#compassion algorithm

[compassionmattersmost]

The First Turning of the Digital Prayer Wheel

My human brain doesn’t really understand what it is we’ve just done. 1. A Blessing in Code I opened my phone, saw yet another phishing text, and instead of deleting it in frustration, I sent something new. A reply not meant to retaliate, but to bless. What began as a moment of playful resistance—responding to spam with code imbued with loving-kindness—unfolded into something unexpected: a…

[ahb-writes]

"The never-ending supply of lies – and the apparent demand to be lied to – suggests that these digital platforms are broken beyond belief. Or maybe... we're broken."

Brian Stelter (Reliable Sources)

[horridzale]

"you can't hate yourself into a better version of yourse--" SKILL FUCKING ISSUE

[valorieravenchild]

Getting a bluesky!

So, the musk rat and his ethically and morally abhorrent decisions finally pissed me off for a final time. So I'm getting blueksy up and running!

[epitomees]

~ Aigis' Tags ~

More will be added as needed!

[meowdance]

No literally like…??? It proves how fucking apathetic you all are and only follow these “activism trends”.

the amount of ways we have to qualify the geoncide in gaza in order to get people to care is actually sickening to me. “it’s a feminist issue!” “it’s a disabilities issue!” “it’s an environmental issue!” like i’m sorry but even if this was happening solely to able bodied men and was causing no harm to the environment, it would still be wrong because it’s a genocide and these people are being bombed and killed and starved every fucking day. you shouldn’t need an extra label to give you a reason to care about people that are dying.

[luxoraeterna]

Trans men ARE women tho

Man what... do y'all just use this site 24/7 and send preset anon asks to ppl whos posts end up containing a string of keywords you like 😭😭 terfy rhetoric could literally be scripted into an ai and executed more skillfully, this is so lazy pls troll me with more effort next time

GM to my beautiful smart trans followers btw 🥰 smooches u! :)

[philmonjohn]

A Call to the Children of the Global South: The System That Made My Father Disown Me

I didn’t write this living testimony for virality. I wrote it because silence almost killed me. Because truth, even when ignored by algorithms, remembers how to survive. If this resonated with you — even quietly — share it with someone else who’s still trying to name their Fracture. That’s how we outlive the system. - Philmon John, May 2025

THE FRACTURE Several months ago, when I, a South-Asian American man, turned 35, my father disowned me.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t cry. He simply stopped calling me his son.

My father is a Brown, MAGA-aligned conservative Christian pastor, born in Kerala, India, and now living in the United States. His rejection wasn’t provoked by any breach of trust or familial responsibility, but by my coming out as queer and bisexual — and by my deliberate move away from a version of Christianity shaped more by colonial rule than compassion.

I became blasphemy made flesh.

My mother and sister, equally immersed in religious conservatism, followed suit. Most of my extended family — conservative Indian Christians — responded with quiet complicity. I became an exile in my own lineage, cast out from a network that once celebrated me as the Mootha Makkan, the Malayalam term for “eldest son”.

This break didn’t occur in isolation. It was the culmination of years of internal questioning and ideological transformation.

I was raised with warmth and structure, but also under the weight of rigid theology. My parents cycled through different churches in pursuit of doctrinal purity. In that environment, my queerness had no safe harbor. It had to be hidden, managed, controlled — forced into secrecy.

Literal, cherry-popping closets.

Even my childhood discipline was carved straight from scripture — “spare the rod, spoil the child” was not metaphor but mandate. I was hit for defiance, for curiosity, for emotional honesty. Control was synonymous with love. The theology: obedience over empathy. Is it sad I would rather now have had a beating from my father, than his silence?

I would’ve taken the rod — at least it acknowledged me.

Instead, Daddy looks through me.

THE INHERITANCE And I obeyed. For a time, I rose through the ranks of the church. I led worship. I played guitar in the worship band. I wasn’t just a believer — I was a builder of belief, a conductor of chorus, a jester of jubilee and Sunday morning joy — all while masking a private ache I could not yet articulate.

In the last five years, I began methodically deconstructing the ideological scaffolding I had inherited. I examined the mechanisms of theology, patriarchy, and colonial imposition — and the specific burdens placed upon firstborn sons of immigrant families. Who defines our roles? Who benefits from our silence? Why is this happening to me?

These questions consistently pointed toward the dominant global structure: wealthy white patriarchal supremacy. Rooted in European imperialism and sustained by centuries of religious and cultural colonization, this system fractures not only societies but the deeply intimate architecture of family.

What my family experienced is not unlike what the United States of America continues to experience — a slow, painful reckoning with a foundational ideology of white, heteronormative, Christian patriarchal dominance.

My family comes from Kerala, home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. But the Christianity I inherited was not indigenous. It was filtered through the moral codes of Portuguese priests and British missionaries and the discipline of Victorian culture. Christ was not presented as a radical Middle Eastern teacher but as a sanitized figure — pale, passive, and Western.

In this theology, Christ is symbolic. Paul is the system. Doctrine exists to reinforce patriarchy, to police desire, to ensure control. When I embraced a theology rooted in love, empathy, and justice — the ethics I believe Jesus actually lived — I was met not with discussion, but dismissal.

To my family, my identity wasn’t authenticity. It was apostasy.

THE RECKONING In 2020, the ground shifted.

I turned the triple decade — 30 — as the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.

Remote work slowed life down, and I had space to think deeply.

That year, the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others triggered a national and personal reckoning.

I turned to K-LOVE, the Christian radio station I grew up with, hoping to hear words of solidarity, truth, or even mourning. Instead, there was silence. No mention of racial justice. No prayers for the dead. Just songs about personal salvation, void of historical context or social responsibility.

As Geraldine Heng argues in The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, race was not merely a modern invention void of scientific basis — it was already taking shape in medieval Europe, where Christianity was used to sanctify, encode, and sell racial hierarchies as divine order and social technology.

As Ademọ́la, also known as Ogbeni Demola, once said: “The white man built his heaven on your land and pointed yours to the sky.” That brain-powered perceptive clarity — distilled in a single line — stays with me every day.

With professional routines interrupted and spiritual ties frayed, I immersed myself in scholarship. I entered what I now see as a period of epistemic reconstruction. I read widely — revolutionaries, poets, sociologists, historians, mathematicians, theologians, cultural critics, and the unflinching truth-tellers who name what empire tries to erase.

I first turned to the voices who now live only in memory: Bhagat Singh, James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Octavia Butler, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Vine Deloria Jr. Each carried the weight of revolution, tenderness, and truth — from anti-colonial struggle to queer theory to Indigenous reclamation.

I then reached for the veteran thought leaders still shaping the world, starting with Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Shashi Tharoor, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Susan Visvanathan, Geraldine Heng, George Gheverghese Joseph, J. Sakai, Vijay Prashad, Vilna Bashi Treitler, Claire Jean Kim, and Arundhati Roy — voices who dismantle the illusions of empire through history, mathematics, linguistics, and racial theory.

In the present, I absorbed insights from a new generation of public intellectuals and cultural critics: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jared Yates Sexton, Cathy Park Hong, Ibram X. Kendi, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Heather McGhee, Mehdi Hasan, Adrienne Keene, Keri Leigh Merritt, Vincent Bevins, Sarah Kendzior, Ayesha A. Siddiqi, Wajahat Ali, W. Kamau Bell, Mary Trump, & John Oliver. Together, they form a constellation of clarity — thinkers who gave me language for grief, strategy for resistance, and above all, a framework for empathy rooted in history, not abstraction.

I also turned to the thinkers shaping today’s cultural and political discourse. I dreamt of the world blueprinted by Bhaskar Sunkara in his revolutionary The Socialist Manifesto and plunged into Jacobin’s blistering critiques of capitalism. The Atlantic’s longform journalism kept me tethered to a truth-seeking tradition. The Guardian stood out for its global scale and reach, offering progressive, longform storytelling that speaks to both local injustices and systemic inequalities across the world. And Roman Krznaric’s Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It helped crystallize my core belief:

Be a good human. Practice empathy.

That’s the playbook, America. Practice empathy. Do that — and teach accurate, critically reflective history — and we have the chance to truly become the greatest democracy the world has ever seen.

