Brain Detritus

My own photography and my random musings on movies, music,television, literature, games, sports, and society. And who am I? Just this guy, you know? --- It should probably go without saying, but any photos I post directly are, in fact, taken by me and I prefer to be asked if you intend to take and use them for any purpose beyond sharing on Tumblr or other web venues; similarly, if you do share them, I ask that you kindly attribute them to me. I am an amateur, true, but I have a stake in my own work nevertheless, and I'd like credit for what I've done...rubbish though it may be at times! As a bit of an update, I'm not super active and mostly reblog whatever the hell I feel like and post silly gaming stuff of my own, but some time I'll get back to photography. Sometime soon, likely.

[rick-city]

On Marc-Andre Fleury

Marc-Andre Fleury is likely done as a Pittsburgh Penguin. 

I don’t exactly know why, but I feel like writing a little something about what I feel like he has meant to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

If your first thought is “Yeah, but Matt Murray’s save percentage is…..” then this post isn’t for you. I’m not saying that Fleury is better than Matt Murray or that the Penguins should keep him instead of Murray. The league has a salary cap and an expansion draft coming up, so keeping the younger and cheaper goalie makes sense.

However, that doesn’t mean I’m happy to see Fleury go. It’s actually quite the opposite. Yes, sports are about winning (and the Penguins are certainly winning these days) so it probably makes logical sense to say “Well, statistically Marc-Andre Fleury is or isn’t something or other” and then dismiss him. It’s easy to mock people who are sad to see him go as sentimental fools who care more about a “nice guy” than winning and then mention Matt Murray’s save percentage again.

This post isn’t about statistics.

This post is about a feeling. Yes, sports are about winning and losing and numbers, but they’re also about how they make us feel. We cheer because of how we feel. We get dejected when a team loses because of how we feel.

I remember the day Marc-Andre Fleury was drafted. I was two years old when Mario Lemieux was drafted and eight years old when Jaromir Jagr was drafted. I grew up watching those players, but I didn’t have the excitement of paying close attention to their entire careers. 

I was 21 when Marc-Andre Fleury was drafted. I remember getting an email from the Penguins’ mailing list that said the team had traded up to pick first overall. I was ecstatic. It was the first thing to really be excited about as a Penguins fan in a while. The Penguins were not good. The “glory days” were gone. Yes, Mario Lemieux was still there, but the team had only 27 wins in the 2002-2003 season. That year they traded away Alexei Kovalev, and Martin Straka had one foot out the door. 

I had watched Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, and Ron Francis lift the Stanley Cup. Now I was watching Rico Fata, Dan Focht, and Kris Beech. It was depressing.

When the Penguins drafted Marc-Andre Fleury, it was the first sign that there might be hope for the future.

And it wasn’t just hope. Marc-Andre Fleury brought consistency. Yes, it sounds weird to use the words “Marc-Andre Fleury” and “consistency” together, but it’s true.

Since Tom Barrasso left the Penguins, I had watched Ron Tugnutt, Johan Hedberg, Jean-Sebastien Aubin, Garth Snow, Sebastien Caron, etc. in the Penguins’ net. Yes, some of those players were quite good and some had some success in Pittsburgh, but none of them were around for long. When Fleury was drafted I knew that the team would finally have a goalie who would be there for a while. 

He was there for over a decade. He won more than any Penguins goalie in history. And yes, a lot of that had to do with the team in front of him, but a lot of it had to do with him too.

There were certainly ups and downs. Yes, he sat on the puck and pushed it into the net with his butt, he slipped and fell running onto the ice, he bobbled the puck a million times behind the net, he “played” against the Philadelphia Flyers in 2012, and he lost his starting job to Tomas Vokoun in the 2013 playoffs.

But he also stopped Alex Ovechkin on a breakaway in 2009 and dove to keep the puck out of the net to win the Penguins the Cup that same year. He made 46 saves in his very first game with the Penguins (and lost). And, just this year, he stepped in for the injured Matt Murray and was vital to eliminating Columbus and Washington.

