Neurotically Meta

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

[thesunnahthebetter]

they should normalize saying "I'm thinking of you fondly but don't have much to say and frankly I don't even really want to talk rn but you have appeared in my thoughts and it's nice"

[the-sacred-now]

I feel like a lot of people engaging in torture are not treating their victims as if they could have blood borne pathogens 🤔

[the-sacred-now]

Is what my wife said apropo of nothing as we were silently drifting off to sleep

[the-sacred-now]

Uh oh

Is what she said when I immediately reached for my phone and opened Tumblr instead of responding

[the-sacred-now]

@everything-you-feel-is-real I know by tumblr tradition that I'm to say "impossible, my posts never blow up like that," or "please don't do this to me."

But I feel in my bones that you are right. If this is to be my wife's moment of glory, I am willing to suffer notification overload, that the world may know she is funny. #MyFunnyWife

[everybidenjusthavegoodtime]

give a man a guitar and he’ll play for a day, teach a man guitar and today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you

I swear to God I am so tired of this meme. You guys need to leave Wonderwall alone, seriously by now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do

[hannah-the-lion-deactivated2023]

my friend asked if i was gonna stop laughing at wonderwall jokes.

i said maybe

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[maculategiraffe]

me, reaching into my dresser drawer for black pants: I hope this isn’t the pair with big holes worn in the inner thighs

Marie Kondo, gently over my shoulder: why is a pair of pants you find unwearable still in your dresser drawer

me: oh shit that’s right!! The dresser is for clothes that under some circumstance I might conceivably wear!!

Marie Kondo, beaming proudly: Yes, that’s correct!! These pants must have been your favorites. How wonderful that they were so comfortable and practical that you wore them out. But now since they no longer function as pants, you should move them from the drawer where you keep your functioning pants!

me: Yes thanks I got it they’re in the fabric basket now

Marie Kondo, fading back into the darkness: I love what you’ve done with the kitchen!!

[cwicseolfor]

The notion of KonMari as some creepy semi-embodied but entirely benevolent spirit, like a well-intentioned Bloody Mary, is so perfect and wonderful.

[dykepuffs]

Was thinking today about the point of bringing a book to something, when I will usually always have something to do either that requires no props or just on my phone to kill time with, and realised that it's a really specific cultural signal of "I am prepared to spend some time alone here." (Similarly filled by "I have my knitting", "I have my sketchbook", etc etc)

Going to hospital to visit someone where you aren't the primary visitor? "I can just sit in a corridor whilst you and your son talk in private... I brought a book!"

Going to have to wait with someone while they do an important task? "Don't worry about it, just get on with the Task, I'll have a book in my bag so I'll be happy as a pig in shit."

Arrived somewhere before your companions so unavoidably need to sit at a station? "I didn't even realise you were late, I was just in my book." Etc.

Even though logically, they will know that I could probably entertain myself for that time by talking to a friend on messenger, or staring out the window, or catching up on work emails, having a book in my hand is the reassurance of "I didn't expect you to be making me the centre of your attention, I am not in any way surprised or offended by you focusing on your own needs right now... I have a book."

[antlered-vixen]

I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."

[dragon-in-a-fez]

under US law, it's illegal for anyone who's not a member of a recognised native tribe to own an eagle feather. the penalty is a $100,000 fine.

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

probably a good thing I don't intend to move back there anytime soon. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on bird crimes.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

@freedomisscaryshit I'm fucking dying I think you forgot the word "feathers" in your tags?? or do you just wish you could grab whole ass eagles that land in your yard??

[emotional-support-husband]

As an Indigenous person, it continues to astound me that there are such strict laws (written by White people) in our name, laws against...picking up things just found on the ground. Like, stop pretending this is "for" us. We don't want this.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

so, for clarity, that's not what this is. the law against possessing feathers is an anti-poaching measure, derived from a North American treaty protecting certain migratory bird species from hunting. that treaty has an exemption for indigenous people to allow tribes that use eagle feathers in ceremonial or religious practices to continue doing so.

