Are We Cool Yet?

Is this thing on? I blog whatever he/him/himself

[vaxolang]

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[apatheticfluorescence]

some hyper famous artists like Van Gogh transcend overratedness and become underrated because they're so normalized. Like I'll look at a van Gogh and I'm like wait this really is amazing you guys don't get it

[headspace-hotel]

Shakespeare is like this

[insufferablepirate]

Every time I see a Van Gogh that’s not one of his better known pieces it absolutely blows me away

Have you seen this shit my liege? smh unreal

[teaboot]

There is a reality not so far from our own in which Ratitouille (2007) was filmed as an avant-garde conceptual horror akin to Eraserhead (1977)

[teaboot]

There is a young American man in France. His mother has passed away. He has few friends, and works the thankless job of a bus boy in a prestigious restaurant, but dreams of becoming a chef despite having very little skill.

He returns one night to his humble apartment, which is known to have vermin, and comes across a rat, which he could easily kill or set loose on the street.

But the rat- it is special. It seems to speak to him. Promises him every little thing he desires- talent, fame, and fortune. Recognition and esteem like he has only ever seen from afar; fine company like the wealthy men and women whose scraps he picks at over the sink.

Put me on your head, the rat says. Put me on your head and think of nothing.

It is strange at first, yes. Strange to feel another take control of his life and live it better than he ever could. To see miraculous things created with his own two hands, to feel his feet move in graceful and fantastic ways with a confidence he has never had.

But the rat delivers as he had promised: he receives promotions, notoriety, admiration. He is noticed. Envied. Every day is a waking dream, rubbing elbows with beautiful women and handsome men and influential personalities who lavish him with praise. It is addictive, this lifestyle- never mind that he is only ever truly conscious of it as a passenger of in own brain.

It is when he has reached heights few can ever conceive, with all that the rat had ever promised- a beautiful wife in a beautiful house with all the world in his palm, in possession of all the wealth and success a man could ever want, that the rat says that it is leaving.

Leaving? The rat cannot leave. Everything he is, the rat has provided.

"I have delivered on our bargain", the rat says. "I have brought to you all that you have ever dreamed. What more could you desire? I must live my own life, now."

The man is furious. He is terrified. He destroys the rat, in all of the ways that a rat can be destroyed, until nothing is left of it but a fine smear of marinara sauce.

He returns to the restaurant the next day moving like the shell of something hollowed-out and brittle. He cooks well- his fingers remember the movements, his eyes recognize the patterns, his mouth knows without his asking what orders to speak and what platitudes make patrons smile pleasantly with their straight white teeth.

He retains the talents of the rat. The charm of the rat. All the worldly pleasures the rat had provided him.

Still, it seems, he is little more than a vessel for the talents of the rat.

But the rat is gone.

What remains of the man?

[teaboot]

You see my vision

[soldier-exclipse]

[gayvampyr]

“no one is asking for open borders” i am actually

[toasthaste]

absolutely incredible tale that one of my podcast people just told. the fail girl of the bunch.

she was running for a train that was about to leave and had the bright idea to hold her long wallet out in her hand so as to extend her arm to increase her chances of catching the doors. what actually happened was she threw her wallet into the train just as the doors were closing and the train left with her still on the platform. everyone on the train saw.

she realized eventually that her best bet was to catch the next train going in that same direction and get off at the next stop, and sure enough she was greeted by a woman who had recovered her wallet and was laughing her absolute ass off, going "what was that????" and saying that it was the only thing anyone in that train car could talk about for the entire ride.

[aggot]

weather so nice i've decided to free a hostage

[stuffman-main]

dreamed about an RTS that had a "command unit" that the tutorial made a big deal out of the importance of building, insisting you would "gain the advantage" by doing so. but it was just a little jeep that seemed to be bugged because it didn't do anything and it was super expensive. regardless the game focused really hard on it, whenever you built one the voice over would go "now we can gain the advantage!" if an enemy command unit (which also seemed to do nothing) was onscreen, it had obnoxiously huge UI elements telling you to attack it and make them "lose the advantage"

the campaign was really hard, so you didn't want to waste resources building this thing, but if you didn't build it and you cleared the mission the game would give you the lowest ranking because you didn't gain the advantage. even worse, every time you LOST a mission without building one, you would be forced to replay a tutorial on how to build the command unit

anyway this was probably an allegory for something but don't forget to build the command unit so you can gain the advantage

[indigozeal]

[status-quo-hater]

I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.

He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense

[kuttithevangu]

Students will continue to use AI until the structure of incentives in education changes. Anyone who ever increased the font size on their full stops should know this

[markovchaingang]

kinda funny how level drain fetish stuff adopts the aesthetic of fantasy RPGMMOs whereas level draining really only seems to be a thing in rather old-school ttrpgs. if you tried adding an enemy that drains xp into your MMO the players would mail a fucking pipebomb to your office

[artbyblastweave]

When I was a little kid, I was trying to sell a childhood friend of mine on Invincible, and I went, (in reference to when Komodo goes apeshit on the Dupli-Kate clones) "It's so cool! There's a scene where a supervillian just rips this lady in half and there's blood everywhere and stuff like that is happening all the time!"

And what I was attempting to communicate here, in my clumsy kidway, was that it felt very refreshing, at the time, to be presented with a fairly straightforward, earnest, unembarrassed superhero story that was nonetheless way more upfront about the effects of superhuman violence against squishy human bodies than more mainstream works could get away with at the time. One of my very first deconstructive impulses as a kid was this constant sense that these stories were being almost deceitful about the life-changing implications of what these people were doing to each other. But going off the immediate look on his face I don't think that's what I actually communicated. With this specific statement. About this specific scene

[oozins]

NOT EVERYTHING FEELS LIKE SOMETHING ELSE

[copperbadge]

I just received an email from my building management company which opens

On Monday, from 1:30 PM to 1:37 PM, several residents have volunteered to host a brief tutorial in the laundry room for anyone interested in learning more about proper use of the equipment.

That is a leviathan passing beneath the ice of my peaceful fishing hut if ever I saw one.

The passive-aggressive nature of declaring it will take only seven minutes, but precisely seven minutes, for people to actually learn how to use the laundry room is amazing (I'm figuring five minutes to present and two minutes for questions).

The sad thing is, I've lived here long enough to know this informative presentation is absolutely necessary.

[unconventiononthelawofthesea]

one of my least favorite genres of progressive online post is. "people think The West is so advanced and modernity is songood but pre modern people outside europe had [ancient aliens level misinformation] and [impressive for the time, but obsolete, farming practice]"

[wordcubed]

The advanced ancient farming practices one always makes me roll my eyes. We have 8 BILLION people to feed now! Those ancestral farmers could never have made enough food to keep everyone alive today!

[kuttithevangu]

Students will continue to use AI until the structure of incentives in education changes. Anyone who ever increased the font size on their full stops should know this