Howl

[missmonstermel]

Smilodon Helm blank preorder is now live! These are sculpted by hand in monsterclay and cast in urethane, they will ship late July through August!

missmonster.myshopify.com

[robertreich]

Today’s IPO of SpaceX could turn out to be the universe’s largest Ponzi scheme, and you and I are paying part of the price whether we like it or not. Let me explain...

[criticalrolo]

losing my mind at this amazing story from r/dndmemes some people’s dnd adventures are just. So Fucking Cool

here’s the link and the story, it’s Amazing

[ashes-and-static]

THE FUCKING REVEAL AT THE END LIKE THIS GUY IS LEGIT LIKE

THATS MY WIFE AND I LOVE HER

[notimportantjusttrue]

Just some quick math, a long rest is 8 hours, so you can get three long rests a day (theoretically), meaning 9 days and 16 hours is

Twenty-nine resurrections

There were nearly 30 deaths and every single one came back. It musta been like the Endgame portal scene except with like, your brother and your dead wife. Incredible.

[squarebracket-trickster]

"Readers have SHORT attention spans! The average reader takes just TWO sentences to decide whether to put a book down! You have to HOOK them in the FIRST sentence! GRAB them by throat and don't let them BREATHE—"

... have... have we considered that perhaps the average reader just, like, knows what they like in a book? I mean... first sentences are famous for establishing things like *checks notes*... genre, tone, POV, pacing, character, voice, uhhh... writing style...

The average reader is putting your book down because they discovered it's in first person (or not in first person). The average reader put your book down because they wanted a cozy read, or they're sick of cozy reads, or romance, or grimdark, or assassin princesses, or vampires, or or or. The average reader put your book down because they just didn't like your writing style—no, not because it was boring... they just, get this, didn't like it.

The average critical reader put your book down because it had six grammatical mistakes in the first two sentences.

The average reader will read quite a ways if the premise intrigues them, they like the genre, the writing style doesn't get on their nerves, and the characters pop off the page. In fact, they'll probably read the whole book, so long as it delivers on its plot promises and doesn't drag in the middle section.

The average reader will, however, stop reading after just two sentences if it's clear by the second sentence that the only thing they'll like about this book is the opening line.

[squarebracket-trickster]

Idk, I just think like, painting a demographic of people who, you know, pick up full length books to read for fun, as having short attention spans doesn't make too much sense. At least not as much sense as the alternative: words tell people things; namely, the contents of this book.

In general, though, I think we jump to blame short attention spans too often when there is a far more logical explanation. "It takes 0.06 seconds for viewers to scroll past a post." Yes, that is typically how long it takes me to discern whether this post is about something I'm interested in. There's a trillion posts out there, probably a billion books, of course we've gotten fast at sorting through content. That's not an attention span issue. That's just efficiency.

[strongermonster]

was visiting a friend who has a farm, and one of the chickens has a home made flared cone on, so i asked what was up with that and she said "that's diesel, and she's suicidal" so obviously i went ??? and she pressed the door lock on her truck fob so the truck beeped, and this dumbass bird SPRINTED full tilt across the garden to shove her head in the tailpipe. she has to be locked up and coned so she doesn't gulp down toxic fumes direct from the pipe for some idiot bird reason. she is obsessed with doing this and has to be locked up any time someone is using a vehicle.

[strongermonster]

i told her i posted about this and she has an update (which i guess content warning for animal harm [the animal did it to it's damn fool self])

she found this out the first time when she auto-started her truck to warm it up before work one below-freezing morning and came out ~5 minutes later to find (the then unnamed) diesel with her head stuffed in the tail pipe hanging limply by her idiot neck and thought that she was dead, ran over and pulled her out, and the chicken went "oh hi! anyways mind if i get back in there?" and did it a-fucking-gain??

best guess is bc she feeds her chickens with a pvc gravity pipe like this

and despite having ~40 other chickens who don't fuck this up, diesel went "food comes from tubes, this is tube, ∴ this is the ~secret~ food hole that the others do not know about. i will be rewarded with golden seed for being the cleverest of them all :)" and is now on 24/7 vehicle related suicide watch. fine line between docile and dumb sometimes.

[strongermonster]

my artists rendition of the morning in question

[lusitanohorses]

[fidelcostco]

WAIT HOLD ON I cannot fucking believe when I was like four years old my parents were cajoling me to walk with the family and trying to get me to keep up even though I kept insisting that I was "tired" until they took me to a doctor and found out my LUNGS DIDN'T WORK. how insane that we live in a world where reasonably loving parents think their FOUR YEAR OLD is trying to be LAZY. like they were mortified to be clear. adults are just so trained to ignore children's complaints as untrustworthy, kids just need discipline, they can't possibly speak for themselves. what the fuuuuck.

[fidelcostco]

YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE BTW you should always be trying to take children seriously, especially very little ones but definitely all of them. the most disempowered class basically legally defined as property and most people are like "yeah that's good actually I hate when they Loiter lol they're stupid and loud and i actually think children should stop existing. restrict their personhood more actually"

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Bubble Bath

Tiger Shark

by Remuna Beca (United States)

The Monochrome Photography Awards

[wizardarchetypes]

when i was a little kid (age 8 and on) i had 3 veryyy intense special interests i constantly infodumped about to anyone who gave me the time of day. these were:

The Bubonic Plague

Vampire Folklore

Tree frogs.