[chekhovs-raygun]

i used to collect feathers (illegally) as a teenager and the thing is that it's incredibly important for feathers from wild birds to be illegal to possess because it ensures that they never become fashionable to wear. the reason we passed the migratory bird act was because the american and european fashion industry was driving species to extinction in a timespan of years. not just decades. the ecological devastation of exporting birds for hats was absolutely insane and people were watching wetlands and forests and meadows just empty out in realtime. look at the wikipedia article for the plume trade.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

these laws, as harsh and ridiculous as they seem, saved flamingos, spoonbills, egrets, and all kinds of hawks and eagles from extinction. the minute these laws weaken and people can make money off killing them again, they're fucked.

[probablysomethingtm]

Lmao we have to fucking destroy this company are you fucking kidding me with this shit

Google Search as you know it is over | TechCrunch

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and

[probablysomethingtm]

Remember that xkcd about how Google searches are shit now? What if we made them even worse for no reason?

[probablysomethingtm]

I will vote for any candidate who promises to go scorched fucking earth on every tech company. Break every single one of them up into companies based around a single product and then split those in thirds. Weaponize existing antitrust laws to the hilt and pass the most draconian versions of them ever seen on this planet. Nationalize google search specifically. Pass consumer privacy protections strict enough to kill the data harvesting industry for good. Make all of these fuckers go bankrupt for this rent-seeking shit

[probablysomethingtm]

[thestuffedalligator]

It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.

[andhumanslovedstories]

#i don’t think this is what pterry meant by ‘a man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’

I absolutely think it is

[seiya234]

I read Jingo for the first time when I was 13.

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

Terry was a comedic genius

[stormsbreadth]

#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf Leopard (via @morkaischosen)

god DAMMIT

[adverbian]

When I was informed that “Vetinari” is a pun on “Medici”. That pun was so painful I couldn’t even see it.

[triflesandparsnips]

...are you FUCKING KIDDING ME.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

get out here Terry I just wanna talk

[amuseoffyre]

Twurp’s Peerage made me throw a book (gently) at a wall.

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

The Book of Silly and Annoying People, based on the real thing with a pun on the name thrown in for good measure.

[deathsmallcaps]

OMG I FUCKING *KNEW* VETINARI WAS A JOKE ON FUCKONG SOMETHING I JUST COULDNT GRASP IT. I THOUGHT IT WAS A REFERENCE TO WIND SOMEHOW

[sarahreesbrennan]

I am not a talented punster so I was today old when I realised about Vetinari.

[fiollaigean]

guys it's fucking close to water

[aridotdash]

[jennyofmany]

Latinclass ca. 9th grade: the text we had to translate contained the words trans means "on the other side of" or in german it can be translated to "über/ hinüber". Also silvas; silvanis means "the forest" or in german "der Wald".

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

My latin teacher gave me a very weird look as I suddenly facepalmed myself and groaned quietly.

[arkytiorlecter]

The Venturi and Selachii feud is what killed me when I got it.

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

... fucking HELL Terry.

[nochd]

In Carpe Jugulum, Count Magpyr boasts of having helped write the Malleus Maleficarum, along with the Torquus Simiae Maleficarum, the Auriga Clavium Maleficarum, and in fact the entire Arca Instrumentorum.

The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.

Malleus = "hammer" Torquus Simiae = "monkey wrench" Auriga Clavium = "bucket of nails" Arca Instrumentorum = "box of tools"

[nevertheless-moving]

Much has been made of Ryland Grace's name being Grace, and that's extremely valid, but I think y'all might be sleeping on the Ryland part.

Because rye wasn't domesticated like other cereals. It was a weed with enough of a passing resemblance to wheat and barley that there was accidental gradual selection for similarity to crops, which meant larger seeds. At which point rye still mostly stayed as a weed, but a arable (useful/edible) one. And then (after thousands of years of arable weediness) it was intentionally cultivated, likely due to its frost resistance and ability to grow in poorer soil than it its ostensibly higher nutrition domesticated competition, becoming a regionally vital crop. The cultivated strain continued to hybridize with its weedier/"earlier" rye relatives in the wild in a way that was hard to control, leading to a high level of genetic diversity (until relatively recently) compared with other grains.

