#article having

[crabussy]

slightly furious reminder that fish do in fact feel pain and do in fact experience fear and distress when in pain since people seem to love spreading the myth that fish don't feel pain. what is it with people assuming a creature is incapable of feeling pain or emotion just because it doesn't have complex facial muscles. come on gang

[elexuscal]

"it's concerning if university students are genuinely struggling to read full adult-level books for class" and "don't overstate the reporting of a single news article" and "if this shift is genuinely real, it's reflective of broad curriculum changes in lower education levels, probably at least in part due to remote schooling during COVID, and doesn't mean the new generation is being willfully Stupid and Vapid" and "when reading for personal pleasure people should read whatever they like without shame" and "reading from a broad variety of genres, styles, and authorial backgrounds will improve your understanding of both literature and the real world" and "actively mocking people for their tastes in books does not encourage them to become more adventurous you're just being mean" and also "but seriously adult books are not just boringly pretentious nothingburgers padded with pointless sex scenes, and claiming they are just shows how little you've read" all can and should co-exist.

[grimbeak]

woag. i'm sure this character who i've never heard of before in my life would do completely ethical things to me in my Smart Home and that there are not two games entirely based around why this is a bad idea

[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

[hinamie]

newest issue of first years fashion just dropped

[violetsandshrikes]

Really cool write up that links to the original paper that just came out this year (2025)!

This is a really cool example of foraging innovation.

[aintnopartylikeaprideparty]

please be what i think it is please be what i think it is please be what i think it is please be what i think it is please be what i think it is ple

FUCK YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[madqueenalanna]

been seeing homies get deep into "the terror" and making me want to rewatch SO i spent two hours in the dead of night reading the wiki/the subreddit/other linked articles and like. one of those articles was deadass fucked up

there was a woman who spoke inuktitut who was writing a book containing a lot of inuit oral histories, and in nunavut she was able to hear passed-down recollections of when survivors from the franklin expedition were passing through

and like. i can't imagine being an inuit family/group, knowing that europeans exist but having never seen them, seeing 8-9 shambling, blue-skinned, cold-to-the-touch out-of-their-minds white men come wandering by. they invited the men inside their igloos for warmth, for food, to be hospitable. the men refused to eat, refused to speak, and when trade was offered, clutched their possessions close and refused to entertain the idea of trade. this was, offputting, to say the least. the group set them up in their own igloo, with their own fire, and left three whole seals for them to eat. and then they fled cause what the FUCK get out of there. they came back in a few days to check on the strangers. the three seals were completely untouched, while all of the men had killed and eaten each other

i mean. fuck dude. there are obviously pretty dark angles to view the franklin expedition from– honestly can't think of a good angle, it's pure colonialism and british exceptionalism– but that specific interaction, that inuit group who were living lives as normal until a dozen fucking walking dead showed up and did cannibalism. no wonder that story got passed down, i'd be shitting my pants if i saw that

[tchaikovskyed]

"Realistic take on arthurian legend" uhhhh no thank you. I would like my arthurian legend to be full of whimsy and unserious gags. Stop giving us that zero lighting game of thrones-esque gritty nonsense and give us more arthurian legend in all their extravagant colours and silly quests!!!

[deadandphilgames]

i am in awe of dnps ability to not only never cross the line of an outright confirmation of their relationship status, but then pick up said line, move it further along and not cross it again

[chongoblog]

So a lot of political scandals just dropped in the last 24 hours

-NC Governor Candidate Mark Robinson's online posts were found, including some VERY graphic descriptions (like seriously, do not read if you're not 18) of him cheating on his wife, calling himself a black Nazi, and expressing support for reinstituting slavery. His email address was also found on Ashley Madison

-Robert F Kennedy Jr was revealed to be cheating on his wife with a reporter (and that isn't even the weirdest thing since federal law enforcement opened an investigation into him allegedly cutting off the head of a whale and taking it home with him less than 24 hours ago)

-GOP Senate candidate who is the CEO of a bank has been found accepting millions of dollars from what seem to allegedly be Mexican drug cartels.

-Finally, probably the biggest bombshell, according to multiple eyewitness testimonies within sealed sworn affadavits, Congressman Matt Gaetz allegedly invited a 17-year-old girl to a drug-fueld sex party

And we haven't even hit October, folks. Again, these are all still breaking news stories, so things are subject to change, but oh man oh man.

[arttsuka]

People need to stop blaming 'parasocial relationships' when it's revealed to the public that a famous person has done something controversial (or even a crime) and the public is upset. 'I can't believe xxx did that!' doesn't always mean that the person who said it has a parasocial relationship with xxx. Usually it's just our faith in humanity, we want to believe that everyone has some basic human decency (especially someone we might admire) and it's only natural to be disappointed when we learn they're a bad person.

[inkskinned]

you know, you know. no gods, no masters, no kings on pedestals. everyone is fallible. death of the author. you know! you are balanced about your intake of media - you allow the wiggle room, the grace, the gratitude, the skepticism. nobody above criticism.

but still. a weird gut-punch feeling, something akin to betrayal. you read the article. surprise! an author you love is actually: a serial fucking predator.

well, shit. what now. no, you knew he was a person (all people are), but now you're wondering - what have i overlooked by accident? what messages have i internalized that are strange and cruel? and also, like, what the fuck?

his actions lay a thick glaze on top of everything. like each place is now ruined, opaque in a new way. but okay, fine, you've done this before. you knew better, right? you've been betrayed by many a cherished childhood author.

still, this stickiness. fuck. can you pick up that book again. will you read it to your children. you've recommended it to others - will you ever do that again? and of course, of course, no parasocial relationships. you were theoretically above this kind of sentiment. but the artist informs the art, right.

so it's not something as clear-cut as feeling he owed you, specifically (a stranger) better behavior - just that you kind of, in a distant and odd way... sort of trusted him to do better. it's not like a real trust or something speakable, just the faint hope that the product (good books) was a thin representation of the soul. now it feels like the product (good? books?) was a mask. in some small or insignificant way, your previous support of this person lent them power. your money and your time and your laughter.

and the thing is - you have this terrible, echoing sensation. how many times will this happen? over and over. you find out that the singer you love is actually a predator. you learn over drinks that your favorite high school english teacher is in jail for what he did to her. you listen to the news idly and suddenly discover that a woman you used to idolize has been abusing her kids for an actual eon.

what can you touch without the static melting off. you can't even really complain about it too much (you were supposed to know better, and besides, you don't want the same re-split "it's not your fault, love what you love" basic advice), but now it's here. somehow, it feels like - you let him into your life.

it's not that things need to be pure or an artist has to be like, endlessly perfect, mindful. demure. it's more just this terrible truth that has been replayed through your veins so often it feels criminally vain. power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. did you want any one person to be worth that power?

it's just that he wrote books where he seemed to understand that. he seemed to know about hierarchies and unfair systems and bigotry and privilege. you thought they were books about what it means to struggle. you thought they were about having power and still using it for good rather than for control. he spooned you a narrative of being a good guy, a kind soul. you fucking bought what that fucking monster sold.

maybe that's why they were fantasies, after all.

[marxistlesbianist]

Something to be said about how ironic it is that some people in the US celebrating the assassination still view the revolutionary justice of communist parties as evil. Like, killing billionaires is good but only when it’s disorganized.

Anyways, if you like the execution of an exploitative insurance CEO, then you’ll love the People’s Republic of China!

[hesbuckcompton-baby]

people who don't study history will simply never understand the joy of reading historian beef. there's nothing like it