Don't Ask Me, I'm Just Improvising

I'm Mafi, and welcome to my blog! This is a place for just about everything: books, video games, music, movies/TV shows, etc. Plus the occasional personal and educational posts by myself or others.

[bandcampsnoop]

6/15/26.

Ian Roderick doesn't sound like a Virginia based musician. The first song I heard from him was "Home" and I assumed he was a British musician steeped in the psych folk 1970s scene of bands like Tudor Lodge. However, his voice has a bit more crooner. I was certainly surprised when I saw he was an East Coast/American musician.

I was even more surprised to see that no one had bought this yet. I don't know why this surprises me as this phenomenon shows up literally all the time on Bandcamp. Albums like "Pastiche Person" are clearly labors of love and I want to see them appreciated. I can't imagine what the artist themself thinks.

The music makes me think of an amazing cross between Wild Beasts, black midi (or the solo work of Geordie Greep and Cameron Picton as My New Band Believe) and crooners like Paddy Hanna. In fact, I was just watching a seminal moment in Paddy Hanna's life. In 2019, he opened for Burt Bacharach in Galway, Ireland. Bacharach called Hanna onstage to sing "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head". That moment, that one single moment, has sustained Hanna through some tough times as an artist. Hanna has just released a digital single of two Bacharach songs. These don't sound a bit like Roderick, but they capture the spirit of musicians everywhere who play for the love of music.

"Pastiche Person" looks to be self-released.

[dandylilah]

oh my god

[dandylilah]

oh my god

[birlinterrupted]

my mom told me that credit card interest paid used to be tax deductible and i looked this up because it sounded totally bananas to me but apparently this used to be the case until 1986. what sort of fantasy world were baby boomers living in

[ruckuscauser]

[manlethotline]

To anyone wondering if it's worth it to tear down fascist posters or whatever. I spent a few months last year engaged in silent battle with another student at my school who was putting anti trans stickers up everywhere. I had it down to a system where every night I would walk the five block radius they went up in, and tear down all the ones I could reach, and use a stick to put duct tape over the others. Like, within hours of the stickers going up, I would have already purged the whole zone. I knew the basic schedule of whoever put them up based on when and where the stickers appeared. I probably could have found them in person if I'd wanted to. And I told all my classmates and friends what the stickers looked like and got them to rip them down too. And after a few months of this, the stickers slowed, and then stopped forever.

My point is, a lot of this fashy or right wing stuff is one local weirdo. And if you pay attention, and do a little light organizing with your friends, you can basically make their efforts into a giant sisyphisean exercise in misery. You control your streets!

[passionesolja]

I can tell who’s really played Baldur’s Gate 3 and who hasn’t by who mfs think is the horniest one or not. If a mf says “astarion” then I know they ain’t far because Astarion is flirtatious and catty, he’s not horny. Halsin is the horny one. Halsin is the biggest Hornball in the party. Mf those scars on his face are not from battle

[headspace-hotel]

Y'all ever open a book on a new subject, read a little bit, and have to put it back so you can process the way in which your mind was just expanded?

[headspace-hotel]

The textile book: okay here is some of the ways that textiles are important to human life

me: Okay!

The textile book: Clothes separate the vulnerable human body from the conditions of the outside world, and in doing so absorb the sweat and debris of human existence, accumulating wear and tear according to the lives we live. In this way, various lifestyles and professions are represented by clothing, and the clothing of a loved one retains the imprint of their physical body and their life being lived, as though the clothes absorb part of the wearer's soul

Me: ...oh

The textile book: The process of weaving a garment and the process of a child being formed in its mother's womb are often referred to using the same language. Likewise, when a baby is born, a blanket or other textile material is the first material object it encounters and protects it. Textiles can create the idea of two things being inextricable, as with being "woven together," or can create the sense of separateness, as with a curtain or veil that separates two rooms or spaces, even separating the living from the dead, or separating two realities, such as a performance ending when the curtain falls

Me: ...oh God

The textile book: Odysseus's wife Penelope undid her weaving in secret every night to delay the advances of her suitors. In this way she was able to turn back the passage of time to allow her husband to come home. Likewise the Lakota tell a story of an old woman embroidering time by embroidering a robe with porcupine quills. If she finishes the embroidery, the world will come to an end, but her faithful dog pulls out the quills whenever her back is turned, turning back the clock and allowing existence to continue.

me: ...is...is...is that why we refer to the fabric of space and time?

