Assorted Ramblings

(Shh!)

[politijohn]

Source

[killerqueenmp3]

[laura-the-swarming]

My mans unlocked a higher level of synesthesia

[ironychan]

TIL anyone who's going to overwinter in Antarctica has to have had their appendix out. Because removing an appendix that's not causing any trouble just as a precaution is way better than having one that's about to burst when you're on the ass-end of the planet with no way to be rushed to a hospital if shit gets real.

[ironychan]

No, by the way, we absolutely did not think of this ahead of time. A dude named Leonid Rogozov got appendicitis in Antarctica. Fortunately, the expedition's doctor diagnosed him quickly and knew how to remove an appendix. Unfortunately, our man Leo was the expedition's doctor.

What did he do? Well, he set up a mirror, gave his belly a shot of novocaine, presumably told a colleague, "hold my vodka," and he removed his own fucking appendix. He survived.

[sunlaire]

this picture has such "i lived bitch" energy

[doyouremem8erme]

yknow what im just leaving this whole tag thread out here

[throwupgirl-deactivated20240906]

man I really tried to like The Dancing Cavalier (1928) but the plot makes no sense. why would a modern day guy stay with a rich girl during THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. then again, someone once said that movie musicals were mostly spectacle at that time. people just wanted to hear people talk and sing after living through silent cinema that plot didn't matter.

at the very least, it led me down a rabbit hole to some juicy behind the scenes drama between a silent actor and her ghost singer. oh my god.

[huffylemon]

[battlships]

My favorite thing about working in medicine is I know every single one of those nurses is hoping to see the video of dan getting kicked in the balls. They're gonna be so proud.

[puppygirlisland-deactivated2024]

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdv9LcMk/?k=1

[dragonboypaws]

He did it!

[foldingfittedsheets]

I went on an adventure today to return a pillow to IKEA with my coworker Astrid.

We were having a nice day and got stuck in traffic coming home. On the way her phone rang and she was driving so she declined the call with a sigh. “I feel so bad for him,” she said.

“You know that number?”

She did. It turns out her phone number had previously belonged to a woman named Serena. The man calling was her dad. He had Alzheimer’s and didn’t remember his daughter was dead, so he just called the number he knew was hers.

I was stricken to hear this. “Do you talk to him?”

“Yeah. Sometimes he thinks I’m her and we talk. I have a notebook with facts I’ve learned about her so I can connect with him better. Sometimes he knows I’m not her and I say I’m her friend.”

I struggled with the beauty and humanity of this for a moment. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know; I just call him Dad.”

We sat in silence and I was overwhelmed with feelings. That she was so kind and thoughtful about this random connection. A man who called and spoke to her with love for the daughter he missed.

"One time," she added, "he called me just after I had a difficult day with my mom. I knew Serena and her mom had a rocky relationship so I talked to him about my frustrations with my own mother and he gave the following advice: ‘Everyone fails sometimes, even parents; what's important is to communicate with our loved ones, even when it's difficult.’

“I have never forgotten that advice and it healed a portion of my heart."

[yekkes]

We're so fucked.

[yekkes]

[memingursa-deactivated20250625]

This really makes the Studios costing themselves even more money (and getting more unions involved) by prolonging the strike for the promise of free ai labor even more fucking funny. you dumb fucking bastards lol

[avaricesstuff]

I personally said the same thing when AI art was first really taking off. Oh and you can thank PETA for this.

For those that don’t know, there’s a semi-famous story of a wildlife photographer who had her camera stolen by some monkeys she was taking pictures of. When she got her camera back, she discovered one of the monkeys had taken a selfie, and she published the image in a journal as a “look what happened” kind of story. PETA, being the insufferable waste they are, took it upon themselves to sue the photographer, claiming that because the Monkey took the picture, the monkey owns the copyright and thus the photographer was not allowed to publish it. The courts ruled this whole thing stupid and that now art can only be considered protected by copywrite if it was made by a human. So, this “only made by humans” ruling could easily apply to AI as well, meaning Hollywood is gonna screw themselves over if they try to replace their writers with bots.

[ekjohnston]

Me: I don't want to thank PETA for anything. Me: ...actually, that's funny, they can have this one.

[tomboy014]

I don't want to thank PETA. I'm going to thank the monkey instead

[ekjohnston]

Good point! Thank you, monkey.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I mean. This is of course not true.

The photographer in question is David Slater, a wildlife photographer who spent weeks befriending a troop of macaques and setting up his camera equipment in such a way that if a curious monkey pressed a button, it would take what appeared to be a selfie. The above image is one of a set. He was not a woman whose camera was stolen and just happened to result in a monkey selfie.

The lawsuit that reconfirmed that "non-human people" cannot hold copyright in American law was nothing to do with PETA - it was actually the Wikipedia Foundation. They were hosting the image on the Wikipedia Commons because they held that as the monkey took the photo, it therefore fell under public domain. And that's true, and the court re-affirmed that works created by non-humans can indeed not be copyrighted, but made no judgement on whether David Slater was the true owner or not. Legal experts reckon he does have enough of a role in the creation of the images to establish copyright.

