not archival quality

Paleontologist, teacher, indiscriminate biophile, cautious optimist, general enthusiast, board-certified Disaster Bisexual. Tumblr-old (late 30s) with a doctorate and a kid. He/him for general use, they/them if you know me; gender best described as "Gethenian". I like long arguments on the beach, scientific breakthroughs, 15th and 16th century music, interesting bugs, and weird corners of history. Erratic side blog: @monosyllabicvocabulary

[was-once-somewhere-else]

I keep seeing people asking ‘is solarpunk really punk?’ because it’s too happy and optimistic and stuff

and I’m picturing a perfect moment in a solarpunk community — the neighbourhood mayor standing with a shit-eating grin on her face when the cops come and cut them off from city power, and nothing turns off

[solarpunknetwork]

This is my absolute favorite example of how solarpunk is punk. Also, Detroit (and a lot of other places) could probably use something similar for water. Especially in places where it’s illegal to harvest rainwater. I dunno, maybe water tanks cleverly designed as yard art?

[thewritingsquid-deactivated2020]

Like… yeah it’s happy and optimistic, but my view of solarpunk at least is in complete defiance of many capitalist ideals so if that’s not punk … ‘Punk’ isn’t edgy, dark and gritty. Not to me. Building a society completely based on renewable resources, accessibility for all, and constant sharing is a big fuck you to the current system if you ask me.

[solarpunknetwork]

Exactly. Near future solarpunk especially requires rebelling against the current system. Punk is about defiance (at least that’s what it’s come to mean colloquially). Defiance doesn’t have to be destruction and violence and grit, it can look like stubborn creation and community building and rejecting many of the dominant system’s values. 

[caffeinated-transpression]

Wait. Why would harvesting rainwater be illegal?

[watsons-solarpunk]

There’s an interpretation of the concept of property that says if something has value, then someone should be getting paid for it. Despite being flatly absurd and riddled with obvious logical flaws, this has been one of the major philosophies of property in the US, in some contexts (including water) for over a hundred years. This Washington Post article gets into it in detail. 

According to this logic, if there are water suppliers in a region, then they’re entitled to money when people get water. Collecting rainwater for yourself gets around that, so, in this concept of property, it’s a form of theft.

There have also been legal battles over people growing food in their lawns, generating their own electricity, etc. If you’re looking to extricate yourself from the systems wherein you have to serve the interests of specific wealthy people to survive, many parts of the western world are ready to use the force of government intervention to stop you.

[shiisiln]

I feel like a big chunk of the ‘dark, gritty’ aesthetic punk is associated with came as a reaction to the bright, glamorous ‘American Dream’ imagery and patronizing ad campaigns of the 50s. But now that we’re being sold “The future is bleak and dirty and there’s nothing you can do about it,” being optimistic and cheerful is the most punk and rebellious thing you can do

[kintatsujo]

This is an extremely well put point.

[foone]

Important rules for the "age verification" era of the internet that we're living in:

1. Do not do age verification.

2. If you have to do age verification, cheat. Do not under any circumstances give them your real ID.

[very-gay-alkyrion]

Free Tool Says it Can Bypass Discord's Age Verification Check With a 3D Model

The tool presents users with a 3D model they can then manipulate to, the creator says, bypass Discord's age verification system.

Oh no I dropped my link, what a horrible thing! Sure hope this doesn't get reblogged until it reaches users from the UK and Brazil!

And remember to not make a second account just to test out what works best when verifying your identity

[asksanguinius40k]

A reminder that we still dont support Age Verification bullshit.

[flower-crowns-and-combat-boots]

Paywall removed here

[hungrymilliek]

Aaand here's the link to the project's Github.