I'm just saying that at some point, maybe a couple years into the road trip, maybe not until linguists dig in post-nutrient crisis, Rocky, who on day two (2) of their collaboration/friendship, was informed the bipedal leaky space blob's name was "Elegant movement" and duly provided the eridian tranlation with the same sense of amusement that new Merry Men got upon meeting Little John, who called him that name in literally every possible emotional register from sarcastic glee (watching sleep-deprived 'elegant motion' trip on its own feet for the 4th time that day) to great and terrible fear (rocky was not actually thinking about dramatic irony while watching Elegant-Motion be thrown to the wall and lay there unmoving while its body weight crushed its lungs, but he did maybe think about it with dark humor later) to unfathomable love, gratitude, shock, relief, thankfulness (at a certain point a funny nickname ceases to mean anything but that person. Grace is here, Grace came back, Grace is here!), Rocky is going to find out that was not in fact the only translation for his name.

Apparently Grace's name could ALSO have been translated as first name: "Expanse of living things which survive terrible cold and lack of nutrients and are good in hidden ways and unintentionally shaped themselves to be chosen for consumption by humanity", last name: "Help/ Mercy/ Kindness from a higher power". At which point Rocky will clarify that 1)Grace didn't make all that up just now to fuck with him 2) that's been his name since birth. And then Rocky will speedrun all 7 Eridian stages of Grief and chase Grace around with a wrench.

[dsudis]

Maybe... can have shit in Detroit?

Historic wild rice restoration underway in the Detroit River: ‘Living tribute to the First Nations'

Historic wild rice restoration begins in Detroit River as tribal partners work to bring back sacred grain that disappeared from ancestral wa

[ba-sing-saying]

I just finished reading The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold yesterday and I can honestly say I’ve never read a book that felt like that.

It’s like a combination of the morbid fascination of watching a car crash in slow motion layered with the upbeat thrill of a heist movie plus politics intrigue and spy-movie style paranoia, all in a gigantic blizzard swirling around this one little guy. I didn’t know how I would be able to become attached to a character in this series after reading Shards of Honor and Barrayar, because I loved Cordelia so much as a protagonist, but Miles Vorkosigan did the job. Truly the character of all time.

He’s a strategic genius. He can figure out a solution to almost any problem. He’s in love with his childhood best friend and gets shut down repeatedly. He serves as the officiant at her impromptu wedding to a guy he saved through another random act of kindness, and plays out the roles of three different people in it like some kind of vaudeville comedy act. He makes people laugh. He inspires everyone around him to genuine loyalty and trust. He was playmates with the current emperor of his home planet when they were kids and is the heir of an aristocratic family. He refuses to get anything by nepotism and uses his mother’s maiden name when he meets people so they won’t know who he is. On a whim, he decides to help a random stranger and has to lie to do it. He commits to the bit so hard that he ends up faking his way into running a mercenary fleet whose existence was initially a complete lie and stopping a war he had nothing to do with. He has stomach ulcers from how stressed out he is. He refuses to break a promise, even when doing so would allow him to escape the web of lies he’s woven. His house of cards is always one gust of wind from toppling and he’s somehow able to keep it standing by sheer force of character. He will not stop because if he does he’ll have a nervous breakdown.

Genuinely the most fascinating and lovable combination of wet rat energy, goodest boy ever, and rogue with a heart of gold. No one is doing it like him. I’m going to read all seventeen books in this series or however many there are, and then everything else Lois McMaster Bujold has written.

[hotvampireadjacent]

Memphis is “under full-blown occupation” by ICE. Here’s why you may not know that.

Community members face retaliation for trying to spread the word out, a lawsuit alleges.

Ice operations have moved to harassing folk in Memphis

[castformbignaturals]

Huh. I wonder what else is going on in Tennessee (and specifically Memphis) right now?

Oh well, I’m sure it’s a total coincidence.

[quasi-normalcy]

(For those not in the know, @castformbignaturals is alluding to the fact Memphis is a majority Black city that stands to have its congressional representation entirely wiped out by redistricting led by the Republican governor of Tennessee who has, of course, welcomed the ICE occupation with open arms. Again, the project of MAGA is to reintroduce Jim Crow)

[sarahreesbrennan]

USA TODAY CHAOS REIGNS!

So… EVIL WINS… somehow? AGAIN! ALL HAIL CHAOS is currently the 21st bestsellingest book in the land of America!

This is my weird book with the musical, sold for an advance I spent entirely on promo, written when I was sure publishing was done with me. Nobody more pleased than me when people were BAMBOOZLED into buying it but I spent this whole week expecting and dreading that the sequel would fall off a cliff. And it didn’t! THANK YOU TEAM CHAOS.

