Antarctica Starts Here.

Another external service integrated with my Exocortex. This one consists of crossposts from my primary point of presence. Banner by Zenseeker.

[curiositysavesthecat]

If you could restart your life from age 15 with all the knowledge you possessed now, so that you COULD go back and fix all your regrets/mistakes, would you do it?

Yes

No

Remaining time: 4 days 25 minutes

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[digitaldiscipline]

GET OUTTA MY WAY, YOU GALLIFREYAN GUMSHOE, I GOT THINGS TO DO.

[gothiccharmschool]

My tags from my prev. reblog:

Would I want to experience high school again? Fuck no. Do I believe that everything I went through led to my life today? Of course. But good god, if I could reach back through time and tell Jilli-in-her-20s that she's deserving of so much more, she's gorgeous, and DO NOT DATE THAT GUY, because whooo, so much trauma to unpack later. (As an aside, if I'd actually gotten engaged to That Guy, my parents and friends had an intervention plan ready to go. That should tell you everything.)

[hasufin]

I'm just thinking... like, yeah, I would NOT ask That Girl out, she was not a good person to be with at all. But if I knew then what I know now, I'd still seriously want to get rid of and avoid her, and all our other friends would absolutely not understand why, and how do you deal with "Yeah, she cheated on me in another timeline and convinced a bunch of people that was okay"?

[antarctica-starts-here]

I really don't think I would.

It's less "what I've been through made me who I am today" and more "the things that made me who I am today would have probably happened anyway, with a marginally different severity."

[7-en]

[hasufin]

At a meetup last week, an em-dash of technical writers was proposed.

[antarctica-starts-here]

A profanity of sysadmins.

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[toast-ranger-to-a-stranger]

The best thing for me, as an ex- Starbucks employee, is the horror that genuinely is the milk delivery when it’s only you and one other shift member. Though, I did end up learning how to carry six individual gallons of milk at once.

[nekocat44]

[thefoggygolem]

Also that change from Customer Service ™®© voice back to normal to informal joking-threats is amazing

[gomi-chandesu]

Yeah the whiplash from “Hi welcome to starbucks how can I help you! :)” to “I’LL FUCK YOUR WIFE” killed me.

[drtanner]

MILK.

DELIVERY.

[oops-prow-did-it-again]

Almost pissed myself laughing reading this addition holy shit

[hasufin]

I love this both because it’s hilarious, but also because it’s a delightful insight into a little thing about a job I’ve just never seen and would never encounter.

[antarctica-starts-here]

I'm adding "a math problem's worth" to my lexicon as a substitute for "a metric fucktonne."

[lumsel]

There's an open pit in the middle of our office plan that drops down into a bunch of very sharp spikes that kill you instantly. This is bad. People keep falling in there and dying. Someone put a sign up, the other day, all bright yellow so you can't miss it, that says "Beware!!! Spikes!!!"

The office immediately split into two factions over it. One says that if anyone falls in the spike pit it's their own fault for being so stupid and not watching where they're walking, so we should remove the sign. The other says that the sign is an insult, there shouldn't be a spike pit in our office at all, and having the sign up like that is just normalising the existence of the spike pit, so we should remove the sign.

We ended up removing the sign. Probably for the better. Still... for a while there it looked like it might have worked...

[unusual-pybro]

[m1dori-eyes]

Nobody has ever been capable of writing a scathingly harsh and well formulated satire about the perils of modern capitalism, that doesn't just get immediately one-upped by some random food service worker talking about their actual week.

[hasufin]

Back when I was at Sprint, sometimes I had to talk to folks at colo sites. Very frequently, I'd write detailed plans to run cables and the guys at the sites would ask "Is it okay if I just run it through the hole in the floor instead?"

And I'd be like "... um. Well, that makes for a shorter run with less latency, so I guess you can but..."

[tenowls]

hiii in the mood for requests again and insta got most of these last time so i’ll try do ones from tumblr this time…. and i wanna do characters i haven’t rly drawn before…. i recently finished svsss so will take requests for all 3 mxtx series :3c

[antarctica-starts-here]

Not an "all or nothing," just some suggestions off the top of my head.

