weekend-conspiracy-theorist - Tumblr blog

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

“I’ll tell you something, I wrote this particular scene at 2 o’clock in the morning in my kitchen and I wrote ‘age of the geek, brother’ and I started crying at my counter. It was one of those moments where I’m like, am I really writing this scene?” - John Rogers, The Long Goodbye Job DVD Commentary

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

Two Kittens by Kawano Kaoru (1950's)

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

people born in 24 Are 2000 now

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

I love how out of everything, it’s Clippy Barry questions 

Bart infodumping to Barry while grandpa listens, commissioned from @/coralreefskim

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

a little mock postage stamp i did a while ago. free to download (X) and print as stickers, posters or whatever you like.

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

if you think about it the people selling spells on etsy are just carrying on tradition

REAL. On that 1st century Alexandrian hustle.

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

no "other/see results" we die like men

note that I'm not talking about the best SERIES just your favorite CHARACTER

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

IMO you can't say anything coherent about most US-based right wing conspiracy theories without understanding how seriously the diehards in these movements believe in The Devil

the obvious question, "who benefits from maintaining this elaborate lie," does not stop people like Flat Earthers because many of them are young earth creationists who believe in powerful spiritual forces whose only goals are

1. convincing people that Christianity isn't true

2. the proliferation of largely symbolic Evil, which they enjoy tricking you into supporting

"tricking" people into believing the earth is round is enough of a goal for The Devil to go to all that trouble. if people don't believe in God's perfect little flat earth then they're also free to believe in things like evolution and the big bang

practicality and material concerns are usually irrelevant. the lie is worth maintaining because The Devil has near unlimited time, resources, and human servants, and his top priority is Getting You

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

my bff4ever

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

you ever just sit and realise u can’t remember 80% of your childhood? like … what happened? who am i ..?

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

2 silver cups, part of the so-called Boscoreale treasure, buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

Whimsical, Nature Inspired Handmade and Painted Ceramics by MataMiaArt

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

So Percy is definitely in like All the government databases.

I like to think the real reason that he and Sally faced like zero legal consequences for anything in TLT (Gabe, the Arch)—or, frankly, from any of Percy’s school mishaps and destruction of property—is that Poseidon managed to register Sally and Percy under some sort of confusing diplomatic immunity.

I mean, Poseidon is the literal king of all the oceans. I feel like his family should get a little diplomatic immunity. He’s been on-board with making both of them immortal. Legal protection just seems to fit that vibe.

I can imagine Percy’s file showing up during The Arch incident and some agent being like

Agent J: Wait a minute. Prosecuting this kid might get messy.

Agent S: What? He just committed an act of terrorism, Bill.

Agent J: Yeah, but here he’s listed as qualifying for— what is this? diplomatic immunity? This is crazy. Do you know who his dad is?

Agent S: No. Why?

Agent J: Neither do I. I can’t find it in the paperwork.

Honestly the real reason they’re never prosecuted has less to do with the status and more to do with the fact that the paperwork is So Confusing. Basically everything is redacted by the Mist and no one can figure out where any of the paperwork came from. —Teams of people getting headaches from reading over the paper trail for too long and experiencing bouts of temporary amnesia where they can’t remember what they were looking at and why —Agents determined to stay late at work only to get home and realize that they’ve left the office and can’t remember looking over the files

There’s a whole office of agents and a legal team that have dedicated themselves to working their way around the problem so that something like this Never Happens Again with their paperwork. They’ll draw straws to see who gets to pour over the paperwork today. They try taking notes but they all turn out as gibberish and foreign letters. They have a tally keeping track of how many times Steve drives home during lunch or Nancy ends up with a migraine or Emmy finds herself napping on the office couch, or how many legal documents Greg has accidentally shredded right after he filled them out.

Their office has garnered so much attention that it’s become a government-funded psych experiment. The national defense office wants to get its hands on whatever crazy voodoo they’re using to cover up the Jackson history.

There’s also a betting pool going on about what makes this kid so important and who wants to keep him off the radar.

Let’s not even start on the foreign agencies that get involved after the Giant War.

They all learned pretty quickly that technology wasn’t going to help them. Any footage they get of Percy Jackson winds up scrambled and confusing. So the best solution is resorting back to grass-root methods:

Field agents.

Sadie: Guys, I think we’re being followed.

Percy: *grabbing for his pocket* What?

Annabeth: Oh, I see what you’re looking it. No it’s alright. Weapon down, Percy. It’s the NSA.

Percy: Todd? *his eyes scan the crowd*

Annabeth: Yeah

Percy: *waves at a man in a baseball cap who freezes and ducks behind a kiosk in the mall*

Percy: It’s ok. It’s just Todd.

Sadie: Ok. Hold up. You have an NSA agent?

Sadie: Don’t they usually use phones or something?

