#because there are things we can't know 100% for certain. not even with science. so anthropologists build theories arouns what we do know

[dangerousdan-dan]

I'm laughing my ass off. This one person tried to humiliate me and show how smarter than me she was by quoting a fucking dictionary at me. Let me tell you, the look on her face when I went, "well, I majored in literature and languages..." and proceeded to tell her to fuck off in the most academic way possible.

She was being so condescending and sarcastic at me, quite literally telling me I didn't know what I was talking about, but I just smiled and politely showed her how wrong she was.

It was beyond satisfying.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Library Tips For Magic Practitioners

As a Missouri librarian, I've gotten to know my library district pretty well. So here are some tips for you!

Tip 1: Dewey is your friend.

And by that I mean the Dewey Decimal System (a more in-depth list is in that link) is your friend. It breaks down as follows:

000: General Knowledge (encyclopedias, newspapers, almanacs, etc)

100: Psychology & Philosophy (feelings, logic, friendships, etc)

200: Religions & Mythology (Bible stories, Native American myths, classical mythology, etc)

300: Social Sciences & Folklore (families, career, money, government, etc)

400: Languages (English, Spanish, American Sign Language, grammar, etc)

500: Math & Science (arithmetic, animals, rocks, plants, fossils, etc)

600: Medicine & Technology (inventions, machines, farming, health, etc)

700: Arts & Recreation (crafts, painting, music, games, sports, etc)

800: Literature (poetry, plays, novels from other countries, etc)

900: Geography & History (countries, biographies, etc)

If you're looking for ghosts, divination, and witchcraft specifically, look around 133. That's where I've found most of my magic-based books to borrow. You'll also find books talking about people's near-death experiences or reincarnation around this point.

While fiction technically falls in the 800s, most libraries will have it separate from nonfiction. You may still find things like poems or memoirs in the nonfiction section. Some libraries will have the biographies separated into their own section. A few libraries (at least here in Missouri) will have state-specific sections where you can learn more about local stuff.

Tip 2: There are computers and printers to use.

If you can't research something at home for literally any reason, getting a library card will often grant you access to using the computers and printers in the library.

When using the printer, some libraries will charge based on how much ink you use, other libraries will charge based on how much paper you use, and other libraries will charge based on some other criteria.

Be aware that you lose access to these if you reach a certain level of overdue materials or money is charged to your library card until the materials are returned/paid for or the money is paid off. Luckily, librarians are here to help you and can tell you what's missing.

Tip 3: Libraries have more than books.

Seriously. The main branch of my library district has 3D printers, telescopes, gaming systems to use in-building, and more stuff that I didn't even pay attention to because I was scrambling to learn the behind-the-counter stuff. Feel free to ask us for something and we can see if it's in-county for ya!

Audiobooks are often available on CDs and in the form of Playaways, which are like MP3 players with a single book on them. You will need a wire-connected set of earbuds or a wire-connected headset and batteries. Some libraries sell earbuds, but not batteries.

Large Print books will often have their own special designation as LP, but more often they have their own shelf sections. You'll find a surprising number of Westerns there, but there are Large Print nonfiction books.

Tip 4: Requesting materials.

Not finding something you're looking for? Ask the front desk for help! In Missouri, we have the Missouri Evergreen system, which means we can borrow books from all over the state* on the topic you're looking for.

If we can't find it (or you're in a library that doesn't have such a monumental reach), then you can often fill out a book request form. We will then do our best to order the book for you - but be aware that it could take many months, and most of the time, people will cancel their order of the book well before our budget catches up or we even have time to get the book processed and integrated into the system. Patience is key when ordering a new book.

*At participating branches - not every library district in our state is part of Missouri Evergreen.

Tip 5: Self-checkout is a thing.

At least, it is here in Missouri. If you don't want to interact with the front desk, there are often self-checkout stations for books, DVDs, audiobooks, et cetera. Even my middle-of-nowhere branch has one!

Unfortunately, this won't work for other things, like updating your card once it expires or resolving monetary charges (which will both send you to the front desk).

Tip 6: Search the new shelves.

Some libraries like mine will have specially-designated "New Shelves", where you can find a lot of the most recent releases. If you're trying to find something in a particular number that you saw on the search but can't find it, it may be on the new shelf. These get cycled out whenever new books come in, which may mean that you have several months' worth of new releases to dig through.

In short, I hope this helps you in your search through the library! Best of luck to you!

~Jasper

[valentine-writes]

Spot nation is here humbly requesting again u-u One of your recent works breifly touched on The Spot getting protective over an upset reader. Would love to read your take on expanding that concept. :^] Make it as lighthearted or serious as you like! Maybe the reader has to tell him to chill out instead. Like, we love you queen but take it easy. No worries if this isn't smthn you want to do! Loving your writing in general! Take care :>

:(

「 tws + notes: POSSIBLE FLASH WARNING FOR THE GIF BELOW THE CUT?? (jus to be safe!! idk if this is needed or not-), no tws, unedited, super silly moment from me im not in a slash srs mood 」

「 gn!reader, can be platonic or romantic <3 」

↳ ft. johnathan ohnn/the spot

author's note: AUWWHJWAB HELLO!!! u are so so polite omg thank u so much ! ^_^ i luv tha enthusiasm i've been seein from spot nation tbh!!! o((>ω< ))o i'd be happy to expand on that hc! im gon make it a little teeny tiny bit more lighthearted becuz i luv myself some silly hcs but here we go!! super duper soz if itz a bit short anon </3

▸ i think i like writing the spot as a silly lil dude who is jus tryin so so hard. but also he did work for Fucked Up Evil and Co. (alchemax is just brimming w/ all sorts of brilliant minds with horrifying ideas in the name of science. kingpin ran this shit and would not have it any other way) like he's not beyond being an absolute menace he just didn't have the means for it at the beginning of the movie. so we're gonna keep it lighthearted and silly but,,,

we're gonna keep this in mind too, yeah?

▸ you're incredibly dear to him. he's become a little more protective than he usually would be (can't have you being taken away from him! not after literally everyone else in life life ditched–) and it's just the littlest bit unhealthy.

he really does mean well! you just find yourself reminding him to dial it down a bit.

▸ especially after he's gotten a hang of using his powers?... he's got the means to keep you from harm. he may still be insecure about his appearance, but those thoughts can be (temporarily) satiated when he knows what he can do.

the power at the multiverse, in the palm of his hand

i mean. you can't expect him to not want to defend you with it.

▸ you remind him, time and time again that he really doesn't need to check up on you that frequently. in spite of this, he can't help peeking into a portal, just to check on you here and there.

"i swear to you, i'll be fine." you tell him, time and time again- and he trusts you, he really does. but it doesn't hurt to be absolutely, positively, 100% certain, right?

▸ on the days you're upset because of a particularly bad day (not specifically conflict with people, just little things or internal issues, etc, etc... the Horrors,,,,) he offers the support he knows that he'd want.

if you're a person who's obvious with their emotions, he's pretty okay with picking up the cues you're not doing fine. will start up a conversation and then awkwardly ask if you're doing okay.

it's a little more tricky if you're subtle. overtime, he learns what to look for- little signs that indicate you're not doing well- and ensures that he's straightforward in asking about how you're feeling.

and sometimes, he able to sense that something is off. there's a tension in the air neither of you want to talk about, a feeling in his bones that he can't quite shake. he dislikes this the most. mainly because it's easy to attribute this feeling to overthinking. he'll check up on how you're feeling anyways. even if it takes a while to muster the courage.

without fail, he feels his heart break a bit when you look up at him with the saddest expression he's seen on your face. your frown is almost painful to see :(

he's got a very formulaic strategy in his mind that he uses to help you deal with bad days

something like this mefinks,,,

[ step a: he starts by asking what's going on with you... ask how you're feeling and all that. if your mood is negative, he'll try to ask why and if you wanna talk about it ]

if you choose to take up the offer, go to step b. if you refuse, go to step c.