The textile book: The technological revolution of textile making is sadly underappreciated. The textile arts are possibly the most fundamental human technology, as once people created string and rope, they could create nets for catching fish and small animals, and bags and baskets for carrying food. In the earliest prehistoric times, the first string or cord perhaps came from sinew, found in the body of an animal. Because of this perhaps the body of a living being could be understood as made of a textile material. Indeed textiles have the function of preserving life, as with a surgeon stitching back together the human body or bandages being placed on a wound. Textile technologies are being used to create life-changing implants to restore function to injured parts of the body, as though a muscle or tendon can be woven and made in this way. Cloth can be used to create a parachute that will save a human's life as they plummet out of the sky. Ultimately, the textile technologies are used to enter new parts of the universe. [Photo of an astronaut and details explaining the astronaut's suit]

Me: STOP!! MY MIND IS NOT STRONG ENOUGH FOR THIS

[toastpiercer-deactivated2020080]

[argumate]

could it be...? a good political cartoon?

[ranked-competitive-sexhaver]

The artist is Clay Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a veteran of his craft. Here’s some more of his work: 

[socialistexan]

The wire hanger one hit me like a ton of bricks.

[t3sticles]

Can someone explain the last one to me

[ovenroastedtwerkey]

@t3sticles it's a reference to coat hanger abortions, because defunding Planned Parenthood doesn't stop abortions, it just means that people are forced to seek dangerous back-alley solutions

[t3sticles]

Ohhhh that makes sense, thank you

[chthonic-pain]

listen

even if you love being at home and you don't like going outside and you just want to spend all your time at home (which is totally ok!) it's still healthy to leave the house every once in a while if you can.

if you go outside, it means you get to do this thing called "going home" at the end of the trip, which is pretty neat. you don't get to "go home" if you're always home already.

going home is good for you and it's good for your home. it gives your home a chance to do its job, which is to welcome you back into safety and privacy after an adventure in the outside world. you get to shut out all of the other parts of your life that shouldn't be intruding on your personal time.

if your entire life happens inside your home, you're bringing all that stuff inside with you, you don't get to physically shut out stressors, and you never get to experience the relief of leaving your busy day behind as you shut the front door behind you.

this is part of why mental health walks, going to the grocery store, or sitting on your porch are good for you. it's not so much what you do when you're outside that matters, but the being away from home and then coming back to it. going outside improves your quality of life and it makes being at home much more comfortable.

[so-many-ocs]

“everyone is going to hate it” someone will love it. someone will reach out to you and tell you it changed their life. someone will hold it close and treasure it forever in a way you can’t even understand. keep going

[mangomybeloved]

this reddit thread of living your silliest life is so so good

[donthitanybody]

Tomska going hard on Twitter again.

[uniquecrash5]

He's right.

[soy-celeste-deactivated20230905]

Her name is Katalin Karikó. Hungarian. Daughter of a butcher. Her thesis work became the basis of the mRNA vaccine technology. Read the article here.

[rat-tail-butch]

My favorite bits from the article include how Dr. Kariko celebrated the fact that the vaccines that used her mRNA research worked

“On Nov. 8, the first results of the Pfizer-BioNTech study came in, showing that the mRNA vaccine offered powerful immunity to the new virus. Dr. Kariko turned to her husband. “Oh, it works,” she said. “I thought so.”

To celebrate, she ate an entire box of Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts. By herself.”

[rainewynd]

I sincerely hope she is recognized more than she currently is.

[thestarsarelaughing]

She won a Nobel Prize! (02 October 2023)

[mikkeneko]

[mikkeneko]

This is being reposted, for the advent of American Thanksgiving, on November 17th, 2023. American Thanksgiving this year is on November 23rd.

If you are seeing this after November 21st 2023 do NOT come crying to me about it being too late. That ain’t my fault. I Do Not Control The Rate At Which Turkey Thaws

[lousydrawingsforgoodpeople]

[fagcrisis]

dashboard in the morning simulator

mutual 1: i need to quit my job

mutual 2: i need to quit my job

mutual 3: i need to quit my job

mutual 4: i need to quit my job

mutual 5: i need to quit my job

mutual 6: i need to quit my job

mutual 7: i need to quit my job

mutual 8: i need to quit my job

[valtsv]

"how do you know your friends don't secretly hate you/find you annoying" baby i've said things in discord servers that would make any other human being get a restraining order and move countries to never encounter my presence on this earth again, and they haven't even blocked me

[valtsv]

if my friends hated my guts they simply would not keysmash in response to some of the worst sentences ever put together by the human mind

[rapidashrider]

Yeah there’s very much something here about… I mean we all annoy people - the people closest to us most of all just because we spend so much time together. We all get annoyed by people. So like… maybe you do annoy them, maybe you HAVE annoyed them, but they’re still there. Their love for you is greater than your ability to annoy. “They only tolerate me so as not to hurt my feelings” baby that means they care about your feelings. They love you.