#what was your contingency

[mxmoth]

THE JUDGMENT DAY on WWE RAW | 5-6-24

[gibbearish]

ive seen ppl saying smth in the wider plagiarism discussion to the tune of "don't worry anxious people, it's impossible to accidentally plagiarize!" and i feel like that lacks a lot of nuance that anxious brains like mine latch on to to just dismiss the possibility outright, as well as a lack of life experiences fueling it.

it is possible to "accidentally plagiarize" in that you can read something, forget about it, then a while later have your brain spit the ideas back out without telling where it got them. so of course you just assume they're yours and share them as such, because That's Where Most Of The Thoughts In Your Head Come From! and it both is and isn't plagiarism, you weren't /intending/ to pass someone's else's work off as your own, i'd even say in a way you were just as much a victim of misinformation as your audience. but you very much so did still resuse the work of someone else, even if you don't remember it.

but in my experience, this kind of thing also happens to a lot of people. you tell a friend a joke then wake up in a cold sweat two days later realizing the reason they didnt laugh was because they'd told you that joke a month ago. you reply to a friend's text and after sending you realized you ended it with the same exact phrase as theirs. you're writing edgy poetry and write a line you really like only to see it in a text post two days later saying youve already liked the post. like, it happens. so if it DOES happens and you're just honest and explain, people will understand. something like "oh shit im sorry, i totally have read that, i mustve forgotten and only remembered bits and pieces and just thought they were mine. thank you for letting me know and for the source" works wonders.

people know you can forget things. people won't automatically doubt your apology just because all true plagiarists say it was accidental. HOPEFULLY people can understand the nuance between a genuine remorseful explanation, and a thief who hoped no one would find out scrambling for excuses for why they did it. and those who can't, that's a them problem, not a you problem, you've taken responsibility for your actions as much as you can. they think the answer is simple, that the only thing stopping you from saying "yes i did it on purpose, i knew the whole time and deliberately copied them" is shame/inability to admit to your actions. but sometimes things AREN'T that simple, so imo ppl who are shitty to you for not following the script they made up for you in their head should be ignored

[lesbian-honey-lemon]

Anyone else get those days where your brain decides “we’ve had enough sensory overload today, time to turn off the empathy and sympathy!”

Because IRL I have low empathy and lowish/normal sympathy (online both are lower, I think I need the person to be actually in front of me in order for what empathy and sympathy I have to fully kick in), but if I’ve had a bad day? I feel absolutely nothing for whoever’s bothering me with their emotions except pure frustration.

[musical-chick-13]

Now that I'm on this, I think one of the big problems I have with just going, "It's queer!" about a piece of media is that it's always, "there is a queer character in a (usually same-gender) romantic relationship" and not "this queer character exists in a major story capacity and is allowed a lot of interesting narrative choices." The implication is usually that what makes a piece of media queer is "a specific kind of romantic relationship" and not "the presence of canonically queer characters."

[princessconsuelapark]

gungi, a child, who

- traumatically had his entire family slaughtered

- is currently being hunted and treated as something to be SOLD

- desperately seeking out his home planet, he knows barely anything about, and only remembers from DREAMS, and NOT EVEN WHAT VILLAGE HE COMES FROM

finds a village of his own kind slaughtered and burnt to ashes and the sight forces him onto his knees, symbolising the hopelessness of ever finding a place of belonging ever again ??? dave, my kind sir, pray tell WHAT THE FUCK

[fillejondrette]

it seems like a gay man can talk about how he was married to a woman for 15 years and had children with her and people don't question that he's gay. but a lesbian mentions that she had a boyfriend in high school and her sexual orientation is in question. and maybe this in part is due to many bi women describing themselves as lesbians when you don't really have that issue with men (that i'm aware of). but it feels more like a failure to accept women's own perceptions of themselves and reality. and it's extra strange bc in the typical dynamics of hetero relationships and sex, men are more aggressive and women are more passive. i literally dated my ex despite not having romantic feelings for him bc he was so persistent and i was like ok we're friends and we're having sex so we might as well be in a relationship. lmao.