Marc-Andre Fleury isn’t the greatest goalie in history. But he’s not the worst, either. The people who attack him over-exaggerate his flaws, which causes his supporters to over-exaggerate his strengths. But, again, that’s not what this post is about.

Before Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, there was Marc-Andre Fleury playing behind Konstantin Koltsov, Matt Murley, and Mike Eastwood. He gave people a reason to believe. Those bright yellow pads were a beacon of hope.

I’m glad he got to play during this playoff run. I’m glad he got to raise the Cup with pride, instead of sheepishly holding it for a few seconds like he did in 2016. I’m glad Pittsburgh got to say goodbye to him at the parade.

And I’ll be cheering for him in Vegas or wherever he goes. Hopefully it’s not Winnipeg.

[retrogamingblog]

me right after i cash my paycheck

me one day later

[heathentattoos]

I know that I hung on a windy tree nine long nights, wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin, myself to myself, on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run.

Veit ec at ec hecc vindga meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr oc gefinn Oðni, sialfr sialfom mer, a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn.

ᛟ Heathen Tattoos ᛟ

ᚦ Instagram ᚦ

[weallheartonedirection]

Fatlogic works for both genders right?…right!?

[healthathumansize-blog]

Is everything OK, Tumblr?

When you search for certain terms like “thin,” “skinny,” or “thinspo,” Tumblr gives you a little blurb about eating disorders, and asks “is everything OK?”

Now make no mistake: eating disorders are bad, and anyone suffering from one should seek help ASAP. And people who promote eating disorders are simply awful.

But most eating disorders involve eating too much, not eating too little.

As far as I’m concerned, all the blogs on Tumblr that glorify obesity and constantly talk about overeating as if it’s a joke are promoting disordered eating. But search for anything obesity-related, including “fatspo” (Yes, that’s a term that exists. I’m sorry.), and you don’t get any such warning. 

Considering that obesity kills orders of magnitude more people each year than anorexia (and I’ll clarify again that anorexia is a real problem for its sufferers and their loved ones), I have to wonder where Tumblr’s priorities really lie.

[rastaveer]

so much truth it hurts    

[thisistherealthinprivilege]

Fat acceptance in a nutshell. 

[bitchyshitlordwonderland-deacti]

"Thin Privilege?" Try "Fat Problems"

Oh no, someone on tumblr is going to go on another rant about how “thin privilege” (i.e. advantages that thin people naturally have in life) doesn’t exist! Well, not exactly. Let’s work through this step-by-step, shall we?  1. Yes, it IS harder to be a fat person. I know this first hand, I was fat! I’m not going to blatantly deny the times that I felt left out, isolated and misunderstood by people just because of my weight, and I’m sure anyone else who has been on the more radical ends on the weight charts (either thin or fat) wouldn’t deny it either. No matter what it is that makes you stick out like a sore thumb, it’s definitely never fun to be the odd one out.  2. No, that IS NOT society’s problem or fault. But just because your size makes your life harder, that doesn’t mean you can start pointing fingers at everyone else and screaming “thin privilege!” whenever you begin to feel down or singled out. It’s not “thin privilege,” it’s a “fat problem” and it’s YOUR fat problem. And as a fat person, you have two choices in life: accept that your lifestyle gives you these problems as consequences and deal with them, or change your lifestyle so you no longer have to deal with the consequences. 

3. Yes, you can lose weight. “But not everyone can lose the weight, 95% of diets fail, some people are meant to be fat, I starved myself and was gaining 2 pounds per-"  STOP THE NONSENSE! Firstly, you’re a human being. You know what that means? That means your body consumes energy, breaks it down and transforms it into energy that you can use, just like all other lifeforms on earth. Energy is not a mysterious concept,  and the laws of thermodynamics help us understand how energy works quite well. The energy that we consume from food can be measured using calories. The calorie info you see on foods is measured in kilo-calories, which is equal to 4.184 kilo-joules . 