GitHub - promptpirate-x/discord-id-bypass-tool: A verified tool that works on any potato computer that will let you bypass discord verificat

A verified tool that works on any potato computer that will let you bypass discord verification - promptpirate-x/discord-id-bypass-tool

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

my notifications are once again devolving into a spirited debate about the ethics of actions that could potentially make someone uncomfortable, and at risk of sounding like someone about to get a lot of irate anons I think we're frankly giving way too to much moral weight to hypothetical discomfort

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

the thing about discomfort is that it's an extremely nebulous category that can be triggered by virtually anything and that's far too broad a category to have any inherent moral quality to it. like. my mom was mad uncomfortable when I stopped shaving. that didn't mean I was doing violence against my mom it just meant she needed to get over herself. many such cases it must be said.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

there's not a single example I could give that's better than this

[linddzz]

gotta be a term that isn't the dunning Krueger effect but is a kind of similar idea where the more deep scientists get into their topic and the more exhausted they get, the more likely they are to find stupid ways to describe things

[linddzz]

this post brought to you by a bunch of coral specialists at the end of a workshop voting to define coral, a complex animal, as "a rock with problems"

[frottinq]

I think a really really funny idea to pop up in this recent anti-trans hysteria is the idea that someone needs consent to use a public restroom. like so many cis transmisogynists throw around "we don't consent to transgenders using our bathrooms" as if the act of a transgender woman pissing, literally in the privacy of a stall, is tantamount to a violation of someone's body. it's genuinely so beyond ridiculous it boggles the mind. i didn't consent to you pissing in a place where I can't even see you doing it.

[girldixieflatline]

they use that word deliberately because it evokes imagery of sexual assault tbh, thew view us being there as inherently violating so they describe it as if the violence has already happened.

i didnt consent to sharing a restroom with you. i didnt consent to seeing you exist in public. i don't consent to this fact of life and the fact you couldnt feasibly get me to consent to it means YOU are a predator now.

[painkillerscoffeeandcathair]

Please don't leave this in the tags:

[archaeologistproblems]

What the gold rush means to most people: Prospectors! Dusty mine cars on tracks in the wild west! Gold nuggets!

What the gold rush means to an archaeologist: Hmm, where on this 100-acre plot of land covered in contaminated mine tailings do I think these clowns might have buried barrels full of literal cyanide?

[archaeologistproblems]

How dare you leave this nugget hiding in the notes!

[garden-eel-draws]

Why were they burying barrels of cyanide? How and why would you even compile enough cyanide to fill multiple barrels???

[archaeologistproblems]

My friend let me introduce you to the terrifying process of cyanidation, wherein finely crushed ore containing traces of gold is made into a slurry by adding water, then transferred into vats known as “slime separators,” where potassium cyanide is then added to leach the gold into a liquid. Slaked lime is used to prevent the cyanide from going into full Murder Mode as hydrogen cyanide. The gold is then separated from the cyanide through one of a series of processes that I’m not really qualified to explain, but I think there are a few websites that talk about them if you want to google them.

But the key point here: from what I can tell, cyanide has been the main method of getting gold out of the ground for the last 120 years. (Yes, this process is still used today.) Before this technology came along, instead a thin coating of mercury was spread onto a copper plate, and the ore was allowed to wash over it. The gold stuck to the mercury, creating an amalgam, and then the amalgam was scraped off the plate and the mercury was boiled off (urk) to leave the gold behind.

And when processing mills shut down historically, why bother to dispose of your leftover deadly chemicals properly, when you can just bury them in your local tailings pile, which is already contaminated with mercury and arsenic? The known case of this happening in my local area was revealed through a bloom of “Prussian Blue” (ferro cyanide) on the surface of the tailings. Luckily, this is a fairly stable form of cyanide. Unluckily, geologists are crazier than archaeologists and they went ahead and dug a sample test unit right next to it, even knowing what it was, because science.

When I said to myself, “I’ll be an industrial archaeologist. It’ll be cool,” I did not foresee the terrifying knowledge it would unleash upon me.

[garden-eel-draws]

I’m from Goldrush Country and I didn’t know this. All the gold-mining-related historical attractions around here are about good old-fashioned panning and pick-axes. Now I’m incredibly glad I’ve never had any urge to go explore the suspiciously colorful hills left in the wake of various mining operations.

[archaeologistproblems]

Eek! Please don’t play in tailings piles and outflows folks, they are Bad News. “Oh but it’s lovely sand we want to take our ATVs out on it and let our kids build sandcastles” NO. DO NOT.

