Call Me Hux

Weapon of Mass Consumption. Writer, including fanfic.

[ampervadasz]

Unmute !

[plantanarchy]

I showed this video to my 2 y/o niece last night and now every time I get out my phone near her she says “chicken. song”

[dduane]

…Oh dear gods. (spluttering)

[depsidase]

[reave-and-rowdy]

They go after the most vulnerable and marginalized. Trans people, kids on SNAP, single moms, old people. They’ll work their way to the rest of us bit by bit if we don’t stop them

The Spear in the Others heart is the Spear in your own, you are he. There is no other wisdom and no other hope but that we grow wise - Diane Duane

[hannahbisssssss]

When the world needed him most—

[mangled-by-disuse]

in happier pride news i actually found this deeply heartwarming

that's solidarity baybeeee

[lgbtlaughs]

Further context: Durham city council (Reform UK) cut funding and support for Pride. The Durham Miner's Association and other trade unions raised enough money for Durham Pride 2026 to go ahead - a direct call back to when Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) raised money for mining communities when Margaret Thatcher seized union funding during the miner strikes of 1984-85.

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Miners’ Association, said that when it became apparent Durham Pride was under threat, he took it upon himself to “encourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community […] They not only raised funds for us, but came to our communities, uplifted our spirits when they were down, and showed their solidarity.”

[hungry-skeleton]

Asexuals were always part of pride and it really fucking shows when people think it's a recent term.

[hungry-skeleton]

Although not going by the term "asexual" yet, asexuality was spoken about alongside homosexuality as far back as the 1890s. Asexual history is just as vital to queer history as any other term and I'm so tired of watching us being treated like a new thing

[hungry-skeleton]

This image is so so fucking important to me

[hungry-skeleton]

Reblog this, cowards

[thecolorofthegame]

I know this trophy is supposed to represent a triathlon, but it looks like a cyclist award for attacking pedestrians

[twiststreet]

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Edited down a long tweet. (x)

[brucesterling]

[cilceon]

Did you guys know that by the end of this month Google is removing the search feature completely and replacing it with gen ai?

Google Shifts to AI Search, Heralding Major Change in How People Use the Internet

The company's sweeping AI overhaul of Search could reshape how billions of people find information—and impact the publishers and businesses

[depsidase]

[do-not-u-dare]

Stole this from somewhere but i think it’s appropriate

[spinningprincess]

What if we were allowed to strive for "enough"

For background, I'm a shop owner. I own a small brick and mortar (ok, plywood and LVL and weird fake brick, but whatever) yarn store in a suburban town. 

I keep getting emails from review sites, my point of sale system, random cold calls: "increase your sales!" "advertise in more markets!" "unchecked growth!" "people always need more!"

Okay, those last two were paraphrases, but the first two aren't.

And like. We're a small shop. I have a relatively large staff and it's still under ten people. Only two or three of us can actually get a package in the mail. Mostly we have to have a whole conversation with a customer who comes in. I don't want unchecked growth, I don't even want a ton of checked growth. I want steady sales with a stable number of regular customers who buy yarn when they have a new project, and a medium number (maybe 25%?) of new customers who are themselves a mix of people who will become regulars and one-off tourists who will think of us fondly when they go back home. I want a medium number of online sales, again a mix of regulars who know and like us (maybe some of those tourists!) and people who are frantically looking for one last skein to finish a project. 

Unchecked growth is BAD. It's unsustainable for us, the humans who actually package and sell the yarn, and it's unsustainable for the customers, who will soon be drowning in yarn that they don't have time to work with because they're too busy buying yarn, and it's unsustainable for the YARN MARKET since there are people who have a finite number of people hours each. Slow, small, steady growth that doesn't balloon out and create a problem for us later is my ideal.

I do understand that the many many MANY people who are trying to sell me advertising don't really care about this, they have been told that their job needs unchecked growth and that they need to keep making their sales numbers increase, despite the fact that that's wildly unsustainable for them, but.

Guys.

What if there was enough. Not too much, not too little, but enough. What would the world look like if we strove for "enough" rather than "more all the time"? Wouldn't that be nice?

I know that Tumblr doesn't think this is weird and radical, but maybe MAYBE one of the people who's got a horrible sales job at an unnamed review site will happen across this post and think "hmm, maybe it's not me, maybe she just really doesn't want any advertising."

I live in hope, I guess. Hope and a constant state of "no thank you we've got plenty."

This post brought to you by my point of sale system trying to get me to advertise in more markets.

[theconcealedweapon]

[maarvarq]

Always bear in mind that there is absolutely no legitimate evidence that Luigi was actually the one who killed the insurance company guy.

[theconcealedweapon]

Of course he wasn't. He was at a party with me that day.

[tiny-space-whale]

No but like literally, actually. All bits aside.

He didn't do it.

The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.

Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?

From the moment of his arrest, even left-of-center media has been presuming his guilt without examining anything (e.g. calling him "the killer" instead of "alleged" or "accused") and then when I say he didn't do it, the nearest person chimes in with some quip that tells me they think he did do it but should go free anyway. Don't get me wrong, I would have the same attitude if he had done it. But he didn't. It makes me feel like the only sane person in the world, even among my staunchly leftist friends.

[torracat]

this is the money garf. reblog for untold pasta and riches to come your way

[pmamtraveller]

"Fat Tiger" by "Uncle Bum" (不二馬大叔).

[defilerwyrm]

URGENT: PLEASE SHARE

A friend (for whom I can vouch personally) had to give up her dog in a divorce, and now her shitty ex is moving to a no-pets location and is going to send her dog to a kill shelter if he isn't rehomed by June 15th. She can't take her dog back for financial reasons and the dirtbag isn't lifting a finger to rehome poor Lentil. So her friends are doing the lifting. They've been in contact with every no-kill shelter and rescue they can find, but so far, no luck finding anyone who can take him in.

