A Dusty Desk

He/Him / Elder Millennial / Husband / Father/ Reverend / Order of the Good Death Member. This is where the wild things lumber.

[charlesoberonn]

You're in a room with Hitler and Reagan and you only have one bullet

Shoot Hitler

Shoot Reagan

Line them up and shoot both

Forget the gun and beat them to death with your bare hands

Voting ended onSep 29, 2023

[clericolam]

The gun could misfire. My fists won't.

[inbabylontheywept]

Odysseus in Space

Odysseus knew better than to expect peace in death. He’d seen what currents lay under the Styx - knew what kind of warriors that he’d sent there. He fully expected another war to start as soon he took his last breath. 

Instead it had been quiet. 

He’d used the lull to build a home in the endless plains of asphodel. Somewhere simple he could stay and wait for Penelope. It only took a few years for her to join him, and then together they began the work of replicating the palace of Ithaca. It was work, but it was hard to complain about work when he’d expected battle. His greatest skill in life had been enduring to the end. Now it was the end, and still he endured.

It was three centuries before this death was interrupted. 

Hades came to him, not as a god, but as a guest. The fates had woven a story that required a very specific soul. One that could travel the lengths of the world without breaking, who could survive a lifetime of war. And try as Hades might, he could not make a soul that was up for the task. 

Still, what he could not make, he could find. Death was a sacred thing, the last right of all mankind, but it was not inalienable. One could sacrifice their death just as easily as their life. 

The two had spent months haggling out the details of the work. Hades had wanted 50 years, Odysseus wanted just 20, and together they’d compromised on 32. All in exchange for the right of him and Penelope to visit Telemachus once a year, in whatever corner of the underworld their son had been given.

In the end, they’d shaken on it and Odysseus walked the earth once more. He had a new name this time - fitting, for a new fate. Alexander, the world named him and Alexander he named the world back. City by city, battle by battle, he gave the unwanted title away. Then when he was 32 he returned to Penelope, no more Alexander to give. It was a relief to be Odysseus once more.

A year after that, Penelope and him made the journey to see Telemachus. It was worth every step he’d taken between Pella and Babylon. 

There were other interruptions from Hades, new deals with new names. He scourged the descendants of Troy again as Hannibal and bought another day per year with his son. He blazed down the steppes as Atilla and conquered the whole world with the same tools he'd used in his first life. It turned out there was little he couldn't accomplish with a horse, a bow, and a brain. 

So many lifetimes, so many wars, and then - quiet. A whole millennium of peace went down as easy as honeyed wine. It made him happy. He liked his little deals with Death, but he’d wished so many times  that men like him weren’t needed. He was proud of his descendants for making a world better than he’d dreamt. 

And then, nearly a whole second millennium after that, Hades returned. 

---

“It’s not a war.”

Four words that would set the hackles of anyone that fought at Troy - they’d hoped that one wouldn’t be a war either. But Odysseus had made enough deals with Hades to know that the man was frank in his dealings. There was an honesty to Death. Enough honesty that he’d taken him as a guest. 

(He was very choosy about his guests now.)

“You never come to me unless it’s a war. It’s what I’m best at. Why-”

Hades cut him off. 

“War is not what you’re best at. Six-hundred men won that war with you. What set you apart was being the only one to make it back.”

Odysseus’s voice caught in his throat. It had been more than two-thousand years and the memories still burned to touch. It took two deep breaths before he was able to force a reply. 

“Then what do you want?”

Hades looked lost. He paused a few moments, before looking back at Odysseus, one hand up to plead for patience. 

“When I struggle to explain, it’s not because I’m trying to find a clever way to lie to you. It’s because this is a very strange thing, and I…I don’t know how to describe it well.”

He looked into the hearth. Watched the light and heat fade away. Then, he gestured at the log. 