Annabeth: Percy doesn’t have a phone

Percy: Too much bad demigod juju

Percy: I thought Todd was FBI

Annabeth: No, Seaweed Brain. FBI checks in on alternating Thursdays

Percy: Right

Annabeth: *to Sadie* FBI are the worst, honestly. I feel like we spend all day saving their asses.

Percy: Remember Vince? And the corn dog incident?

Sadie: I mean that doesn’t sound too bad.

Annabeth: There were empousai. Venom, right in the corn dogs. I’ve never seen a mortal drop that fast.

Percy: Or Elise and the subway scramble

Annabeth: That mishap with Randy on the 58th floor

Percy: *Looking back at Todd* You know, I miss Jamie.

Annabeth: Yeah, Jamie was nice.

Sadie: What happened to Jamie?

Annabeth: Oh, no. Nothing like that. They took her off the case.

Percy: She was too friendly.

Annabeth: She always waved back.

Sadie: . . . Right. And why are they following you again?

Percy: Annabeth has a theory.

Annabeth: We think it has something to do with Percy’s stint as a domestic terrorist.

Sadie: A wat now?

Percy: I blew up an arch.

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

Poppy, linocut, 2023 🌞

Summer here in Southern California is making me miss the cooler weather and the spring poppy bloom!

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

I rly hate the Satanic Panic & the moral panic surrounding violence in video games in the 90s, coz it's now impossible to talk about the social implications of violent video games in a realistic sense.

No, violence in video games does not create serial killers in the way most people imagine it would.

However, it's very important to notice how after 9/11, a lot of violent video games pivoted their content from silly gratuitous cartoon gore to more realistic military shooters set in the Levant from a US American lens. It's also important to notice the connection of these games & their toxic online multi-player voice chats to Gamer Gate in 2014.

It's obviously not as black & white as it was presented in the 80s & 90s, I dont think everyone who played early Call of Duty games is a white supremacist who wants to join the military to kill people in the middle east, but I think it's dangerous to pretend like video games or any media can't have an impact on the way people think about violence.

I think what makes all the difference here is how that violence is portrayed, what the message behind it is, what the motives are behind the people who crafted that message, who the victims of that violence are, how they are portrayed & the greater cultural context that surrounds it.

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

Here’s one good thing to come out of 2020:

Paleontologists completed a life-sized replica of Sue, the most complete T. Rex ever found.

And she is freaking GORGEOUS!

As I read more about this beauty, I found out some new details regarding things I thought I previously knew about the beast that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I’m going to share them with you.

First, and most obvious, her size:

This is nothing new, we all figured T. Rex was big, but I for one never stopped to consider exactly how big it was. Nobody ever really knows what to imagine when they read about something the size of a whale that walked around and ate everything it could kill. 

Speaking of eating things, I just want to remind you all that T. Rex had–by miles–the strongest bite of any terrestrial animal living or dead, somewhere around six and a half tons of force. That’s over six times greater than the current estimate of what Allosaurus was capable of, and three times what was delivered by the highest measured reading of the living title holder–the estuarine crocodile. It didn’t have to waste time swinging its head open-mouthed like Saurophaganax for a little extra oomph, or grow fancy serrated teeth like Carcharodontosaurus to cut pieces out of its prey. It opted for the simplest approach: get its mouth around something and crush it to death; imagine the full weight of an elephant on whatever was between this thing’s jaws.

“How did it find something to eat?” I hear you asking. “It can’t see something if it doesn’t move, right?”

Listen, I love Jurassic Park too, but that’s a big crock of shit.

Notice how both her eyes face forward. That gives her binocular vision (the ability to focus both eyes on one target, like you and I). More importantly it means she has impeccable depth perception due to overlapping fields of vision from each, large, eyeball. Researchers agree that T. Rex not only had incredible vision, but that it was probably better than most modern animals–including eagles, hawks, and owls–and that she could likely spot something three and a half miles away. If something that big can see that well, it doesn’t matter if you move or not, she’d be able to tell if it was an animal trying to hide or a piece of vegetation. So pray she isn’t hungry if she lays eyes on you. And even if by some miracle she didn’t see you, she’d still smell you. 

If she decided you looked tasty, you probably wouldn’t hear her coming as much as you’d feel her. Modern science indicates that T. Rex didn’t roar like in Jurassic Park, but rather bellowed or maybe even hissed like crocodilians. If she were on to you, you’d most likely feel this sense of unease creep up your spine as a low-pitched rumble in the air permeated through you. You wouldn’t know what it was or where it was coming from until you hear her footfalls. By then it’s too late–you could try to run but she’d probably catch you. There’s plenty on YouTube that reconstructs what T. Rex may have sounded like, and it’s legitimately haunting.  

To wrap all of this up, the one bit of good that came out of the cursed year that is 2020 is that this wonderful child of science and art came into the world, and reaffirmed my respect and admiration for the eight ton slab of muscle and teeth that is this magnificent creature.

…and it is nothing if not magnificent.