[garden-eel-draws]

Reblogging because some desert-dwellers might not know this. Yes, those pretty hills are probably within ATV driving distance of Amargosa, Ocotillo, Buttercup, Superstition or whatever other recreational area you might be camped out at, but rainbow-colored dirt is usually rainbow-colored for toxic reasons!

[archaeologistproblems]

Absolutely! And bear in mind too, not all tailings are brightly coloured - the ones in my area are just light grey. “Sand in spots where sand isn’t common” is sometimes the only warning sign.

[archaeologistproblems]

I’m reviving this post because I’m doing up a Health & Safety protocol for digging near a mining site and folks. I did the math based on some recent soil tests. The tailings near my test site contain enough arsenic that ½ teaspoon of soil (tailings) easily contains a fatal dose of arsenic for an adult. Please stay safe and wash your hands thoroughly before eating/drinking/smoking if you aren’t 100% certain what the dirt is like where you’re digging.

[thatdisasterauthor]

And this is why we found a whole quart of mercury in my grandparent’s basement! Old timey prospectors would really just do shit.

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tumblr reply from highEmpressOfDirt reading: a different kind of Mine Sweeper /End ID]

[archaeologistproblems]

Thanks for the image description!

Since I’m seeing a few people tagging or commenting with the assumption that this post is about US history: this is a Canadian blog, based on my experiences in Canada, and this mine waste phenomenon is, unfortunately, a problem in much of the world. Nova Scotia, for example, had three separate “gold rush” phases from the 1860s to the 1930s.

Also, bonus content for those who are startled/fascinated by the arsenic concentrations, here’s a sample page from the Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) report by Mike Parsons et al., showing arsenic concentrations at Mooseland, which isn’t a site I’ve worked on, but is noteworthy because one soil sample was over one-quarter arsenic. The site I worked at with the “tablespoon to kill six people” calculation was less than half of that.

[Image ID: A map showing soil sample locations and numbers along the Tangier River in Nova Scotia near a historic gold mining stamp mill. The highest concentration is 256,000mg/kg, or 25.6% arsenic. To the south, a huge number of abandoned mine shafts are also shown in red.]

[systlin]

Every time I see bullshit about women never EVER being able to beat men in any sport, I think about how in martial arts classes I, a cis woman, 5' 8" and 145 pounds, regularly beat the tar out of 6' 2" 230 pound cis dude weightlifters. One guy ragequit class. He came in cocky as hell and talking the standard bs line about how a woman simply never could beat a man in a fight because they're physically weaker and our instructor was like. Okay. Put the pads on you're sparring her. Yes, her, the one 4" shorter and 100 pounds lighter than you.

It wasn't close I beat the pants off that man, and others like him. I did it more than once. Some guys got humble and stayed. One guy got angry and stormed out.

And I think about that every fuck damn time I hear that bullshit, which seems to be all the fuck over the place these days. Oh, women are just fragile little soft delicate flower creatures who can't do ANYTHING and could NEVER compete with big strong manly muscular strong MEN.

I think about driving that dude into the mats and seeing the brutal reality of this big dude's misogany meet the realization that a woman was beating his ass literally that second, that none of his strength could stop the fact that I'd just hip thrown him facefirst into the mats and that had I actually connected with the axe kick to his neck I would have crushed a bunch of important shit and he could not stop me, and his whole psyche collapsing like a dying star in that moment.

Anyway, don't ever fall for it, ladies, and there's absolutely no goddamn reason to get your knickers in a twist about trans people in sports.

[klatchianmist]

What martial art do you study? Hip throws and axe kicks are an unusual combination.

[systlin]

Tang Soo Do! It's closely related to Tae Kwon Do, but Tae Kwon Do is almost purely a Korean style with a lot of the signature powerful Korean style kicks and Tang Soo Do has a lot of Chinese, Japanese, and Okinawan influences as well as Korean, thanks to the fact that Korea was occupied by both China and Japan at various times and of course the fact that martial artists through history have learned from each other and swapped interesting techniques.

