Illusions of Greatness

~ my mind is my realm but I am not its queen ~

[doubleca5t]

I would argue that the two most perfect critiques of Harry Potter come from a pair of 4chan posts, which take opposite approaches to their critique but reach equally damning conclusions

[c3po]

oh u can have this post i don’t want it

[coughloop]

Gee, thanks mista! Oi Avent had a post to me own since and mum n pop died of influenza! I'll be certain to cherish it as if it were me little brutha who died from influenza also

[gogglor]

Woss-all this then? You cheeky li’uhl buggah, wheh’d you get that post? Didn’t I tell you wha’ ‘appens to li’uhl boys that steal posts, hm? If your dear old mum knew she’d catch influenza with shame.

[hidinginawell]

Oh no, Officer! I know ‘im, and ‘e’s a good lad; ‘e ‘elped me find daddy when I was lost in th market! I’m sure my father would be happy to let me pay for th’ post! Father is just around the corner getting influenza

[jaffacakerebellion]

'Ere offisah, dahn't truss that littuw giwl, orrite? She's the one wot stole foive bob from me larse week she did, when i was recovering in St. Urchin's 'Ome For Those With Influenza. And I sorer shewwin 'er ankles to some poor gent dahn the pub yesserday arfernoon while 'er ol' dad stole the poor bugger's influenza roight aht the man's pokkit. She's a baddun orrite. Fling 'er dahn the nick.

[c3po]

if i knew they were gonna make my post british i never would’ve gave it away

[scamguy]

i would like to officially thank sesame for its seeds, its oil, and of course its street

[magicalmrmephistopheles]

couldn’t leave this in the tags

[mutantrenegade]

You know Jones soda cap, as a tumblr user i can actually say i think I have.

[ltwilliammowett]

The Danish training ship “Georg Stage” (1934) dresses in rainbow colour, 2021 

[dragon-in-a-fez]

not the kind of gay ship I’m used to seeing on tumblr but cool

[dubiousculturalartifact]

ship georg is an outlier but SHOULD be counted

[trek-tracks]

When a student copies an essay online instead of writing it and then painstakingly changes every word to a synonym until the text no longer makes any sense...

call that the Ship of Thesaurus

[trek-tracks]

Any educator who doesn't feel this on a visceral level has never had to experience the psychic pain of reading the phrase "Unused York City."

[trek-tracks]

This is the fifth anniversary of me receiving the paper that contained "Unused York City." With ChatGPT slop invading my classes like original thought-choking kudzu, I now look back on the copy-paste + Spinbot days with a surprising amount of rosy nostalgia.

I was once in the office and another professor called me over. She was teaching a course on global citizenship.

"I can't figure out what this student is writing about," she said. "She keeps using the phrase 'perspiration stores.' Perspiration stores this, perspiration stores that."

I glanced at the paper and read a paragraph.

"Friend," I said. "She's writing about sweatshops."

[headspace-hotel]

i just spent like 20 minutes scrolling through the notes for examples and I'm screeching with laughter

[homunculus-argument]

"Problematic height gap" was a concept made up by people who have never seen the kind of short people who go out to interact with the public. Those fucking gnomes fear nothing. If they're at the exact right height to bite you in the nuts, they will.

And insanely tall people come in two categories: If they're merely tall, and not large, they're just skittish fragile giraffes. The most dangerous thing they can do to you is stand up too fast, faint because their blood pressure dropped, and hit you on the way down like a felled tree.

The tall people who are also large are mostly chill in my experience. Sure some of them must be assholes just out of statistical inevitability, but it takes some edge out of life knowing that someone could try to hit you with a tank and all they're going to find out is whether or not a Leopard 2A7 has a crumple zone. And most importantly they are never tactically prepared for getting bit in the nuts.

[pussyronin-deactivated20260120]

if i were in charge of star wars i would end the last movie witth yoda reading the story out of a big book and he gives a little chuckle and says "happened, none of that did." and then he gets out of his truck and waddles into walmart

[charlesoberonn]

"Diversity of opinion" but the opinions are "We should use a chainsaw to rescue a cat from a tree" and "We should trap more cats on the tree and then set it on fire"

[charlesoberonn]

To clarify: If those are your only options (and they often are) it's your moral imperative to choose the chainsaw.