[ step b: listen! provide support, be attentive. he'll let you rant, scream about it (ok maybe not too loud though, but,, y'know. if it helps, it helps), cry- anything. if you do cry, go to step d ]

[ step c: distract!! distract, distract, distract. you got a favourite comfort show or movie? he tells you: hey, you haven't watched it in a while (even if you have), why don't we put it on? your favorite video game? he'll play with you! talk about your favorite things or talk about nothing while you grab a snack or drink. he knows avoiding stuff isn't gonna work for long term problems, but he's more than willing to cheer you up ]

[ step d: SILENTPANICSILENTPANIC... internally he's just kinda freaking out because it's hard to see you cry. he's not awful with comfort- just a little stiff, y'know? much better with distractions. but in the event of you crying: he'll rub your back, wrap his arms around you. or give you space (depending on what you need) probably goes "hey, no, no no- it's okay, it's okay-" while attempting to soothe you. gives you time to cry it out while he babbles reassurances under his breath. ]

he really does try his best (´꒳｀。)

▸ if you're beefing with someone and it's making you upset, he'll listen to you complain about them. out here nodding and agreeing with you like he was there to witness. again, he's got your back!!

(this part partially inspired by @//spdrslayr 's posts!!) in interest of cheering you up,,, you two make fun of the person.

if you're someone to openly bitch about someone and aren't afraid of getting a little mean behind someone's back,, he's making fun of them too.

of course, if you're like "noo,, but like,,, that's mean-" he's quick to remind you what they did. like they had the audacity, there's no need to be sorry.

if you're consumed by harrowing guilt anytime you're remotely rude (even behind someone's back) he'll tone the jokes down. just a little. he can be VERY a little out of pocket.

likes watching you try not to lose it, stifling laughter, as you share a moment over mutual hatred for said person

"hey– that wasn't.. that wasn't funny–" you're snicker, doing very little to hide the obvious smile on your face. he loves seeing your face brighten, the frown on it now replaced with a grin you just can't hold back

he's gonna crack jokes about them randomly too in your conversations. he's good at holding a grudge yeah,,, but at least in this case he's funny abt it. it's lowkey starting to sound like he was wronged instead of you.

▸ if someone hurts you? that's a whole other story. (hehe. whole- my bad.)

being inconsiderate, rude, and mean to you is one thing, but bringing physical harm to you?

he can't stand the idea that someone would want to harm you. it doesn't matter what happened in the events leading to it. he knows you didn't deserve it. he knows it. the minute he sees the tears stinging in your eyes,, the bruising on your body– the blood–

someone's going to have to answer for it.

(but im not talking abt him tryin to rock someone's shit becuz that would be 10x longer blehhhh :p)

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

I recently reblogged this thread recently and I have to say, it's mind blowing to me. This is a great thread but looking through the replies is mind numbing. Women have children. Aside from RARE exceptions this is a biological fact. The thing that causes this to happen? Sexual Intercourse. The thread is shown here:

Now. Let me start this off by saying that I don't have solid beliefs when it comes to Pro Life or Pro Choice. I really don't. I know several people I follow are pro life and would not be happy with me saying that but I mostly sit on the fence for this one. I lean more towards the Pro Life side of things but I'm honestly not 100% pro life. And I'm not good at articulating why. But that's something I personally have to live with.

However the reason I'm making this post is because of some comments I saw. Specifically from one person. Now, I didn't see the things they were replying too, but I can still approach what was said in the comments as they were statements that need no context to understand. I'll address them kind of together but also separately.

Here are the comments:

So let me make this blatantly clear. All of this is bullshit. All of it.

A fetus is a HUMAN fetus first and foremost. Meaning it is human from conception. And yes. Children have more rights than adults. Why? Because you can get charged for neglect towards a child. As well as other things. Kids have varying protections under the law that adults do not. So it's not, "More rights than a regular person". It's "More legal rights and protections than an adult."

A fetus is NOT a corpse. And even in the case of a miscarriage, there should still be a level of dignity given to the lost life.

"By allowing people to chose to terminate a pregnancy, that ensures both the parent and the child have equal human rights" No it doesn't. It means that the child has no right to life and the mother has a right to destroy said child before it is delivered. Even after said child is viable. When functionally a fetus is viable after a point in time where it can survive outside the womb. If it has to come out either way at that point, why kill it? Oh right, because you don't view it as a living human.

This here is a load of shit. Bodily autonomy stops the moment another life is added to the equation. "It means no one can use your body without your consent."

*SIGH*

YOU LITERALLY CONSENT TO THE CHANCE OF HAVING A CHILD THE MOMENT YOU DECIDE TO HAVE SEX. EVERY THING YOU DECIDE TO DO IN YOUR LIFE HAS CONSEQUENCES! IF YOU WANT TO HAVE SEX AND NOT HAVE KIDS GET FUCKING FIXED! And if you can't get fixed, the reason is because doctors have been SUED for letting people get fixed when they were too young to realized they'd eventually want kids. And after a LOT of legal issues most doctors will no longer fix people under a certain age without X amount of kids. Unless you opt to freeze your eggs first. However there are doctors that will still do it.

If you are so concerned, find those doctors. THEN when you decide ok now I'm ready, I hope you lose in court against the doctors or hospital you sue.

Nah. This is the sentiment of MOST pro choice advocates. It used to be "Safe, Legal, and Rare." Because back then, we understood life started at conception but very FEW exceptions were made. We did NOT call it "Just a clump of cells". We did not call it, "Just some tissue". It was, "As early as possible" "Not after a certain point" and "Put it up for adoption if you change your mind".

Now a days, it's "It's not a life at all, it's just some tissue, and it's only a baby when I PERSONALLY decide it is". <You all admitting you don't care about science or logical fact. It's human in it's developmental stages from the moment the egg is fertilized. And the only reason people DON'T want that to be the understanding is because people think it's their right to have consequence-less sex and have zero repercussions at all. It's people not wanting to take responsibility for their actions.

And here's the kicker. I have casual sex. I LOVE SEX. However, if I EVER got a girl preg and she kept it, I'd be a responsible adult and help take care of it. As the child would be half mine.

And contrary to the idea that denying a woman's ability do "Chose" is somehow, "Boiling women down to just their ability to give birth", No it's not. Not even remotely. It's just saying if you make a choice, and that choice results in a new life being created, you opted to make the choice that created it. It's not making women less than. It's holding men AND WOMEN accountable for their actions.

However, there is another element to this too. Which is another fun part of this WHOLE BS narrative. MEN are the only ones expected to have to be responsible. Both by society AND by law. They also, (in the west) do not have legal say over keeping the kid if the mother wants to get rid of it. So basically, your stance is probably, "Women should have carte blanche to have sex with NO consequences what so ever, but if the mother decides to keep her child the man has ZERO choice is if he has to pay child support in most of the western world. So again, we come back to this narrative of infantilizing women saying they can't be held to account for actions they themselves take. But others can be held to account for them.

How hard is it to stop having sex or don't have sex at all? Really though. Try being physically addicted to it to the point your mind actually gutter bombs into "It's fine I can stop living". A lot of Nymphomaniacs live that reality and often have to be on heavy medications to more or less kill their libido entirely. Except less than 5% of the world populace has that problem. It's a want that you are trying to pass off as a need.

This is an annoyed post mostly and probably moderately incoherent but honestly? This whole argument pissed me off. Women are not toddlers. Please stop pretending that being exempt from consequences is somehow "Empowering" and "A human right". It's not.

[tanadrin]

( My position on Longevity research) I believe animal based research in this field is entirely unjustified, like with communicable diseases , “ no one dies of an infection or childbirth ( especially children) ” is a coherent theoretically achievable goal, with positive downstream effects ( lower fertility rates, fewer future meat-eaters, ) , but people can’t achieve immortality, A human life will always be a minute point of the universe, Immortality is a white whales gigantic maw, How many lives will you sacrifice trying to satiate its endless stomach. How much commodification and torture of your fellow beasts until your satisfied?