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

i think it is well and good to think deeply about politics in a highly theoretical sense but it is very easy to forget about praxis entirely. you do have to have political aims besides “revolution” and unfortunately too many people in online left spaces do not

[deiscension]

[twirling hair around my finger] Do you ever think about the fact that SQX went from 'it's my fault I'm the one who sinned' to 'we're the ones who sinned' but never 'my brother is the one who sinned'. Do you ever think about how they always implicated themself in He Xuan and his loved ones' suffering? Do you ever think about how they never try to profess innocence despite having known nothing? How it's so heavily implied but never fully said that they would never not see themself as at fault because none of it would have happened if only they hadn't existed to bring that sort of fate into the world, and then to be the unknowing recipient of such wretched malpractice?

Obviously that is part of the problem-- they couldn't condemn the one who was at fault. It was too much to ask, because he wouldn't have done it if they weren't there. So much more goes into it than that of course; the younger must not overstep the older, that's their only family, and oh qingxuan, who will look after you if not me? It's not just that their sense of righteousness suddenly hit a brick wall as soon as it came down to condemning their brother. Clearly they know what Shi Wudu's actions were appalling. It's that they couldn't climb over that wall without trying to drag their own perceived wrongdoings behind them, without understanding it wasn't their fault for existing-- it was their fault for not being able to parse where the blame laid.

[an-eldritch-peredhel]

*through desperately held back tears* die young by ke$ha is a dior and nimloth song im sorry i dont make the rules

[bigskydreaming]

I’m ngl, I’m mildly interested in the Lazarus Planet stuff coming up, mostly because I miss being invested in DC comics and also I’ve been very invested in Marvel comics for awhile, and when nature is out of balance to that degree, bad things happen.

Like, I’m not expecting it to be GOOD, per se, but it does look like radical changes across the board (even if temporary), and that’s the kind of shake-up that can rattle loose various ideas or set-ups that intrigue me and get the inspiration engines up and running.

Course, first there’s this whole Batman vs Robin set-up to put everything in place, and I’m aggressively trying to ignore all of that and just wade into the eventual Lazarus Planet stuff armed with wiki summaries, because oh look, all the former Robins have been brainwashed into being evil and trying to kill Bruce because brainwashed Batkids is something new and different and oh well, at least they’re just making this about former Robins and not Bruce’s kids so its not ACTUALLY like Cass and Duke have just been left on the sidelines again right?

Hey, completely unrelated, but who wants to join in on a “Its Been This Many Days Since We Last Fucked With Dick Grayson’s Brain” scoreboard as like a Christmas gift for the DC offices?

Anyway, my only real takeaway on this is not only are Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph and Damian all united in being evil and targeting Bruce, they’ve also all been armed with heavy-duty mystical weapons like the Sword of Sin and Cloak of Cagliostro and lol its like wait at what point do you have to take a look at how you hype up the Batkids’ own skills and danger-levels and be like, umm, Bruce really should NOT be coming out of this event alive but okay.

[llamasgotoheaven]

Radical idea: we shouldn’t have to reward ourselves because we deserve to be happy and satisfied most of the time if we can do anything about it… maybe what I mean can alternatively be framed as microdosing on rewards all day. Did you sit for an hour reading for work? Go get that goddamned cuppa tea. Take a stretch break. Set a timer and make sure you get up to do something nice for yourself regardless of how much you ‘accomplished’. Sitting down to work is rly hard some days my friends, that can be worthy of a so-called reward in and of itself.

Also consider: You are a living breathing creature who deserves to enjoy living the life you were given. Your body should have the good feelings whenever possible within reason, life is too short not to have them.

