This Machine Kills Fascists

Analog photography with maybe the occasional digital images thrown in. Canon AE-1P. Generally photos are very lightly edited on a computer, I don't have time/money/space to do my own darkroom shit or they'd be completely done on film. Also not going through and deleting anything old, if you scroll far enough to find my high school posts I apologize in advance for any cringe. Profile picture by @noellesteeleart on Instagram.

[freesiadotcom]

having 40 minutes to leave the house is fked because 40 minutes is basically 30 minutes and 30 minutes is basically 20 minutes and 20 minutes is basically fifteen seconds. but 50 minutes? 50 minutes is an hour, and an hour? ooobh thats plany off time

[busket]

"im tired of living through major historical events" is now "dear lord please let me witness a high profile political assassination in the next 1-2 years. amen"

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

Broken Elbow

Broken like the elbow that snapped skating last month 

I still don’t know what I’m going to do next year 

Waiting for a sign that things might get better 

But the husks of days past rise past my ears Falling through the air like a dead bird 

Stumbling down the stairs like a drunk 

I threw up on new years eve and hated myself more than normal 

I don’t give a fuck about your comforting words How could I? 

I’ll always hang myself out to dry like forgotten laundry

Up so long that the house has fallen down 

Abandoned yards and overgrown fences 

Rotting wood and rotting bones beneath the floors 

Don’t worry, on my way out I’ll cut the lights and lock the fucking door 

I haven’t learned how to move yet 

Pack the U-Haul from dead to dying 

Maybe New York and my mind aren’t a safe bet 

I’m not done, I’m not done living I won’t be done until I’m dead  

As Ian Anderson once said I’m “feeling like a dead duck” 

Maybe I’m feeling like a stupid fuck 

Believing that things are going to get better 

When everything points to it all getting worse 

[skarabrae-stone]

Okay, here we go. Thanks to @burberrycanary for the tag!

Rules: Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass this onto other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💖

Not a Perfect Soldier -- 93k | M | Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers | MCU

Summary: In a world where HYDRA was wiped out in the '40s, Steve is found by the Army rather than SHIELD. General Thaddeus Ross wants a perfectly obedient super-soldier at his command, and to that end, he sets out to break Steve to his will. As Steve struggles to come to terms with all he has lost, his life in captivity is only made bearable by the presence of another prisoner-- another super-soldier known only as "Soldat". Then the Avengers strike a deal with Ross to "borrow" him for missions, and Steve is faced with a team who dislikes him, an organization he doesn't trust, and the question of what he's willing to do to escape Ross's clutches. This is probably still my favorite of the fics I've written, as it included a lot of themes/tropes that I enjoy reading as well as writing. It was a really interesting challenge to handle Steve and Bucky's separate traumas, and the various misunderstandings between Steve and the Avengers. This was also my first time writing Jewish Bucky in a way that really focused on that aspect of his identity, and I'm really grateful to siyuttov for their help in making that part of the story more accurate. I'm also really proud of the fact that I wrote a novel-length fic!

You Can Touch -- 3k | E | Bucky Barnes/Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers | MCU

Summary: She opens the door almost as soon as he knocks, ushering him inside before he can say anything. Her hair is partway down, her jacket and tie folded neatly over the back of a chair. She was getting ready for bed, he supposes, or at least planning to stay in for the night. Steve is in a meeting. Bucky goes to visit Peggy. There are three fics in this series, but this one has a special place in my heart. This was my first fic where I really tried to get explicit, and it was also different from my usual Steve/Bucky-focused fics in that most of the fic is just Bucky/Peggy (Steve comes in at the end). I really loved writing the developing intimacy between Bucky and Peggy, and there's always something fascinating to me about characters choosing to be vulnerable with each other, and taking care of each other/allowing themselves to be taken care of.

The Kind You Save -- 37k | M | Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson | MCU

Summary: When HYDRA sends the Winter Soldiers to assassinate the new Captain America, they expect the mission to be an easy one. After all, they're super-soldiers-- how hard can it be to kill one unenhanced human? As more and more of their attempts prove unsuccessful, however, the Soldiers' respect for Wilson grows, as does their suspicion that HYDRA's motives are not what they seem. If Sam Wilson is a good man, what does that make them…? I really love playing with the concept of Steve as the Winter Soldier. I also love Sam Wilson as Captain America. So Steve and Bucky as Winter Soldiers who first attempt to assassinate Sam, then start to fall for him as they realize what a good person he is, was great fun for me! It was really interesting to figure out what Steve's personality as the Winter Soldier might be like, and how his and Bucky's dynamic might work if they were both brainwashed. And it was great getting to write Sam as the hero he is!