"can we engineer solutions to the individual biological effects of natural aging" is an empirical question that has nothing to do with philosophical-aesthetic considerations like "what is the relative measure of a human life in the grand sweep of the universe." i think one reason a lot of transhumanists get really annoyed by these conversations is that they think they're having a conversation about where incremential improvements in medical technology are leading, and how nice it would be to make diseases like cancer and dementia a thing of the past, and to stave off things like age-related cognitive decline or sensory impairment, and then the person they're talking to will suddenly go off on a tangent on, like, the sources of essential meaning for human existence.

and it's disingenuous as hell! or it feels that way--because ultimately what you have to confront is that sooner or later, if you take an out-and-out anti-immortality position (contingent on the answer to the empirical question of "can we indefinitely stave off most of the effects of aging" being "yes") that grandma has to die pissing and shitting herself and not knowing what year it is or who her grandkids are because A Human Life is a Minute Point in the Universe, and nobody actually thinks that's a reasonable proposition.

like, we've made real gains in cancer treatment in the last few decades; cancer is an age-related illness; should we stop researching cancer treatments because A Human Life is a Minute Point in the Universe? dementia is virtually exclusively a disease of age; should we stop researching treatments for dementia because A Human Life is a Minute Point in the Universe? at a certain point you have to own up to your principles and say which lines of medical research you oppose because A Human Life is a Minute Point in the Universe, and it's more important that we all be incredibly aware of that at all times than your kids getting to have meaningful memories and connections with your parents or w/e.

Like jesus, what even is that last bit of nonsense? Barrings some really unexpected turn of events in the biomedical sciences, it seems likely to me that one day--not soon, mind you, but one day--human lifespans might start regularly surpassing the hard ~100 year limit that they have right now, even if we don't aim at "immortality" as such as a goal. Medical science is good, it's getting better, and lots of smart people are highly interested in questions like "how can we improve people's lives and reduce their suffering?" So when do you say "no more"? When do you start going around to old folks' homes and executing people whom you personally deem have lived too long?

It just seems like a really weird ethical stance that nobody who argues for has really thought through. And when all you can do is spin airy-fairy philosophical reasons to justify that stance, when you are inventing reasons that a thing is bad, like imagining some kind of abstract machine into which monkeys are dumped in one end and additional average life expectancy years come out the other, I can't help but think you don't actually have a coherent idea about why the things you oppose are bad.

The ethics of the use of live animals in medical research is a totally valid conversation to have, but it's a different conversation. Its answer does not impinges on the empirical question of whether functional immortality will ever be possible, or desirable. If you want to have that conversation, go ahead, but please let's not have it in my ask box.

[qqueenofhades]

Sometimes I feel like we are all reliving the 1930s, hurtling uncontrollably toward the 1940s and to WWIII. I don't think I'm overreacting when I see what's happening in the US and Italy, to say nothing of Russian aggression in Ukraine. As a historian, can you give me any hope, any examples where events of that era could have taken a different turn and where current times could turn out differently? Sorry to dump my angst on you.

Welp. I've been thinking about this ask for a bit, and I'll try to see if I can say anything that makes sense and is both realistic and hopeful. So here goes.

First off, history is not "fixed." It's easy to look back and say "oh, it could only have ever gone that way," but that's not true. So yes, there are literally countless examples, even in the 1920s/30s period between the world wars, and in the wars themselves, where things could have gone differently. People could have made different choices or acted in different ways, things could have broken different ways, luck could have been bad instead of good, good instead of bad -- etc etc. It's just life, and it happened the way life does: messily, chaotically, accidentally, unpredictably, until it was over and eventually people started looking back at it and studying it to see what that was. But it wasn't predetermined to happen that way, and nothing is predetermined or utterly destined to happen now. Yes, there are a lot of unsettling historical parallels -- war, plague, economic unrest, social inequality, etc etc -- that really makes you wonder if all of human history is just repeating our same mistakes in 100-year cycles. I struggle with this feeling myself, especially since as a historian, I DO know so much about what has gone on and failed to work before, and it astonishes me, not in a good way, that it's still happening now.

That said: people are so used to thinking of the study of history as Finding Out What Happened In the Past, and believing that there is only one singular narrative of what "did" happen, which can be uncovered and confirmed by objective theory and universally agreed truth. This was a historiographic theory popularized by Leopold von Ranke, a 19th-century German historian, who was trying to make the writing of history more scientific and systematic and following the essential rules of natural sciences (as the Germans were doing with a lot of academic disciplines in the 19th century). This had its merits in making the practice of history more rigorous and well-researched, but it also completely discounts the fact that all of human experience, experienced by all humans everywhere, cannot POSSIBLY be objective, or agreed on a single perspective, or represented everywhere. History happened to everyone everywhere, in all times and places, even if it wasn't the things that a certain person felt like writing down for posterity. One of my favorite anecdotes is that of a monk keeping a regional chronicle of events -- I can't remember where, in France or possibly Germany in the early 11th century or thereabouts. Next to a famous date, where an emperor died or a pope was overthrown or something of the sort (apologies again that it's early and I can't remember that either), he wrote essentially, "Nothing much happened this year. My brother who was abbot died."

Anyway, that really just sums it up for me. This monk was living in the middle of major events that would interest later historians, but he didn't know that or see that at the time, and his interest in chronicling this year was to write that his brother, who was an abbot, died. He was experiencing history by living his life and commenting on the places he lived and the people who he knew. That is because history is the monk's brother dying, as much as the emperor being overthrown; it happened in these small personal moments, as well as these huge political things. We see things and patterns in hindsight that look much clearer and put together than they actually were, but it's just the collective sum of human experience, good and bad alike.

As I have always said, people are people, in all times and places, and that means there's always hope, and there's always love, and it's usually right. Let me leave you with an absolutely heart-shredding passage from John Clyn, a fourteenth-century Irish monk and chronicler who was writing in 1349, just as the Black Death was sweeping over his monastery and leaving him as the only survivor. Alone and probably already ill with plague himself, Clyn wrote:

"So that notable deeds should not perish with time, and be lost from the memory of future generations, I, seeing these many ills, and that the whole world encompassed by evil, waiting among the dead for death to come, have committed to writing what I have truly heard and examined; and so that the writing does not perish with the writer, or the work fail with the workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work, in case anyone should still be alive in the future and any son of Adam can escape this pestilence and continue the work thus begun."

And just. My God. Even as he is "waiting among the dead for death to come," Clyn the historian finishes his work. He has committed to writing down what happened for future generations, because he still believed that there would be one. He saw the whole world "encompassed by evil," but he left parchment for someone else to write more, because if anyone should be alive in the future and anyone escaped the plague, they would want to continue the work. Of living, and writing, and doing history, and trying again. And you know what? He was right. Sons of Adam (and daughters of Eve, and children of God) did escape the pestilence. Not everybody died. Society was changed and rebuilt and life went on. The work did not fail with the workman. The future came. And the future will come again, even in the darkest and most terrible of hours.

Hugs.

[w000ble]

TRANSCRIPT - FROM 31:39

Tim: I found out that atoms don't look anything like every atom I've ever seen drawn looks like. (Bryn: No, that's complete lies) Tim: They're all lies! Bryn: Yep. Tim: Because all of the electrons are basically everywhere in a big cloud of potentialness— (Bryn: Yes, absolutely.) Tim: —and so it wouldn't look anything like every atom I've ever been shown! EXPLAIN!

