Hurah, I'm dumb

Personal blog, Alex, he/it, occasionally writes, often sews, sideblog is ryuutsuki-kun.

[homunculus-argument]

in Finland, it is illegal to kill a bear when it’s hibernating. If you ask a hunter why that is, a number of them will tell you it’s wrong simply because it is the law, and they don’t make a distinction between what is right, and what is legal. Most people like that are perfectly normal, decent and respectable people, just like the rest of us.

 But if you ask people who think about things, the answer is vague. Killing a hibernating bear would just feel… impolite? You can’t fucking shoot a man when he’s sleeping, that’s just fucking rude. It’s just not the right thing to do.

 Long before hunting laws were established in Finland, you couldn’t kill a sleeping bear, and what commands you is something older than law: tradition. Even at a time when hunting was a matter of life and death, and a bear fighting for its life is mainly a matter of death, you just didn’t kill a hibernating bear, you have to wake it up first. Hunters risked their lives, the lives of their brothers and everyone in the hunting party, who were friends, family and men that they loved, to give the bear a fighting chance.

 In the modern time, the hunting season of bears is in the summer, for the warmest summer months. There are many reasons for why they are allowed to tread safely in autumn and to sleep in peace through the cold months, almost all of which are rational and scientific, and do not touch the old traditions.

 Old faith says a living thing has many souls - henki, luonto, itse. Plants only have one - the one that wills them to grow. Animals have two, both the spark of life and nature that enables them to act. A human being also has the third, one that makes them a person, personality, itse, literally “self”. But the soul that travels in your dreams is not the soul that defines a human - animals have that one as well. When your dog runs in her sleep, her soul is elsewhere, where a dog is needed.

 One’s waking soul is elsewhere when they sleep and dream. A bear’s soul is somewhere else when they are hibernating - there are two words for “hibernation” in finnish, one of which is talviuni, “winter sleep”, and that is the one that bears have - and if you kill a sleeping bear, their soul is not in the body, it is still out there, and it can find you, and as a revenge for killing its body, Ghost Bear will kill your entire fucking family.

[iamthemaestro]

people have said it before but if you read a lot of historical literature you do begin to just sort of think in that style of language. I’ll put down the 18th century journal I’m reading and have to resist the urge to send academic emails with every Noun capitalized and punctuated only by the profuse Usage of the Em-Dash — it is a deceptively challenging Instinct to resist, & worse is that Instinct when spelling certain Words to utilize what would, some Centuries prior, be an appropriate Spelling, excepting that my Correspondence occurs in the Twenty-First Century, where Men are inflexible and uncreative in their Methods, & this Propensity of mine would appear only foolish & incorrect, instead of suggesting what it in actuality reflects, which is that I am simply an Incorrigible Nerd — O! the Woes of modern Sociability! Why should I be compelled to conform to these d——d modern Conventions! Is it not enough to be unabashedly and impudently Autistic?

[sherezades]

Some notes on the 100k Irina Rozanova Lives AU that I will never write:

Grigori dies in 2003. He accidentally eats rat poison.

There are a few rumors about it in Moscow, but nothing bad enough that Irina doesn't have to deal with old men coming on to her, gifting her jewelry, looking for a mistress or a second or third wife. 

Ilya and Andrei’s biggest sin stops being laziness. They don't have the time to properly grieve for their father because they have to be strong. They have to push through the pain, leave it behind, forget it and live life. They have to get rid of all the parts of themselves that make them weak. 

Irina stands next to Ilya after the draft, beautiful, elegant, and proud. And fearful, of all that could happen to her little boy so far away from her watchful eye. The sins he could succumb to. That night she puts her cross around his neck, as a reminder. That night he sneaks away from her.

She reads all the American news articles that come out about him, from both sports magazines and gossip rags. He's a ladies’ man, a Casanova, a Don Juan. She wishes he would settle down and marry a nice girl, but it's fine. It's fine. This is what men are supposed to do. She doesn't begrudge him that. She too does what she's supposed to do, lay on her back and close her eyes for a man that takes her out to town and buys her furs and diamonds. At least Andrei has a proper girlfriend. A middle class girl, but they can't keep their hands off each other in a way that's difficult for Irina to understand.

