tense-gemstone

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apropos of nothing (lies, it’s @madscientistshowdown! VOTE AGATHA!), please enjoy this stellar Agatha Heterodyne, Mad Scientist scene that I’d totally forgotten about:

@professorfoglio the comedic timing in this comic is perfect.

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every time i write i think about that maya angelou quote where she talks about her editor asking her why she uses semicolons instead of colons and says she has often responded by threatening to never speak to him again

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something i’ve kind of noticed with the surfacing of this whole “the best smut is a character study” kind of mindset is the pipeline to a borderline “when i write porn i do it intellectually unlike some of you SICKOS” type of mindset and i just wanted to remind you especially in our current political atmosphere that writing porn doesn’t have to be intellectual to have value. it can be just horny. thanks

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damn so JD fucking Vance says Tolkien is his favorite author

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girlbulge is such a choice look i really wish it was more normalized

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the princess bride is such a good fucking movie

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It’s difficult to fully articulate the hold that Patrick Stewart had on audiences when TNG was airing. Between the hundreds of magazine covers, the talk show circuits, and the paparazzi nonsense, the amount of baldness puns editors were compelled to create was astounding.

It was like the media fixated on this man because he had catastrophic levels of charisma and audiences were losing their minds over him (TNG was regularly beating network shows in ratings), yet he was so far removed from the narrow Hollywood standards of beauty that it vexed and haunted these people for years.

Baldness was a joke in Hollywood. 75% of George Costanza's identity revolved around bald jokes. If you were a bald actor, you were cast as a villain or a buffoon, never the hero. And if you were losing your hair, you had to slap a wig on or risk losing your career. Yul Brynner was somewhat of an exception but he was from a much different generation of Hollywood and even Bruce Willis didn't fully shave his head until 1994 (post TNG success incidentally).

In Patrick Stewart's case, there was often an undercurrent of snide putdowns with many interviewers, drawing focus to his baldness over and over and over again with low hanging jokes. It was like you could see their vanity-based paradigms cracking in real time and it was strange to witness. Imagine how bizarre it would be if talk show hosts today could only ask The Rock, Vin Diesel, or Jason Statham about their bald heads.

But karma swooped in to the rescue. In 1992 Stewart was voted TV Guide's "Sexiest Man on Television" with a whopping 54% of votes. He beat out the likes of Luke Perry, John Corbett, A. Martinez, and even Burt Reynolds (with a total of 20 contenders).

The middle-aged bald guy in the syndicated sci-fi show beat out the hottest of the Hot Guys™️ and it wasn't even remotely close.

^ Bald joke

So yeah, today he's an old, revered thespian who is occasionally Charles Xavier, but not only did Patrick Stewart pave the way for other bald actors to be considered leading men, he discombobulated Hollywood with his unconventional attractiveness and it was amazing.

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What's a video game?

Watch the new episode now on Dropout

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One of the awesome things about chronic pain is that stress and exertion almost always exacerbate it, which means you will consistently get flare ups when you need to be locking in. a second awesome thing is then trying to convince yourself, while doubled over in pain, that you are not faking it to get out of work

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I really resent the way that the Overton window has shifted for online privacy, so that I sound like a hysteric when I say that I don’t want Facebook and Google to know everything about my life.

‘I don’t mind Facebook showing me pretty dresses.’

Cool! That’s the absolute least of what they do, though! They’ve experimented on inducing depression in their users! They actively interfere with elections! And they spy on everyone – not just their users, but all internet users. And they’re capable of working out who non-users are based on information their users feed them! Pardon me for thinking that’s not okay!

‘Advertisers don’t listen into your phone as much as everyone thinks.’

Cool! But they do fucking do it! And the amount I would like them to listen in on my conversations is none! I would like none spying! Zero tracking of my internet activity! Especially by companies who want to sell me shit!

Remember how in the 80s, ad companies would listen in to your private conversations in your house, and then send different catalogues to your mailbox as a result? No! Because they didn’t, and couldn’t. And people would have – quite rightly – considered that a massive invasion of privacy.

Remember how in the 90s, ad companies opened and read all of your personal mail, making copies to keep on microfiche, before allowing the re-sealed envelopes to reach your house? Because they didn’t, but it’s what Google does with your email! So they can serve you ‘more relevant ads’ in your inbox!

Why am I the outrageous radical for thinking that I should be able to at least partly control my own data? My own likes and dislikes? I’m not even proposing leaving the internet entirely! I didn’t even stop using Facebook because they’re shitlords, but because using it made me miserable. And I’m considering switching from Gmail to something else like Protonmail. I already use Firefox, and have an add-on installed that reduces Facebook’s ability to track me from site to site.

Why am I so strange for wanting to return to an internet where the people who serve me ads can’t name my age, postcode, eye colour, purchasing history, dietary preferences, and half-dozen closest friends without having to try to do it?

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i had a dream two nights ago where i was being shown around a fancy medieval port, and my guide said "this coast used to have two ports, Mangeet and Totoga, but in recent years we've combined them both into one - Port ManTo" and i actually woke up with a fucking start

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chronic pain diagnoses are all like yeah we don't know what this is or why it happens. we also don't know how to treat it. good luck out there soldier

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celebrating Disability Pride Month by being unbelievably fucking tired

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Fallen London is like what if a piece of the most wonderful beautiful world ever dreamt up (by the biggest names in interactive fiction, no less) was just hidden behind this button you must press 16 times. And after that there will be a button you must press 17 times. And after that

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(All art used with EXPRESS permission from the artist)