What this means practically is that we do, in fact, learn hip throws AND axe kicks! Very versitile, I think picking out the various influences from various arts is very interesting and quite enjoy the wide range of movement styles we learn because of it.

[klatchianmist]

Ah, very cool. I studied Tae Kwon Do for eight years, and then in grad school I decided to pivot to aikido so I could learn anything that wasn't kicking. I have had to study a lot of different styles to be able to become something like well-rounded.

I think Hapkido has both kicks and throws, how close is it to Tang Soo Do?

[systlin]

Closely related! If you put Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido in a blender, you'd come out with something very close to Tang Soo Do actually.

I've nothing against Tae Kwon Do but I do prefer other arts with a balance of punching, grappling, and other techniques in addition to kicks, which is why I like Tang Soo do very much. I totally agree with you that I prefer something a little more rounded.

Akido is one art I've always wanted to train more seriously in but there's no good dojo near me :/

[klfg]

[source]

[klfg]

🚨BREAKING: OpenAI published a paper proving that ChatGPT will always make things up.

Not sometimes. Not until the next update. Always. They proved it with math.

Even with perfect training data and unlimited computing power, AI models will still confidently tell you things that are completely false. This isn't a bug they're working on. It's baked into how these systems work at a fundamental level.

And their own numbers are brutal. OpenAI's o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The "smarter" models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.

Here's why it can't be fixed. Language models work by predicting the next word based on probability. When they hit something uncertain, they don't pause. They don't flag it. They guess. And they guess with complete confidence, because that's exactly what they were trained to do.

The researchers looked at the 10 biggest AI benchmarks used to measure how good these models are. 9 out of 10 give the same score for saying "I don't know" as for giving a completely wrong answer: zero points. The entire testing system literally punishes honesty and rewards guessing.

So the AI learned the optimal strategy: always guess. Never admit uncertainty. Sound confident even when you're making it up.

OpenAI's proposed fix? Have ChatGPT say "I don't know" when it's unsure. Their own math shows this would mean roughly 30% of your questions get no answer. Imagine asking ChatGPT something three times out of ten and getting "I'm not confident enough to respond." Users would leave overnight. So the fix exists, but it would kill the product.

This isn't just OpenAI's problem. DeepMind and Tsinghua University independently reached the same conclusion. Three of the world's top AI labs, working separately, all agree: this is permanent.

Every time ChatGPT gives you an answer, ask yourself: is this real, or is it just a confident guess?

[salt-baby]

yes, doctors suck, but also "the medical ethics and patient interaction training doctors receive reinforces ableism" and "the hyper competitive medical school application process roots out the poor, the disabled, and those who would diversify the field" and "anti-establishment sentiment gets applications rejected and promotions requests denied, weeding out the doctors on our side" and "the gruesome nature of the job and the complete lack of mental health support for medical practitioners breeds apathy towards patients" and "insurance companies often define treatment solely on a cost-analysis basis" and "doctors take on such overwhelming student loan debt they have no choice but to pursue high paying jobs at the expense of their morals" are all also true

none of this absolves doctors of the truly horrendous things they say and do to patients, but it's important to acknowledge that rather than every doctor being coincidentally a bad person, there is something specific about this field and career path that gives rise to such high prevalence of ableist attitudes

and I WILL elaborate happily

[miseria-fortes-viros]

your weird obsession with moral purity is degrading your critical thinking skills and poisoning your ability to empathize with other people btw

[miseria-fortes-viros]

your weird obsession with moral purity is degrading your critical thinking skills and poisoning your ability to empathize with other people btw

[jesuistropfatiguee712]

Not interested in empathizing with rapists. Especially any that engage with CSA.

[miseria-fortes-viros]

let’s put our thinking caps on for a second. do you genuinely believe that is what i wanted you to take away from this post

[jesuistropfatiguee712]

Your originally post? No.

Your reblog with the addition of tags specifically calling that out? One could argue you’re making the case that such content is not an exception to the blanket rule you are proposing.

