The official blog for Buffer_Subroutine for all Defects and everyone else to enjoy~! Chanel & Socials: buffer-https://buffer-subroutine.carrd.co/
Welcome to my Tumblr! Posts are NOT strictly SFW and thus this page is adults-only.
For a college game, I used an entire box of candy canes as a size colossal monstrous zombie grasshopper, and then when it died I ripped the box open and used the candy canes as size large monstrous parasitic horsehair worms erupting from its corpse. Nobody actually wanted to eat them after that so I took them home and ground them into a powder with a pestle, intending to add it to my hot cocoas. But I didn’t wash the pestle very well last time after using it to crush garlic and chilis, so I accidentally made chili-garlic-mint powder and then I tried serving that cocoa at a later D&D sesh, and we were all baffled at why it tasted so horrible until I was like oh my god it’s the ground up zombie ass worms. I contaminated them with garlic and chilis. And the group was like YOU GROUND UP THE ZOMBIE ASS WORMS AND FED THEM TO US which seemed like a lot of fuss over what would have otherwise been free and delicious cocoa. Then after that before taking any snacks they’d ask did you perchance put any zombie ass chili-garlic worm powder in this?, and then refuse to eat until I said None.
Which they thought was very funny, even if I was slightly less amused, but I bided my time until they got tired of the joke and stopped specifically asking. Then I poured all the remaining zombie ass chili-garlic worm powder into a bag of party mix. The first guy to take a bite spluttered, and I laughed, and everyone said WHAT DID BABS DO, and I said THE WOOOORMS… YOU FORGOT TO ASK… OHMYGOD… and then I laughed so hard I actually cried. Derailed the start time almost an hour.
I cannot understand why anyone would want to fuck a Pokémon when the Pokémon world is canonically bountiful with hot empty-nest moms whose husbands are absent or nonexistent
the normalization of jealousy as an indicator of love
the idea that a sufficiently intense love is enough to overcome any practical incompatibilities
the idea that you should meet your partner’s every need, and if you don’t, either you’re inadequate or they’re too needy
the idea that a sufficiently intense love should cause you to cease to be attracted to anyone else
the idea that commitment is synonymous with exclusivity
the idea that marriage and children are the only valid teleological justifications for being committed to a relationship
the idea that your insecurities are always your partner’s responsibility to tip-toe around and never your responsibility to work on
the idea that your value to a partner is directly proportional to the amount of time and energy they spend on you, and it is in zero-sum competition with everything else they value in life
the idea that being of value to a partner should always make up a large chunk of how you value yourself
I'm obsessed with this chair. The artist takes a flimsy hunk of injection-molded plastic that's been cost-cut to hell and back, and insists that we look at it with fresh eyes and understand its beauty. And they went about it in the most labor-intensive way I can think of.
Absolutely nothing about this design is convenient to execute in wood. Every piece is curved, most have compound curves. This is artisan craftsmanship: it's inherently slow, manual, and skilled. Notice, also, that most features of this chair must be thicker and heavier than on the plastic chairs being imitated. Injection-molded chairs can be produced in this shape in a matter of minutes with far less material at very low cost.
If these flowing, organic curves are so beautiful in polished wood, perhaps they are also beautiful in the mass-produced chairs that are far more accessible. Perhaps we should remember to admire designs that succeed enough to become ubiquitous. I don't know about you, but I'll never see injection-molded chairs the same way again.
I agree with all of this, but YOU HAVE HIT UPON A FORGOTTEN TRUTH OF PLASTIC CHAIRS!!!!!
The standard one-piece injection molded plastic chair is referred to as a "Monobloc", literally just describing it as a single piece. The history of this chair is fascinating, and it all starts back in 1946, with the D.C. Simpson Monobloc.
Douglas Colborne Simpson was an architect mostly active in the 40's and 50's, designing a lot of classic mid-century style buildings in Vancouver, Canada(1). In 1946, as part of a government project to find new uses for materials developed for WWII, he and engineer James Donahue developed the design you see above, simply called the Monobloc(2). Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about this chair as it was only ever a prototype, and no modern examples have survived, nor have most of the records surrounding it(3). To my knowledge, we don't actually know if this was technically injection molded, or crafted some other way. We can't even be sure if it was technically the inspiration for the designs that followed, but no matter the case it has lent its name to the entire genre.