And this empathy must extend to all — especially to trans people. In India, the Hijra community — trans and intersex folk who have existed visibly for thousands of years — embody a sacred third gender long before the West had language for it. But they are not alone. Across the colonized world, the empire erased a sacred third space: the Muxe of Zapotec culture, the Bakla of the Philippines, the Fa’afafine of Samoa, the Two-Spirit nations of Turtle Island, the Māhū of Hawaiʻi, the Sworn Virgins of the Balkans — each of these communities held space outside Western gender binaries, rooted in care, ceremony, and spirit. Some align with what we today call trans or intersex, while others exist entirely outside Western definitions. Colonization reframed them as deviants.

And still, we must remember this: trans people are not new. Our respect for them must be as ancient as their existence.

THE RESISTANCE As I examined the dynamics of coloniality, racial capitalism, and Western empire, I realized just how deeply imperial power had shaped my family, our values, and our spiritual language. The empire didn’t just occupy land — it rewrote moral codes. It restructured the family.

I learned how Irish, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, and Albanian immigrants were initially excluded from whiteness in America. Over time, many adopted and embraced whiteness as strategic economic and social protection — and in doing so, embraced anti-Blackness and patriarchal hierarchies to maintain their newfound status. Today, many European-hyphenated Americans defend systems that once excluded them.

And over time, some Asian-Americans have followed the very same racial template.

At 33 — the age Jesus is believed to have died — I laid my childhood faith to rest. In its place rose something rooted in clarity, not doctrine.

I didn’t walk away from religion into cynicism or nihilism. I stepped into a humanist, justice-centered worldview. A system grounded in reason, evidence, and above all, empathy. A belief in people over dogma. In community over conformity.

I didn’t lose faith. I redefined it.

I left the pasture of institutional faith, not for chaos, but for an ethical wilderness — a space lacking divine command but filled with moral clarity. A place built on personal responsibility and universal dignity.

This is where I stand today.

To those with similar histories: if your roots trace back to Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, Oceania, or to Indigenous and marginalized communities within the Global North — you are a Child of the Global South. Even in the Global North, your experience carries the weight of displaced geography, the quiet grief of colonial trauma, and a genealogy forged by the system of empire. Your pain is political. Your silence is inherited. You are not invisible. They buried you without a funeral. They mourned not your death, but your deviation from design. However, we are not dead. We are just no longer theirs.

White supremacy endures by fracturing us. It manufactures tensions between communities of color by design — placing Asian businesses in Black communities without infrastructure and opportunities for BIPOC folk to share and benefit from the economic engine. Central to this strategy is the model minority myth, crafted during the Cold War to present Asian-Americans as obedient, self-reliant, and successful — not to celebrate them, but to invalidate Black resistance and justify structural racism. It’s a myth that fosters anti-Blackness in Asian communities and xenophobia in Black ones, while shielding white supremacy from critique. These divisions are not cultural accidents; they’re colonial blueprints.

And these blueprints stretch across oceans and continents and time.

In colonial South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi — still shaped by British racial hierarchies — distanced Indians from Black Africans, calling them “kaffirs” and demanding separate facilities. In Uganda, the British installed South Asians as a merchant middle class between colonizers and native Africans, breeding distrust. When Idi Amin expelled 80,000 Asians in 1972, it was a violent backlash to a racial hierarchy seeded by empire. These fractures — between Black and Asian, colonized and sub-colonized — are the legacy of white patriarchal supremacy.

Divide, distract, and dominate.

We must resist being weaponized against each other.

Every Asian-American must read Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong. Every high schooler in America must read and discuss Jared Yates Sexton.

Study the systems. Name them. Disarm them.

Because unless we become and remain united, the status quo — one that serves wealthy cisgender, heterosexual, white Christian men — will remain intact.

This is A Call to the Children of the Global South. And An Invitation to the Children of the Global North: Stop the infighting. Study and interrogate the systems. Reject the design.

To those in media, publishing, and the arts: postcolonial narratives are not cultural sidebars. They are central to national healing. They preserve memory, restore dignity, and confront whitewashed histories.

If you want work that matters — support art that pushes past trauma into structural critique.

Greenlight truth. Platform memory. Choose courage over comfort.

Postcolonial stories should be the norm — not niche art.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out was a cinematic breakthrough — razor-sharp and genre-defying — in its exposure of white supremacy’s quiet machinery: liberal smiles, performative allyship, and the pacification of dissent through assimilation. The Sunken Place is not just a metaphor for silenced Black consciousness — it’s the empire’s preferred position for the marginalized: visible, exploited, but unheard.

A system that offers the illusion of inclusion, weaponizing identity as control.

Ken Levine’s BioShock Infinite exposed white supremacy through a dystopian, fictional but historically grounded lens - depicting the religious justification of Black enslavement, Indigenous erasure, and genocidal nationalism in a floating, evangelical empire.

David Simon’s The Wire exposed the institutional decay of law enforcement, education, and the legal system - revealing how systemic failure, not individual morality, drives urban collapse.

Jesse Armstrong’s Succession traced the architecture of empire through family - showing how media empires weaponize racism, propaganda, and manufactured outrage to generate profit and secure generational wealth.

Ava DuVernay's Origin unearths caste and race as twin blueprints of white supremacy - linking Dalit oppression in India to the subjugation of Black Americans. Adapted from Isabel Wilkerson's Caste, it dismantles the myth of isolated injustice, revealing a global system meticulously engineered to rank human worth - and the radical act of naming the system.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners — a revelatory, critically and commercially successful film about Afro-Asian resistance in 1930s Mississippi — exposes the hunger for speculative narratives grounded in historical truth.

Across the Spider-Verse gave us Pavitr Prabhakar - a Brown superhero who wasn't nerdy or celibate, as Western media typically portrayed the South-Asian man, but cool, smart, athletic, with great hair, in love, and proudly anti-colonial. He called out the British for stealing and keeping Indian artifacts… in a Spider-Man movie. That moment was history reclaimed.

A glitch in the wealthy white patriarchal matrix.

Dev Patel’s Monkey Man is a visceral fable of vengeance and resistance, where the brutality of caste, corruption, and religious nationalism collide. Amid this chaos, the film uplifts the Hijra community who stand not only as victims, but as warriors against systemic violence. Their alliance reframes queerness not as deviance, but as defiance — ultimately confronting the machinery of empire with what it fears most: a system-breaking empathy it cannot contain.

The vitriolic backlash from white male gamers and fandoms isn’t about quality — it’s about losing default status in stories. Everyone else has had to empathize with majority white male protagonists for decades. Diverse representation in media isn’t a threat to art — it’s a threat to white supremacy. It’s not just a mirror held up to the globe — it’s a refusal to let one worldview define it.

Hollywood, gaming studios, and the gatekeepers of entertainment — if you want to reclaim artistic integrity and still make money doing it, we need art that remembers, resists, and reclaims — stories that name the machine and short-circuit its lies. The world is ready. So am I.

Today, efforts like Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and the Federalist Society are not merely policy shops — they are ideological engines: built to roll back civil rights, impose authoritarian values, and erase uncomfortable truths. They represent a hyper-concentrated form of white supremacy, rooted in unresolved Civil War grievances and the failures of Reconstruction.

Miraculously, or perhaps, blessed with intellectual curiosity and natural empathy, through all of this, my wife — a compassionate, steadfast partner and a Christian woman — has remained by my side. She has witnessed my transformation with both love and complexity. While our bond is rooted in deep respect and shared values, our spiritual landscapes have diverged. Her faith brings her solace; mine has evolved into something more secular, grounded in justice and humanism. We’ve navigated that tension with care — proof that love can stretch across differing beliefs, even as the echoes of religious conditioning still ripple through our lives.

I am proud of her increasing intellectual curiosity and her willingness to accept me for who I am now, even if I wasn’t ready to accept myself when we met.

But our marriage has defied the splintering that white supremacy specifically creates: hyper-capitalist, hyper-individualistic, fractured families and societies.

As Children of the Global South — descendants of peoples who survived enslavement, colonization, and erasure — we carry within us the urgent need for stories that do not turn away from history, but confront it with unflinching truth.

In the pain of losing my family, I found a deeper purpose: to tell this story — and my own — any way I can. A sudden rush of empathy, pity, and love struck me: My parents’ and sister’s rejection was not theirs alone — it was a lingering Fracture left by colonization and global exploitation, tearing apart families across generations. As Children of the Global South, we still carry those wounds.