[miseria-fortes-viros]

ohhhh ok i see. you think that playing pretend sometimes is the same thing as actually doing the thing. of course! this post is about you then

[jesuistropfatiguee712]

It’s not about me. It’s about the fallacy of your argument and reblog. Nice attempt to distract, though, pervert.

When you eventually get arrested for playing out your fantasies in real life, I hope you get chemically castrated.

It’s sickening to fantasize about raping someone or having sex with your relatives.

[miseria-fortes-viros]

your worldview is dependent on personal disgust which is why this post went over your head and also why you’re unable to identify early warning signs of fascism. because you’re too busy accusing consenting adults of being yucky

[inbabylontheywept]

As long as there is some category in your head of UnPersons, of people whose suffering is not merely neutral, but good, moral, required, there is a bypass in your soul for committing atrocities. One of the goals of fascists is to first, create and name this group. They'll pick Jews, they'll pick gays, they'll pick sex-offenders or communists or furries, immigrants or heretics - whoever is convenient. Whoever they think will work.

Then, once it has become established that their Target Group has no rights, that there is no cruelty they do not deserve, no sadism too perverse, they will begin trying to lump their real targets in with them.

So you see that it starts with signs that say Throw Your Local Pedophile Into A Woodchipper. You laugh. Pedophiles are monsters. Who is going to defend a monster? Why not throw them into woodchippers? Fuck em'. But then the default accusation of the fascists becomes accusing all their enemies of being pedophiles. They start going, you know, I think those trannies are only making all this fuss about being allowed to use the bathroom because they want to peep on little girls. Maybe those gays that want to talk about LGBT history are just trying to groom little boys. Maybe everyone that I hate is secretly evil and I am allowed to do anything that I want to them. How wonderful. How convenient. And wouldn't you know it, the woodchipper is already warm.

@jesuistropfatiguee712, this is what Miseria is pointing out. That your obsession with finding someone that you're allowed to hate is bypassing your normal moral compass. It is! Look at yourself! When you had a disagreement, you immediately decided that the person you were arguing with was a pervert, then jumped into a fantasy where you, what, hoped she got caught raping someone just so you could have the satisfaction of seeing her castrated? And then, as if you were on some level aware of how repulsive that was, you had to throw in another dig about how gross perverts are. So gross! So gross that it's okay to fantasize about them getting castrated! So gross that it's okay to fantasize about hurting them! You're not deranged! They're just sooooooo grossssssssssss.

My wife is a survivor of CSA. It's hard for her. It's hard for me. I feel like I spent the second and third year of our relationship in a therapy office lobby. I was there when she told her siblings what her dad was. I was there when she told her mom what her husband was. I held her together as best I could in that time. It felt like trying to hold a grenade together by squeezing it with my bare hands. It was awful. I don't know how to write about how awful it was so I mosty just don't write about it. It was more awful for her, but it was awful for me, and I only had one friend I could talk to about it, because everyone else would go on these unhinged rants about how they wanted to throw her dad in a woodchipper and dance in his guts, or how they hoped he went to prison and got beat to death by other inmates, or, better, yet raped. And it made me sick. And the one friend that I had that could talk about it and sit with me in a way that did not make me feel sick to my stomach was a victim of CSA himself. He just wanted to feel safe again, he just wanted to learn how to trust people again, he just wanted his rapist to go to jail, where he wouldn't hurt anyone else ever again, but he didn't have elaborate torture fantasies. He didn't want to hear them from others. He could sit with me, and cry with me, and the gratitude that I feel for him is unspeakable. I owe him so much. He would puke to hear the note of hope in your comment, your hope that your opponent rapes someone just so you could be maximally vindicated in your rage. There is a sickness here that I cannot make words for. Please change.

Please.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

the way prehistoric animal documentaries will talk about extinction like it happens because of “a failure to evolve” as though evolution is a meritocracy is so funny and so scary

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

this species persisted over the eons because of its Protestant work ethic to produce more of a specific kind of digestive enzyme that allowed it to extract 4% more nutrients from the dominant plant species in the area

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

we watched a couple episodes of Netflix’s The Dinosaurs a few days ago and it kept going on about shit like “this dinosaur has found a meal worthy of her future bloodline” like she’s some sort of Triassic era Bene Gesserit

[allegedlygwen]

Its really hard to describe long-term macro evolution without ascribing words like "figured out" or "solved the X problem". Even if you try using more cautious language like "this mutation allowed this following mutation" it suggests direction and intent.