Bryn: Atoms are drawn like solar systems because... apparently people who draw diagrams of atoms believe children are stupid. Tim: I would have preferred a cloud of— look, here is a globe, the atom is everywhere and nowhere all at the same time— again, if you'd have told me that, and that dude's crazy-ass name, I'd have been much more interested in science! Bryn: (Cracking up) Ben: To be fair though, it would make it much more difficult to count the electrons when you were doing one of those puzzles about like, 'we knock the electron out and what isotope does it become' so you have to count the electrons and work it out. Tim: Just dissolve it into a cloud and go, 'best of luck!' Ben: Yeah exactly, exactly you just flick one out of the cloud and like (PFBBBT) 'Have a guess. :)'

Bryn: This is actually an important point about science— is, y'know we talked about science being a method of understanding truth, or not, as the case may be. Tim: It's an onion of lies! Bryn: —and a lot of science is lies, because what science really is, is a model of the universe; of reality. It's not— you know, it is not necessarily a perfect understanding, and especially when quantum physics was being developed, where we discovered stuff like: an electron is actually a cloud of possibilities, we discovered that the universe is much weirder and harder to understand than we could possibly have imagined before, Tim: So we stopped trying. Ben: (Pffffft) Bryn: Basically, yes. What we have to accept is that our understanding of the universe is what we call a 'model' and the model is only useful as long as it makes predictions. But the model can also be useful, even when it doesn't necessarily reflect reality. And so chemists, to understand chemical reactions, and to understand things like isotopes or chemical bonding between elements— their model of the atom doesn't need to care about the fact that electrons aren't little balls of stuff orbiting around the center of the atom. (Tim: Okay. Alright.) Bryn: Their model allows them to make accurate predictions of the real world based on something that is not technically true, but— We've talked about the scientific method— hypothesis, test conclusion. If their hypothesis is a model that, in certain circumstances, we can say, 'an atom works like this,' and it makes correct conclusions, then it doesn't matter that the real picture is more complicated. And we do this all the time in physics as well. So you've probably both studied— y'know back in school— stuff like the laws of motion, and you probably had to calculate cars moving around, or billiard balls, or things on slopes.

Tim: I was asked to, I can't claim that I ever did— but I was certainly asked to.. Ben: Probably, and at some point I was asked about Boyle's law, and shown a spring, and I was like 'ah, (unintelligible), I dunno.' Bryn: (Cracking up) Sure. In all these examples, we ignore air resistance. Unless you're studying— y'know, and depending on what age you're studying these things, you may or may not ignore friction. But we know these things from our everyday experience exist, and we know that if we wanted to get super accurate results, we'd have to include air resistance and friction, but actually the results that we get by ignoring them are close enough that if we don't need to be 100% accurate, if we're just trying to make a decent prediction, the prediction is good enough most of the time.

Tim: It's spherical chickens again. ((I think this is a reference to the previous Tim & Ben do Science episode)) Bryn: It's spherical chickens in a vacuum, absolutely. And it's an important joke in a way, because what it says is, 'well, reality is complex and messy as we've already established, and science helps us understand it, but if science is making accurate predictions, that's really what's important.' And accurate predictions are essentially specific to a certain field or a certain test. If I say, 'well if I chuck this acid and this alkalide into a cup together, I don't need to know what's going to happen with every single atom inside. What I need to know is what's gonna end up in the cup at the end. Tim: There's potentially a lovely analogy, I think, from cartography where they say 'the only true map is the exact size and shape of the thing you are trying to map.' (Bryn: Absolutely.) Tim: '—but best of luck taking that on a short camper-vanning holiday in the Cotswolds.'

END TRANSCRIPT - AT 35:45

And you're telling me we're supposed to be more engaged, as high school students, with a model by some guy named Bohr than the QUANTUM CAT BOX guy??

[dick-chugger]

I'm bored so I will now ramble about gods and science.

I have always been a person who believes in science. Not 100% but like 99%. It is pretty convincingly proven and I can't think of much that contradicts what we know about like evolution and stuff. But also, I am religious (Hellenic polytheist in case you didn't know), and believe in a lot of myths, including ones about gods being responsible for the creation of some animals and plants. So let me explain how that makes sense in my head.

To put it shortly, I don't think gods are suoernatural. I think they're a completely natural part of the universe just like you and me. Their powers seem supernatural to us because we don't understand how it works, but we always thought of many natural things as impossible or supernatural. Not to reference It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia but there's that scene where Mac explains how his religion makes just as much sense as science. You may have seen this image.

While most things Mac says in this scene are insane, he definitely has a point. Basically, his friends tell him that evolution is proven by science, and he argues that many things have been "proven by science" butvturned out to be wrong. Humans' understanding of this world constantly changes, hopefully, to a more accurate direction. So I think it could be very possible that there are gods, and humans just haven't figured out how to prove it yet. In the 1400s people didn't have microscopes and in the 2000s we don't have whatever tools would help us see gods.

Your next question might be "But what are gods in this scenario?" And I think I have an answer to that. Basically, in my opinion, gods are just another type of organism, like animals, plants and fungi. And I could compaew it like this: Gods are to humans (or animals in general), what humans are to bacteria. Both humans and bacteria are organisms but we are so different, that we can't possibly even understand it. We can examine how bacteria work biologically but we can't know what it feels like to be a bacteria. And they can't possibly understand how humans feel. We have brains, they don't. We are so huge compaeed to them that they couldn't comprehend it wven if they did have brains. And like that, we can't understand what being a god feels like and they can't understand what being a human is like. (Except those who have been humans at some point but anyways.) To us shapeshifting, for example, feels impossible. But to plants animals being able to fly must feel impossible.

The hardest question in my reigion for me to answer is some of the myths? "If you believe in evolution, how can you believe that Zeus and Prometheus created humans?" So first of all, I'm more confident with my belief in evolution than I am in that myth. That myth is so old and gone through so many people, that it must have changed. I'm assuming someone once heard it from some god and it got changed and changed over the years. Or maybe someone just made it up. What I think would explain it is, that Zeus ans Prometheus helped with evolution in some way and are therefore responsible for humans' existence. In the same way that humans have bred dogs to be certain way. We didn't necessarily create pugs, but we are responsible for their existance.

Then there is the question of the timeline: "According to myths, Dionysos' mother was a Greek human named Semele, but there is evidence of people worshipping him wah before Greece in it's modern form. How does that make sense?" Again, I think that myth and many others have just changed over time. Maybe his mother actually lived thousanss of years before Greece as we know it, but a few thousand years ago, the myth was changed to take place in Greece to make it more relatable for the people living there. Who knows what actually happened.

And then we're gonna do my last point and finish this post: "Why were these gods only worshipped around Greece?" I think that many gods just settled down there, maybe on Olympus. Far enough from humans that we couldn't see them, but close enough to interact. Maybe once humans figured out how to get on top of Olympos, they moved. Or maybe they're still there and we just can't see them. Like the human-bacteria metaphor I used earlier. There are many myths of gods traveling to other places too or coming to Greece from other places, just as Dionysos' travels to Asia. So yeah, maybe they just like/liked Greece.

Anyways, if this didn't make any sense to you, feel free to ask questions. I just really like thinking about religion.

[breelandwalker]

Hi Bree! I have a followup question to the ask about magic and science. Personally, I can‘t help but conclude that for me, if spells don‘t usually work, I can‘t bring myself to believe in them. Which is probably why I don‘t do them. But I still try to do things with intention, like baking a summer-y recipe on litha, that help me be more in touch with the world around me and especially the kind of… energies, I guess, around me. I‘m not sure if I can consider myself a witch, though, because of that. What do you think?

I think that you're a witch if you choose to be one. Sensing energy or making all the Wiccan holiday observances is not a requirement. I know plenty of witches who don't do energy work or bother with more than a cursory observation of holidays (if they do it at all), and I know at least one witch who is a complete brick wall when it comes to sensing anything. (Her intuition is really good, but she doesn't sense energy or spirits or anything. It's never hampered her work in the slightest.)

If you have difficulty connecting with certain seasons or holidays or places, you don't need to include them in your practice. I post about Midsummer, but I don't celebrate it. I actually really hate summertime because I get overheated easily and high humidity make me feel sick and uncomfortable. So when other witches talk about summertime magic, I can appreciate it, but I don't feel connected to it. But catch me in the autumn and it's a completely different story. Sometimes you need to find the things that work best for YOU, rather than judging yourself by what works best for others. When you try to weigh your own corn in someone else's bushel, you'll always come up short.

As for spells, it's less that spells "don't usually work" and more that we can't and shouldn't expect them to work 100% of the time. Magic always needs to be backed up with practical action and even at the best of times, under the most favorable circumstances, all that magic can do is increase the odds of a desired outcome. If the possibility was already remote or other things need to occur first, that might not be enough. The universe always answers our requests. We just have to accept that sometimes the answer is No.

There is also something called the Open Label Placebo Effect, which was discussed in the June 2022 episode of Hex Positive with my guest host, the incomparable Sedna Woo. The Open Label Placebo Effect is basically the placebo effect when the person receiving the placebo knows they're receiving a placebo and is aware that placebos can still have positive effects. In other words, "I know this is a placebo, but it might help anyway."