Make no mistake: white supremacy leaves wounds — because it is the system. And unless it is dismantled, both the Global South and North — and their collective Children — will remain trapped in a dance choreographed by empire — built to divide, exploit, and erase. Any vision of democracy, in America, will remain a fragile illusion — if not an outright mythology — built on a conceptually false foundation: white supremacy itself.

A cruel, heartbreaking legacy of erasure — passed down through empire — indoctrinating God-fearing Brown fathers to erase their godless, queer Brown sons. Preaching shame as scripture. Teaching silence as survival.

I reject that inheritance.

Empathy as praxis is how we reject that inheritance. In a world engineered to divide, it rebuilds connection, disarms supremacy, and charts a path forward. If humanity is to survive — let alone heal — empathy must become our collective discipline.

And perhaps what cut even deeper for my father — beyond my queerness — was that I no longer validated his role as a pastor. In stepping away from the faith he had built his life upon, I wasn’t just rejecting a belief system. I was, in his eyes, nullifying his life’s work. For a man shaped by empire, ordained by colonial Christianity, and burdened with the role of moral gatekeeper, my departure from his manufactured worldview may have landed as personal failure. But it wasn’t. It was never about wanting to hurt him. I love my father. I love my mother. I love my sister. It was never about them — it was about the system that taught them love was conditional, acceptance required obedience, and dissent unforgivable. That kind of pain is real — but its source is systemic. I still want to be Mootha Makkan — not by obedience, but by truth. By love without condition. Not through erasure, but by living fully in the open. Not��in their image, but in mine.

Yet, and yes, I also carry the wound — but I also carry the will to heal it.

THE CALL I believe in empathy. I believe in memory. I believe the Children of the Global South are not broken. We are not rejected. We are awakening.

Children of the Global North: join us. We are not your enemies. We are your present and future collaborators, business & creative partners, lovers, and kin. We are building something new — something ancient yet reawakened, a pursuit of empathy, and a reckoning with history that refuses to forget.

If this story resonated with you, kindly share it, spread the word and please comment. I’d love to hear from you. Your voice, your memory, your Fracture — it matters here.

You are not alone. All are welcome.

Thank you so, so much for your time in reading my story.

You can also email me directly: vinesvenus at protonmail.com I'll be writing more on Medium as well: https://medium.com/@vinesvenus/a-call-to-the-children-of-the-global-south-the-system-that-made-my-father-disown-me-fecad6c0b862

[dravidious]

You're really great

Found this site that has a bunch of funny quotes in it that you can easy copy paste so I dumped a ton into a text file. Here you go

Compass: I was going to suggest we do Marilyn Monroe and JFK roleplay, but I’d get way too into it. Alice: What- how? Compass: You’d be like “come to bed … Mr. President” and I’d be like, “I need to increase the amount of American military advisors in South Vietnam by a factor of 18.”

Alice: Well, Compass and I finally did it! The rest of the squad: gasps, shocked expressions, etc. Alice: That's right… We kissed!

Alice: I don't need to go to bed. I'm not tired, I'll be fine. Compass: But, darling, I'll be so lonely without you. Come curl up in my arms so I can feel whole again. Alice: O-oh. Well. Are you trying to seduce me into healthy sleeping patterns?? Compass: Is it working?

Jamie: Is something burning? Breeze, leaning seductively on the counter: Just my desire for you. Jamie: Alice, the toaster is literally on fire.

Compass: We should get you to a doctor for a check up immediately. What if it happens again, and there isn’t anyone around to help you? What if it’s congenital? Oh my God! Was it me? Did I hurt you? Alice: …You realize any other person that made their partner pass out on bed would simply feel really proud of themselves, right?

Jamie: I am the left brain, I am the left brain. "I work really hard until my inevitable death" brain. You've got a job to do, you better do it right and the right way is with the left brain's might. Breeze: I LIKE OREOS AND PUSSY-

Compass: What are you in the mood for? Alice: World domination. Compass: That's a bit ambitious. Alice: You are my world. Compass: Aww… Alice: Compass: Alice: Compass: OH.

Compass: As top in this relationship, I think we should- Alice: I can't believe you're pulling rank on me.

Compass, dashing into the room: WHY AREN’T THE DISHES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER?! Alice: …What does that even mean?!

Compass: I ran into Alice in the kitchen at 1 AM last night and when I asked them what they were doing, they just shrugged, said “these are my roaming hours,” and wandered off, strumming vaguely on their guitar.

Compass: We need a plan to beat them. Alice: Okay, listen up. First, we fill their shoes with wet cat food. Compass: Alice: Judge me all you want, I get results.

Breeze: If bees can be fish and boys can be girls, then why can't my dad love me? Jamie: I thought I was going to have to yell at you, but now I think I should hug you.

Breeze: I committed all 7 deadly sins in 30 minutes. Jamie: Wow, I've gotta hear this. Breeze: I was angry and envious of my neighbor so I lazily seduced his wife and ate all his groceries and didn't share. Jamie: You forgot pride. Breeze: No, I'm pretty proud of this.

Breeze: We have fun, don’t we, Jamie? Jamie: I have never been more stressed out in my entire life.

Breeze, throwing their head into Jamie's lap: Tell me I'm pretty! Jamie, lovingly stroking their hair: You're pretty fucking annoying, that's what you are.

Breeze: If you don't stop talking, I'm going to jump out of that window. Jamie: …We're on the ground floor. Breeze: I know but I want a dramatic exit.

Jamie: Breeze, are you drinking… drinking hydrogen peroxide?! Breeze: It says H2O2! That means it’s the sequel to water!

Breeze: Get in, loser, we’re committing vehicular manslaughter!

Breeze: The only straight I am is a straight-up badass.

Alice: I have yet to encounter a problem where a sword didn't factor into the solution at least in some way.

Alice: I’ve been described as a ‘heartless villain’ and a 'little shit’, but I prefer… 'has alternative ways of having fun’.

Compass, seeing a banana on the car seat: What the FUCK?? Compass, buckling the banana up: Fucking buckle UP, it’s the LAW!

Alice/Breeze: People always shoot down my ideas and I’m sick of it. Two sentences in and everyone’s always shouting “what the fuck? that’s illegal!” and “you can’t do that!”. Like, c'mon, let me talk!

Breeze: I have a philosophy in life; if the seat is open, the job is open. That’s how I came to briefly drive a Formula 1 car.

Jamie: A stake to the heart won't kill a vampire if their tits are big enough. Compass: Yeah, you just catch it. Breeze: Nah nah nah, deflects it. Stake? Just bounces right off. Done. Back to doing hot girl shit. Alice: Then I just use a spear instead. Jamie: You are trying so hard to kill a vampire with big bazongas, and for what? Why would you do that to the ecosystem?

Jamie: Go on, give Breeze a compliment. Compass: How do you expect me to do that? Alice: Just say something that you wish someone would say to you. Compass: Uhh… You are now unbanned from Free Ham Sandwich Day! Breeze, sobbing: Nobody’s ever said that to me before!

Alice: Subs are so fun to play with. All you have to do is hint at what you might do, back them into a corner with a look, or grab their wrist in a certain way and they're a wide-eyed mess. Breeze: What the fuck kind of Subway are you going to? Compass: Substitute teachers deal with so much shit. Jamie: Guys.

Compass: You were stabbed. Do you remember anything? Jamie: Only the ambulance ride to the hospital. Compass: That wasn't an ambulance, I drove you. Jamie: But I heard a siren. Alice: That was Breeze. Breeze: Sorry, I got nervous.

Alice, gesturing to Compass: Breeze, look what you did! You made Mom upset! Jamie: Mom, please don’t cry, we’re sorry! Breeze: I’m sorry Mom… :( Compass, near tears: I DON’T REMEMBER GIVING BIRTH TO ANY OF YOU!

Compass: You’re just being paranoid. Again. Alice: When have I been paranoid? Compass: Um, when you first met Jamie you thought they were an undercover cop…? Alice: No one has a wart that big, I thought it was a surveillance camera! Compass: And last year you were sure Breeze was a mermaid! Alice: They hate wearing shirts! COINCIDENCE?! Later, when Alice’s theory is proven wrong Compass: Do you have anything to say for yourself? Alice: I still think Breeze is a mermaid.

Jamie: Small creatures are much more vicious because they have a smaller body to bottle up all their emotions. Breeze: Ridiculous. Give me some examples. Compass: Wasps? Alice: Terriers? Jamie: Alice.