Rewards as a concept need to change… They’re not something we only deserve when we ‘win’ or when we ‘grind’.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

truly fitting re: billions to have the lose-lose that if winston is written out i get to be disappointed for obvious reasons and if winston isn't written out i get to be disappointed for being denied ever knowing peace

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[chaoswithcausation]

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[deep-space-netwerk]

What do you mean by Venus floating cities?

I'm hoping to write a science fiction story about visiting Venus as part of the space race and I would love your input

Alright so the thing with Venus is that we're all very familiar with her horrible hell-death clouds and 900°F surface temperatures. We all understand the surface of Venus is not a fun place for humans to be.

But, nobody ever talks about the fact that ABOVE the hell-death clouds, Venus is a paradise. The most Earth-like environment we know of in the solar system, beyond Earth itself, is actually in the skies of Venus.

About 30 miles above the surface, the pressure is ~1 atmosphere, and the temperature ranges from 30 - 100°F, which is Happy Human™ standard pressure and temperature.

What's more, a breathable mix of oxygen and nitrogen provides over 60% the lifting power on Venus that helium does on Earth. In other words, a balloon full of human-breathable air would float to the habitable range of Venus's atmosphere. We could float a ship with the very air we breathe.

The other great thing about this is that it avoids one of the big problems with Mars colonization. On Mars, any habitat on the surface full of breathable air is vulnerable to leaks and explosive decompression, a la the Martian.

Floating on Venus, a balloon full of breathable air doesn't have a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside. Which means, any leaks or tears would be very slow and manageable. You could fix that shit with duct tape!

Similarly, because the environment outside the balloon is so Earth-like, humans living there wouldn't need any big fancy pressurized suits for extravehicular work. We'd need air to breathe, maybe some heat protection, and protection against the acid rain. That's it. 

Venus also provides the tools to keep us fed! It's atmosphere is made primarily of carbon dioxide, even above the dense horrible clouds. What likes carbon dioxide? Plants from Earth!! Lets grow FOOD on FLOATING PLATFORMS in the SKIES of VENUS.

This whole idea actually came out of a NASA effort exploring potential Venus colonization. The program was called HAVOC - the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept.

It hasn't really gone anywhere, and as far as I know there are no real plans to revisit it. Unfortunately, from a practicality standpoint, Mars is a much more viable target for human colonization. Not only is it better poised for outer solar system exploration, being farther away from the sun, but living on Venus would come with too many complicated contingencies. In the event of a major failure on Venus, you'd need to fly to another base, or fuck off all the way to orbit. I understand why people aren't really in a hurry to live somewhere where landing on the surface means certain death.

But that doesn't mean I won't be forever and always enamored by the skies of Venus. Here's one of the artist concepts to come out of HAVOC.

I want to be there.

[medicinemane]

I don't know... just the utter insanity of being like "I don't trust the government" only to put your full faith in the government cause you've decided that this punitive law is one you like and could totally never be used in an inappropriate way

Never trust the government man

Government needs to be forced to have full transparency and accountability and have a boot kept on it's neck at all times to make sure it's doing what we need it to... and we're not there yet, not even close. DOD can't even pass an audit man, and so many of the governmental systems as so clearly just kind of broken

So why on earth would you ever trust some new law to only be used in positive ways and not as a tool of suppression?

And part of it is about looking at laws, looking at what they say and do, looking at their scope. Like yeah, I'm pro right to repair laws because they mostly say companies can't stop me from fixing my own shit and need to make parts available (which they demonstrably don't do otherwise, which is the only reason I even want a law about it)

But like... there's a bit of a difference between the scope of a right to repair bill vs something on surveillance, or banning something like tiktok, or making it so police can arrest you for something new... never trust that stuff's going to be applied how they say it will, assume they've slipped massive overreach in the fine print, and assume that even if it's technically the most restrained bill that the feds might ignore that and use it as an excuse to trample all over your rights despite technically not being allowed to

Doesn't matter if the cop technically isn't supposed to arrest you for it, we see cases all the time where cops do shit they're not supposed to do and go after people not doing anything wrong