For example, you may go through the motions of casting a confidence glamour spell, fully not believing that any magic is taking place, but the ritual of it and the fact that you've done it can still have a positive effect on your self-presentation. If that helps you cast spells (if indeed that's something you want to do), maybe give it a try. (And check out Sedna Woo's YouTube channel, she's really wonderful!)

And again, if what you're doing doesn't resonate with you, try another method. It may take a while to get around to the things that feel right, but keep trying!

Hope this helps!

[straightfromthetorturedpoetsdept]

i think it's quite silly that atheists are still pretending like you cannot prove gods don't exist in 2023 tbh. all gods start out as an explanation for natural phenomena humans could not explain and the god hypothesis has a failure rate of 100% so far for explaining those natural phenomena. for every single hypothesis that god has been the assumed answer for, they have failed. your argument of "you don't know what came before the big bang!" is literally just another god of the gaps argument but updated to reflect all the science we DO know about now. it's extremely unlikely that the god hypothesis will succeed on try one million and two tbqf.

"you can't prove god doesn't exist" yes we can prove that 99.999% of all gods ever created by humans didn't exist. why is your god any different? because u say the things that would prove him false actually prove his existence? yeah okay do u see how crazy u fucking sound?

like why are we still debating this in 2023???? please bro. how is it that every single time we've tried to prove a certain god exists, we come up with a new science field and learn even more mindblowing things in the process, none of which are the result of said god? idk if u wanna believe in santa claus as an adult, that's your business but pushing it onto society as a whole because you've convinced yourself santa is really going to torture you for eternity if you don't please him is like... next level.

[mitigatedchaos]

So, just to clear a few things up with regards to some matters @arcticdementor likes to talk about:

1 - Don't bank on getting more than +5-10 years of lifespan from improvements in medical treatment.

As we've seen with Covid, the replication crisis, and ideological capture, getting actual medical advancements depends on the broader social context and the capabilities of institutions.

You should bet on modest, but real medical progress. Take care of your body and your mind to delay treatment until the latest practical time, when the technology will have had the most time to mature.

If we win the medical science lottery and everyone lives to 150 (and just the other day I saw a commercial pushing for that very number - I think society won't reject it in itself), great! But for that to happen a lot of different things across society have to go right, which they might, but they might not.

2 - Even if you do eventually get life extension treatment, you'll wish you acted more now.

This era is special because certain technologies that might exist in the future do not exist now, much like technologies that didn't exist or weren't widespread in the year 2000 exist now.

This era has its own character that you will get to experience in a way that cannot be reasonably replicated in the future. Everything that exists right now has a tremendous depth of the now in it; simulations are necessarily more limited, and will be treated as less important than the original.

Further, works that are created earlier have an easier time staking out a location in the space of creative works, and have more time to be influential due to having fewer competitors.

3 - Developed countries are projected to have long-term population decline. The cost of labor in terms of assets will increase. You should probably have children.

Assets purchased with labor now will be less valuable in the future, when there will be fewer young buyers, and more older sellers, which reduces their ability to store value.

Having a family is not an absolute guarantee that someone will take care of you when you are sick, or make the right decisions on your behalf when you can't make decisions reliably anymore, or allow you to move in when you have trouble working.

This is because nothing in life guarantees those things. A state bureaucracy could be overthrown or run by the uncaring, or the tax base supporting it could collapse, and so on.

But if you want to up your chances, having children is probably the way to go. You want to make bets across multiple scales.

This is, of course, by far not the only reason to have children. Children don't have anything to pay you with, but they can provide things (like a link to this world) that can't be purchased with money. (Not to mention moral reasons, the joy of seeing a smile on a child's face, etc. I'm not being an economic reductionist.)

But if you're concerned about the economic cost of having children, it's worth it to consider the potential economic cost of not having children.

Likewise, though not all life outcomes are genetic, a lot of life outcomes appear to be at least partially genetic, so you don't have to be a striver lunatic whose existence is a failure if you don't raise the perfect child.

4 - When I point to early versions of advanced medical technologies, I'm not arguing they will definitely 100% pay out; I'm arguing that it's too early to conclude the only path is oppression.

There is no absolute guarantee that nervous-system-controlled prosthetics, tissue engineering, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or epigenetic modifications will mature into low-cost commercial industries. If we knew that they would, that would imply that we already had all the necessary research done.

It's possible that some thermodynamic-like limit in terms of noise at the molecular level will make genetic alterations too impractical for use in practice. But we don't actually know that yet.

Evolution has a reason not to prefer immortal organisms - they don't adapt as rapidly to changes in the environment. Additionally, calories are scarce in the natural environment, so if it requires higher energy inputs, that would also be a reason to avoid it. In both cases, control over genes would be farther from the thermodynamic-like limit of how much you can precisely control genetics in terms of molecules.

Anyhow.

If you decide to go Full Darwin on some health problem and then it turns out you get your hands on genetic engineering for it 20 years later (or it turns out it was really caused by industrial chemicals, etc), then you end up with a lot of blood on your hands for nothing.

Sometimes you need to use force to e.g. take down a bank robber, but immorality corrupts, so it's important to limit immorality, and to be skeptical of calls for immorality.

Agriculture is about 12,000 years old. Modernity is about 500 years old. Mendel's pea plant heredity experiments are about 160 years old. Knowledge of CRISPR-Cas9 seems to be 21st-century stuff.

We really don't know the limits of what can be accomplished. This is a reason to have a diversity of societies, which means having a diversity of countries.

[ratlivesonblog]

Going to try my best to answer this, but I don't know 100% if what I'm saying is even slightly accurate, but let's give it a shot.

Genocide means the end of EVERYTHING. Remember, Sans knows you can reset, so even sparing one monster boots you from the path. Genocide corrupts the entire timeliness from then on, even after you reset. That's why he only fights you if you've killed everything thus far. He knows you can reset and the timeliness will still be intact so long as you haven't killed EVERYTHING. Sans fighting you is supposed to be a last resort, the last thing between you and oblivion. He only fights because you CAN'T come back from Genocide and the timeliness will be messed up.

In terms of him having Papyrus’ mindset, for Sans, I think, it's not necessarily about being a better person but making better choices. Hence why he only fights you on the genocide run. He knows there's a chance you can reset and make a better choice next time, even if the player did heinous things in the last run.

Sans DOES have hope, it's just buried deep down under nihilist and science shenanigans. We're not sure what happened in Sans’ past, but we do know that the knowledge he carries has a heavy burden, so much so that he's pretty numb. However, we know that Sans has that lab in the back of his house with a picture that says, “Don't Forget.” It's up for debate what's in the photo, but if it's any consolation, the photo could've acted as a sense of motivation for Sans to “not forget” the people close to him, meaning that he hadn't abandoned all hope.

It's up for debate if Sans knows about Chara, but we DO know for sure that based on his research, he knows for certain that the timeline ends or at least is corrupted based on what he says during the final fight. “Timelines starting and stopping, jumping left and right…that's your fault, right?” “You'll just keep consuming timelines.” By consuming, he could either mean that by interacting with Chara, we'll have corrupted every timeline from then on, OR we'll just keep killing everything and everyone until there's nothing left. If you do a Pacifist route after a genocide, you can see an extra ending where Chara scribbles out everyone in the photo and reawakens inside of Frisk before doing a demonic laugh, implying that they're going to kill everyone, both humans and monsters, because the timelines are corrupted and Frisk is technically soulless forever.

Sans is lazy, but it seems like his laziness comes from nihilism or depression with lines like, “Just give up, I did.” “You can't understand how this feels, knowing that one day, without warning, it's all going to be reset.” “I can't afford to not care anymore.” There's a link between Sans’ laziness and his being existential because of the prospect of the resets and being powerless to stop it. It seems like at one point before he dove into intense timeline research, Sans might have not been as lazy or hopeless given that Papyrus, who, as far as we know, doesn't know about resets or at least knows as much as Sans does, is in much better shape mentally.