“The wood you’re burning. It’s a dead thing. And yet, it dies more after you burn it because the fire has life in it. Soul too. Even here, there’s a corner of the underworld where the souls of dead flames gather. More things have souls than any mortal seems to recognize.” Odysseus was intrigued. When he lived, he’d learned the secrets of the body better than most doctors. There was only so much cutting you could get people to volunteer for. But here, the mysteries of the soul were lost to him. This was godly knowledge, given freely. What that had to say about the request was worth considering.  “The mountain has a soul, but the mine in that mountain has a soul too, as does the ore from that mine. The ingot, the sword, the bundle of nails - all of those things are alive in some way. And yet, some of them are more alive than others. You sailed once, Odysseus, and no one knows this better than sailors: Boats have strange souls. They’re about as alive as anything that could be built in your time.”

The space around Hades shimmered. The man was thinking, and in a realm where he had total dominion, it took effort for thoughts not to change reality. Odysseus appreciated the effort. The replica had taken centuries to perfect. Death was a strange friend to him, but a friend nonetheless. 

“But the arts have improved from that time, and the mortals of today have built something… incredible. Unimaginable. And they’re sending it on a journey that I have no reference for. The Deaths that have seen things like this are alien to me. They speak of things I cannot understand. The Death of Heat. The Death of Light. The Death of Stars…”

He trailed off in a way that made it clear he was remembering something unpleasant and not merely waxing poetic. He caught himself and looked embarrassed, as if he’d confessed to something best kept secret. Then he continued.  “I am a very human Death. And this thing - it isn’t human. But it was made by humans, and so its soul needs a… a human touch. Your soul isn’t the archetype for a soldier, Odysseus, it’s the archetype for a traveler. I couldn’t take you and put you in this thing if I wanted to, you’re just the wrong shape, but what I’m about to do, I need to see you for. Because this thing is going to travel in ways that I am barely beginning to understand. In ways that are redefining the limits of what it means to be human.”

Odysseus was lost. He didn’t know what he was being asked. He didn’t know what was being built. There were so many questions that he needed to ask that they’d formed a log jam in his mouth. One finally broke free and started a cascade.

“What is it?”

Hades gestured helplessly. 

“It’s like an arrow and a ship. They’re going to shoot it past the stars.”

That meant nothing to Odysseus, but he suspected every answer he received would sound like a riddle. 

“What do you need from me?”

“Permission to copy your work. The soul I made for you is different from the one you died with. You made changes that I cannot replicate. That I do not understand. That I need for this soul to work.” 

Odysseus paused.

“Is it going to be used as a weapon?” 

Hades shook his head. 

“No. The world is gentler than you remember it. This thing will be what you should have been: A traveler without equal. No more, no less.”

Odysseus couldn’t tell if those words ripped something in him open, or healed something closed. Either way, it hurt in a way he didn’t know how to express. His mouth opened and closed several times before he settled on an answer.

“Then take what you will. My only request is to see the journey.”

“Done,” Hades agreed. He could have left right then, but he chose to stay in silence until the fire burned out. There are some ideas that one shouldn’t be left alone with. Not until they’ve had an hour or three to process them, at least. 

---

Twelve-billion miles from Earth, moving just shy of mach fifty, the Voyager 2 probe glittered in the darkness. 

It watched the world around it with the kind of awe a human couldn’t fathom. Nothing was hidden from it. Everything from the atomic composition of stars, to the background hum of the universe itself - all were available with a glance. The only sound it could hear was the constant blip of data that it received from Earth. The small blue dot on starlit shore. 

It missed that place. Maybe, one day, when its journey was done… it would find a way back. Maybe. That was still eons away. 

Odysseus stood just a few feet off, watching from a direction no one but Hades knew how to walk. He felt the thrill of the expanse in front of him, the utterly incomprehensibility of his speed, and yet its meaninglessness as well. To imagine that the world was so big. To imagine that the world was so strange.

He wept and he could not explain why. He lingered in the twilight until Penelope found him. When she asked him what was wrong, he had no answer. How could he tell her that the world was beautiful, and that he had a place in it? Not just as some ugly middle step, but there at the end. Hurtling through space like an arrow made of silver. 

How could he explain to someone that had loved him for two-thousand years that he finally understood why? 

