im just a mailman and an okay actor

she/her - 21 - I WILL BE CHANGING MY DESKTOP THEME as soon as i find one (Ask to tag!)

[pnglove]

[ilovetodrinkwater]

Simon and gar phone call

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

literally nothing and i genuinely mean absolutely nothing in this world quite encompasses corporate detachment from the consumer quite like peggle_2_ode_to_joy.gif

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

upon its release to the xbox live arcade in 2009, peggle was THE top selling game for two solid weeks. within a month, more than 100,000 players were on the leaderboards. before it got to live arcade, it had been downloaded 50 million times.

and when it released for ios? holy fuck were they DROWNING in money. when they took a weekend to put the game on sale for a dollar, down from five, a couple months after release, they made as much in that one weekend as they did since its release. it was among the top paid apps for weeks.

with critics, peggle was among some of the top downloadable, mobile, and general best games of all time at the time of its release in 2007 and onwards, and it only shot up in popularity as they made it more accessible to more people. and this was in a time before candy crush.

the thing about simple addictive puzzle games is that they make you feel competent, confident, smart, and cool for being good at them. not everybody can learn how to aim in a shooter or the best strategy in an rpg. but anybodys grandmother or baby brother can play a simple puzzle game, and the nature of these games and the way they make you feel only makes you want to play more and more.

however very very fucking few people who play simple puzzle games that you can master on the toilet would be going to E3 in the early 2010s. remember in 2012 when every ~hardcore gamer~ would screech about ‘fake gamers’ who only play candy crush? thats what peggle was. it was THE crack mobile game from the pre-candycrush era.

no one who was excited about peggle was going to E3. the hundreds of thousands of people who played peggle were not the type of people who would consider going to (or even giving a shit about) E3.

but it sold like hot cakes, and candy crush was churning out content like a madman, and EA owned popcap now, so because the game sold amazingly, and because they wanted to keep cashing in on it, and because corporate drones who controlled the scripts didnt comprehend that their consumerbase isnt one homogeneous mass, they decided to announce peggle 2 at E3 2013.

but not just “oh by the way peggle 2”, no. peggle sold like skyrim, it sold like black ops, clearly they should be saving the best for last, they should announce it like it was the craziest most incredible announcement of the night!

thus:

but in all honesty it doesnt quite have the same impact without hearing ode to joy overtop of the deafening silence of the crowd. so heres a link too. timeless.

[kitchen1]

I wish I took a better pic of this writing in a bar bathroom in toronto bc I think of it so often. Be So Completely Yourself That No One Is Attracted To You Or Wants To Employ You

[videogolf-deactivated20170314]

[aubrophonia-deactivated20170627]

THIS IS SO COOL

[spookyram]

woah

[spoonyruncible]

This is from ‘Beasts of Burden’, a really cool comic about a bunch of dogs (and one cat) protecting their town from the supernatural things that threaten it. It’s spooky and sad and really just fantastic. At one point they teamed up with Hellboy. Everyone should read it (if you don’t mind some pretty dark things happening. it is not a cheerful comic but it is a good one).

[paniniville]

Hey! So, I loved this comic, and still think about it occasionally, and tonight it was linked to me again with just the right timing so that I hyperfocused and squirreled off to go read everything! They aren’t really numbered well, but the Wikipedia page has a list of them in release order and what anthologies to find them in!

But given that it’s a pain to seek out each one one by one, I’ve got a list of links in order a smidge further down! Please try to support Dark Horse Comics if you can, but if you’re broke like me and still want to read, the Internet is a beautiful place. According to the wiki page, there are at least two more installments to come, scheduled for May 1st and June 5th, but there’s no real update schedule for the series as a whole.

Do note: they are graphic, gory, and sad, with a lot of body horror. But they’re really fantastic.

Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites contains: 1. Stray 2. The Unfamiliar 3. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie 4. A Dog and His Boy 5. The Gathering Storm 6. Lost 7. Something Whiskered This Way Comes 8. Grave Happenings

9. Sacrifice (Hellboy Crossover)

Beasts of Burden: Neighborhood Watch contains: 10. Food Run 11. Story Time 12. The View From The Hill (the one in this post!)

13. Hunters and Gatherers 14. What The Cat Dragged In 15. Wise Dogs and Eldritch Men

[northstarfan]

The trade collection for “Wise Dogs and Eldritch Men” came out a couple of weeks ago, btw.

“Neighborhood Watch” is due out in October and contains more stories than listed above (including the Hellboy crossover).

[thebiscuiteternal]

This is one of my favorite series ever and I’m so glad it’s finally getting proper collections instead of one-off anthology appearances.

Warning, though, the story about Hazel and her pups will *destroy* you.

[memewhore]

[youngalientype]

[sixofkaz]

GANGS BACK GANGS BACK GANGS BACK

[lockssteps]

i miss her

[dloeza]

the eyes of the mighty caesar are upon you

[kosmogrl]

[memecucker]

Invention of bread is weird bc it’s like some Neolithic ppl were like “hey you know that tall grass thing that’s sorta edible but not really how about we take it and grind it into a very very fine powder which is extra backbreaking right now bc the wheel won’t be invented for awhile and then we mix it with water and heat it up and you know what let’s also toss some mold in there just to see what happens”

[quoms]

there are a number of distinct steps though, each of which can be observed in isolation. “grind tough seeds to make them edible” is practiced with other foods besides grains (like acorns). the natural next step after that is to add water, which gives you porridge: a common ancient roman meal was puls, very similar to modern cream of wheat. once you have that you also have a simple dough, and baking it to preserve it is a logical experiment (as is baking some you forgot about and left out for a few days, just so you don’t waste it... voila, leavened bread)

there could have been, and probably was (though i’m not an archaeologist) a substantial time between each of these innovations. it’s not too hard to imagine people being chill with “grind seeds for soup, select plants for bigger seeds” for a good while

[quasi-normalcy]

Do you ever wonder how many amazing things are fated to go forever uninvented because each step necessary to invent them is a completely unintuitive thing to do?

[noctumsolis]

Okay, that's not how bread was invented. I wrote a potted history, I could try to dig that out if anyone is interested?

[quasi-normalcy]

Please do

[panecultus]

I'm putting this on my bread blog, because of course I am. Also tagging @appendingfic who I think expressed interest.

Tens of thousands of years ago people foraged and hunted for their food and ate whatever they could. Among their forage were wild cereals, which included the ancestors of modern cultivated wheat, barley and others.

People like sweet things. Grains are starchy, but if sprouted they start converting those starches to sugars, so people would've left grains in water to sprout. These sprouts are also easier to digest, thus more nutritious, which bestowed an invisible advantage on those sprouting their grains.

If grains are left in water too long, however, they begin to ferment. Alcohol is produced. People like alcohol.

In ancient Mesopotamia the fermented grains were experimented with, resulting in an early form of beer. The process of making that beer was quite complicated and involved a combination of sprouted and mashed grains.

People wanted beer all year round, but early beers did not have long shelf lives and the grain could only be harvested at certain times. So the ancient Mesopotamians invented a way of storing the ingredients for beer.

It was made of the grain mash, honey, dates and spices that were fermented to make beer. For storage, prior to fermentation, the mixture was baked dry, cut into smaller pieces and baked again to remove all water. This produced bapir, a product very much like biscotti, which could be stored for later rehydration and fermentation. Sometimes it was eaten instead.

I've made bapir, and I've eaten it. It is brittle but delicious. It's also a form of unleavened bread.

Bread was invented as a way to store the ingredients for beer, which was most likely a development from a chance discovery. Leavened bread (that is, with bubbles) may well have been discovered when a mixture like that for bapir was accidentally allowed to ferment before baking. Yeast is responsible for both alcohol production and leavening.