Plastics technology was simply not what it is today back in the 1940's. Most people would have had very little plastic in their homes, most likely just a few pieces of Bakelite (the first commercially viable plastic, made from a formaldehyde based resin in a Bakelizer, the best name for any industrial manufacturing equipment ever). Over the following few decades, however, as a wider variety of plastics were both developed and came down in price to the point of commercial viability, the concept of the plastic chair was revisited, and the first folks to revisit it were Helmut Batzner, in 1964, and Joe Colombo, in 1965.
This, is the Bofinger chair, Batzner's design:
The elements of D.C.Simpson's Monobloc were pretty alien compared to todays mass-manufactured plastic chairs, but here we start to see some more modern elements come into play. The first thing you probably notice is the front legs, which have that characteristic visible 90 degree bend in them for added rigidity, plus a much more comfortably leaned back and slightly scoop-shaped seat. We also see much more support in the back rest, with broad triangles allowing for a more efficient use of materials without losing back support.
Similar to Simpson, Batzner was not an industrial designer, but an architect, and this chair had a very specific purpose. Batzner and his team designed it as part of a project to build a new theater in Karlsruhe, Germany, which required a large amount of additional seating which could be easily packed away into storage or distributed around the theaters rooms by the staff (4). As such, it was designed to be both lightweight and stackable, so several of them could be moved by one person, and they could be stored compactly. This piece of furniture was a huge hit a the theater, and was so popular that 120,000 units would ultimately be manufactured and sold around the world, with each one taking just 5 minutes to produce (4).
Around the same time, Joe Colombo enters the scene with this:
Colombo was an artist in several mediums who, after taking over his families appliance company in the 50's, made the shift towards architecture and interior design, and started designing a wide array of trend-setting furniture(5). The chair shown above is known as the Universale (sometimes referred to as the Chair Universal 4867), designed in 1965. This chair differs pretty greatly from the ones that came after it, it many ways it represents a different path that could have been taken, but it's also very widely referenced as an inspiration for what is broadly considered the origin of the white plastic chair the world over.
Enter: the Fauteuil 300
This is, arguably, the first iteration of the white plastic chair we all know today. Designed by Henry Massonnet in 1972, the Fauteuil 300 and it's imitators are, collectively, the single most widely used piece of furniture in the entire world(6). Before that, however, it was something else entirely: works of art.
What might be hard to recognize in hindsight is that all of these chairs described so far were not everyday objects. They were on the forefront of modern design, they made use of brand new materials and manufacturing processes, and at the time they were each made, they were slick, stylish, and fairly expensive. Despite the speed at which they could be manufactured, these innovative, high-end chairs rose sharply in cost up through the early 1980's due to the sheer demand for them. They weren't cheap spare seating you stuck in the garage, they were placed at dining tables and on fine patios, and they were a wildly popular talking point. That's not to say their expense justified their artistic value, but rather that their expense and popularity was a product of their status as highly contemporary and boundary-pushing designs.
With the price of plastics declining after the 70's, the increasing accessibility of injection molding to manufacturers, and the widespread popularity of these designs, copycats proliferated rapidly, and eventually drove the price down. This era, in the 80's and 90's, is when these chairs became cheap an ubiquitous, and where they became manufactured the world over.
And here is where we reach this piece, "Plastic chair in wood", by Maarten Baas, and a piece of the history I've left out so far. The Monobloc was designed to be made out of wood. Like the the other chairs designed by Joe Colombo, like the chairs that predated the Simpson, the Monobloc was designed with the intention of using laminated plywood, but as the artists and designers behind them began to experiment with new materials they fell in love with the idea of making them from plastic, and so they did. They redesigned and redesigned until they made something that would be impossible to make in wood at a price most people could afford, but which could be made from plastic in mere minutes. The organic curves and thin profiles would take so much time, so much waste material, so much skill and effort to create if made of wood that they could never be furniture, they could only be art. Baas' chair is a perfect, beautiful reflection of that.