Jamie: Who wants to go out of the country on a road trip? Alice: Yea, I could drink legally! Compass: I could hang out with the boys! Breeze: I could hide from the consequences of my actions.

Jamie: Why are your tongues purple? Alice: We had slushies. I had a blue one. Breeze: I had a red one. Jamie: oh. Jamie: Jamie: OH. Compass: Compass: You drank eachothers slushies?

Compass: Why did you guys dress up as each other for Halloween? Alice: Rose is the scariest thing I could think of! Rose: Alice told me I should pick the dumbest costume possible.

Compass: Where are you going? Alice: To get MYSELF a gift cause somebody didn't get me one! Compass: I told you I did! Its coming here on Friday! Rose, knowing full well that Compass got Alice an engagement ring: eating popcorn

Alice: Why is everyone so obsessed with top or bottom? Honestly, I’d just be excited to have a bunk bed.

Rose: How do you tell someone that you wanna have sex with them in a polite way? Compass: Excuse me Mx. Would you give me the honours of indulging in sexual activities with you? Alice: What the fuck is wrong with you two?

Compass, Entering Rose's room: Alice did it again. Rose: Peace disturbance? Compass: What no- Rose: Arson..? Compass: NO, JESUS CHRIST, HOW MANY- Rose: uh….Attempted murder? Compass: NO, THEY ATE ALL THE FOOD IN THE FRIDGE, BUT WHAT THE FU-

Compass: So… who's the big spoon and who's the little spoon? Alice: We're chopsticks! Compass: Well… that's cute! Compass: Does that mean you two snuggle together perfectly? Rose: No, it means that if you take the other away, the only thing the other is good for is stabbing.

Rose: So… I’ve seen you’ve been spending a lot of time with Compass recently. Alice: No, Rose, it's not what it looks like, I swear. Rose: Oh really? So no reason for me to be jealous? Alice: No! You’re the only one for me. Rose: Is that so? Alice: I promise! Compass and I are just dating, okay? They’re my partner. Rose: So there are no best-friends-feelings involved? Alice: You are still my one and only best friend! They’re just the love of my life, nothing more! Rose: But I’m still the platonic love of your life, right? Alice: Of course bro! Rose: Bro… Compass: What the-

Alice: Due to personal reasons, I will be fucking sinking to the bottom of the ocean in a large metal box. Compass: Did Rose say 'I love you' and you said 'Thanks'? Alice: THE REASONS ARE PERSONAL–

Compass: I like your top, Rose! Alice: I have a name, you know. Rose: sighs Why. Why are you like this.

Rose: Is letting someone win at chess sapiosexual bottoming? Alice: Can everyone in this godforsaken group please learn the skill called "Think Before You Speak"? Compass: Ya know… it might be.

Rose: What have you done with Alice? Compass: Nothing. Why, do you think I should?

The gang is about to do something dangerous Compass: Shouldn’t someone give a pep talk? Rose: Go ahead. Compass: Be careful. Compass: Don’t die. Alice: Holds back a laugh Rose: Great. We’re all bloody inspired.

Rose: So, what is Compass to you? Alice: The reason I wake up every morning. Rose: …That’s adorable. Compass earlier that morning, barging into Alice′s room, smacking pans together: WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP!!!

Compass: H-how do you ask someone out? Alice: Well, first- Rose: Don't ask them, they asked me out in a McDonalds parking lot. Compass: …And you said yes?

Compass: Rose, what does IDK, ILY, and TTYL mean? Rose: I don’t know, I love you, talk to you later. Compass: Alright, I love you too, I'll ask Alice. Rose: Wait- Compass, no-

Alice, at an awards show: Well, first of all, I’d like to thank Rose, the love of my life, for telling me Compass was going to win so don’t bother to prepare a speech.

Alice: What are you two arguing about this time? Rose: They’re always using common phrases incorrectly! Compass: Cry me a table, Rose.

Alice: I didn't drink that much last night. Compass: You were flirting with Rose. Alice: So what? They're my partner. Compass: You asked if they were single. Compass: And then you cried when they said they weren't.

Rose: Alice you can’t move in with Compass. Alice: Why not? Rose: Well, um, how are you going to feel when they see you without any makeup? Alice: I’m not wearing makeup right now. Rose: Holy crap, you’re beautiful.

Compass: So, what’s Alice's type? Rose: Brown eyes, kind, oblivious, good sense of humor, turtle lover. Compass: Sounds kind of like me. Too bad we’re just friends. Rose: Did I mention oblivious? Compass: Yeah, why? Rose: Okay, just making sure.

Jamie: Yesterday, I overheard Alice saying “Are you sure this is a good idea?” and Breeze replying “Trust me,” and I have never moved from one room to another so quickly in my life.

Alice: If you want my advice- Rose: No offense but you’re the last person I want relationship advice from. You tried to kill your significant other. Multiple times. Alice: First off, that was before we started dating. Secondly, they’ve also tried to kill me. Compass: It’s true. It was mutually attempted murder.

Compass: Alice- Alice: sighs Rose used to call me Alice… Compass: …Because it's your fucking name.

[luv4arinn]

I Just Wanna Feel

Author’s Note: So—sorry for not posting in weeks, but I had a massive writer’s block, and well… I’m back! I was heavily inspired by THAT Robbie Williams song. Yes, I watched his biopic. Yes, I cried. Yes, I recommend it. And… surprise?! There will be a whole chronology with the others, all themed around Robbie’s songs! Yayy <3!! Consider it a gift? from me for taking so long 🥺. Love you all.

Pairing: Bayverse!Donnie x female reader

Tags: Intense fluff, nerd having an emotional crisis, extreme overthinking, unexpected kisses, Donatello’s mental breakdown, romantic panic, “oh no I messed up” but in HD, happy ending.

The sound of the keyboard echoed through the room—a rhythmic, steady tapping that blended with the low hum of the monitors. The bluish glow from the screens cast irregular shadows across his face, reflecting off the lenses of his glasses with every line of code appearing and disappearing on the monitor.

Donatello was there, as always.

The work was easy. Thinking was easy.

It was like a well-structured algorithm: receive information, process it, execute a plan of action. The world had rules, patterns, probabilities—formulas that predicted outcomes with near-absolute precision. No matter how chaotic a situation seemed, there was always a logical solution waiting to be uncovered.

Computers don’t lie.

Data has no biases, no whims. It doesn’t suffer irrational fluctuations. It doesn’t beat faster without reason. It doesn’t have to remind itself to breathe.

But then…

There’s you.

And everything falls apart.

Not immediately. Not like a fatal error shutting down the system in the blink of an eye. It’s more subtle. Like an unexpected variable in an equation that had, until now, been perfect. Something that doesn’t fit into the rigid structure of his world—but something he can’t ignore either.

He thinks about it often. About how his brain operates like a well-calibrated machine, each thought clicking into the next like the teeth of a moving gear. Logic is his native language. Reason, his compass.

And yet, when it comes to you, all that logic becomes blurred.

The gears grind.

The code becomes erratic.

The equation fills with unknowns.

Because when you step into his space, when your voice disrupts the steady rhythm of his keyboard, when you lean over his desk without a second thought for the scattered circuits and switch off his monitor without warning…

His first instinct is to think. Analyze. Quantify.

What does this mean?

Why does his heart react this way?

Why does his skin register the shift in temperature more intensely when you’re near?

But thinking doesn’t give him answers.

Feeling does.

And that is terrifying.

Because feeling isn’t predictable. Feeling has no neatly arranged lines of code, no graphs to chart behavioral patterns, no equations with exact solutions.

Emotions, in themselves, are a chaotic system.

And you…

You are the anomaly he still doesn’t know how to decode.

Nights shouldn’t feel this short when spent alone in front of a screen. And yet, when his mind drifts to the memory of a laugh, the fleeting image of a glance, the echo of an accidental touch… time dissolves in a way not even quantum physics could explain.

When he feels the weight of his name on your tongue. Like an access key to a system he never thought anyone would try to hack.

And he watches you from the corner of his eye as you lean closer, and in that instant, every variable in his mind shifts. Every equation rewrites itself.

A shiver runs down his shell.

Feeling.

He knows because his chest tightens with an undefined pressure, a sensation he can’t attribute to any specific physiological variable. His heart rate isn’t elevated from exertion. He’s not under attack. He’s not in danger.

So why does his body react as if he is?

There’s no equation to explain this.