Ilya spends every summer with them in Russia. She drags him to the ballet at least once, and then mostly lets him have his own fun. He goes out clubbing every weekend and comes back in the mornings smelling like alcohol and perfume. He trains harder than he ever did as a teenager and eats so much she jokes about selling one of her necklaces to afford that much egg and chicken breasts. He smiles at her around a mouthful of breakfast and then picks up his phone to fire a quick text. He sits to watch tv with her and picks up his phone to send a series of texts. He goes out shopping with her and his phone is always in his hand. He tipes, he reads, rereads. He blushes. She sees the name Jane over and over in stolen glances at his phone, but something about the way he doesn't mention her at all makes her stomach twist with worry. It reminds her of a time when she was young and unmarried, hiding love letters beneath her bed, chasing kisses in the dark, stealing memories before she had to become a wife. It reminds her of every bottle of sleeping pills she’s ever held in her hands. It reminds her of all her weaknesses.

During hockey season, her calls become more often. You have to be strong, she reminds him. Focus on your career, stop giving into distractions, stop giving into temptation. You can’t afford to be weak, you’ll lose the life you’ve fought so hard for. She asks if he still wears her cross, if he still carries with him the reminder of every lesson she’s ever teached him.

Boston is out of the playoffs again. Ilya will stay in America until the awards are done and then come back to Russia, like always. She’s having his bedroom prepared for him when he calls to say he’s not coming. Not right away, at least. He has some team stuff to take care of in America, it’ll only be a week, maybe two. 

He’s different, when he finally arrives. Happy and unguarded at first, then progressively more silent and tense with every step into their home. She can’t stand to look at him. He has no idea of the things she’s had to endure, the desire, the yearning, the inevitable heartbreak, the pain, the pain, the pain. She’s tried to raise him right, to make him strong, to spare him that pain. And for what? All down the drain for a week, maybe two. All for mama, I need to tell you something. As if she hasn’t always known, as if he wasn’t the reason she’s still alive, fighting to be strong, to protect him from making her same mistakes.

I love him, mama, he says. 

You are weak, she doesn’t say. Like I am weak.

[caffeinewitchcraft]

A 75 yo man proudly came into the cafe wearing an Ultra Maga hat. I excused my barista from the register to handle the transaction.

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.

Anyone wearing that type of shit and preying on workers for their own spank bank material is a brainless fucking sheep.

[headedoutleft]

something i want to mention because i’ve seen it growing as a trend online is that not only do people do this just for their own gratification, but watch for glasses. smart glasses are a growing segment of the consumer market, and creeps like this are harassing people in public in order to gather content without the victims being aware they’re being filmed

good job on how you handled it, op!

[ralfmaximus]

Indeed, spotting Meta glasses in the wild just got harder in 2026.

They are no longer exclusively Ray-Bans.

[keisuk3-deactivated20160705]

[xxxxxxxxxx9y-blog]

*smoke emiting from clenched fist*

woman: OOOOoOOH NoO!!!! It’s meelltIINNGG!!

*ring melts off woman’s hand*

woman: MY PRECIOUS POWERRrRR RING! GONE FOORRVVERrrr..

woman: *screams like a pterodactyl* 

[yamino]

I read the description and though “surely it’s not actually like that”

[yamino]

The contrast between the unbelievably extra voice acting and the extremely stiff and emotionless animation is what really makes this a masterpiece. 

[gragam]

its back

[penny-anna]

Everyone needs to stop saying death of the author when what they mean is separating the art from the artist. Like FR stop it.

[penny-anna]

I know it's mainly just ignorance of what the term means but I do wonder if this happens in part bcos 'death of the author' sounds so dramatic like oh this author is dead to me, I don't care about them anymore. Whereas 'separating the art from the artist' is a lot more neutral and well. In CERTAIN CASES it is kind of immediately apparent that you cannot.

[penny-anna]

TO REITERATE:

Death of the Author is a term coined by Roland Barthes for his essay of the same name in 1967.

In brief: death of the author is the concept that analysis of a work of art should not be focused on the artist's intent; the artist's intended reading of their own work is just A reading and no more valid than anyone else's.

A good straightforward example of this in practice is the response to Andy Weir and Project Hail Mary. Weir is adamant that his work contains no politics but I would say that PHM is pretty clearly a story about climate change.

You can apply death of the author to any work of fiction and it has nothing to do with whether the author is a good or bad person.