The PETA thing was a completely separate challenge where they swung on from stage left and insisted that animals SHOULD be allowed to be copyright holders, and therefore the macaque should get the money from the picture, but as the macaque can't use money, the money should go to PETA on its behalf.

Which was totally dismissed as being motivated by furthering PETA's own interests, rather than the rights of the monkey

So, it's actually Wikipedia you can thank for this, and you can go back to laughing at PETA and stuffing them in a locker.

[dduane]

A scan of a print signed "Jeny91" that I picked up at an art show or dealer's room at some North American media convention, most likely in the 90s.

If anyone can help me better ID the artist, I'd appreciate it... :)

[petermorwood]

@spirk-trek says the artist is Juanne Michaud, which would date this to 1991.

While back in 1986, at UFPCon, I sketched this.

It was an interesting con, all things considered... :->

[dduane]

Yes it was.

(hotel room door opens unexpectedly)

"OOPS! Sorreeeee…”

(door closes hurriedly)

[insert helpless snickering here]

[and then back to, uh, bizness...]

:)

[mentalmilkshakes]

A bad photoshop will always be funnier than an AI image no matter what

[makingqueerhistory]

There is a reason that there has been such a concerted effort to remove queer people from their history. Queer history, in its nature, is empowering. It debunks the belief that queerness is unnatural. It reminds queer people that their legacy is that of change, revolution, and beauty. It challenges every defended belief about history being a story of cisgender straight white men doing brave things while the rest of us sat at the sidelines. There is a reason that so many people are so scared of queer people having access to their history.

[daisywords]

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

[anarchautistic]

All wizards lactate naturally

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

That's what Gandalf's Big Naturals are for

[wordswithkittywitch]

I just love the idea of a cis male wizard finding a baby and thinking, "Oh man. I have been waiting for an excuse to try this spell." and enchanting themselves to have functional and loaded breasts so they can feed their new charge.

[wordswithkittywitch]

I keep seeing this in my notifications and thinking, "What imbecile cursed me with the phrase 'functional and loaded breasts'?" and then discovering that I am in fact the imbecile.

[typhlonectes]

[homunculus-argument]

Random linguistic worldbuilding: A language with six sets of pronouns, which are set by one's current state of existence. There's a separate pronoun for people who are alive, people who are dead, and potential future people who are yet to be born, and the ambiguous ones of "may or may not be alive or aleady dead", "may or may not have even been born yet", and the ultimate general/ambiguous all-covering one that covers all ambiguous states.

The culture has a specific defined term for that tragic span of time when a widow keeps accidentally referring to their spouse with living pronouns. New parents-to-be dropping the happy surprise news of a pregnancy by referring to their future child with the "is yet to be born" pronoun instead of a more ambiguous one and waiting for the "wait what did you just say?" reactions.

Someone jokingly referring to themselves with the dead person pronouns just to highlight how horrible their current hangover is. A notorious aspiring ladies' man who keeps trying to pursue women in their 20s despite of approaching middle age fails to notice the insult when someone asks him when he's planning to get married, and uses the pronoun that implies that his ideal future bride may not even be born yet.

A mother whose young adult child just moved away from home for the first time, who continues to dramatically refer to their child with "may or may not be already dead" until the aforementioned child replies to her on facebook like "ma stop telling people I'm dead" and having her respond with "well how could I possibly know that when you don't even write to us? >:,C"

[homunculus-argument]

@witchofanguish it is also used in poetry and plays, ghosts talk like that. Imagine being in a folk story, staying overnight in an abandoned cabin and in the middle of the night there's a knock on the door and a bellowing voice going

LET ME IN.

and from the "me" alone you know that whoever is out there is not one among the living.

[rotationalsymmetry]

ok but also: imagine the mysterious stranger implying that they don't know whether they themselves are alive or dead.

Ghost stories where the characters don't know they're ghosts and keep referring to themselves by living pronouns, where the audience doesn't know they're dead for most of the story. Ghosts that signal that they're ready to move on by using I'm-dead pronouns.

[ryan-sometimes]

Did anyone have Marlon Wayans destroying Soulja Boy for being transphobic in their 2025 bingo?

[spark1eheartemoji]

picking THIS PICTURE sjdfkhszklhjflsdk

[retrolizard]

i’m sorry i still think this is one of the funniest lines written for anything ever

[capesandshapes]

As Elon Musk cements his place in history as a fascist tech overlord and the rest of the world looks at us in horror, I really do want to reiterate what I feel will be lost to the history books

Nearly everyone in america has thought and continues to think that Elon is very cringe.

[soloyoyquienmas]

Despite not being a USA citizen, everyon has... no, MUST remember that the billionare Elon Musk has such a tiny, pathetic and childish ego, that he had the need to lie about being a hardcore epic gamer in Path of Exile 2, only to be caught red-handed as the hilarious sham that he is, and ban everyone who exposed him.

[anarchopuppy]

the doge meme is from 2013. its easy for dates in history books to get kinda blurry and to just print something like "the department of government efficiency was named after a popular meme at the time", but i think its important to record that musk named the agency that is illegally seizing our government after a joke so outdated that the dog in the picture has since died of old age