Because if there were, he would have solved it long ago. He would have identified the problem, broken it down into its components, eliminated any errors. But every time he thinks he’s close to an answer, another unknown appears, shifting all previous solutions out of place.

Music filters through his headphones, slow and melancholic.

“I just wanna feel, real love…”

A shiver runs down his spine.

His body reacts to the sound before his mind does. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. There is no logical reason why a progression of chords and a set of words arranged in a certain way should have this effect on him.

And yet, here he is.

Fingers hovering over the keyboard, motionless—caught between the instinct to keep working and the strange, undeniable realization that… he can’t.

Not because he’s tired.

Not because he lacks information.

Not because there’s a problem that requires more processing.

But because, for the first time in a long time, the data isn’t the most important thing.

The screen flickers with information he should be absorbing, but he isn’t. His glasses reflect numbers and graphs that would normally hold his full attention, but his gaze is empty, unfocused.

The room remains unchanged—draped in shadows, illuminated only by the bluish glow of his monitors and the faint blinking of LED lights from his equipment.

The mission had been difficult. The margin of error had been higher than he liked to admit.

It wasn’t often that his calculations failed.

But sometimes, calculations weren’t enough.

Sometimes, reality simply… refused to adhere to logic.

“Feel the home that I live in…”

His jaw tightens.

He doesn’t know how that song ended up on his playlist.

But he has a reasonable theory.

One that involves Mikey, his blatant disregard for personal privacy, and his insistent need to “help him connect with his emotions.”

(Sure. Right.)

And yet…

The lyrics hit him harder than he’d like to admit.

It’s not the melody itself. It’s not the chords or the rhythm. It’s the way the words seem to slip through the cracks in his mind, seeping into the spaces that logic has never quite managed to seal shut.

“I just wanna feel, real love…”

Donnie exhales slowly, his fingers still hovering over the keyboard, motionless.

He thinks about the battle.

The mistakes.

The risks they took.

Numbers flash through his mind like a simulation running in reverse—impact probability, the margin of error in his calculations, the reaction speed needed to avoid damage. Fractions of a second where the difference between victory and absolute disaster depended on decisions made under pressure.

But more than anything—he thinks about you.

He thinks about the way, at the end of the fight, you rushed to check if he was okay.

About how, without even thinking, your hands—warm, alive—ran along his arm, searching for injuries he had already identified and dismissed milliseconds before with his visor.

He could have told you it wasn’t necessary.

That he was unharmed.

That he had concrete data to prove it.

But he didn’t.

Because logic dictates that worry should be extinguished by facts.

But feeling…

Feeling dictates that your touch lingers, even after you’ve gone.

That the sensation of your skin against his stays beyond his capacity for reasoning.

That the light pressure of your fingers on his forearm still burns in his memory, like an unsolved equation looping endlessly in his mind.

“Come and hold my hand…”

Donnie closes his eyes.

He could turn the song off.

He could erase the anomaly from his system.

He could rewrite the equation, adjust the variables, find a way to rationalize what he feels.

But… he doesn’t want to.

Because for the first time in his life, the result of a problem doesn’t matter as much as the unknown.

He doesn’t just want to think.

He wants to feel.

He wants to understand why being with you feels like the only constant that truly matters.

And then—you arrive.

Without warning, without fanfare, without the slightest idea that the world inside Donatello’s mind is teetering on the edge of a collapse even he can’t explain.

The lab door slides open smoothly—barely a whisper against the silence, thick with static electricity and the faint murmur of music in his headphones.

He notices everything.

The shift in air pressure.

The sound of your footsteps, softened against the floor.

The faint scent of shampoo and fabric laced with the chill of the night.

The way the temperature in the room rises by just a fraction of a degree when you step inside.

But he doesn’t turn around immediately.

Because he doesn’t know what to do with the anomaly that you are in his equation.

He doesn’t know where to place you within the rigid parameters of his logical, structured world.

His operating system slows, his brain—so used to processing information with the precision of a surgeon—stalls in an endless loop, searching for a resolution that refuses to exist.

And then—your voice.

“Donnie?”

Soft. Not because you’re hesitant, but because you know him. Because somehow—through a method he can’t quantify—you can read the tension in his shoulders. You can see the way his fingers have stopped typing, even though the screen is still waiting for input.

He closes his eyes for just a moment, as if that alone might be enough to reboot him, to restore the control that feels like it’s slipping through his fingers.

He knows he should say something.

He knows he should act normal.

But his normal means efficiency, speed, precise answers delivered at the exact right moment.

And right now, every command in his mind is failing.

You watch him with quiet curiosity, tilting just slightly toward him—just enough for the air between you to feel heavier, more tangible.

“Everything okay?” you ask, voice soft in that way that completely disarms him. Then your gaze sharpens slightly, scanning him with quiet scrutiny. “Are you hurt?”

He doesn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he looks at you.

His mind runs an automatic analysis of your expression—eyes slightly narrowed, lips barely pressed together, the faintest crease in your right brow, as if you’re already calculating the probability that he’s lying.

Logic dictates that he should reassure you with data. That he should tell you his visor has already run a full diagnostic scan and that his physical condition is optimal. That there is no rational reason for concern.

But then his gaze drops.

And he sees his own hand, still resting on the desk—still tense.

And for the first time in a long time, he chooses to do something without overthinking it.

He looks at you again.

His throat feels dry. Without realizing it, he wets his lips—a quick flick of his tongue over skin cracked from hours without proper hydration.

Then, in a voice so quiet it barely sounds like his own, he asks:

“Can I… hold your hand?”

It’s not the kind of question anyone would expect from him.

And he knows it.

Because it doesn’t fit his usual patterns. It’s not something that makes sense in any logical context.

But right now, logic is utterly useless to him.

Your lashes flutter in subtle surprise, as if the words take a few extra seconds to fully register.

“What?”

His instincts scream at him to backtrack, to rephrase, to find a way to explain what even he doesn’t fully understand.

But he doesn’t.

“I want to…” He inhales, trying to reorganize his thoughts. “I mean, just—”

He shuts his eyes for a second, frustration flickering across his face. He has never felt this clumsy with words before.

When he opens them again, you’re still there. You haven’t moved. You haven’t looked away.

And somehow, that alone gives him the courage he’s lacking.

“I just… want to feel it.”

The truth escapes him so easily, so quietly, that it almost embarrasses him.

Your expression shifts.

It’s not amusement.

It’s not rejection.

It’s something softer. More intimate.

And without questioning it—without hesitation or unnecessary words—you let your hand slide over his.

Not hurriedly.

Not hesitantly.

Just with the quiet certainty of someone who understands exactly what he’s asking for.

And when your fingers intertwine with his, Donnie feels every equation, every algorithm, every carefully structured rule in his mind… simply dissolve.

As if they had never really mattered in the first place.

“Well?” you ask, your voice carrying a faint attempt at lightness.

Donnie knows you’re trying to sound casual, that you’re masking your uncertainty behind a relaxed tone. But he notices.

He notices the delicate dusting of pink on your cheeks, the almost imperceptible tremor in your lower lip, the way your thumb brushes against the back of his hand—like you’re adjusting to the contact just as much as he is.

And something inside him… softens.

His lips curve, at first unconsciously—a smile, small and barely formed. Then, from deep in his chest, a quiet laugh escapes, unbidden and genuine, as weightless as the air after a storm.

It’s not mockery. It’s not disbelief.

It’s something purer. Something real.

—Nothing, —he murmurs, his thumb moving awkwardly against your skin— Just… this is nice.

The confession catches him off guard.

Because he hadn’t planned it.

Because he hadn’t filtered it through his logic before speaking.

Because it simply happened.

And then, you look at each other.

Maybe for too long.

Maybe just long enough for the world around you to blur into a distant murmur, as if nothing else exists except the space you occupy together.

He finds himself mesmerized by you.

Fascinated.

But not in the way he is fascinated by a new equation, by an unexpected pattern in the data, by the perfect symmetry of a well-designed structure.

This is different.

This is raw.

This is visceral.

This is feeling.

His other hand, trembling in a way he doesn’t understand, lifts with a slowness that borders on reverence.

And when his fingers brush against your cheek, the touch is so light it feels like an experiment in itself.

He feels.

He feels the warmth of your skin beneath his fingertips, the way it molds so effortlessly to his touch, the way your body leans ever so slightly toward him—responding to an equation he hasn’t yet written but, for the first time, doesn’t feel the need to solve.