He doesn't want us to kill him, not because he genuinely cares about his life as much as other monsters, but because he wants us to reset. His entire battle is supposed to be a ploy for the player to get frustrated and reset before we get to the end. That's why he says he can't afford to no longer care. He's the last thing that stands between us and eternal suffering for everyone. However, if he wasn't the last one left, if he was free to just die and knew that at least SOMEONE could fight us in his stead, Sans probably wouldn't mind dying right after Papyrus.

Sans is…technically a skeleton, and skeletons do have blood vessels which could technically be the reason why he bleeds (but given that Papyrus doesn't bleed, my theory doesn't hold up that well. So let's just either chalk it up to it's ketchup, or Sans was at some point, a human, or just a different breed of monster entirely, or possibly not even a monster at all.)

Karma is a tricky one given that it ONLY shows up in the genocide route and isn't even discussed, but it could either be just a given power of Sans because of his nature as the moral judgment, or just because it's the judgement hall itself that's causing it because we have so many sins. Either way, it's up in the air. Either way, it has to do with judgment. In terms of invincibility, Sans is canonically a cheater as he attacks us in the menu and attacks during our turn. It's all a ploy to fuck with us. As to HOW he does it, it's a mix between either his nature as the judge as judgment will be delivered regardless of what you hide behind, or because he researched it and…somehow learned to ignore it. He's ignored the other fighting rules thus far, so that latter wouldn't surprise me.

As far as Sans being from Deltarune, that holds weight, but there's a tiny issue with that as Papyrus doesn't know what the Sun is at the end of the true Pacifist Route. However, Sans DOES know what it is, so you could be right.

I'm not sure who Sans was talking about when he said “our reports” but u personally believe it to be Alphys because she's the only one of the main characters who are still alive at this point and it's established at the end of the true Pacifist route that Alphys and Sans do know each other to the surprise of Papyrus. It's also implied that Sans knows about the amalgamates in her lab as he's the one that feeds them (the same food found in the lab used to feed the dog amalgamate is found at Sans’ house.) But this is still up in the air.

I like to believe Sans dusts for the simple reason that the same sound that plays after each monster dies after Sans slides off screen. Can't know for sure.

Sans is a judge. He's also lazy. He knows we have a greater power and in that sense, he gives us the freedom to make choices. He forces us to reckon with our actions. It's not that he doesn't care, but his prevention would do little if anything, so he instead takes a neutral stance and tells us that if we have greater power, it's our job to use it. He can't FORCE us to do anything we don't want to, and he knows this, so the best thing to do is to at least warn the player that their actions have consequences, and then either try to guilt or manipulate them into doing so. He doesn't know for sure that we'll even kill Papyrus, but even if he did, he knows our power far outreaches his. In the end, Sans CAN'T do anything, even if he can. We're the higher being, and he's aware of this. He loves his brother, it's very evident, but he knows that there's a greater chance of us resetting than him doing anything effective. He only continues living in the neutral endings to update the player and goad them into resetting and getting a better ending. We don't know for sure if he's happy, but I seriously doubt he's even a little bit. He just knows we're most likely going to reset and possibly make better choices.

Sans admits that he wouldn't have followed through with the promise had she not sounded so desperate and had her joke telling skills not been so effective. Sans is numb, but he's not emotionless. Toriel's concern is genuine for the most part, and I'm sure Sans knew that, otherwise he wouldn't have cared.

His letterbox is full because Sans doesn't pay his tab, and he has a lot of friends as evident by almost everyone in Grillby’s at least being somewhat acquainted with him.

Anything else? I definitely missed some stuff, but here was everything major.

Oh man thank you SO MUCH for your long answer to my post, ngl i was putting down every thought about him, it's been a good while since i played the game so your refresher was REALLY needed, also you put my thought about the erasing of the timelines in, in such a well way since i forgot to add it 😭

Also if you don't mind I'd like to know your thoughts about what flowey could've meant when he said to not let sans know anything about us, or we'd regret it (i don't really remember if it was at the end of a route or in one of the letterboxes) but thanks about everything you wrote! :D

[the-firebird69]

There are few wars going on there's one in New England over cars and money and the secrets of JC and Mary and wachusett valley and Narragansett and more that was huge probably one or 2% of the warlock will die there today fighting each other and Thanos is going to fail and begin falling and he loses the object and our son is laughing I'm going to be like you and too big to fit in that damn thing and he started laughing again and said what do you want it for grocery shopping you don't really need it the Maxi just grabbing and it says okay now everybody knows my and he smiles it says this is how it is they would just come in and wipe me out silently ooh you would have died like a queef it smiles so that's about right smells. And there's a lot of stuff happening that's one war and it's big and beefy

#there's a huge amount of stuff going on and it can't be helped we have to get things done the other one that's picking up is the war over Florida on the evacuated last night and that's the warlock is still standing about 15%, they were at 20% a few days ago and it's going to drop down a few percentage points and if it's just below that number but it is going on now that people getting up to leave and huge forces are amazing to come here and they're about two or three percent of the remaining population. It's one of the largest wars in history is over Florida and by the warlock against warlock.

-there's several other things happening one of them is a battle to get our son things and it's all over the world and it seems like it's between Cork and Trump and that's what it is Trump is at the post office and he's also getting beat at the hospitals but this is like a huge deal that they can't get through and they're bigger and even go there for a while and it's heated up and it's in every area and every day just like 2 trillion idiots that are gone because of it really is one or two percent a day it's been going on for a few months solid and the numbers are shrinking I don't know 100% about 4 months ago they're down to about 70% and every day now they're losing 5 to 7%, and drinking and once they get to a certain size damn they're going to shrink fast there's another couple wars but this is what heated up it's getting very big

#the war in the Midwest has now expanded for new stuff that's been stored and old motorcycles they insisted on fighting each other more or less it's causing a war there and those people are fighting each other and it's all over their place it's less which is not that much so like 10 big cities 10 medium cities and 20 small cities and goes to the outskirts and the rural area is not theirs anymore and then you go to the cone and the rivers are 350 mi up then they're 2 miles and on the side of East River and the upper Midwest there fighting like cats and dogs over the stuff that goes all they had left and it's really ugly is intense fighting between bja and Trump mostly no it's between the pseudo empire and them and they're going after it pretty hard others are fighting too but these two groups are going at it

#another group that's fighting in casa giant war it's a western Massachusetts and we mentioned as part of the New England conflict but because it's so huge they spread out west to the New York area and one of the pseudo empire bunkers is under siege and they're prepping to attack the others in Northern New England and in Pennsylvania and there's one smaller in Massachusetts and they're going after them and it is beginning today and it will change what's going on we'll see no empire will push them out finally and will probably push Tommy F out

#couple more wars and one of them is very big and it's getting even bigger it's because of the ships getting ready to depart and they think that it's this week and think that the cycles running what's the cycle begins and they know the science I mean they said that's already science and it started but there's two run a series of tests and I haven't seen that yet but they're a big armies going up there there are a lot bigger probably about three quarters bigger than they were last time so it's 175% they're moving out too and those are huge armies it's probably 0.5% of the entire warlock population of what's left working on that 70%

-taking that into account there's a couple more wars it's over the islands all of them are embroiled and minority morlock found out that it's pseudo empire attacking and the warlock and they hit them both and it's the same old thing so they're invading here and yeah that that battle in war is mushrooming and it is getting very big. By the end of the day it will encompass 2 to 3% of the morlocks remaining populace and that is a lot plus and that did not include the fight on the islands they're taking heavy hits and damage from each other totally about 1% more out of the total it's a huge war but the war elsewhere is huge entire in Chinese gigantic it's probably 1/3 of the fight and trying to get here to the West is another third it's humongous and going on now and getting bigger and yeah so far about 7% of their population list of numbers that are materializing right now

#there are other things happening Trump is being a huge a****** and needs to die going to spent he's gone that guy is a piece of crap now. And our son and daughter say we've spent enough time examining this piece of poop and it's excrements and it's gone and we know so he's getting attacked and financial centers and all over the world for stealing money and they're going after him very hard and he's been buying stocks going after higher ups for stocks and yeah okay he's after companies that we supposedly took over now there's a lot of stuff that this guy lies about and we did not buy that many companies and he's a liar and he's taking money from people and taking control and share and stuff like that

Cuz it's last paragraph we're going to publish

Thor Freya

Olympus

Zues Hera

[000life-is-meaningless000]

One horrible thing that I've learned in my life is oddly not to talk to people there's an immense amount of really stupid mother fuckers on this planet it's surprising how many clueless lost stupid human beings will fight truth and reality there's an amazing and I mean an amazing amount of stupid human beings who think they understand something but really have no fucking idea what they're what they understand and they will fight truth they'll fight science they'll fight reality it's amazing it's amazing one out of every million humans is not completely fucking drop dead retarded.

