[softinvasions]

DIRECTOR'S NOTE

You can't go home. This play has a particular care for and interest in its victims. The resident

inciting event is endless. tragedy is much more concerned with footnotes than it is with gods.

well acquainted with what happens afterward, storytellers claim they can't diverge from what's

written: resist. rage against what must be. tell a story about war without talking

about love. survive its aftermath. fail to find resolution. make this suffering

a home. There's no breaking this chain— fate, as always, gets its way.

Poetry assembled from the program of an Oresteia production. Nov. 2023.

[oaky-dokey]

love the library. there's no risk. you can take out a book and go "wow this sucks" and just give it back. and when you do that you're still making the library's Number Go Up so you'll be able to roll the dice on even more books. all for the low low price of free/you already paid for it with your tax money so you might as well use it

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

as humiliating as it is to repost myself from a light-mode-user's reddit screenshot, i cannot allow this year's zenquish to go uncelebrated.

celebrate my favorite holiday with me, my friends.

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

if the emperors of rome can add extra months that actually fuck the calendar up i'm allowed to add a new month that lasts 0.0000 picoseconds

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

the last holiday that hasn't been commercialized

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

i made this up when i was a little kid and nothing would make me happier than to see people celebrating it for years to come

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

zenquish approaches. prepare to rejoice! briefly!

[atleastimprettyugly]

Calabria x The Pitt (extended version)

TikTok version.

[silvernevermind]

small town diner waitress voice: Omelas? Oh, oh no, easy mistake, you're in oh - MAY - las right now, with an A. Plenty' people get the name mixed up. Nope, no utopia here, just our small little town. *face gets really grim* We do still.. Okay well we do still have a kid that we... I mean it isn't working but- well- You know. It- It's fine. I'm sure it'll start working soon.

[toasthaste]

according to An Immense World, apparently giant squid eyes are, like, UNREASONABLY large, even for something their size living at those depths. the next largest eyes on earth, blue whale eyes, are less than half the size, and swordfish, who live at similar depths as giant squid and have the largest eyes of any fish, have eyes that could fit inside a giant squid's pupil.

eyes hit serious diminishing returns wrt resource costs vs vision quality as they get bigger, so the question became: what the FUCK do giant (and colossal) squid need to see so badly that they couldn't see with swordfish-sized eyes that's justifying that massive energy cost? that nothing else in the deep ocean needs to see so fucking badly??

turns out the one strength eyes that big really have over much smaller eyes is: seeing large glowing objects in water deeper than 500 meters from an appreciable distance.

sperm whales are the primary predator of giant squid. sperm whales don't glow. BUT! water that deep is full of bioluminescent creatures-- these creatures light up when bumped into. something a sperm whale's size is continuously bumping into those critters, it's just surrounded by a glowing field all the time when it's swimming at those depths, visible from a distance-- if you have the right eyes-- as a massive glowing shape. so basically the only reason to have eyes the size of soccer balls is if you live in the deep ocean and your life depends on having a heads up when a hungry sperm whale lurking around

and also I gotta say, the imagery... the huge lurking threat betrayed only by the ambiguous glowing shape of its movements through the water, is really evocative, if spooky deep-sea games aren't already using that to make things extremely ominous then they should really start

[shatterstared]

robby, a lying liar who lies: i don't have a best friend

[teathattast]

[thefurriestofchows]

oh,

oh this is absolutely beautiful

[wakingfromthewater]

I saw some James Webb Telescope scientists give a talk and one of them said this was her favorite image because she had waited and worked 25 years to see this.

[teathattast]

200k notes is insane who the hell are u people

[alagaisia]

Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

[alagaisia]

It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!

[alagaisia]

It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.

[watermelon-converse]

Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this

[emi--rose]

Hell yeah moon holiday

[hello-delicious-tea]

Ooh coming up we should celebrate

[ariaste]

PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)

[walmart-the-official]

LOVE THIS!!!

[lizluvscupcakes]

Moon Day’s coming up, lads!

[wavebirddash]

Happy Moon Day, everyone!

[jugularimugi]

IT'S MOON DAY MONDAY LADS

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Being an adult will have you unironically craving a vegetable

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Being an adult will have you unironically sad about a parasite outbreak in fresh vegetables.

[tam--lin]

You watch Leverage and you occasionally go, "hm. it's kinda of silly to set up a room full of people and get them to pretend to be a bustling trading floor. this elaborate act of theater is testing my suspension of disbelief, a little bit!"

And then later you'll be reading a white collar crime book and this investigative journalist will go, "and then the Enron executives set up a whole fake room full of people pretending to be a bustling trading center, and they brought their dupes from a major bank through, and lo! those scumbags got the deal! through an elaborate act of theater!"

and then you have to applaud Rogers and Devlin for their restraint, basically.

[quinloki]

It's probably been said already by others, but one of my favorite things about Leverage is how most all the episodes are inspired by real life crimes.

And in just about Every Single Case where an episode is inspired by a real life crime, the episode had to be toned down from what really happened because the truth was so unbelievable. And that's extra wild when you think about how over the top the show feels at times.