The issue is that macroevolution is one of those concepts that is more or less cosmic horror when it comes to attempting to comprehend it. Not truly incomprehensible but so far beyond the experience of the average person that its hard not to use language that can be read as a narrative.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

I understand that, but that’s not really what I’m talking about. There is a degree of personification and narrativization that is just kind of inevitable, especially in scicomm aimed at a general public. HOWEVER there is a point at which is becomes egregious and another, parallel point at which it becomes weird propaganda for a christofascist blood and soil worldview. I’m a huge sucker for the Walking with Dinosaurs model of CGI dinosaur documentaries which all have their troubling rhetorical flaws but I made it through about an episode and a half of Netflix’s The Dinosaurs while writing that post before I couldn’t take it anymore… at all times it was 30 seconds away from praising its dinosaur characters for their sigma grindsets and the purity of their bloodlines.

[allegedlygwen]

To be clear, what I am saying is that the issue is a convergent one between "social darwinist" popular understanding of evolution, and the narrativism that gets built into how we talk about evolution even academically. Netflix's portrayals have been absolute ass, I'm just trying to break down the contributing factors because I think it is deeper than just the social darwinist influence on popular understanding of evolution.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

I mean I think it’s very much a reflection of the times. A sociological study on the shifting rhetoric in natural history documentaries of all kinds over the last 30 or so years would be very interesting.

[jacopo-belbo]

thats right

[sodafired]

have you been told you’re intimidating?

yes

no

bald/recluse/see results

Voting ended onFeb 3

curious to see bc ive been told this many times and im always a little shocked! reblog to increase sample size blah blah blah

[samiholloway]

Idk why. I'm literally well under five feet tall and scared of strangers.

[hasufin]

My experience is, some people find anyone who has firm opinions about anything as "intimidating".

There's a broad range of human experience, and the problem is that any time you're perfectly palatable to one end of that range, you're absolutely abhorrent to the other. If you meet the absolute minimum of "not a doormat" to people who are extremely loud and aggressive, then to the quiet, submissive end you come across as intimidating and domineering.

[samiholloway]

Yes.

Other things that have gotten it:

Paying attention to things and remembering what was said

Forgetting to mask in public (not laughing when things aren't funny, telling people things are stupid when they are, etc)

Zoning out ADHD style and having it be interpreted as glaring

Resting bitch face

Also resting cry face? Bc I wasn't hiding looking like crying even tho I didn't know I looked like that bc that's just my face?

Knowing things at all and letting people know that you know things

I guess I'm more intimidating since I stopped putting up with so much nonsense and stopped pretending I was dumber than I am?

[hemipelagicdredger]

not since I transitioned, lol, and I used to get it relatively often

[blowery]

via

Gabe Moshenska (@gabemoshenska.bsky.social)

Just published a paper on the complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir meme, the decade-old tumblr in-joke that continues to impact the public understan

[bill-blake-fans-anonymous]

In King Ludwig II’s defense, if I had basically infinite discretionary funds, was accountable to absolutely no one, and was king of a country full of picturesque landscapes, you couldn’t stop me from building myself a big gay fairytale castle on a mountaintop either.

[bill-blake-fans-anonymous]

This post is spreading and I feel bad about it because it contains misinformation, so for the record: Ludwig II did not in fact have infinite discretionary funds. He only acted as if he did. He never dipped into the public coffers for his building projects, but he spent his own fortune extravagantly and borrowed heavily from everyone he could think of. By 1885, the year before his death, he was 14 million marks in debt.