That, in brief, is the history of the design of the white plastic Monobloc chair, but it's not all there is to know. In fact, it's kind of just the start. I've linked my sources below, but I would strongly recommend checking out the German documentary Monobloc, by Hauke Wendler. It goes over the history, but it's far more interested with what the Monobloc means, and what it's place is in our world today. The impact it's made, the better and the worse, and what it says about us. It's fascinating, and well worth your time.
everyone loves to hate terfs until they realise that it actually entails rejecting bioessentialism entirely and then suddenly you’re “taking things too seriously” and you “don’t have a sense of humour” like i’m sorry but saying protect the dolls doesn’t make you immune to terfism it has seeped into every corner of mainstream feminism and unless you’re actively searching it out and checking your own biases you will always be at risk of sharing a space with terfs
“Only women can—” nope. “But all men—” nah. “The divine femininity of—” gonna stop you right there. “Everyone born ama—” if you finish that sentence I’ll kill you. “Men don’t experience—” you’re wrong. “Gender isn’t real but sex is imm—” *loud incorrect buzzer*
It also goes without saying that bioessentialism inherently can’t be trans inclusive no matter how hard you try. “All men including trans men—” probably not. “This is only a woman’s issue—” is it really? “Afabs only—” why? “All trans men are like—” what? what are they like? finish the sentence i dare you.
"why can't they just be friends?" not in the homophobic sense, but in the "in your need to center romance in everything you are missing the whole point of the media in question" sense
reminder to all of u that all the stickers u see are for sale on my kofi!
i sell them in randomised packs but ur welcome to msg with ur order number and request specific ones youve seen! (if they havent already been sent out)
"I want to live in a world in which teenagers can fulfil their natural purpose of being annoying" and "I do not always want to be annoyed by the teenagers" are compatible sentiments
#I get so happy when I’m annoyed by teenagers in public#because it’s like#these kids are forming communities outside of their parents!#they aren’t shackled by school or soccer or clubs their parents put them in#they have the initiative and confidence to make their own social connections#it’s so so cool that I’m out of touch with what they’re saying and doing#because it means they have lives of their own (tags via @elongated-twink)
You! You are the only person who has correctly understood this post. The point is not that they should go be annoying somewhere else, it's that being annoyed by teenagers in normal public places, while annoying, is a good thing. It is a sign of societal health. We adults just need to be ok with the fact that we're going to be annoyed sometimes.
Someone asked me what housekeeping skills I’d recommend learning.
Keep in ming that this is not me shaming you, I know you have your reasons, folks. This is just a guy who enjoys clean spaces asking that you start learning now.
Here’s what I suggest as an adult who has lived with other adults who didn’t have housekeeping skills:
First and foremost, learn about all the places in your house that need to be cleaned and understand how often they should be cleaned. the American Cleaning Institute (I guess that’s a thing) has a good article about basic cleaning info. Plus this video on cleaning tips is great!
Learn how to do your dishes. HOT water is the only way to clean your dishes.
Learn how to clean your shower head, especially if you live in a place with hard water. Same goes for your sinks.
Learn how to do your laundry correctly. Even without the whole “separating whites and colors” thing, there are things you need to learn about washing your clothes. Learn what the tags mean, too.
Also, you don’t have to use fabric softener and you shouldn’t use it on towels or any fabric meant to absorb. (Learn about laundromats)
And please learn how to clean out your dryer vent, it’s a safety hazard!
Get a disinfecting cleaner for your high-touch areas, especially the gross ones like the bathroom. Just because it doesn’t look dirty, doesn’t mean it’s clean!
Learn how to sweep, mop, and vacuum effectively.
You’ll also want to make sure to change out your home’s air filters.
TL;DR, here are some cleaning videos.
How to Clean Everything in Your Bathroom
How to Clean Everything in Your Kitchen
Livingroom Cleaning Routine
How to Clean Everything in Your Bedroom
Now these resources are not the end-all-be-all, but I think if you don’t know much about cleaning your space this is a good way to start.
here’s some of the things that are helping me actually clean (as an adult who had messy parents, and has a hard time getting threw my nurodivergency about cleaning specifically) that may be helpful to you:
Favorite Cleaning Book: it helps you work through the emotional side of cleaning (and other care tasks)
Current Favorite Decluttering Method/Concept: it helps you know how much is too much to keep and how to get started when you’re overwhelmed. (having too much stuff makes it incredibly hard to clean/organize.)
Basic Cleaning Skills: this channel is amazing! this man has a special interest in cleaning and cleans people’s spaces who deal nurodivergence that make it hard to clean. he does this for free (or at a deficit because he pays for supplies and dumpsters and transport and such) and does it all with empathy and kindness working With the people as much as people can handle instead of just coming in to “fix” an issue. these videos are a bit different from his usual ones, (the last one’s most like his usual videos) but i find having the sped up cleaning videos with a voiceover can help fill in for body doubling when im too ashamed to bring people into my messy spaces.