Brave Soldier Boy (Comes Marching Home) -- 2k | G | Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers | MCU

Summary: Ten years after losing her son in the war, Winnifred Barnes receives an unexpected visitor. The Winter Soldier needs her help with an important mission. This story is from the point of view of Winnifred Barnes, which I really enjoyed writing! Mothers in the MCU tend to be dead if they're mentioned at all, and I really enjoyed giving Winnifred (and the rest of Bucky's family) a chance to shine. Several people told me they were nervous to read this because of the title, but it has a happy ending!

Let Me Touch You for Awhile -- 2k | T | Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers | MCU

As Bucky heals from his experiences as the Winter Soldier, he begins to remember some of the things he's been missing out on-- specifically, the fact that Steve and Bucky used to be comfortable touching each other, whether it was an arm around the shoulders or a hug goodbye. But Steve in the present day seems determined to give Bucky space... much more space than Bucky wants. Can Bucky work up the courage to ask for the physical intimacy he craves? Set after an Infinity War that ended differently, with the Avengers and co. defeating Thanos before he had the chance to Snap. I'm a huge fan of touch-starved Bucky, but I'd never written a fic that just focuses on that, so I really enjoyed writing this! This is also a bit of a fix-it with everyone surviving Infinity War (and no Endgame), and I liked getting the chance to write a cameo of Natasha and Yelena's relationship.

@elvenfforestydd, @h-i-raeth, @16woodsequ, @lycorogue, @xemiliagryphonx, @planeoftheeclectic, and anyone else who'd like to join in, please play if you want to!

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

Feel like I am starting to get good at this photography thing.

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

idk this looks like somethoung out of scifi

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

Tried learning home development

[fadeintoyou1993]

cannot stop thinking about this skit from the new i think you should leave season

[system-reset]

what the hell

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

this is perfection

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

I’ve found that color photography on overcast sky gets boring. Black and white, IMO, handles flat color better, but in general shooting in lighting that creates stronger contrast between shadows and highlights is much easier to get shots I like. This one is alright, but the flatness of the sky kind of kills it for me.

[beemovieerotica]

the cognitive dissonance from people who want the products of modern medicine but get weird about animal research. like im sorry but this is necessary for the survival of the society we currently live in. and the scientists who work on these things are not evil cackling psychopaths. anyone you talk to in animal research has incredibly complex feelings about their work and incredibly complex relationships to the animals in their care. there are regulations and oversight and penalties in place to make the work as humane as possible and scientists are overwhelmingly the ones enforcing and advocating for better care.

[beemovieerotica]

@velvetdemon I'm doing a full reply because I want to give this question the time and space it deserves, and I really do appreciate your curiosity about this.

The short answer: It is deeply unethical. There are nowhere near enough willing patients in the world to be able to do this, and it would be criminal to put them through this.

The long answer: The one side of the equation you're focusing on is: how much of a drug is too much, to the point where it will cause negative side effects or even death? And this is crucial to know. But it's not just a matter of finding out the lethal dosage of a heart cholesterol medication, you need to know that it can actually lower the cholesterol of any living thing. There is no way to know this without giving it first to...a living thing.

But beyond this, I need to emphasize: The goal of a drug trial is to effectively cure people who are already suffering from disease, who are living on limited time.

Drug trials don't just happen on any member of the public, they need to happen specifically on people affected by the disease you're trying to treat. There is at any time a very limited and very marginalized population of the world affected by early onset, familial Parkinson's disease. Because you cannot ethically induce disease in a human being, you are working with, speaking with, and helping patients and their families who are hopeful and desperate for a cure.

If you were to jump straight to human trials from petri dishes, not knowing absolutely anything about how the drug functions in a living, breathing animal body, it would look like this:

We didn't know that minute quantities of the drug interact lethally with x, y, z medication that people are commonly also taking. X number of patients have died as a result.