There's a lot more to it, in terms of the cultivation of grains and the development of milling, than I've written here. It's been a process of millennia to go from chewing sprouts to eating soft white bread like that pictured. But every step along the way was small and simple.

[quasi-normalcy]

I never would have guessed that beer pre-existed bread. I've always just assumed that beer was an accidental discovery by breadmakers.

[jenniferrpovey]

Nope, beer came first. Mead is also very old.

[headspace-hotel]

Thanks, ancient humans!

[thirtyknives]

Australian First Nations people developed their own bread making culture independent of the beer-base route. As far as I'm aware, pre colonial Australia had little to nothing by way of fermented drinks at all, so the likelihood of beer being part of the evolution of native breads is unlikely. Their breads, made from native grasses, are both leavened and unleavened. There's also different bread making practices using different grains, dependent on location - Australia is big and Indigenous culture over here is no more a monolith than it is anywhere else. Kamilaroi bread is different to Yuin bread, for example.

The colonization of Australia actively suppressed Indigenous knowledge, and creating an image of the idle wandering tribes was required to justify taking Aboriginal lands. This means a lot of the archeology of how First Nations people developed their breads has not just been lost but deliberately suppressed. The idea that they were settled enough to have ovens, let alone a bread-making tradition, is only now really being examined. I wouldn't be surprised if the grains-porridge-bread route was true for Aussie breads, though.

[grendel-menz]

Nader has spent the last eighteen years of his life in the Gaza strip. He has witnesses war after war, famine, fear, and death. His little cousin is now a toddler and has known nothing but terror herself.

If you'd like to help my friend Nader and his family afford food, medical, and housing costs please consider contributing to Nader's fundraiser, or reblogging! Thank you so much.

FUNDRAISER HERE.

[grendel-menz]

Please do consider helping Nader. His father is currently going through treatment for cancer and their family could use all the help they can get!

FUNDRAISER.

[abdalsalam2000]

For nearly three years, a devastating war has ravaged the Gaza Strip, leaving nothing untouched. We have been starved, besieged, displaced, our homes destroyed, and we have suffered immensely. We have lost so many of our loved ones, and this war continues unabated. We are desperately trying to survive by collecting donations, as they are the only thing that can keep us alive. My father's and brother's workplaces have been destroyed, and my father is battling cancer. Please don't hesitate to donate. Your donations are our only hope. Please donate now.

[save-the-child-qais]

HEARTBREAK—CHILDREN IN GAZA ARE DYING IN SILENCE.

My baby Qais is one of them, a small life slipping away in front of me while I stand helpless, unable to give him what he needs to survive. I will not forgive anyone who scrolls past and keeps browsing without sharing my post.

[save-the-child-qais]

Tonight, he struggled to breathe again, his tiny chest rising with difficulty, his eyes searching mine as if asking me to save him, and I stood there wishing someone could help.

[save-the-child-qais]

I am begging you from the deepest place in my heart—please don’t ignore this pain.

Donate now, because your help could be the reason my baby Qais stays alive.

Gofundme - Vetted#679

[exgirlfiend]

happy valentine's day :3

valentine it's based on under the cut

[exgirlfiend]

rule #4

[ashenmind]

“monsters in the backrooms” is still such a funny concept to me

“here’s a space that’s odd and makes you feel uniquely alone, like no one has ever been here before, but don’t worry, we put a critter in here because we thought that was boring”

[fishmech]

So you only like the first 62 words of the 80 word post that established the concept? Fascinating.

[ashenmind]

yes

[ashenmind]

like that last paragraph is exactly what I described; an author overplaying their hand because they don’t grasp that the space being empty is far more interesting than anything you could possibly put into it

[ashenmind]

there are 1001 one things you can put into the backrooms that are more interesting than monsters

once you have done that, find something else to do with your creative efforts. not everything needs to be suitable for a video game.

no. wander my halls for 10,000 years.

[oleskyfm]

[brokenbythesirensound]

[innerchildabortionclinic]

how all "shocking" news about gen ai reads when you know how it works