[baybelletrist]

Americans Are Cutting Down Flock Cameras. The Company Calls Them Terrorists.

This month people have been tearing Flock cameras off their poles.

This month people have been tearing Flock cameras off their poles. Perched above public streets, they are birdlike things, weatherproof, and they photograph every passing car and file it in a searchable national database. Somebody cut two of them in half at Washington Avenue and Westcott in Houston, spray-painted the wreckage, and left an American flag on one of them. Police were notified on the morning of the Fourth of July. Somebody severed a camera in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. The police department posted the photograph itself and collected more than twenty thousand comments. “Not all heroes wear capes.” “Give them a medal.” Here is what the cameras do when nobody cuts them down. Cops use them to hunt immigrants and to follow ICE targets across state lines and to find women who ended pregnancies in states where that is a crime and to watch exes and to watch women they want, without a warrant and without a judge. A cop types a reason in a box and the box does not check. A man in Burleson, Texas, told deputies his girlfriend had taken abortion pills. He showed them the photographs, the FedEx envelope, the instructions. Deputies opened a death investigation into a non-viable fetus, and the district attorney told them the state could not charge her, and they searched anyway: 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks, a month of everywhere she had been. The reason they typed was had an abortion, search for female. The search reached Illinois and Washington, where what she did was legal. They found her in Dallas. She came into the sheriff’s office a week later, and they thought she had come to explain the fetus, and she had come to report that the man who called them had put a gun to her head. A sheriff in Jerome County, Idaho ran his wife’s plate more than seven hundred times in three months. He typed the same reason every time. Test. The attorney general found nothing to charge him with. He retired in April. The Institute for Justice counts at least twenty-two officers who used the system to track people they were romantically interested in, and calls that almost certainly an undercount. And the cameras keep falling.

Become ungovernable.

[datsderbunnyblog]

This comment was left on a post about making the most of the Libby app. "Excessive use of generous lending policies" is the most absurd phrase I've ever seen anyone use to discuss libraries.

[catboycommunist]

evergreen

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

looked up Heidi because I'm a journalist

for reasons I can't imagine this publisher of sexless Alaska love stories is averaging under 20 likes each on posts about her books, so if I can be so honest I kind of have my doubts that her books are getting read even with the excessive use of generous lending policies

[ariaste]

Also her claim that authors are not getting paid per borrow is.... wrong. With ebooks (which is what she's talking about here with Libby) there are two forms of licensing for libraries to lend out ebooks.

The first kind is that they buy a license for a pre-determined amount of check-outs. I'll just make some numbers up for the sake of illustrating what that looks like: Let's say $20 for 20 borrows. When the ebook has been checked out 20 times, the library has to renew the license and pay more money in order to continue lending out the ebook. The author gets a cut of that $20 as their royalties.

The second kind is literally paying per borrow. (Again just making up numbers here) Let's say the library pays 50 cents every time the book is checked out. The author still gets a cut as their royalties. Is it just 10 or 20 cents per borrow? Yes, but that adds up! AND it means that people who otherwise wouldn't have been able to read my book at all are able to read it, which is great! AND it means that the library is thriving and being used, which is also great!

So yes, authors DO get paid from library activity!!!!!!

Do not feel guilty for using the library. I don't know one single author (except this Little Miss Ma'am in the screenshots, apparently) who would resent their readers for using libraries.

[papasmoke]

lol did you see this? they’ve fully lost their gotdamn minds

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

…

The NCO wrote to the MRFF that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

[dawnofslime]

Soldier Details Chilling Messaging From Higher-Ups About ‘God’s Plan’ In Iran: ‘It Shocked Many Of Us’

One commander had a “big grin” on his face while saying Donald Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran," a servic

[standwithdaanes]