My rogue’s gallery of villains back for their encore, worse than ever, in an epic fantasy adventure that is both camp and tragedy. I hope. When is a fictional character real? Oh, when you love them. Thank you for loving them and making my dreams real.

[mxjackparker]

This kind of response to things I say about sex work, which isn't always phrased like this but almost always focuses on me being male or a man or my pronouns, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why mansplaining is bad.

I am a sex worker. I have been for a decade. The majority of people I know are sex workers and I'm embedded in sex worker community. I started before 18 and have done it in brothels, cars, my own home, clients' homes, saunas, and hotels.

It's absolutely reasonable to criticize men who speak on issues they don't experience like an authority, especially when they speak over women to do it. It is not reasonable to raise someone's gender (or in this case, pronouns) as a reason their thoughts aren't worth hearing when the issue is one they do face.

[mxjackparker]

I see people bringing up that I'm trans in response to things like this, as a way to legitimize my speech. The reason I refuse to do so, despite many of my experiences selling sex being pre-transition, is that I equally do not want cis men who have done sex work to be silenced on the topic.

We need more active and former sex workers to speak out. That won't happen if we're dismissing those who do.

[penrosesun]

I strongly suspect that a lot of this attitude ties directly into people having fundamentally not unpacked the incredibly anti- sex worker assumption of “sex work at its core is women giving up their Feminine Purity and Virtue in exchange for money.” Like… I’m sorry but gigolos exist, and have always existed. Male porn stars are porn stars; male strippers are strippers. If you mentally put the Chippendales into an inherently different category than Dita Von Teese, maybe take a moment and consider why that is. If you mentally put a male escort in a completely different category than a female escort, even when they two of them are servicing the exact same clientele, maybe seriously think about why.

[solrin]

We tried to warn you about the "adult content" bans. Now Kickstarter is starting that shit

[problematic-faves-appreciation]

"It must have serious value!"

Staight-up sounds like obscenity law/Miller Test-type crap.

[thatdisasterauthor]

So fucking pissed off at this. Those terms are so damn slippery and unenforceable.

And this is honestly so much more infuriating given how long Kickstarter has held the stance of "products are the responsibility of the project creator, not us, we have no liability." If you get scammed on a project Kickstarter won't help you, they say you assumed the risk when you agreed to back a project for something that wasn't real yet. But now they're turning around and doing this? Why am I allowed to assume the risk of not getting the product I back, but not seeing the scary scary sExUAl cONteNt?

[thatdisasterauthor]

Sent a long message to Kickstarter about this. If you would like to do the same, here is their contact page: https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/requests/new. Please be respectful in your comments, screaming at them will not fix anything.

Once you submit your comment, you will get an email from support asking you to verify that you sent it. You must click this link for the comment to go through! It's a spam protection thing they have.

[rhaegarzeppeli]

Very well said and might I add: a... anything and everything can be sexually gratifying to anyone. How would they even apply these checks if I say "naaaaahhhh fam, I definitely did nOT create this thing specifically for gratification"?? How would they even know if I made a zine about purple umbrellas with frogs painted on purely for the sexual gratification of myself and a select few? lol

And - for the nth time - I don't know how to tell this to terminally online purity culture people but sexual gratification is part of the life of the majority of people on Earth. If we keep repressing this in ways of such plaforms enforcing rules against it, it's gon' be reaaaal unhealthy out there, real soon! (Already is. Just saying.)

[thatdisasterauthor]

Yep, that's a lot of what my message sent to them covered. And how this will disproportionately effect queer people.

[thatdisasterauthor]

Kickstarter Reverses Controversial NSFW Ban And Blames Stripe

Kickstarter's COO stated that the now-reverted NSFW guidelines were put in place due to campaigns being 'suspended by Stripe mid-funding'

[pennywords]

X

[alexaloraetheris]

Oh, to be a little kitten who just got vaccinated and then taken to a high-end restaurant and tasted the best food the chefs could offer and then fell asleep in a basket.

[insouciantlypersnickety]

It's a shame not adding the original source of the video, which is haitangtravel on tiktok, a channel devoted to a dude travelling with his two cats! They've been to Hokkaido, Paris, Venice, Dubai, the Pyramids and more!

(idk where the black kitten went though)