We didn't know that the drug is fatal to people with [common variant] in their genetics. X more patients have died.

We didn't know the drug exacerbates x, y, z chronic illnesses. X number of people have acquired permanent, lifelong disabilities.

We didn't know the best way to deliver the drug, so we tried multiple ways: the people who received it intravenously are now suffering from a painful, costly, and debilitating condition that did not happen with the ingested form.

I could go on, and on, and on.

The vast majority of these problems can be nearly or almost entirely averted by testing other animals first.

These are all people who possibly could have waited for the normal progression from animal testing to human testing and thus received better outcomes. Some people will pass away in the time it takes to get to that point, and that's heartbreaking, and we all wish science could be faster.

But the cost of expediting science could mean a life of profoundly greater suffering or an even shorter life than the one where no intervention happens at all. And at that point, you have completely exhausted your trust, your goodwill, and your patients' hope, after you've failed to do anything or even worsened the lives of people who are already deeply suffering.

[manslaughter]

hi, i’m an animal research professional. making sure laboratory animals stay alive, healthy, and enriched has been my full-time job for several years now.

animal research is not the mad scientist wild west that PETA wants you to think it is. there are extremely strict federal laws in place to protect the well being of these animals. animal welfare organizations like AAALAC ensure that lab animals are treated with dignity & respect and are given enough specialized care & enrichment to be happy and content in captivity, just like AZA accreditation with zoos.

not a single animal from a zebrafish to a mouse to a dog to a macaque goes unaccounted for. if an animal gets moved to a new cage, paired for breeding, has a procedure performed on it, gives birth, gets sick or injured, dies, etc. it is legally required that this information is recorded and kept on file for the US federal government to access. failing to record & retain this information is very much punishable by US federal law.

let me tell you - if you abuse or kill an animal, even a mouse - you are almost certainly getting both fired & blacklisted from the industry. if you abuse or kill a more ‘advanced’ animal, such as a dog or monkey, you will likely face criminal charges. killing a monkey is as serious and disastrous as a nuclear meltdown. you are expected to reasonably explain every illness, injury, or death of an animal under your care. you must record all of this information. animals that are clearly suffering with low QOL are required to be euthanized according to AVMA guidelines.

research animals are highly expensive. yes, even the "lesser" animals like mice. the cheapest mice will run you a few hundred $ per individual, with some of the most expensive mice i've cared for being $25,000 per individual. in research we have the "three Rs" - reduction (reduce amount of necessary animals to a minimum), refinement (refine processes to ensure research is accurate and animals feel no pain or distress), and replacement (replace animals with non-living research models as they become available). i can assure you no proper research team is wasting animals (*do not* say "b-b-but elon musk--" his research team is actively being investigated for animal abuse by the government).

research methods that do not require live animals are currently being looked into & efforts spearheaded by - you guessed it - the animal research industry itself (notice how the animal rights people are strangely silent & unhelpful when it comes to this?) but current technology is rudimentary and does not compare to live animal models.

some research animal fun facts (US edition):

all species of animals are only allowed to have one single major surgery performed on them in their entire lifetime.

institutions with nonhuman primates must have a behavior program in place (run by knowledgeable primate specialists) to ensure that they are happy and receiving enough daily enrichment and social interaction.

institutions with dogs are required to have physical exercise programs in place. this means every individual dog gets a substantial amount of leashed AND free-roaming exercise daily, including playgroups with other dogs.

a majority of nonhuman primates get to retire to sanctuaries like peaceable primate sanctuary, and almost all dogs get retired and adopted out by organizations like homes for animal heroes. some institutions will also adopt out unneeded young rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, etc.

some strains of mice glow neon green (or orange or blue) under UV light. this is not harmful to them and is commonly seen in cancer research.

so yes, you can rest knowing that laboratory animals are treated with the utmost respect by their caretakers. and you can stop this awful, ignorant talk of human experimentation that will only end in the abuse of nonwhite people, LGBT people, disabled people, indigenous people, and so many others. please just take a look at this wikipedia page if you think “ethical” human experimentation can exist.

[digitaldiscipline]

Thank you for the wonderful explanations (and also the lagniappe of Neuralink getting scrutinized and stink-eyed).