So what happens when you don’t put wood into a fire? It will go out eventually, because that’s how energy consumption works. Energy cannot come from nowhere, it’s one of the laws of thermodynamics. So essentially this alone should be enough to prove that yes, you can lose weight, and no, you can’t starve yourself and gain 2 pounds.  So what are all of those people talking about when they say that they are gaining weight from nowhere?

Well, it’s not entirely their fault, kind of. Especially in our day and age, it’s extremely difficult to really pay attention to how much food we eat. It’s not limited to the kitchen or dinner table anymore - food is sitting pretty in gas stations, the ends of checkout lines, even hardware stores and libraries sell food now. 

On a personal note, when I was fat I could not for the life of me figure out why I was gaining weight. I ate a normal 3 meals a day, average portions, sometimes smaller than other people’s…I even bought a calorie counting app; I was only eating 1500 calories a day and gaining, gaining, gaining!

Frustrated, I started measuring every single thing that went into my food exactly by the gram. That’s when life slapped me in the face. I wasn’t putting just 1 teaspoon of butter on my toast in the morning like I had thought, and those little midnight chocolates added up to way beyond the 200 calories that I had been assuming. 

As for the claims of starvation, their results are extremely normal for someone who tries to drastically cut calories or try a fad diet; more often than not you gain more weight back than you originally had. Why? Not because starving makes you fat for sure, or else pictures of Holocaust survivors would have looked a bit different. No, it’s because the brain’s natural response to periods of restriction or starvation is to eat - and eat lots. Our minds purposefully aim our cravings to fill a certain amount of calories; usually the amount one had burned during starvation plus some, just in case starvation might occur again. It was a great instinct for our ancestors who starved more often than they thrived, but it works against the majority of us now. So those people who think that they’ve starved themselves into gaining two pounds are actually just suffering from the instinctual consequences of improper dieting - not from the dieting itself. The simple fact is, a well-balanced diet (that, mind you, is a permanent change not a "lose 10 pounds in one week” scheme) will allow you to gradually lose weight in a safe and healthy manner. 

4. Nothing about that should be offensive. If these facts of life offend you, you aren’t getting the point. Doctors and medical experts telling you that you CAN lose weight and that it would be better for you aren’t trying to ruin your self-esteem - they’re trying to show you that the torch is in your hands. You do indeed have the power to change your body, telling yourself otherwise is discouraging, not empowering. Sure, it does hit you with a hefty load of self-responsibility, but that shouldn’t be such a bad thing either. And if you aren’t okay with having some sort of control over your body and being required to maintain it…you need an adult. 

So continue dealing with your fat problems, I’m off to go enjoy my fat-free life. 

-BitchyShitlord

[yhrite]

Somebody stop them from committing more heinous traffic violations (based on) 

[inccption-deactivated20190115]

[inccption-deactivated20190115]

[arrivingtoolate]

High five!

[gearr-gausapo]

the misadventures of the people on pandora

[myrdas]

Felt like doing a thing!

Borderlands text posts

[text-mode]

The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988 was one of the first computer worms distributed via the Internet. It was written by a student at Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris, and launched on November 2, 1988 from MIT.

[pyronoid-d-deactivated20181217]

It’s trapped on a floppy tho this is some dark shit it has been denied its purpose forever bound to this obsolete storage

[smolmzd-deactivated20150612]

am i glad it’s in there and we’re out here

[undergroundmonorail]

people reading fantasy novels ask “why did the ancient ones seal the evil away for ten thousand years instead of just killing it” but then we go ahead and do this shit

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

We have learned nothing from every fantasy novel ever O.O

[ayellowbirds]

The best part, from the wiki article: “According to its creator, the Morris worm was not written to cause damage, but to gauge the size of the Internet.”

It was intended to do good, but the programmer made a mistake and it got out of hand, becoming viral.

