Above the Storm

Trying to keep out of the rain. I'm Mingus, I'm 34(gross), still ace,but now learning how to do anything in a relationship

[petaltexturedskies]

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

[creekfiend]

if you looked at how high the walls were, and you looked at the people who were being allowed through the gate, and you looked at who was being turned away, and you decided based on this information that it wasn't worth it to try entering the walled city, that was gatekeeping working as intended.

gatekeeping is so effective because it allows the people in charge of it to frame it as a passive and natural force. "ah well, you just don't meet our criteria because of some technicalities, it's not that we are screening specifically for Your Kind Of Person, you understand, it's just that all the requirements coincidentally happen to produce a result where Your Kind Of Person is unable to enter our walled city :) so i think you'll see that we are not discriminating!"

i think a LOT less people understand how much gatekeeping impacts their lives than are impacted by gatekeeping. if you were ever prevented from participating in something bc of your inability to meet technical requirements for reasons outside of your control, that is gatekeeoing. if you ever decided to not even fucking try because you understood that the walled city wasn't for People Like You, that is the natural and intended outcome of gatekeeping.

one of the big reasons that gatekeeping is effective is because it cedes control of the narrative to the institution that has erected high walls around their city to begin with. they say the walls are natural. they have the power to make those claims because in general, no one else has the resources to develop alternative models. due to the gatekeeping.

[draconym]

I think it sucks that you have to go to so many different kinds of doctor to take care of yourself. It's the 21st century. I should be able to go to a single office where they scan me with a big xerox machine and tell me what I'm allergic to and why my tummy hurts and if I have any cancer or cavities or if my glasses prescription has changed. And then I should get a sticker.

[sourcreammachine]

[valtsv]

self destruction really is such a fascinating human response to various factors both external and internal. what if sisyphus could leave at any time but kept rolling the boulder up the hill just to watch it roll back down anyway. what if he kept pushing it even as the rock cut into his palms and his legs began to ache with the desire to rest for even a moment and his body became a canvas of bruises and cuts that never have time to heal. what if he did it because it's the only thing he knows how to do. the only thing that gives him a sense of certainty and control in a world that takes both and offers neither.

[valtsv]

& needless to say this trait is a lot more fun to observe in fiction than it is in you. or your mother.

[naamahdarling]

That has to be the most humiliating way to describe one of Earth's most terrifyingly effective predators.

[sapphic-and-stupid]

Picture of her from the USA Today

[teaboot]

I would let her kill me for sport

[vaelus-malewife]

[shower-thoughts-last-responder]

[alwaysaphoenix]

[should-be-sleeping]

These things sent me to the E.R. 😂

[podcastwizard]

you don’t realize how important lunch is until you’re wandering around thinking about how unloveable and untalented and uniquely cursed you are and then it’s 4pm and you finally eat lunch and you go Oh. oh right.

[podcastwizard]

lot of people commenting on this post like "who eats lunch at 4pm that's a terrible time to eat lunch" yes. that is the point. 4pm lunch is inadvisable. 4pm lunch is not the ideal. 4pm lunch makes the mind demons real.

[pansy2025]

goo goo dolls if they were in dune: and i don’t want the worm to see me

[mezzodical]

[mattymouse16]

The best magicians don't reveal their tricks.

[queer-as-city-folk]

Horses - can bet on them winning a race

The Jaguar - not able to be bet on

Can someone please explain?

[queer-as-city-folk]

I want to gamble on cool animals

[queer-as-city-folk]

Someone put several missionaries in a pit with a jaguar and let me bet on which one the jaguar will eat first

[queer-as-city-folk]

It would be like Roulette but cooler

[lavender-wren]

I think you have just reinvented the Roman Colosseum

[queer-as-city-folk]

But with GAMBLING!!!!

[coffee-n-kush]

[not-this-crude-matter]

[stupot]

i feel like we're remiss not to tell The Columbo Fan Website (Tumblr) about the episode of Lupin III that features Detective Columbo's cool skateboarding son--that he apparently has--named Boronco

[sarksarkos]

Funny thing, because of how Japanese romanization works, "Boronko" could be translated (or re-translated, if we assume it's a Japanese pronunciation of a western name) in several different ways. Boronco is one, or it could be Bronco, Boronk, Bolonco, or

Blanc

Benoit Blanc is secretly Columbo's Anime Skateboard Son and I have the evidence right here and they're trying to keep me quiet but in this essay I will

[introvertathome]

They shot them before they could finish the post

[crowscriven]

Found what I assume to be a very fine and normal printer in a free pile this morning. Just needs a little work. What could go wrong?

[crowscriven]

I see everyone in the notes is also having a very fine and normal time with their definitely-not-possessed printers

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[mcromwell]

helicopters are bugs

[bacony-cakes]

hard exterior

two or more rapidly-moving "wings"

large eyes

various adaptations to water, carrying loads, etc.

bright colourations indicating danger to potential predators

can hover in one place

full of clear fluid that is needed for it to function

suboptimal to have one land in your drink

[fritokal]

I read this in a novel, pretty sure it was So You Want to Be a Wizard.

now I need to go re-read that. I think I gave my copy to my niece though.

[dduane]

Have to say that this early Harcourt paperback cover by David Bowers goes fairly hard on that image... 😅

[byjove]

Everyone makes fun of the millennial overpriced burger restaurants but the worst part is that they got you hooked on some bullshit and promptly shut down because their polycule broke up or whatever. You’ll never get to eat the caramelized onion apple parmesan sex bomb burger again. And it was $23 and good.

[byjove]

So close! Richmond, Virginia.

[plain-flavoured-english]

As a Greek, in response to the current controversy about Matt Damon being cast as Odysseus, I'd just like to share that one of the moments that changed my brain chemistry as a kid was reading a novelized version of the Odyssey and coming across the following description of Odysseus when Circe sees him for the first time and thinks he's hot: "his hair curled like a clematis and his eyes were very brown".

So may I present my own casting choice for Odysseus:

[plain-flavoured-english]

Excuse me???

[ruffboi-mags]

you are right and you should say it.

[instantduckninja]

Is this the face of a man who would put his own infant in front of a plow to avoid going to war?

Absolutely not

You know who would try that shit?

Is this the face of a man who would defy the very gods to get home to his wife?

You know who would defy the gods just to show he could get away with it?