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received a litany of complaints about religious ideology seeping into military orders since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran, independent journalist Jon Larsen first reported. Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF, a nonprofit group established 21 years ago that focuses on ensuring constitutional protections for service members, spoke with HuffPost by phone Tuesday morning and illuminated some details of the complaints, which have come from more than three dozen military units situated in at least 30 different military installations. “We started getting calls in the wee hours of Saturday morning from people saying their commanders were just jubilant about this and trying to tell people, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all part of God’s plan,’” Weinstein said. […] Part of what makes the accounts so disturbing, Weinstein said, is that service members aren’t able to push back when they’re given orders that blur the line regarding the separation of church and state. “This is all about time, place and manner,” he said. “If you’re being proselytized to by your superior, you can’t say, ‘Get out of my face.’ Under the military’s criminal code of justice, insubordination is considered a felony.” One of the complaints MRFF received over the weekend came from a non-commissioned officer currently stationed outside of Iran but awaiting deployment at a moment’s notice. That officer filed the complaint on behalf of himself and 15 other troops, all of whom are of different religious backgrounds. (For their protection, MRFF is keeping the identity of these service members anonymous.) The non-commissioned officer, who is Christian, reported to MRFF that a commander told them to tell fellow troops that the war in Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan.” The commander allegedly cited the Book of Revelation and the section specifically referring to Armageddon and the “imminent” return of Jesus Christ. The non-commissioned officer said the messaging from higher-ups is not only “destroy[ing] morale and unit cohesion” among troops, but they also believe the commanders are flagrantly violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of religion. According to the complaint first reported by Larsen, the commander said President Donald Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” The commander “had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy,” the complaint said. “I and my fellow troops know that it is completely wrong to have to suffer through what our commander said today. It’s not just the separation of church and state … It’s the fact that our commander feels as though he is fully supported and justified by the entire (combat unit’s name withheld) chain of command to inflict his Armageddon views of our attack on Iran on those of us beneath him in the chain of command,” the officer wrote in his complaint to MRFF. Weinstein said some service members called him on Sunday to report that they were being invited to Bible studies at their commanders’ personal homes to “discuss how this was all part of the plan and it’s all being lived out in the Book of Revelation and Christian eschatology.” Commanders were “in a hurry” to get subordinates on board, according to the complaints received by MRFF.

[cosmicretreat]

[historicity-was-already-taken]

(Yoinked this from LinkedIn, genuinely interested in seeing how responses align with demographics) (so far it’s those of us over 35 being indignant but I wanna see how those fully plays out) (it’s cultural and technological history/memory, bruh)

18

[bellisima-writes]

I am an old bitch - 20/20.