It's God damn incredibly fucking amazing just how many dumb piece of shit are walking around I swear to God we do need ethnic cleaning, I don't give a fuck how taboo this fucking post, cuz we do need genocide we need the stupid people to not exist anymore I don't care if it's legal I don't care with natural disaster we need those dumb brains to deactivate and not work anymore.

Delusional, I got a lot of delusional my God there is a lot of delusional people out there a lot of them are atheists a lot of these people are skeptics and atheists they're extremely mentally ill

They think they can debunk paranormal they think they can debunk all things of the Mandela effect the Mandela effect isn't even a paranormal it's not even a spiritual thing it's Quantum it's fucking Quantum science and he's dumb motherfuckers feel proud of trying to trying to think they could debunk it when the Mandela effect his base 100% and got damn fucking reality it's fucking science trying to debunk the Mandela effects are trying to De-bunk bacteria !

And it goes much further than that it just like no matter it doesn't matter what good you do what truth you tell what thing you've done it's Just amazing Just how many stupid people are out there it's overwhelming this is why I think there needs to be a also meeting rights only certain people are allowed to have sex and make babies and everyone else get their fucking baby ABORTED. AKA FORCED ABORTION !!!!!!!

Only certain hands selected people are allowed to make make babies the vast majority of people don't get to make babies only the strongest and the smartest get to make babies everyone else just fucking Die's !

A stupid person would see that is evil a smart person would understand that we have to get rid of the piece of shits out there

The Reason why we got so many dumb people out there is because stupid people get the parade in the Next Generation keeps getting Dumber also we have a overly easy civilization that makes it easy for every piece of fucking shit to survive every low quality subhuman constant decorating constantly devolving constantly rotting away genetically human being to continue on becoming the next downgrade of the Next Generation

Or, Another downgrade in the Next Generation

. . .

I don't care if I'm an evil person I want all the stupid people to die

I can't stand this fucking world I really can't stand this fucking world it really is a torture upon anyone who's fucking intelligent intelligent people need to get the fuck away from the human race there is I don't want to say surprising there is an overwhelming amount of really stupid people in the world people that can't learn people that think they know everything people that can debunk everything in existence somehow the bunking existence was intelligent somehow debunking everything became the new greater intelligence the buckle science the bunker reality the bunk all that is Paranormal debunk all that is super science debunk all things of the quantum debunk this debunk that when the fuck did debunking become intelligent ?

I really fucking wish how we could we could debunk it most the human race out of existence

I don't give a fuck we really need we really need a cataclysm on the Earth right about now we need something to 💀 the stupid people

We live in unfucking believably Dumb world we really do live in a fucking Idiocracy

I can't stand this fucking planet I hope the fuck the 👽 Gray's👽 The win or loses War, My only point is getting to the end I don't care if they win or lose if they lose the War I get to die and I get to get my spirit out of this God for second fucking place I get to get out of this fucking Idiocracy

💐🪦💐

But they win the war the earth going to look very different

[magickfromscratch]

Hi! Ive read your wordpress blog and a few others where people talk about ritual possession and I found that very interesting! If you dont mind I have a few questions:

What moments did you have when you realised “this is 100% real”? And did the Gods ever act in a way different from what you would expect? And then, is this something that will only happen in groups, or can you do this on your own too?

Thank you, I hope that I will experience this one day too!

It's an interesting question.

I see myself as a natural philosopher or occult scientist rather than as a person of faith. So I will never say that I know anything 100%.

While some people view science and magic as opposites, to me, science is a method, not a belief system. And you can apply that method to anything you can observe.

Likewise, I don't have beliefs, I have models for understanding things I observe. And as I sit here typing this, I fully accept the possibility that my explanations for what I experience may be completely wrong. And I'm ok with that. Hell, I'm proud of that.

You can tell how accurate a model is by how well it allows you to predict what will happen regarding a certain phenomenon. However, any model built from the observable facts will have SOME predictive power, even if it's dead wrong. Kepler thought that the planets somehow fit together in the solar system in some kind of system of Platonic solids inside one another. People at one point thought the Earth was the center of the solar system. It seemed to resonate with what they observed.

The way I do trance with my friends is that we call down a deity into the room first, rather than directly into a person. The medium in question has to be able to feel the deity's presence in a tactile sense before them occupying the same space and doing an alignment between the deity's body and the medium's body.

I consistently observe that people can feel this energy. During the alignment process, people's limbs and extremities will start to move without the medium willing it, even before full possession occurs. And watching people new to the process saying things like "holy shit that's WEIRD" when it happens is also pretty consistent.

But then again, if you know much about trance states, that's not proof that there's actually a deity there. Pre-hypnotic suggestions are just as powerful as post-hypnotic suggestions in some cases. How people culturally expect trance states to feel, and what they expect to happen during them can powerfully shape their experiences. Trance states, hypnotic states, liminal mental states... neurologically, it's all part of the same phenomenon. And it's no guarantee of 'accuracy', even if the trance is deep.

Much more convincing to me are the experiences I have had where people called down a deity and tranced, and I felt absolutely nothing. The air did not move when the deity came down, I did not feel the rushing of energy or heat or cold over my skin, and when I looked at the medium, I discerned no second presence within them, even though I fully expected to. If I can expect to feel an extra something, if I can expect to see an extra light in the medium's eyes, if I can expect to feel something on my skin, and I am surprised to note its absence, then it validates for me the times that when I felt it, it wasn't just because I expected to, and it wasn't just in my head.

The unexpected, in general, is what sells me on the realness of the phenomenon. Real forces of nature do things you don't expect. People have written entire proofs as to why bumblebees can't fly, and it took a long time before anyone really understood why they could. They had to look deeper based on the surprises in nature before they could come up with theories of aerodynamics that had the capacity to predict such a thing as a flying bumblebee.

Hermes doesn't always behave as I expect. I recall one time trancing him, and he lost his temper at someone. That was a really unpleasant experience. The guy deserved it, of course. He was a scum bag, a sexist, and was actively making anti-consent comments during the devotional, in addition to insulting both party guests and his hosts. But I think it must have taken hours for my heart rate to actually return to normal after the deity departed. And yeah, that guy was like, 'oh that wasn't really Hermes that was a fake deity' because his other option was to admit he was wrong and that a deity he worshipped was actually mad at him.

But the fact that Hermes had that setting? I mean. I'd never seen it. I'd never imagined it. I figured he could just stay calm and use persuasion for everything, right? And that whole thing was insane. People were telling me that he pulled that dude aside, and it was like there was a cone of silence in that small room. No one could hear what the god was saying except that one dude. And then he BOLTED and was dead certain, not that I was channeling nothing, but that he'd encountered a medium carrying a metaphysically potent evil demon.

Could that human have been correct that it wasn't Hermes? Sure! But consider the message. "If you don't wake up and smell the consent culture, you have a hand in undoing our community." That's what this 'demon' said. And this was prior to the "me too" movement, I think, if only by just a little bit. Which he told the guy all but privately so as not to humiliate him publicly. So evil. Much malevolence. Very demon. Wow.

But then again, I also believed strongly in the importance of consent culture. So even at that, ymmv. And the cone of silence thing is WEIRD, right? But even though I was working in a Hellenic framework, and even if I'm not the right archetype of person to call on Silence as a power, it's still something that one of my (non-Hellenic) magical systems can consistently manifest. So maybe the weird magical effect came from somewhere other than the god. And you can, absolutely, do this all day, and second-guess yourself into the ground.