This good boy is currently located in NYC but can be transported!

Let's get Lentil to safety! Contact info is in his resume above!

[callmehux]

I would take him but I have spawn in the home.

[misfitwashere]

I wrote a eulogy

"I wrote a eulogy for my best friend last week. Then I read it to him. At the pub. On a Tuesday."

He was alive, holding a pint, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have.

I'm Mick. I'm 70. The man across the table was Barry. Seventy-two. Best mate for 46 years. Met on a building site in 1979. He dropped a plank on my foot. I called him something unrepeatable. He bought me a pint after the shift. Haven't gone a week without talking since.

Three months ago we went to a funeral. Bloke we'd worked with. Cancer. The eulogies were beautiful - people saying what he meant to them, things they'd clearly never said to his face. And all I could think was, he can't hear any of this.

Every beautiful sentence. Every "he changed my life." Said to a room of crying people and a box of wood.

I turned to Barry. Whispered, "What a waste."

Drove home. Couldn't sleep. Because I realised, if Barry died tomorrow, I'd stand up and say extraordinary things about this man. Things I've never said in 46 years. And he'd be in the box, missing all of it.

So I wrote them down. Took a week. Harder than expected - not finding the words, but admitting I had them.

Rang him. "Tuesday. The Crown. Need to read you something."

"Have you joined a book club?"

"Just come."

Same corner table. Pint of bitter. Crisps. I pulled out the paper. He saw my hands shake.

"Mick. What's this?"

"Your eulogy. I'm reading it now because I'm not wasting it on a day you can't hear it."

"Have you gone mad?"

"Probably. Shut up and listen."

I read it. In a pub. To a man very much alive and very much uncomfortable.

I told him about the plank and how it was the best injury of my life. About the night he drove forty minutes in rain to help change a tyre. About how he rang every day for three months after my divorce and never once asked "Are you alright?" - just talked about football and weather, because he knew I didn't need a question. I needed a voice.

I told him he was the funniest man I'd ever known and his jokes were terrible and both things were true. That he'd been a better father than he thinks. That his wife's a saint and he knows it. That I'd have been a worse man without him.

He didn't look at me. Stared at his pint. Jaw tight. Doing that thing men do when the feelings arrive and they'd rather swallow glass than show it.

When I finished, long silence. Then he picked up his pint, took a sip, and said,

"You're paying for the next round. And the one after."

That was his answer. Perfect. Because Barry doesn't say "I love you too." He says "you're buying."

But in the car park, he hugged me. Not the quick back-pat. A real one. Thirty seconds. Neither let go first.

And he said quietly into my shoulder, "Don't read that again at the real one. I want new material."

Who would you write a eulogy for - while they're still here?

Don't wait. The flowers can't hear. The box doesn't laugh. Say it now. At the pub. Over a bad cup of tea. You'll feel ridiculous.

They'll look uncomfortable. It'll be the most important thing you've ever done.

Read them the speech while they can still hug you in the car park.”

.

[dduane]

Seeking escape

Those of you who notice such things will know that in a little less than two weeks, it's going to be a year since @petermorwood departed this plane of existence.

As the date's been getting closer, I'm becoming increasingly clear (due to mood swings and sleep disturbances and other such stuff) that it would be a really good thing for me if I don't have to live through this first anniversary of his loss anywhere near the house where he breathed his last.

For that day, and ideally a couple/few days on either side of it, I really need to get away from here.

So that's my plan, if I can get all this to come together (with everybody's help). ...It's not like any brief escape will get the pain to stop, you know? That's years away... if ever. But at least this move will prevent a short-term crisis, and allow me (after the really painful day has passed) to start getting back to what around here now passes for "standard operating procedure"—meaning writing, and doing other work, and getting on with the rest of the current form of life—as quickly as possible.

What I have in mind is to spend the days on either side of May 9th—and the day itself—as far away from the cottage as physical issues will allow me to travel. Let's think of it as a long weekend, an hour or two's flight away. To manage that, though, I need to boost sales at the Ebooks Direct store over the days to come. If the necessary funds manifest themselves over the course of this week, I'll have time to make the necessary arrangements.

So can I get those of you who see this post to reblog it, and bring the Ebooks Direct store to people's notice as widely as possible? ...As numerous ebook bundles are available at discount prices. (There are more than show in the slide below: that's just a snapshot of how the front-page carousel looks.)

...And if none of these appeal (or if you've got them already and want to give them to somebody else): hey, there are gift cards! (I finally managed to get these things organized correctly...) 😅 They come in per-bundle versions, or in a number of cash values to suit your preference.

Finally: if you've already got too many ebooks, or otherwise just prefer to drop a little something into the kitty to help me escape for a few-ish days, here's my Ko-Fi.

Support Diane Duane

Support Diane Duane

...So let's see if this can be pulled off. And for all your past help, and assistance to come: thanks, friends. I appreciate you so much... as your voices, heard daily, are pretty much all that makes the local silence bearable.

Thanks again.

[thesituation]

my stance on the trans athlete debate is always and forever going to be that sports should be completely desegregated because humans have one of the smallest levels of sexual dimorphism in the animal kingdom and the disparity we see between male and female performance is entirely caused by social factors rather than anything biological. “should trans women compete against cis women” i think cis men and cis women could compete fairly but that’s apparently a little too spicy for people to wrap their minds around bc they’ve been told their whole lives women are biologically inferior & never thought to question that. or wonder if it’s maybe a self fulfilling prophecy of some kind. are women biologically inferior or do they appear so because patriarchy demands that of us?