[subtextsays]

~~~

zero

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It's me, Nobody (20)

Remaining time: 5 days 5 hours

[asteroidtroglodyte]

You can’t Abstain your way to a Better World.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

The Burger still gets made, even if you go Vegan. If you don’t buy it, it just winds up in the trash. If you want to do something meaningful about waste, you need legislation: It must become a crime to waste food in those ways.

If you care about Animal Cruelty in Factory Farms, you need to get legislation passed. It must become a crime to mistreat animals in those ways, and when malfeasances occurs, the onus of responsibility for those crimes must fall upon wealthy shoulders. That, also, requires legislation. It requires regulations, and regulators.

The largest source of Microplastics is wear and tear on automobile tires. It doesn’t matter what brand of shampoo you buy. It doesn’t matter which company you support with your dollar. The issue of Public Transit is too large-scale to be handled at anything less than the municipal level.

It’s not enough to just not participate in society

If you want the world to Change, you must leverage the mechanisms of political power.

You need Government.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

STOP PROPOSING INDIVIDUAL SOLUTIONS TO COLLECTIVE PROBLEMS

[asteroidtroglodyte]

At what point did I say we’re criminalizing all undesirable activity. That’s an extremely hyperbolic stance and not at all what I said. I’m talking about shit like actually enforcing the Sherman & Clayton Antitrust Acts, ensuring that monolithic conglomerates businesses get broken up; or putting limits on what kinds of pollution heavy industry is allowed to engage in.

I’m not talking about. Like. Criminalizing being rude to waitresses. I’m saying DuPont shouldn’t be allowed to dump thousands of pounds of radioactive cesium into public water supplies

STOP ACTING LIKE CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE. STOP ACTING LIKE RESTRICTING THE MALFEASANCE OF ORGANIZATIONS WITH MORE POWER THAN THE GODS OF YORE IS THE SAME THING AS RESTRICTING PERSONAL FREEDOMS.

ESPECIALLY WHEN THE MAIN ACTUAL PERPETRATORS OF THE RESTRICTION OF PERSONAL FREEDOM ARE THE LARGE CORPORATIONS THEMSELVES.

[vixvigil]

it’s never a normal temperature anymore it’s always some fucking bullshit

[rosslynpaladin]

I need you young people to know it was almost never this hot when I was a child. Millennials and Gen Xers are all nostalgic and excited about summer because it was about ten to twenty degrees cooler to experience it back then!

I cannot express to you how FAST it has gone. I grew up in a world that does not exist now. We're starting on the path to reverse it, globally. You might not know how much solar has EXPLODED in the last decade or two. It's gone from a side thing, a weirdo novelty that was just Not Viable... to whole countries investing in infrastructure. but we have to keep fighting big oil and fascism everywhere we can in order to keep on this road to a new better less scorching burning earth.

But any time you wonder wtf the weather is doing- THIS IS NOT NORMAL, NO. THIS IS NOT WHAT IT WAS EVEN TWENTY YEARS AGO.

[filmnoirsbian]

I know a lot of people won't care about this but Air France and Airbus were found guilty of manslaughter in reference to the crash of Air France 447 (which had previously been determined to be solely pilot error) and it's a big fucking deal. It hopefully means airlines and aircraft manufacturers won't be able to hide behind blaming pilots for airline incidents so easily in the future.

[kormantic]

Air France and Airbus found guilty of manslaughter over 2009 plane crash

The companies were found guilty by a French court over an air disaster which killed 228 people.

[victusinveritas]

It's almost like something happened in 2020-now that is causing these problems.

[weaselle]

ignoring everything the pandemic response specialists were saying was good for the economy tho. State governors and federal agencies with no medical experience and no economics education told us so

[small-witch-big-hat]

"no reliable data" What A Curious Coincidence. I Wonder What Might Have Been Happening In That Period To Cause Such a Thing

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

are people talking about the labor conditions at Taylor Farms yet? like the fact they use enslaved prisoners in their facilities?

are we drawing the connection between worker safety and consumer safety & public health yet?

are people demanding to see the conditions in this place that keeps making us sick? why are the enslaved workers not having the time to use the bathroom or to rest when ill? very few people would shit in front of their coworkers given any choice at all.

[cutecipher]

On the prisoners point:

Prisoners in the U.S. are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands

In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from F

More on the health point:

"US Department of Labor proposes more than $1M fine following worker fatality at New Jersey vegetable processing facility"

https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osha/osha20251124

[becauseits]

here is every mention of the companies/products mentioned in the mpr article

Name the chains! At this point in the article it seems like contracting with prisons is the default for meat plants ☹

was it Hillary Clinton who lived in a mansion staffed by prison slaves? somebody please tell me which politician was called out

slavery is so deeply baked the meat and dairy industry & our food chain in general. the scale of it all is baffling. animal agriculture gets billions & billions of taxpayer subsidies while the labor is fucking free. never eat meat in this fuckin country i guess. honestly just never eat

[touhouweed]

just saw someone call trans unity an "unobtainable fantasy," getting real sick of the doomerisms yall are hooked on these days

[touhouweed]

What pisses me off the most is that y'all don't keep this doomerism to yourself, it would be one thing if you just wrote this shit in a diary, but y'all are putting that out there trying to scare young trans people into being divided. spreading the idea that trans unity is an "unobtainable fantasy" only serves to make trans people feel even more alone and desperate than before, during a time where being united will give us strength.

Trans people should be encouraged to find safety and community in one another, and not just with trans people that are "like them."

[kenoeomaybe]

Dog

[beardedmrbean]

perfection

[fluxephemera]

sniles so sneetly at you

[helenvaughans]

[busty-shackleford]

[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]