[insomniac-arrest]

~ ✨✨ 14 million marks in debt ✨✨~

[centrally-unplanned]

I always find this inspiring because try to name another prince of a German state. What did the rulers of Hamberg do? The Grand Duchy of Hesse? Gone with the wind, no one knows them anymore. But Mad Lad Ludwig built a top 5 most famous castle in the entire world. Money is fake, castles are real. Go broke and die like a winner.

[the-barefoot-hatter]

EXCUSE ME, this is still wrong. He built 3.

Neuschwanstein, literally the inspo for the castles in Disney's Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella

Hohenschwangau, the practical castle

Linderhof, the final, the smallest, and the MOST fab.

Every room is incredible and the park is beautiful, but shoutout to The Bedroom, the biggest room

The Hall of Mirrors, which he probably wandered by candle light because he was a serious night owl

The Dining Room, with a wishing table that lowers to the kitchen, and rises with a crank, returning magically full of food

The Venus Grotto, constructed for the sole use of Ludwig to larp to his heart's content

A full artificial cave, it features a waterfall, fake stalactites, and a custom-designed swan boat floating on an artificial lake. The first electricity in Bavaria was generated here, to change the colors of the stage lights and to power Ludwig's fountain and wave machine.

Now THAT'S ~ ✨✨ 14 million marks in debt ✨✨~

[marzipanandminutiae]

I love that- and I cannot emphasize this enough -none of this was tax money

the public paid for zero of his fairytale castle hobby

rare European monarch W as far as spending money lavishly goes

[johannestevans]

jeeves is a criminal, which is what makes him such a great valet honestly.

he has a murderous streak in him and is always ready to bash in the brains of a policeman, he LOVES to steal, he's a masterful pickpocket, he always knows which horse races are fixed, he carries ROOFIES at ALL TIMES

the thing is when people only know about jeeves as like. A Big Good Butler from Pop Culture they just can't appreciate that he's not just a valet and not a butler, but that the WAY in which he gives good service and is an expert on anything is that he's criminally insane. and sexy

[johannestevans]

Didn't mention before how keen jeeves always is to assume various false identities at the drop of a hat, but I've just gotten to him infodumping about his interest in jewellery and genuine gems and pearls vs fake ones, and i love him. you're a gay autist in 1927 and your special interest is crime

[jauntylittlefrillyboy]

I think the solution to kids on the Internet is to have specific, kid friendly spaces on the Internet. Kids wouldn't come across "adult content" on YouTube if barbie dot com still had flash games and this is a hill I will die on.

[aetherograph]

Oh! Then I know the EXACT person you should be mad at! Michael O'Rielly! He's the one that gutted the Children's Programming Rules, which covered internet as well as television.

[jauntylittlefrillyboy]

HELLO?

[aetherograph]

#so the death of the Saturday morning cartoon is THIS motherfuckers fault?????

Indeed it is! The FCC controls how much of broadcasting has to cater to children and that includes how educational that programming has to be, and exactly how much and in what way you are allowed to advertise to kids. That's why for the entire 90s and up to the early 00s, kids shows had shorter commercial breaks, and ads that talked about a website had to say "ask your parents before going online", and those websites had to be non-commercial--i.e. they could not be shops, and could not have any way you could spend money or were encouraged to spend money. That's why Barbie.com was flash games, and O'Rielly LIFTING that ban is why Barbie.com now takes you directly to a storefront instead.

If you're mad about Saturday Morning Cartoons, dark patterns in ads targeted at children, online protections for kids, or wondering why educational children's shows aren't as much of a thing as they used to be, get mad at the FCC and the person in charge of it who is gutting the Children's Brodcasting Rules (sometimes called the Kid Vid Rules), because those rules control all of that!

While O'Rielly is responsible for gutting the rules in 2019, he was replaced in 2020 by Nathan Simington as head of the FCC, and Simington resigned in June of this year. The post remains vacant as of the time of this writing (August 31, 2025).

And a side note: Things like KOSA and SCREEN and all those other censorship bills that use "think of the children" are not going to protect children at all; if you want to protect kids online, there is already a way to do that it's called the Kid Vid Rules and the FCC is the one that can update and change them to keep up with the times! It doesn't need a congress vote, it already got voted on in 1990!