Probe - Austin James

The Murderbot Diaries - ARTbot

Quantum Leap - Al Calavicci

Neuromancer - Molly

Ghostbusters - Egon Spengler

Galaxy Rangers - Walter "Doc" Hartford

[mogblin]

the thing about job searching is i see all these job postings and im like i dont wanna do any of this for any of you

[hasufin]

That's okay. The majority of them are fake and the rest they won't let you anyway.

[slipping-into-madness]

[thaumbody]

Here's a source for the analysis, but it probably is not the source.

Labor share of income hits record low as corporate profits soar

Workers’ share of US economic output has fallen to its lowest level since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data th

Some points of interest:

Corporate profits are soaring. After taxes, they now take 12.3 percent of national output, far above their postwar average of 7.3 percent.

Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019, Ip noted. Corporate profits over the same period have risen 50 percent.

The Economic Policy Institute calculates that since 1979 the productivity of American workers has grown 90 percent while the pay of the typical worker has grown 33 percent. Had wages tracked output, the average worker would earn $16.40 more an hour today.

The profits are concentrated among the largest corporations. Earnings at the 500 biggest US firms rose 28 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2021, and their profit margins reached 14.8 percent. The seven technology giants known as the “Magnificent 7”—Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla—grew their profits 63 percent.

In the United States, the richest 1 percent of households hold 31.7 percent of all wealth. The bottom half hold barely 2.5 percent.

[antarctica-starts-here]

And that's not even getting into unemployment right now.

[slipping-into-madness]

[hasufin]

Me: That's an interesting headline about a new development in a topic which I find interesting.

Also me: ...and it's a video. Nah, I'm not THAT interested.

[hasufin]

DC still has a military occupation, in case you'd forgotten.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Yeah I saw the lovecraftian horrors and didn’t succumb to madness. What- no I’m not a cultist, James. For Christ’s sake. What you’re forgetting my friend is that HP Lovecraft wasn’t a flexible man. His brain simply wasn’t stretchy enough to take it all in. I however, have short term memory issues. Flexibility is the name of the game when you can’t remember if you ate lunch or not. What’s the size of the universe? Big. You knew that already, James. Come on now. You don’t need to witness the terrifying ocean at the base of the entirety of reality itself to know that. Pass the brandy.

[what-even-is-thiss]

You must imagine the character I’ve created here wearing a suit and a monocle, by the way.

[thesilvertophat]

During a Eldritch Horrors based tabletop RPG my character was a young dandy who wasn't particularly interested in all this monster mystery stuff but his father (my brother's character) was a researcher who WAS very into it, so Bertie went along to make sure the old man didn't get into too much trouble. It was your average Eldritch Horrors RPG in that you don't make your characters with the expectation that they will survive for very long, both the game itself and the genre are very intent on turning your characters inside out, driving them insane, and blowing them up in no particular order.

The thing was, everything in this nightmare hellscape just seemed to keep coming up Bertie because the man was too stupid to realize what genre he was in. Every time he had to roll for a sanity check whenever he saw something crazy, the dice treated him so well that he just... didn't get it. Gee that sure is a funny costume. There's something wrong with that dog. These mean guys in stupid hats are trying to hurt that young lady, we can't have that! I had not built him this way, his intelligence stats weren't even that bad, random chance just made it so that this man was living a scooby doo adventure while everyone else was being consumed by The Horrors. The final straw was at the end of an adventure when Bertie escaped from the cultist headquarters by breaking out through the mansion's front window on a motorcycle with a hot rescued sacrificial maiden clinging to his back and leading the cultists on a merry chase through the hedge maze while the other adventurers escaped. His sanity score? HIGHER than when the adventure had begun. He had found the whole experience quite thrilling and felt very good about life in general! Bertie retired from adventuring to marry the maiden he rescued and care for his aging father and delight and bemuse his friends at the gentleman's club with stories of his 'wacky' adventures. I didn't want to risk breaking his ridiculous lucky streak.

[thememedaddy]

[samiholloway]

Jeeze. Probs couldn't see him thru the smoke.

[hasufin]

https://youtu.be/bJdJBAiUFYg?is=Aa8v1eiHJdjvwtuz

Zog yes? Zog no?

[antarctica-starts-here]

Hang on, I'll get a bucket.

[vintageandroid]

i made a post like this before but I can't find it now. so. I'll just redo it.

What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?

It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.