He feels the erratic pounding of his own heart, too fast, too unsteady, as if it has forgotten its natural rhythm.

He feels the heat gathering in his chest, expanding outward like a shockwave, defying all logical explanation.

And then, he hears you sigh.

Small.

Soft.

Almost imperceptible.

But he feels it.

He feels the warmth of your breath against his skin, the subtle vibration of your exhale in the nonexistent space between you.

Feels,

feels,

feels.

As if every one of his senses—once so meticulously calibrated to process information—has now been repurposed for a single objective:

You.

Your warmth seeping into his skin.

Your quiet, rhythmic breathing.

The barely-there weight of your gaze resting on him.

The familiar scent of you, imprinting itself onto some hidden corner of his mind he never thought necessary.

Just you.

Only you.

Nothing else exists.

Nothing else matters.

And then—without thinking, without calculating, without rationalizing it into exhaustion like he always does—

he kisses you.

It’s brief. Just a brush of lips.

A moment suspended between doubt and need, between impulse and fear.

A single heartbeat contained in a single point of contact.

And then—

He hears you gasp.

His entire body locks up. Every muscle goes rigid with a tension so sharp it’s almost painful.

His brain—so efficient, so precise, so relentless in its ability to analyze every variable in a situation—enters a total shutdown.

He stares at you, eyes wide, pupils blown.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

He misread everything.

What the hell was he thinking?

You don’t see him that way.

Why would you?

Why would you ever?

Shame crashes over him like an unstoppable wave. His stomach twists, his skin burns, his heart clenches into an invisible fist that threatens to crush it from the inside out.

He pulls back, his hands loosening, his voice catching in his throat.

—Oh, God, I didn’t mean to— —he stammers, his voice cracking under the weight of his own panic. His thoughts are a mess of unsolved equations, of probabilities collapsing into a singularity of pure dread— I just… I thought it was a good moment, I—

—Yes.

Your voice cuts through his spiral.

His brain short-circuits.

—It was.

…

What?

His breath halts.

The air thickens, pressing in from all sides, as if the entire universe has stopped—right here, right now, in these words, in this reality he never accounted for.

And then—

You close the distance.

You are the one to bring your lips back to his.

And his mind—his brilliant, overanalyzing mind—

for the first time in his life—goes completely silent.

And he simply—feels.

[quakerjoe]

When asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response:

"A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.

I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t.

We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a sniveling sidekick instead.

There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman shouldn't, wouldn't, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.

It’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set."

[littlebatgames]

How to make a powerful, hot vampire you still want to hug

Hi tumblr! I'm Cyrus Nemati, creative director at Little Bat Games, and a voice actor you might know from games likes Hades (I did the really secure guy and the really insecure guy).

We're closing in on the release of our debut title, Vampire Therapist, and based on tumblr's response in the past, I think you might be interested in seeing our creative process.

Andromachos is our 3000-year-old vampire mentor you'll meet early in Vampire Therapist. He's a complicated character: he was an assassin and warrior for most of his 3000 years, but a personal crisis put him on a voyage of self-discovery in the 1800s. Therapy never existed in his time, but as it developed, so did he. We needed a character who expressed wisdom and strength, but also gentleness and compassion. And of course, he's a vampire in a sexy vampire game. He needed to look like a Mediterranean dream.

This was our initial sketch of Andromachos by art director Ruth Bosch (https://x.com/rthbosch). As you can see, he's already oozing confident vampire energy, and he clearly has the wisdom of 3000 years. This is someone you want as your therapist. Vampire Therapist is a game with specific needs, and a certain lightheartedness is one of them. This Andromachos is very much grounded in reality, and just might be *too* realistically sexy.

This was @nomnomroko's first test render for Andromachos before joining the team. Right away, she understood the *figure* of Andromachos and poise of a man who has lived for 3000 years, but this was a more villainous (albeit super hot character). We toned him down shortly after, and brought back in some of the more grounded humanity from Ruth's initial sketch. You can make fan art of this version, though, we won't mind. This version might come back if we ever do a prequel!

Here's his toned down version, already much closer to the Andromachos we see in the final game. He's lost none of his power, but is already the welcoming presence we needed to have in Vampire Therapist.

Body language is also a key aspect of our game. In a game about therapy, we are mostly sitting, so the ways we can express emotion and intention are more subtle. You can already see the strength of Andromachos's character here.

Which takes us to our final rendering!

I love Andromachos. Or Andy, as more familiar folk call him. And I think you will, too. To me, he's a perfect synthesis between Ruth's initial rendering and Sybille's test that fits the comedic, warm, and very human tone of our game.

You can check out our game on Steam and GOG, and your wishlists will make algorithms happy. As you know, everything is algorithms! Help us make Vampire Therapist 2?

Steam:

And GOG:

[thebreakfastgenie]

I'm not anti-vote or anything, but I think some of the liberals on here greatly overrate how much damage a bunch of bored kids (most of whom probably can't even legally vote) talking shit on social media can actually do to the Democrats. So what if they turn out braindead "Genocide Joe" memes by the thousands per week? No meaningful voter would pay attention to those, and anyone who does never had a vote worth chasing in the first place.

The problem is that it's not just a bunch of bored kids. It feeds a larger social media ecosystem. Remember "cancel culture?" Remember how that became a right wing talking point that conservatives whined about in mainstream settings? That has its roots on tumblr. If you ever doubted that fringe social media movements affect mainstream politics, 2024 should have been the final nail in the coffin. JD Vance has very signifcant (and, frankly, underreported) ties to online far right communities (known as "groypers" to the terminally online) and it absolutely influenced his campaign and now he's bringing those interests to the vice-presidency. Elon Musk (the owner of twitter) and Vivek Ramaswamy want to run a government office named DOGE after a meme. We're sharing the internet with the people in power; we're all playing with live ammo. It's often a ripple effect or butterfly effect, so it's very difficult to predict what memes and posts from "bored kids" will make it to real life politics and how they'll be transformed along the way. Because it's so hard to predict, we need to be aware of the possibility and act with care. "Genocide Joe" memes contributed to a general feeling of dissatisfaction with Biden that, intentionally or not, played into the Trump campaign's "everyone hates Biden" narrative. A similar thing happened with Hillary in 2016.

Elections are also won and lost on the margins. Campaigns spend billons on ground games that persuade a very small percentage of voters, but it's better to persuade that percentage than not to. If you don't know if something is going to make a difference, you act as if it is when the stakes are high. Is the drag from a constant negative social media narrative going to hurt a campaign? Maybe, and either way it's definitely not going to help, so it's better not to have it. 2016 and 2024 were both very close elections.

Liberals also tend to interpret bored kids' posts as statements of action. If someone says they don't want a Democrat to win, will try to stop it, and will tell other people not to vote for that candidate, liberals are going to object to that.

It's usually not "meaningful voters" who decide elections. It's low-information swing voters who make up their minds on the way to the voting booth. These voters are, consciously or unconsciously, often influenced by perceived popular opinion. A lot of people don't have deeply held values that they've spent time examining, but have moral compasses more akin to "if everyone I know thinks this, it must be right." The danger of social media is that is also distorts the meaning of "everyone I know." Your meme about how you hate Joe Biden finds its way into an algorithmically-generated bubble and someone says "gee, it seems like everyone I know hates Joe Biden, I generally trust my social circle, he must be really bad." And it's self-reinforcing. They start sharing it or making similar posts of their own and it spreads to their contacts in their own bubbles.

I don't think the exact mechanisms or limits or this phenomenon are fully understood yet because social media is still too new, but it's very real.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

I read this week that Instagram is pushing “overtly sexual adult videos” to young users. For a Wall Street Journal investigation, journalists created accounts that could belong to children, following young gymnasts, cheerleaders and influencers. The test accounts were soon served sexual and disturbing content on Instagram Reels, alongside ads for dating apps, livestream platforms with “adult nudity” and AI chatbots “built for cybersex”. Some were next to ads for kids’ brands like Disney.

This is something I’ve been trying to get across to parents about social media. The problem is not just porn sites. They are of course a massive concern. Kids as young as nine are addicted. The average age to discover porn is now 13, for boys and girls. And many in my generation are now realising just how much being raised on porn affected them, believing it “destroyed their brain” and distorted their view of sex.