So as you can imagine my mom spent many years prepping me for social outings by doing a call-and-response litany with me that went "let's focus on tree frogs tonight. let's tell people about tree frogs."

[apathetic-revenant]

“oh no, my audience has begun to guess the big twists of my story and are accurately predicting what will happen!”

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

[thebourneultimatum]

can someone elaborate on the “make hoax” and “post angry tweet about “leak”“ part. i’m stupid and don’t understand things

[apathetic-revenant]

sure!

(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)

I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.

now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.

hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:

…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).

it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.

personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.

plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

and now you know!

[notaplaceofhonour]

if your audience guesses the ending of your story

don’t:

change the ending

do:

gaslight them

[tzikeh]

Maryland to Become First US State to Ban Surveillance Pricing That Charges More After Mining Personal Data

Maryland will become the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in retail stores, after passing Protection from Predatory Pricing Act.

Jesus fucking christ that this exists in the first place

[boyslit]

I WAS FUCKING WONDERING WHAT THOSE DIGITAL PRICE TAGS WERE ABOUT SUDDENLY i had hoped they were so the workers didn't have to finagle those little papers into the slider part anymore 😭

[eclipticasolaris]

Hi, yes, that is the OFFICIAL excuse made to me by the guy replacing the paper tags with digital ones at my local Walmart, but the end goal is to remove the numbers off the shelf entirely, replacing them with QR codes that you have to scan with the app…. Which requires your login information….. and also stores your card information so even if you didn’t use your Walmart account at the physical checkout, if you used a card they recognize, they assign that purchase to your Walmart account purchase history.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Yes, call your reps. Yes, push for more legislation like this in more places. But also take an extra minute out of your shopping trip to MAKE IT HURT for companies to pull this shit.

[antisocialxconstruct]

I've seen some people in the notes express (very fair) concern that this is only going to inconvenience already under-paid laborers, and not have any impact on corporate. While I can't speak for every company or every store, I do work in a grocery store and I can tell you this is precisely the kind of thing that would have an impact, especially if people are doing it en masse. Stores absolutely track their shrink numbers, and they do draw distinctions between what gets stolen, damaged, or wasted for other reasons. If people are making it clear that the reason they're bringing things to the cashier is that the prices are not adequately represented on the displays, and rather than improving business it's wasting product, slowing down transactions, and causing confusion and mistrust in customers, that is a language that shareholders speak.

[dovewithscales]

I worked in retail for years. If this had happened while I was working retail, I would have been delighted and felt great solidarity with anyone who was wasting my employer's time and money and giving me busy work as an act of protest. In point of fact every moment the employee spends carting items back to the shelves is a moment not spent standing at a register.

[hungry-skeleton]

I think the biggest thing mascot horror things need to get a grip on is the reasonable balance of cute/creepy. The mascot in question needs to be cute enough to realistically be for children but scary enough to actually make for effective horror. Most games always lean too far in either direction and idk maybe it's just me but immersion with these kinds of games are important for me to actually find enjoyment in them.

[hungry-skeleton]

Can anyone hear me

[hungry-skeleton]

[hungry-skeleton]

GUYS...

[mavenmemnon]

[thememedaddy]

[juicydangler]

shut up this is adorable

[marine-gifs]

A tiger shark attempts to catch a black-footed albatross. Filmed near the Hawaiian Islands. From BBC's South Pacific (2009).

[penandinkprincess]

very funny that longline bras are so consistently styled/designed to look sexy when they are like. the biggest speedbump of tit access in terms of bras.

cute, sexy, love the lace and ribbons and criss-cross in the middle. very attractive. but what about the clasp situation??

that is seven (7) clasps to undo.

as someone who has had to coach a boyfriend through unclasping a bra before because my band was wider than he expected and his move of undoing it with one hand didn't work and then he got flustered, extremely funny that this is meant to be A Sexy Bra™ when this is more accuratelly a skills checkpoint to determine if someone is worthy based on how they handle Fort Knoxckers here.

[imoriginalvisual]

Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian but it’s Toxic by Britney Spears

[gallusrostromegalus]

I’m gonna propose something: if your combat/ass-kicking sequence can’t fit to a top 40 female-vocalist Banger like “Toxic” or “Mama Mia” or “I Need a Hero” you’re not Doing It Right.

[fatsexybitch]

At this point its starting to feel like Editors are using 140-150bpm as a standard for action sequences, and I cant say I hate it.

[homestuckphobia]

I agree wholeheartedly with every point above but I watched this first with the sound off because I forgot that was an option and what struck me most is how efficient Luke's lightsaber style is. Almost every flourish he makes and all of what, 2 entire spins?, is defensive to better parry blaster fire while nearly every offensive swing he makes is basically a head or chest level kill shot. If I had to make a guess about his character I'd say this vintage twink has probably Seen Some Shit and maybe comes from a background where resources are scarce and help is far away so if you get in a fight you have to end it before it starts or you're dead meat

[screamting]

deeply want a time travel fic where Luke visits the old republic and the Jedi are like “that’s not a dueling style” and luke is like “yea am not doing much dueling tbh”

[thesewersofparis]

btw i live on nailpolish reddit nowadays

and everyone is posting their 4th of july manis

except this year its very few american flags and red white and blue and stars.

and a LOT of pond scum inspiration