And that brings me to my last, and possibly most important point: it's fine to ask yourself if it is real, but a far more important thing to do is to ask, "Is this spiritually fruitful?"

Are we giving deities a chance to speak, or giving our clergy a bully pulpit? Are the messages we receive helping people and communities to grow, or is it causing an increased level of fear, anxiety, anger, angst, and strife? And that's a question you can really only answer on a clergy person by clergy person basis, or maybe a community by community basis. And the answer generally revolves around another question:

Have your mediums done their shadow work?

Well? Have they?

[supergay-supergirl]

i look for a picture of you to keep in my pocket (but i can't seem to find one) -- chapter one (1540 words)

or, what if in episode 4x19, Lena told Kara she loved her?

considering making an ao3 because I'm hoping to do something a bit longer with this. if you read it lmk what you think!

Chapter 1: American Dreamer (4x19)

"What does—love—feel like?"

Although she was fairly certain the question was rhetorical, and it didn't call for a yes-or-no answer, Lena couldn't help but agree.

On the mounted flatscreen, Dreamer—young, vibrant, trans Dreamer—looked into the camera. Suddenly, Lena's clothes constricted her. This morning, they'd seemed practical—dark, maneuverable, appropriate for work—but now, they felt like camouflage.

In a moment of weakness, she rocked back in her chair and put her hands between her knees, pressing her fingertips together in the warmth. She hadn't done that since she was little; it was one of the first things Lillian had trained out of her. She'd done it in front of Andrea back in school, when no one was around. And then a few times as an adult, but those didn't count because they were with—

Kara.

"Oh, my… you're leaking."

Brainy was right. She'd been trying to ignore the tears rolling down her face, probably ruining her makeup—she needed to go, to compose herself, to regain control of the situation—

It's Brainy, she reminded herself. He understands.

Slowly, in her mind, she sat back down.

"I always considered myself strong, brave," Lena said through shaky breaths. "But to share yourself like that, I—" A sob choked her, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to contain it.

"If I am understanding Dreamer's words correctly, none of us should be afraid of who we are," Brainy said carefully, and Lena opened her eyes. "Nor should we fear sharing that."

He understands.

"I feel so—paralyzed right now because I'm not able to, I'm—not able to move forward." To move on. "I can't find Lex, I can't fix James…" I can't tell her.

I'm so scared.

Brainy stepped around her to take the opposite seat.

"I understand," he said, "that you have been betrayed by many people in your life, Lena. I know that feeling too. But if you want to be trusted and accepted, then you must also trust."

His words were simple, as they always were. And yet, as they always did, they sent a spear directly into the part of Lena that she didn't want to touch, the part that was still raw from every hurt she'd shoved into a box over the course of her life.

"It will be risky," Brainy continued. "But I can tell you that if you close all doors, you will have a 99.9% chance of sorrow."

100%, she wanted to correct him. Nothing in science was completely precise, but she knew this the same way she knew she'd still be working nights fifty years from now, the taste of scotch and betrayal festering side by side in her mouth, and Kara wouldn't be there to ease the glass from her hand and hold her until she fell asleep.

But here was something to hold onto—not Kara's hand, but the suggestion of it; not a future, but the first twinge of pain that hinted at growth.

Dawn doesn't come unless we want it to, Dreamer's words echoed in her head. But we don't have to wait for the new day. We are the new day.

Any reaction required energy. That was why plants needed sunlight to survive and grow. Even when she was with Kara, Lena had been living in the dark.

Maybe it was time to take the dawn into her own hands.

-

When Lena walked into CatCo, it felt like a completely different place. Before, she'd made an effort to be larger than life, to make a good impression on everyone in the office. Today, she was just… a woman. Frankly, it was terrifying.

When Kara smiled at her across the floor—a little sad, a little cautious, but mostly relieved—her fears melted away.

"I'm sorry I was so short with you," Lena began as they walked out onto the balcony in perfect lockstep. "You were just trying to do your job."

"Friendship is the most important job," Kara countered, "and I was so focused on my article, I forgot what really matters."

There was that word again. Friendship. And just like that, everything—what she was about to do—became real.

"No, Kara. The truth is… even if you'd been standing right next to me when Lex escaped, I really wouldn't have let you be there for me."

"What do you mean? Why?"

Lena looked away, off the balcony. She rubbed her fingertips together.

"Because I'm the one that's keeping secrets."

She'd meant to go straight into it, but instead, she turned to something minutely easier to talk about. "Eve wasn't the only one working with Lex, I…" She inhaled, holding back tears. "I was working with him too."

Kara waited.

"He contacted me four months ago. He knew I had the Harun-El. He had cancer and he was afraid to die." The excuses slipped out one after another, the same things she'd been telling herself since Lex had appeared at Luthor Mansion. She was in control. She was capable of logical decision-making when it came to her brother. She could handle her emotions. "He's my brother." I loved him. I hated him. "And in my heart, I knew he was manipulating me, but—I believed him, and I helped him, and he betrayed me." And I love you. "And I was weak, and I will never forgive myself for that."

She swallowed as another sob threatened to overtake her. "I can only imagine what you think of me, Kara, I don't blame you—"

"No. No." Kara pulled her into a hug, and something in her snapped. She crumbled against Kara's shoulder, crying.

"You are a brilliant, kind-hearted, beautiful soul," Kara said. “Your brother asked you for help, and in life and death situations, you help family. No one can judge you for that.” Lena sobbed harder. “I’m so sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me.”

It was a kind of catharsis, an amplified version of the feeling that had gripped her with Brainy. Until today, she hadn’t cried—really cried—in months. Discounting the times when alcohol had lowered her inhibitions, she hadn’t cried since Lex’s trial.

But as much as she wanted to stay here forever, she wasn’t finished yet.

“Kara,” she said, extricating herself from the hug. “There’s something else.”

She gave herself exactly one breath to steel her nerves, because she knew if she took another, she’d never do it.

"I love you," Lena said. "I always have."

"Oh," Kara said.

-

Kara Danvers was not Supergirl.

Kara Zor-El was Supergirl, and Kara Danvers was, arguably, Kara Zor-El. But most people only saw one and the other, ignored the mild-mannered reporter and blindly trusted the superhero, because Kara Zor-El was messy. Because she still felt a spike of fear every time she stepped into an elevator. Because she'd broken Alex's arm once and injured dozens more, back when she was a teenager trying to navigate alien powers in a human town that would have ostracized her if they'd known. Because she bore the weight of a dead planet on her unbreakable back.

And Kara Zor-El knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lena Luthor didn't want messy. Lena loved her because the two of them were diametrically opposed, perfectly human and humanly perfect. How could Kara tell her that for every drop of poison in the Luthor bloodline, there was one in the bloodline of the House of El? How could she reveal her cracks without bringing their entire relationship down?

Friends keep secrets all the time, she tried to reason with herself. They're called boundaries. If I'd told her everything about myself when we first met, she would have thought I was crazy.

But this wasn't just a boundary, or even a secret. You couldn't chip off the chimney of Kara Danvers and affix Kara Zor-El in its place. The surface she showed was a real part of who she was, a facet she loved and cultivated and lived every day. It was her foundations that were a lie, and that, to Lena, would be the greatest betrayal of all.

Lena's walls were back up. "I'm so sorry, Kara, I don't know what I was thinking—I shouldn't be burdening you with this, especially with everything going on—"

"No," Kara interjected, still half in her head. She took Lena's hands. "You are not a burden."

For a few seconds, they stood there, quiet. Then Lena spoke again. "Please say something, Kara."

I have to tell her. If telling the truth destroys our friendship, then so be it.

But it's not just our friendship, is it?

Lex had just escaped from prison. He'd preyed on Lena's trauma, manipulated her into curing his cancer with the same tactics he'd used to control her as a kid. Her assistant, whom she'd trusted with her every fantastical hope for the future, had stolen her research. And just last week, she'd been forced to relive her childhood yet again on Stryker's Island.

She would break. This would break her. And if that happened, Kara didn't know what either of them would do.

So she did the only thing she could.

"I love you too," she said.

It was true.

But as relief soaked Lena's face like a lungful of yellow sunshine, Kara's heart sank into the pit of her stomach.