[vmohlere]

An on-topic poem, by me: http://www.jabberwocky-magazine.com/2011/03/laying-small-ghosts/

Laying Small Ghosts « Jabberwocky

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

Accidental perfection from the #cinestill800t

[egberts]

[everydayconman]

[cock-holliday]

“If this hurts my shows I’m gonna riot” “they better not cancel my favorite show” “this is so selfish I NEED this show” “what about my mental health now that they—“

So you agree. Show-writers are important to you and to the industry and should be compensated accordingly for their important work.

[vague-humanoid]

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

I’ve been working on thinking more seriously about each composition. Paying better attention to shadows and light, thinking more about where different shapes and colors fit scenes, etc. I’m very happy with both of these.

[ms-demeanor]

Not to talk about week-old discourse on a years-old reblog but I really just do not buy the idea that a reasonably politically aware person in 2003 could not find a leftist (or even just slightly left-of-the-USAian-center) position against the Iraq war that didn't rely on a bunch of icky anarchists chanting "No Blood For Oil."

If absolutely nothing else, it was fucking impossible to ignore the fact that France (as well as Germany, Belgium, Mexico, Canada, and a whole bunch of other countries but France is the one that got proto-meme'd) had a perfectly reasonable critique of condoning a US war of aggression against Iraq, namely that the UN investigation into claims of WMDs was not complete, they thought there were better ways to convince Saddam Hussein to comply with the investigation than an outright war, and the US/British evidence suggesting that Iraq was building a nuclear arsenal was pretty garbage.

Saying "well, the only people protesting the war were targeting obvious strawmen and history shows that the US wasn't *actually* gunning for oil" completely overlooks the fact that Republicans in congress were so fucking offended by UN member states criticizing their warmongering that they renamed french fries and plunged us into an inescapable vortex of patriotic cringe. If you were mocking Freedom Fries at the time, you were doing so with the knowledge that France did not support the US war in Iraq and if you put even the tiniest bit of thought into that stance you either realized that the issue was much more nuanced than a bunch of white suburban kids in black hoodies yelling about Dick Cheney, or you were an idiot.

[ms-demeanor]

"The only people who were against the war were too politically toxic align with and were OBVIOUSLY wrong because their optics were so terrible, so it seemed reasonable to follow along with the adults in the room, who were screaming that one of our major allies was a nation of cheese-eating surrender monkeys and threatening to break a boot off in their baguette-eating asses."

Bullshit.

[ms-demeanor]

I owned a Dennis Miller doll who had a series of canned phrases that he spoke when you pressed a button. One of those phrases was "The French might as well gas up the dinghy and go fishing with Fredo, because they're dead to me."

In 2003 we were at late-night-comedian action figure talkbox levels of awareness that major european countries opposed the Iraq war. Saying that you couldn't find sensible arguments against the war is just an indication that you weren't looking.

[skarabrae-stone]

This! Another very obvious argument against the war was that we had already started a war in Afghanistan, which was not going well. Lots of people were concerned about spreading our resources thin, starting something we couldn’t finish, etc. People who were already (with good reason) against the war in Afghanistan pointed out that these invasions would foster more bad will towards the U.S. and create more of a problem.

There were already concerns about Bush’s financial connections to military contractors like Blackwater, as well of course as his connections to the oil industry (my dad was fond of pointing out that gas was $0.99 a gallon before Bush got elected... during the early years of his presidency, it went up to more than $4 a gallon). With the amount of cronyism and lying the Bush administration was already engaged in, it was not a big leap to conclude they might not be entirely trustworthy when claiming we needed to invade another oil-rich country that Bush’s family had personal beef with. (Fun fact: George H Bush was actually AGAINST the Iraq invasion and publicly advised George W not to do it. Yes, this was in the news at the time.)

And yeah, the PRO-war arguments were largely incoherent and frequently boiled down to “if you don’t agree with us then you HATE AMERICA and you HATE FREEDOM!” which I don’t think ought to have been particularly convincing.

I think the argument that “no one I knew had a good enough argument NOT to go to war, so I was pro-war” is stupid anyway, but honestly it was not hard to find reasonable arguments for not going to war, or at least waiting until it was clearer what the situation was.

[godisnottheonlyastronaut]

Also they weren’t really wrong about the economic and resource-based concerns either re: US need for oil and other natural resources available in abundance in the Middle East.