[dr-archeville]

R̴͓̮͈̞̿͐͛̏̒͂͊̾ͅE͉̝͍̹̣̺̿͗͟͝L̶͖̫͇͙̬ͬ͗͌͘E̻͔̳ͪͭ̑̔̉̉̑ͣ͝͝ͅẢ̲̳̝̗̮ͩS̼̮̠̦͍͈̳̝ͮ̌ͯͯ̌͆͗͠ͅEͦ̎̊͏̪͙̤̦͈̯̱͞͠ ̱̃ͥ̆̄M̛̝̘̺̥̙̱͚ͣ̋͊̚E̪̮͍̘̟̟͚͖͐

[hotcommunist-deactivated2019032]

the year is 28AW (after worm) and the effects are still being felt 

[humansofnewyork]

(1/3) “We got called out one day to assist a fuel convoy that was being pinned down by gunfire. They had stopped along an open field, and were taking fire from a tree line about 200 meters away. When we arrived, I noticed a small truck about 50 meters out. It had stopped on a farm road running along the field. There were legs hanging out of it. I was acting medic for the platoon so I went to investigate. And they’re obviously not combatants. It’s this family of six. I guess they’d been driving toward the convoy and somebody got scared and shot them up. It’s just a mom and a dad and four kids. And there’s this unique, awful smell when your guts open up. And everyone’s dead except the father and this eight-year-old girl who’d been shot twice in the chest. And she’s crying. And this wasn’t what I came for. I thought we were here to kill bad guys.”

[humansofnewyork]

(2/3) “All we wanted to know was who the bad guys were. But nobody knew. We were getting picked off one by one and we couldn’t find the bad guys. Some guy who was helping you during the day might kill you at night. The enemy didn’t wear uniforms. Far more innocent people got hurt than anyone else. It wasn’t malicious. It was just legitimately confusing situations. When you’re driving to a meeting and a car bomb explodes, suddenly every car looks like a bomb. And you’re surrounded by cars. And anybody could have a suicide vest. And you’re surrounded by people. It was threat overload. And it was mentally exhausting. One day we were driving to a small village to pick up a young Iraqi boy. We were going to fly him to the US for a rare heart surgery. And I’m in the back of the convoy doing rear security. And this woman in a burqa starts walking toward me. And I’m shouting in Arabic for her to stop, but she keeps coming. And I can see she’s carrying something. She’s clutching something inside her burqa. And she won’t stop. And I keep trying to wave her away. I’m screaming at her and pointing my gun but she keeps coming closer. And I’m thinking that I have to kill her because she has a bomb. I have to do it. And I switch off my safety, and I’m just about to pull the trigger, and suddenly she opens up her burqa. And there’s a baby inside.”

[humansofnewyork]

(3/3) “It wasn’t every second of every day. But sometimes I’d get this boiling feeling like there was mercury in my blood. And it would rise up into my head and I’d get so angry it was like I was going to explode. And all I could think of was worst-case scenarios. And it felt like there was no way out. I’d work myself into such a frenzy that I thought there was only one way to eliminate that feeling. And I’ve already lost seven veterans that I know to suicide. Two of them were very close to me. These were educated guys. And they seemed happy. You’d meet them, and think: ‘These guys are so great.’ And I knew if it could happen to them it could happen to me. So I came here and I started unpacking this shit. It was a lot of work. The therapist just guides the conversation. You have to dig up stuff you thought you’d packed away forever. And you have to answer questions that you never answered. It’s exhausting to go that deep. But it works. I feel like I’m in control again. I know my triggers. I don’t flip out. I don’t send inappropriate emails at work when I feel slighted. I still have bad days but I’m in control again. I was afraid therapy would cause me to lose my edge. That didn’t happen. It made me stronger. It’s like gym for the mind. And I don’t want to lose one more veteran. That’s why I’m telling my story right now. I don’t want anyone to be afraid to look under the hood. Therapy is like Men’s Wearhouse: ‘Give it a try. You’ll like the way you look. I guarantee it.’”