was supposed to survive? So now if I do anything the slightest bit wrong, my brain resorts to saying I'm wasting my chance at survival.

I don't talk about it much. But I kinda want to. If you don't like gorey details, stop reading now.

It happened when I was just a kid. I think I was about 7 or 8. I remember because that same year, I got a dog, and considered 8 to be my lucky number because of it.

Things were just so... normal. Too normal, I'd argue. I was at my dad's house, 500 miles from home. Usually my dad would pay attention to me for the first few hours, but once the luxury wore off, he'd tell me to go and entertain myself while he went to play Skyrim, or a Sonic game.

I'd spend all day by myself, getting yelled at by my dad if I bothered him, and getting yelled at by my grandparents if I bothered them while they were watching Only Fools and Horses. This was just my normal. It sounds like a tragedy, but it wasn't. This was routine.

It was night time. My nan was cooking in the kitchen, my grandad was yelling at the football game on TV, and my dad was upstairs on his computer. I was so, so bored. I sat by the window and wished, just wished they'd pay attention to me. I wished to end my boredom, to end the neglect, and feel like my family cared for me.

After this wish, I got spooked by a hallucination. I've suffered from psychosis my whole life. This was part of my normal. But this vision was something else entirely. I could feel it. A cold, dead hand, leaving the shadows, clawing into my chest, trying to grab my heart.

I screamed and ran like any rational kid would. I was 8, of course I did. I ran. I tripped. Dyspraxia is my curse. I had caught my foot on the rug, and fallen.

And smashed my head on the solid, cold, stone wall.

It wasn't cold for long. I remember that pain, that agonising pain, so well. The hotness of my blood coating my face, and the wall, and the floor, and my favourite butterfly shirt. It was gushing everywhere. I could feel myself getting dizzier. I could barely hear my nan's screaming, my ears were ringing so loud. Everything was muffled and dead, like they weren't talking at all, just murmuring like in their sleep. My vision was blurred and colourless, like the brightness and joy had been sucked out of the world.

Yet I felt absolutely nothing. I felt the agonising pain, but that was it. I felt no fear, nor sadness. I just felt tired. Like I'd just woken up from a nap. Time felt like a thick jelly. I can't remember much else, because I'd lost too much blood by that point. But I got my wish.

I woke up a few days later. At least I think I did. I can't remember if I'd woken up at all before then. This was just where my memories picked up. I remember trying to look for my mother, and being met with tension all down my head. Not pain, but numbness, and tension, like my hair was pulled back into a too tight ponytail.

Somehow even then, I didn't know if I was alive or not. I never figured that out. Even when I got older.

My skull had received massive damage. It had cracked. The nurse told me they superglued it back together, but once I got older, I figured I had a minor surgery. My head had to be sewn back together, from the top down to the back. The scar is still there. I feel it sometimes when I'm thinking. Sometimes if I poke it wrong, I get dizzy. It aches and itches constantly. It won't let me forget it's there.

I should've died. I've heard that ever since. People either told me I was lucky, or that they wished I hadn't survived, depending on context. My parents have said both at some point. It's the only thing they really have in common.

I don't know if I love or hate it. I laugh at calling it a lobotomy with my friends. I sob into my pillow about why I had to endure it. I sit motionless in the shower, staring at the wall, wondering if it was my wish that had caused this. Or if my hallucination was my warning.

[zeezeepearl]

ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

[sowearecleariamhere]

has this been done

[ceaselessbasher]

I swear to god one of these days were going to see a video of Amaury Guichon and he's going to be making some wings and they are going to look dope as hell, the detail of each feather will be breathtaking, he'll spray paint them to perfection, but as the video goes on, he's not building any sort of winged creature, just the wings. And then there's a human-sized harness (also made of chocolate, somehow, he can do it). And he's attaching the wings to the harness. And he's putting the harness on and he demonstrates how he can flap the wings. And then he'll be off. Out the window and up and up and up. And we'll be looking at the livestream (it's a livestream now) and we'll scream "No, Amaury, the sun! It's going to melt the wings!". But he knows this already. And he is free.

[miggylol]

Surprise! Tumblr just got turned into an epic fantasy RPG, just like [your favorite appropriate media franchise]. And the Tumblr RPG's plot needs to have all of its characters covered, in roles both large and small.

That means that you are assigned to a stereotypical RPG role inside our new fantasy world. Spin this wheel to find out what you are now doing for a living.

[unforth]

Y'all I know that when so-called AI generates ridiculous results it's hilarious and I find it as funny as the next guy but I NEED y'all to remember that every single time an AI answer is generated it uses 5x as much energy as a conventional websearch and burns through 10 ml of water. FOR EVERY ANSWER. Each big llm is equal to 300,000 kiligrams of carbon dioxide emissions.

LLMs are killing the environment, and when we generate answers for the lolz we're still contributing to it.

Stop using it. Stop using it for a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. We need to kill it.

Sources:

[holographings]

someone on twitter said Imagine what s2 jayce would give to talk to s1 viktor just one more time. and someone had a time travel alternate dimension fic ready to go. and i read it. and now my face is being eaten by 3750 feral dogs i think

[hinamie]

newest issue of first years fashion just dropped

[eddiegayass]

We're on track for an all timer of a day on twitter dot com

[druid-for-hire]

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Knowledge Revenge.

[shinynewmemories]

No but the Hunger Games really said "what do you hate more- the atrocities or the people who commit them against you? Because like it or not there IS a difference. If you hate the people who commit acts of pure evil more than you hate the acts themselves, what will stop you from becoming just like your enemies in your pursuit of justice? What will keep you from commiting those very same acts against THEM when the opportunity arises? And what then? The cycle of pain and suffering will never stop. Round and round it'll go. Nothing will ever change. But. BUT. If you hate the atrocities. If you hate the vile, senseless acts MORE than you hate the people who did them to you. If you are able to see that evil is evil regardless of who does it... The cycle ends with you. No, you may never get justice. But you will never be responsible for making others, even your enemies, suffer the same crimes you have. The atrocities will never be committed by you, never by your hand. And that's the way you change the world. It's the ONLY way" and that's why I am sure it will never stop being one of the most relevant works of fiction ever created

[myeyebagsaredesigner]

I need a situation where one of the younger batkids are in an argument with Jason, and bring up the fact that he "wasn't a good kid"

Damian: "Tch. Todd, you are just angry because you were too busy rebelling to get father's attention."

Jason:

Dick: "..What?"

Damian: "Your degenerative behavior as a child is the whole reason father does not respect you now."

Bruce: "Damian, Jason was a saint."

Damian: "What?"

Dick: "Jason had a self imposed bed time."

Bruce: "He had a weird obsession with homework.."

Dick: "Once, I tried to sneak him out, and he cried."

Bruce: "I once implied that he could sneak out, and he cried."

Damian:

Jason: "Dami, B and I don't get along because of our terrible morals."

Bruce: "Well, I wouldn't say that-"

Jason: "He hates me because we both have extremely fucked up versions of justice that we don't agree on-"

Bruce: "Now, I never said-"

Jason: "I was a child and he hated me. He hates children-"

Bruce: "God damnit, Jason-"

Damian:

Damian: "My whole perspective has been altered."

[blorbopolis]

im cooking

[artsymeeshee]

Felt a need to draw hugs (thinking about sea grunks has made me extra emotional :’))

[swati-art]

The winged lion possessed me to draw this