My first news thing I remember is the OJ Simpson trial. I vaguely remember watching the news with my grandparents before that, but that's the first story I remember, in part because my second grade teacher had us go play so she could watch the verdict 😂

[absolutelynotclassicusernam-blog]

I remember walking down the street and seeing a sign protesting George W. Bush’s war on Iraq, so I think that.

[samiholloway]

Challenger -- my dad had applied, so I knew about it when it was a good story and a sad one. They sent us home from school when it blew up, and then the news played the footage over and over and over all day.

[hasufin]

Same. Oddly I don't recall where I was when I saw it, but I remember it.

[antarctica-starts-here]

Also Challenger.

I was in second grade, in math class taking a test. The principal came on the school PA system and announced that the Challenger had exploded and all hands were lost. The teacher then said "All right, enough of that, back to work." And we went back to our math test.

I didn't hear another word about it in school, ever. It was on the news that night (and in the paper, of course) but that was it.

[overseer-picard]

Imagine accidentally becoming a deity to a primitive civilization in a massive Prime Directive clustercuss and the only way to sort of resolve it is by voluntarily getting shot with a compound bow. Happened to my good friend The Picard.

=====

Star Trek: The Next Generation S03E04 Who Watches the Watchers

[hasufin]

How the hell did a bronze age civilization get a compound bow?

Like, they could definitely do the pulleys, don't get me wrong. But I think they'd be deeply challenged to make a string with sufficient tensile strength, and if they can make those bow arms they're absolutely fucking NOT bronze age, they're whatever-the-fuck-that-material-is age.

[mumblesplash]

no but the “”ai”” boom is crazy bc they made the entire internet so shitty that the only reason to use it is because it’s where all the people are and now they’re getting rid of the people. like i’m straight up logging off and going to the library there’s nothing on here anymore

[mumblesplash]

‘here’s how to tell if an image is ai’ ‘signs the person you’re talking to is a bot’ ‘how to tell if a song is ai generated’ ah but consider this: i am shutting my laptop and walking outside

[jedusaur]

I saw a bsky post last year where someone said their grandma couldn't tell what was real on the internet anymore so she stopped using it and I really, genuinely think the techbros currently ruining everything have never even considered that possibility. their projections and pie charts and market share research and whatever simply do not take into account a scenario where people lose interest in being online. like yeah we're pretty much all gonna keep using the internet to book travel and look up words and order pizza, but in terms of how we spend our leisure time? I'm still extremely online, but in the last few years I've been learning candlemaking and carpentry and sewing, and I was already spending a lot of time cooking and reading books and skating at the rink and hiking, and an afternoon spent on any of those things always leaves me feeling better about myself than an afternoon spent doomscrolling. I think my daily life is going to keep reflecting that more and more as the slop encroaches, and it sounds like I'm far from the only one feeling that way. silver lining to everything, I suppose.

[hasufin]

Their intent is to shut down or monetize all the alternatives.

Mark me, if it doesn't exist already we're at most months from a major restaurant chain instituting an added fee for ordering in person instead of using the app.

[bigboysdrinkmilk]

Why is there a diarrhea parasite outbreak in America?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to disease prevention and control.

Why is measles back in America?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including RFK Jr, cut vaccine and measles prevention funding and programs.

Why is the New World Screwworm infecting cattle in Texas, when it had previously been eliminated from the area?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Elon Musk, cut USAID funding, which in part worked to monitor and prevent screwworm outbreaks.

Why was there a flu outbreak in our armed forces?

Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Pete Hegseth, cut vaccination requirements for our armed forces, putting all of them at risk alongside our military readiness.

What contributed to the Covid outbreak?

Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to a pandemic prevention program in his first term because Barack Obama had created it.

“America first” sends its regards. Trump voters, please learn your lesson. And if you don’t, it’ll be taught to you again with yet another diarrhea outbreak.

[bigboysdrinkmilk]

[antarctica-starts-here]

They still won't learn their lesson, because people they personally hate are getting hurt. They'd gladly take a broken nose if it meant somebody else's neck was broken.

[hasufin]

I think they hate so much, they'd accept getting a broken neck if they saw someone else getting a bloody nose.

[antarctica-starts-here]

Neologism: Cat toying

cat toying - verb phrase - Making your own tools, materials, or other such things but never actually using them for anything.

Source: Some Cat

https://drwho.virtadpt.net/archive/2026-07-23/neologism-cat-toying/