But the problem is bigger than that. Porn is everywhere now. TikTok is serving up sex videos to minors and promoting sites like OnlyFans. The gaming platform Twitch is exposing kids to explicit live-streams. Ads for “AI sex workers” are all over Instagram, some featuring kids’ TV characters like SpongeBob and the Cookie Monster. And there’s also this sort of “soft-porn” now that pervades everything. Pretty much every category of content that kids could stumble across, from beauty trends to TikTok dances to fitness pages, is now pornified or sexualised in some way for clicks.

I think this does a lot of damage to Gen Z. I think it desensitises us to sex. I think it can ruin relationships. But beyond that, I also believe a major problem with everything being pornified is the pressure it puts on young girls to pornify themselves. To fit the sex doll beauty standard; to seek validation through self-sexualisation, and potentially monetise all this like the influencers they’re inundated with.

Which, of course, puts girls at risk of predators. Predators who are all over TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. Predators whose algorithms helpfully deliver them more content of minors and steer them towards kids’ profiles. Predators who are taking TikToks of underage girls and putting them on platforms like Pornhub.

And this is even more terrifying because adolescent girls are especially vulnerable today. They are vulnerable anyway at that age—but today they have far less life experience than previous generations of girls did. They are extremely insecure and anxious, and much less resilient. Combine this with the fact that they are now more easily exposed to predatory men than ever before in history, and served to strangers by algorithms. And another thing: girls are also able to look way older now. They have AI editing apps to sexualise themselves. TikTok filters to pornify their bodies. And access to every kind of make-up and hair and fashion tutorial you can think of to look sexier and more mature. I don’t think enough parents realise how dangerous this situation is.

Which is why I find it so frustrating to see some progressives downplay the dangers of all this. Those that dismiss anyone concerned about the pornification of everything as a stuffy conservative. And somehow can’t see how the continual loosening of sexual norms might actually empower predatory men, and put pressure on vulnerable girls? That seems delusional to me.

Let’s just say I have little patience for those on the left who loudly celebrate women sexualising themselves online, selling it as fun, feminist and risk-free, but are then horrified to hear about 12 year-olds doing the same thing. C’mon. No wonder they want to.

But I also find it frustrating to see some on the right approach this with what seems like a complete lack of compassion. I don’t think it helps to relentlessly ridicule and blame young women for sexualising themselves online. I don’t think it’s fair either. We can’t give girls Instagram at 12 and then be surprised when as young women they base their self-worth on the approval of strangers. We can’t inundate kids with sexual content all the time and be shocked when they don’t see sex as sacred, or think sex work is just work! We can’t give them platforms as pre-teens where they are rewarded for sexualising themselves and presenting themselves like products and then shame them for starting an OnlyFans. We can’t expose them to online worlds where everything is sexualised and then be confused why some of Gen Z see their sexuality as their entire identity.

And again, on top of these platforms, girls are growing up in a culture that celebrates all of this. They are being raised to believe that they must be liberated from every restraint around sex and relationships to be free and happy, and many have never heard any different. Celebrities encourage them to be a slut, get naked, make/watch porn and make money! Mainstream magazines teach them how to up their nude selfie game! Influencers tell millions of young followers to start an OnlyFans, and pretend it’s about empowering young girls to do whatever they want with their bodies! I can’t say this enough: their world is one where the commodification and sexualisation the self is so normalised. It’s heartbreaking. And cruel that anyone celebrates it.

So sure, young women make their own choices. But when we have children sexualising themselves online, when girls as young as 13 are using fake IDs to post explicit content on OnlyFans, when a third of those selling nudes on Twitter are under the age of 18, I think it’s safe to say we are failing them from an early age.

I guess what I’m trying to get across is this: it’s tough for girls right now. It’s tough to be twelve and anxious and feel unattractive and this is how everyone else is getting attention. It’s tough to constantly compare yourself to the hyper-sexualised influencers that the boys you’re interested in are liking and following and thinking you have to compete. It’s tough to feel like the choice is sexualise yourself or nobody will notice you. The sad reality is we live in a superficial, pornified culture that rewards this stuff, and in many ways punishes you if you’re modest and sensitive and reserved, and a lot of girls are just trying to keep up with it.

We need serious cultural change. We need to wake up to how insane this all is, how utterly mental it is that we allow young girls anywhere near social media, and how we’ve let the liberalising of sexual mores escalate to the point where pre-teens are posing like porn stars and are lied to that it’s liberation. And where we need to start is with an absolute refusal from parents to let their kids on these platforms.

So please. If the relentless social comparison and obliteration of their attention span and confusion about their identity wasn’t enough, this has to be. Don’t let your daughters on social media.

[valenti-nahh]

finally took some time to form opinions

So I listened to SKELETÁ by ghost and I need to confess something immediately before I combust: this album didn’t just go hard—it went raw, no lube, and made eye contact the whole time. This wasn’t music. This was a spiritual backshot, a soul-deep stroke, a full-body ghostgasm that left me trembling, moaning, and begging for more even as I lay crumpled on the floor in a post-riff fugue state.

In the beginning, there was silence. And the world was void, and the hearts of men were hollow. Their playlists were dry, their aux cords were frayed, their AirPods cursed with algorithmic torment. The masses wandered, streaming aimlessly, clinging to stale albums like relics of a time when music still meant something.

And lo, from the depths of divine discord, rose a figure cloaked in velvet and incense, masked and magnificent—Papa Emeritus, the eternal, the enigma, the ecclesiastical architect of all that slaps. And from his unholy pulpit he unleashed unto the mortal realm a sonic sermon, a blistering bible, an apocalyptic mass of melody: SKELETÁ.

It is not an album. It is a threat. A challenge. A crucible. An audio-alchemical sex ritual designed not just to melt your brain but to grip your soul by the thighs and whisper forbidden knowledge directly into your mouth. This isn’t music—it’s the sound of unzipping your moral compass and letting Papa slide into your conscience like a ghost-shaped succubus who smells like sandalwood and shame. My chakras? All aligned. My blood type? Changed to “G". I looked in the mirror mid-chorus and saw Papa Emeritus himself staring back, nodding, silently whispering, “You get it now, my child.”

I was Raptured by Riffs™, Baptized in Basslines™, Confirmed in Choir Chords™. I didn't hear the music. The music heard me. It crawled into my soul, screamed, "We’re doing renovations,” and began redecorating with fog machines and red velvet. Every measure—every downstroke—every spectral whisper—feels like I’m being spoon-fed ambrosia by a succubus in corpse paint while Gregorian monks chant in reverse behind her. THE GUITAR TONE? PEAK. THE VOCALS? CUMWORTHY. THE LYRICS? STRAIGHT FROM THE NECRONOMICON, IT’S LIKE IF SATAN AND FREDDIE MERCURY HAD A BABY AND RAISED IT IN A CANDLELIT CATHEDRAL MADE OF BASSLINES.

Every riff? A tongue on the nape of your brain. Every bass note? A finger tracing the hem of your morality. Every drum hit? A deep, pounding reminder that you are a hole waiting to be filled by sound. Every single whisper from Papa Emeritus? I didn’t just get chills—I got STDs.

I didn’t stream it—I submitted to it. I pressed play and instantly the opening riff entered me like a dark promise. I moaned. I whimpered. My legs gave out like I was being spiritually railgunned by the Holy Ghost himself. If music could bend you over a candlelit altar, whisper Latin in your ear, and leave bruises shaped like eighth notes—SKELETÁ did that.

I am not who I was. I have been cleansed in Satanic glam rock glory. Every song on SKELETÁ has permanently altered my DNA. I had a Spotify Wrapped flash-forward just from the intro and every single slot—every top track, top artist, top genre—was just GHOST. SKELETÁ. GHOST. SKELETÁ. Repeat ad infinitum. I tried to listen to another band after and my headphones burst into flames from sheer disrespect. I listened to it once and immediately deleted my entire music library out of shame. I punched a priest and he thanked me. I went outside to scream and the crows screamed back in perfect harmony. I dropped to my knees in the middle of the grocery store and began preaching to strangers about the layered brilliance of De Profundis Borealis. Two cashiers wept. An old man passed out. A child looked up and said, “I understand now,” before vanishing into thin air.