[cookiethebirddoll]

bus is my friend. shes no train but shes trying her hardest in a world that hates her

[frodo-of-the-nine-fingers]

immortality as theft (you have to steal life from something else) immortality as parasitism (there is something else inside You that is keeping you alive and you become less of yourself more and more the longer it stays in you) immortality as violence (everything is trying to kill you because everything is supposed to die and the universe will always try to find a way to right the wrong that is You) you understand

[ninewheels]

#at least once a month I think about that one post about laminating a paper towel#and how that makes it immortal but also forever prevents it from fulfilling its true purpose#yes you will live. but at the cost of everything that makes you You

(courtesy of noknowshame)

[dgalerab]

honestly my favorite thing about hardison is that he has no real tragic backstory, he's just like "i am very smart and therefore i should be allowed to do crime" and he's entirely correct

[dgalerab]

i love everyone reblogging this going "yeah! soft boy!" in the tags bc that's my other favorite thing about hardison (i have many) and that's that he's never particularly treated as morally grey bc he is constantly so kind and loving and good and also he enjoys some crime

[dgalerab]

parker: i have severe psychological trauma and i steal things to cope bc i don't know how to relate to people

eliott: i have a tragic history being entangled in the mafia and even now i could kill the most dangerous fighters without firing a gun

hardison: if money is fake, why not for me and my grandma who i love? :)

[polytropic-liar]

Yes!! I love Hardison's orientation towards right and wrong, in part because it's such a fun, powerful contrast with other members of the team.

You have Parker, who has been designated as bad and wrong since she was a very young child and who has let go of any expectation of being anything else, so that identifying and doing what she thinks is the right thing is consistently an overwhelming and scary experience for her;

Then there's Eliot, who can point to exactly when and how he became irredeemable in his own eyes and whose highest ambition now is to do the wrong thing for the right people this time at least;

Nate, who is clinging to all of these ideas about morality and legality and good and bad that are completely inconsistent both internally and with his behavior, because his very normative view of the world was shattered and he never put the pieces back together in any kind of coherent way;

Sophie, who sees right and wrong as primarily about relationships between people, like she does everything else: right and wrong is in how you engage and who you hurt interpersonally, anything more abstract is irrelevant. But within that, there's also this weight to how she engages, this sense of regret at how she's treated people in the past that we never really see the full scope of;

And into this morass of regret and alienation and self-doubt, beautiful sunshine child Alec Hardison sails with this completely coherent, straightforward understanding: he's doing the right thing. He understands the systems creating and maintaining inequality and he's winning against them. He doesn't feel bad at all about breaking the law because he doesn't respect it as having any moral weight, and why should he? He's right. Y'all I love him so much.

[systlin]

Getting down on my knees and thanking the humans who invented dishwashers and washing machines.

[ihonestlydontknowwhattocallthis]

InsNe that dishwashers are more efficient and easier than just washing them manually but they also use less water. It’s a win win situation

[systlin]

They ALSO sterilize dishes, due to operating at a far higher temperature than human hands could ever tolerate. It's a win every way.

[systlin]

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

He said the exact same thing, which I did not know before that, so spreading this knowledge.

[mindhost]

Dutch longsword fencer Tosca Beuming

Photographed by Martin Philippo and Andress Kools

[zeiat]

Chen Chen, "To the Guanacos at the Syracuse Zoo"

I'm sorry I would've skipped past your exhibit on my quest for the elephants, if not for my boyfriend's shouting, Look, llamas! I'm sorry I then called out Llamas! twice, three times, in the typical zoo attendee's Iloveyou! shriek, before noticing your sign: not llamas, but their close relatives, guanacos. I'm sorry my boyfriend kept calling you guaca-moles & I'm sorry I found that funny. I'm sorry, guanacos, for all four of you on display, your little slice of Syracuse hill looked nothing like the lush Patagonian plains or grand Atacama desert lands pictured in your bio. I'm sorry you were not llama-famous, & stuck in an underfunded zoo in Upstate New York. After reading more of your bio, I'm sorry your lives in the wild weren't so grand either. Your more hospitable habitats were being destroyed, you were hunted by fox, puma, mountain lion, & man, inventive man who used, I'm sorry, your thick neck skin to make shoes. I'm sorry that even though it was a stupid-hot day, you could not demonstrate your most adorable survival technique—licking the dew off cacti—as there were no cacti around. & yet it's true, I watched you, & I'm sorry for staring as I did, it's just you somehow managed to look at once elegant & weary, I mean each of you sitting so still with your legs tucked beneath your body, & then your sleepy eyes. I mean, the four of you were like a quartet of elderly duchesses. (I'm sorry, later I looked you up on the zoo website & found out you were all males.) I'm sorry, I meant for this to be an ode, a love letter, & it is, I swear, but the ways you'd been treated—I knew I couldn't, on top of all that, lie to you. I didn't intend to meet you & you yourselves were probably hoping for better. But isn't this how it happens? Aren't all great love stories, at their core, great mistakes?