[redlipstickresurrected]

Vanessa Stockard (Australian, b. 1975, Sydney, Australia) - Reflections aka Kevin in a Compact, Paintings: Oil

[urie]

stop calling it a girl dinner and call it by its formal name: Fend For Yourself dinner in an ingredients household

[queer-reader-07]

[tuckedinbugw]

Nothing like holding my love

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Quick shout out to the Down syndrome kid from my after-school program back when I was in grade school. Like yea he had the usual issues but he was a sweetheart and quite funny; and one day both his parents showed up at the same time to pick him up and I had the experience of meeting a family of genetically disabled people that had jobs and a home and a kid in school and it was a profoundly normalizing experience for me like I couldn’t take eugenicists seriously after that because like “no they totally can have whole entire meaningful lives with marriage and children and work and hobbies have you not met Dennis??” Anyway quick shout out to Dennis you were a real one

[homunculus-argument]

"Problematic height gap" was a concept made up by people who have never seen the kind of short people who go out to interact with the public. Those fucking gnomes fear nothing. If they're at the exact right height to bite you in the nuts, they will.

And insanely tall people come in two categories: If they're merely tall, and not large, they're just skittish fragile giraffes. The most dangerous thing they can do to you is stand up too fast, faint because their blood pressure dropped, and hit you on the way down like a felled tree.

The tall people who are also large are mostly chill in my experience. Sure some of them must be assholes just out of statistical inevitability, but it takes some edge out of life knowing that someone could try to hit you with a tank and all they're going to find out is whether or not a Leopard 2A7 has a crumple zone. And most importantly they are never tactically prepared for getting bit in the nuts.

[aquinohotelcentral]

[milkymiks]

Jason/Jane gets embarrassed hanging out with her friends in public after she transitions, because it rapidly becomes her going around in rotation between Danny, Wes, Roy, Artemis and fucking KORI, telling them to stop staring at his tits. He's flattered, but seriously guys. Can't be seen in public with any of you Horndogs. My eyes are up here.

I mean, who wouldn't?

This is so funny, imagine getting instant gender affirmation but it's in the form of tit staring. Tbf I would too, pre-hrt Jason already has huge boobs, now she got more lady juice enhancements I would be happy if I died between those bazonkas like right now actually I'm so tired

[heyfruitcake]

Now that everyone is discussing Nolan's Odyssey movie, I feel like it's a good time to let non-Italians know that the production dumped plastic props into the Italian sea. Weirdly enough I could not find any article in English about it but it's a fucking problem nonetheless.

I might translate this article later today. This one was the most complete one, even in Italian news it's not talked about that much.

L'Odissea di Nolan tra "scheletri spazzatura" e relitti: Arpa al lavoro in Sicilia, che succede

Non è la prima volta che la produzione solleva un vespaio in Sicilia. A Lipari una squadra di sub sarebbe però già impegnata a bonificare i

[ignitelimelight]

They dumped plastic skeletons in environmentally protected areas, against the literal contracts they had to sign to get the permits to film in environmentally protected areas. Like they not only did a bad ecological thing that freaked out some divers, they literally broke environmental protection laws and their contract with the Italian government

[bebsi-cola]

abelds have this funky ability where they hear disabled people say they "can't" do something and instead of hearing "can't" as in, cannot, they hear "i can if i push myself and i just don't wanna". which is really interesting!

[bebsi-cola]

people in my notes mentioning that people don't respect the fact that they can't do certain things without heavy consequences and ableds want us to beat those consequences for their convenience. and that's true but i do mean that people who say that they can't do something need to be taken at face value that it's just not possible to do at all. i want people to respect the literal meaning of "i cant'" because it's often dangerous otherwise. like people will straight up put a disabled person into situations that are harmful or incredibly dangerous for them being they assume "can't" means "i can a little bit". and when that thing is "I can't eat [allergen]" or "i can't walk at all" and you get stuck with food contaminants or at the top of a half flight of stairs they assumed wouldn't be a problem then that can actively, seriously, literally be harmful and dangerous

[pengosolvent]

Edit: the title for this comic is “Puzzle Rat” this one’s a few days late due to having a lot of doctors appointments sorry it’s  just 9 pages, and about some rats… it’s more symbolic than anything really

(it’s completely unrelated to any of my songs that have to do with “puzzleboy”) Patreon: www.patreon.com/PengoSolvent

[arirna]

[greenfelt-deactivated20220219]