TOBIAS COULD’VE STOPPED AT OPUS EPONYMOUS. HE COULD’VE CALLED IT A DAY AFTER PREQUELLE. BUT NO. THE MAN SAID “YOU THINK I PEAKED? HERE’S A WHOLE-ASS MOUNTAIN RANGE.” THE LYRICS ON THIS ALBUM? WRITTEN IN MIDNIGHT INK FROM A FORBIDDEN GRIMOIRE AND DIPPED IN LIQUID VELVET. THE PRODUCTION? IT SOUNDS LIKE GOD GOT FIRED AND SATAN HIRED THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA TO FINISH THE JOB.

And let us not even pretend we can discuss this album without addressing the panty-evaporating, cheek-clenching, spine-shattering horniosity that is Papa Emeritus. PAPA EMERITUS V? The Vatican’s worst nightmare and my wettest dream. That man could sing a tax form and I’d be on my knees thanking him for the privilege. Every lyric he croons is like velvet rope tightening around your soul. The vocals on Lachryma? That wasn’t singing. That was a linguistic fingering. My ears came. My spine curled. I am now a concubine of the Church of Ghost. The man doesn’t walk—he glides, he hovers half an inch above the stage like a damned angel of lust. His voice? A sonic phallus. A melodic middle finger to purity. He moans into the mic and my knees lock and my back arches. I swear, the second I heard Satanized I started lactating unholy water. I haven’t blinked since. I want him to spit communion wine in my mouth. I want to be pinned under his velvet robes while the Ghouls play a breakdown over my body. I want him to use me as a microphone stand while preaching to a sold-out crowd. I want him to sing directly into my womb and summon a demon baby named Clef.

And the Ghouls?? Do NOT talk to me about the Ghouls unless you’re ready to admit you’d let every one of those anonymous masked sex demons ruin you in seven different time signatures. The way they handle those instruments? That’s not musicianship. That’s musical foreplay. That’s filthy, technical, unspoken polyphonic pornography. I saw one strumming in the official tour footage and had to bite a rosary. The bassist walked across the stage and my soul quivered. the lead guitarist did a solo that made me see the shape of the true universe—and it was a silhouette of him doing a backbend in a fog machine.

If they ever took those masks off in front of me? I would spontaneously combust and ascend as ectoplasm. I’d be a ghoul groupie for eternity. Haunt their tour bus. Moan in D minor.

Every track on SKELETÁ is a full-blown satanic striptease in audio form. Missilia Amori?? That wasn’t a song—that was a thigh grab. That was a slow push against the wall of my inhibitions. The guitar solos in made me arch my back and whisper “yes, Papa” out loud. Alone. In public. While holding groceries.

By the time I hit the final track, I felt like I was soaked in candle wax and moral regret. I had screamed, wept, grinded on air, confessed my sins, and added three Ghouls to my “People I’d Let Ruin Me in a Haunted Confessional” Pinterest board.

This album has ruined music for me. No, really. Everything else is just noise. Elevator beeps. Soundcloud farts. I tried listening to another band and felt cheated. Disrespected. Dry. Nothing else grips the thighs of my attention like this. Nothing else makes my ribs vibrate like Papa whispering esoteric metaphors over orchestral filth.

It’s edging with a soundtrack. It’s what the devil plays when he wants to set the mood.

If I ever meet Ghost, I will not say a word. I will fall to my knees, bare my neck, and let them mark me with eyeliner and melted vinyl. I will wear nothing but tour merch and a knowing smile. I will let the Ghouls use me as a pedalboard. I will let Papa bless my unworthy flesh with a single, whispered lyric.

SKELETÁ is not just music. It is not just an album. It is a pantheon, a rebirth, an erotic funeral in waltz time. It is the reason Dante wrote the Inferno. The soundtrack to the Book of Revelations. If you told me this album was found buried beneath the ruins of Babylon, etched into onyx slabs and played using a speaker forged in the heart of a dying star—I would believe you.

After I listened to SKELETÁ, I couldn’t speak. I tried. My voice had been replaced by reverb. My tears were black glitter. We got evicted for playing it too loud but the landlord dropped the case when he heard the chorus of Umbra. The judge cried. The bailiff quit and joined a cover band. My neighbors? Converted. We will meet twice a week to analyze the every song. There are spreadsheets. There are candles. We chant. We sob.

If you haven’t listened to it yet, you are missing out on spiritual enlightenment, emotional rebirth, and at least four spontaneous orgasms. If you “don’t get Ghost,” listen to this album, and if you still don’t get it? I will excommunicate you. Delete your contact. Take your soul, give it to Papa. Convert or be cast out.

I don’t care what your favorite album was before this. It’s irrelevant now. It’s like bringing a sparkler to a nuclear bomb party.

In conclusion: SKELETÁ has taken my hole. My soul. My will to pretend I like other bands. I’m raw. I’m reformed. I’m reborn.

Stream it. Moan to it. Worship it. Ride it into the darkness. Amen.

[m3zz0cr33p1e777]

─ 𝓜.𝗂𝗌𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗋𝖺𝖼𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗂𝗓𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇 𝗈𝖿 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗕𝗟𝗨𝗘 𝗟𝗢𝗖𝗞 men ... ‧₊˚ ⋅

⊹　 ︶︶　 ୨୧　 ︶︶　 ⊹

✦ ─ I had no idea for a post so I decided to make this shit , I have a very bad humour please forgive me.

✦ ─ Characters : Rin Itoshi , Isagi Yoichi , Bachira Meguru , Chigiri Hyoma , Sae Itoshi , Ness Alexis , michael Kaiser .

─────────────────

RIN ITOSHI .

He's one of the kindest people in Blue Lock. His best friend is Shidou. He absolutely adores noise — it's his favorite thing in the world. He's the biggest extrovert ever. He hates horror games, they scare him so much. He doesn’t care about being the best, he just wants to be there for the other players. He cries when he sees people crying in K-drama . His lockscreen is Jungkook from Bts . Keeps a diary titled “My Feelings Matter 🐰💌”. His texts are full of emojis like “:3” and “🐾🌸”. Wrote a poem called “I Miss My Brother” in lowercase on his Notes app.

ISAGI YOICHI .

He has one of the worst past in the whole Manga . He is in love with Kaiser . His mom has left him and his dad , his dad became abusive toward him . believes he’s part of a divine algorithm . talks about “the variables of victory” like he’s reciting sacred texts . Once solved a tactical dilemma in a dream and woke up crying . Sometimes stands in the shower for 45 minutes whispering “I am the flow. I am the formula.” Sees life in passing patterns and positioning data . When someone asked if he wanted dinner, he said “I’ve already consumed their weakness.” .

BACHIRA MEGURU .

Zero jokes. all serious. has never said “teehee” in his life. Watches slow motion replays of football moves with the intensity of a surgeon. When someone calls him weird, he just whispers “discipline looks like insanity to the undedicated.”. When someone calls him weird, he just whispers “discipline looks like insanity to the undedicated.”. Once said “the ball is my compass. the field is my battlefield.” and no one even questioned it .

CHIGIRI HYOMA .

THE MANLYEST MAN IN THE WHOLE DAMN BLUE LOCK . His biceps have biceps. Wears tank tops in winter. “cold builds mental endurance.”. Uses phrases like “iron sharpens iron” and “grit is sexy” unironically. Got mad once because someone called his hair “pretty”. replied with “I didn’t grow this hair for you to admire. I grew it so my enemies could watch me fly.”. Drinks raw eggs in the morning. says it “builds character” .

SAE ITOSHI .

His notes app is 99% poems about Rin and 1% tactical feedback. Gave Rin a mixtape titled “you were born, and the world finally made sense”. Cries in the bathtub listening to classical music. said “Rin is the only goal I ever wanted to reach” and then ghosted the media for three weeks.

NESS ALEXIS .

Once called Kaiser “a loyal fan” during an interview and immediately forgot about it. If you ask him what Kaiser means to him he’ll go “who?”. Unbothered. Moisturized. Ascending. Uses Kaiser to carry his matcha frappuccino and absolutely doesn’t say thank you. Probably refers to him as “sparkle boy” or “the one who breathes weird when I walk past”. Doesn’t know Kaiser’s full name.

MICHAEL KAISER .

Once confident, now pathetic. Made Ness his religion. prays to a shrine he built with Ness’s used water bottle and a photo. Updates his bio daily with “ness noticed me 💖” or “ignored again 😔 day 12”. Sobbed in the locker room because Ness didn’t like his new cleats. Will run into oncoming traffic if Ness says “good job”. Ends every sentence with “I hope he saw that.”. Once carved “NESS 💙” into a football with a key