[creepykuroneko]

Fuck this rhetoric. You are not obligated to choose the chainsaw. Go create a better solution.

[charlesoberonn]

[terminally-twentyeight]

#mybloodchainsaw

[oberorka]

gay pride flag for people who can see a much wider range of wavelengths

[funny-tik-toks]

[autumnhobbit]

finally decided to sit down and watch the incredibles again. there will be no commentary because i’m gonna be too busy watching it

[autumnhobbit]

okay i just gotta say

having been married for 3 years now (almost), i really love how bob & helen argue. when i was a kid it just came off to me that everyone in this movie was being super mean for no reason but when you watch it as an adult it’s different. i really appreciate that even when bob is frustrated/angry he basically never lashes out at helen or the kids, his problem is he’s withdrawn and existantialling. i also really appreciate that when they do fight they’re actually more expressing their frustration than attacking each other. it’s only later when things get real that helen (understandably) gets really angry.

[autumnhobbit]

also edna’s advice is actually really good, helen’s just melting down over the idea of losing her husband (which is sweet and helps us understand her character) but edna tells her to confront it immediately, hold bob to account by leaning into his concern (all his heroics being forgotten) and reminding him that she’s a super, too. direct action is a blessing in communication.

[autumnhobbit]

i love how the movie communicates bob’s competency, like he’s actually handling all the twists and turns of the situation rapidly deteriorating very well, the only thing that throws him off is when his family gets involved. we also see helen’s competency in the plane scene and how she immediately knows something’s up when no one responds on the radio

[autumnhobbit]

syndrome is such a fucking good villain, saying ‘i seem to recall you prefer to work alone’ and laughing at him when he believes he’s murdered the guy’s wife and kids???? holy fuck

as previously mentioned bob breaking down and sobbing alone in the containment room shaped my personality

[autumnhobbit]

ah the good old days of 2004 when having a voluptuous mom ass was a bad thing. good riddance, we don’t miss you.

also the it’s a neat little parallel to bob’s body image struggles, they really went to great lengths to showcase that these people are equals & soulmates

[autumnhobbit]

the kids are really well-written too, they feel very authentically their age and they both have motivations, the writing does a great job of showing how the gravity of the situation sinks in for them and forces them to rise to meet it. dash especially fascinates me in this movie because he’s just the right balance between immature and starting, just starting to get that life is a big deal and stakes are real and you’ve got to care about what you’re doing and try to do the right thing in every situation. the way the kids instinctively protect each other even though all we’ve seen of them so far in the movie is antagonism is just *clenches fist* so good

[that-catholic-shinobi]

The Incredibles is incredible on every level

[ave-aria]

I appreciate the "there will be no commentary because i’m gonna be too busy watching it" followed by 8 of the truest takes on the movie, respect.

[what-even-is-thiss]

The amount of slavery in Ancient Rome was legitimately terrifying tbh

[what-even-is-thiss]

Y’all know that I’m into ancient Roman history and I do a lot of research on it but even though I should be used to it by now sometimes I read an anecdote about how an individual slave was treated and I’m hit with the realization that like a third of the population was living like that and I just need to put my head in my hands for a second

[what-even-is-thiss]

Emperor Hadrian randomly stabbed a slave in the eye in a fit of rage and he was supposedly unusually sympathetic to slaves.

There’s other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didn’t even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.

And slaves didn’t rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.

People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.

Like how many people throughout history were beaten to death because some rich asshole was angry and there was no legal or social consequences for doing so? We don’t know.

[what-even-is-thiss]

When you study ancient history you’re reminded that slavery has never once been kind or justified. It just takes on different forms of evil in every time and place that it infects.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Chattel slavery is an incredibly cruel and dehumanizing system.

So is every other kind of slavery.

This doesn’t diminish the awfulness of what people were forced to endure under chattel slavery.

I just think it’s useful to remember that cruelty is complicated and diverse and just because a cruel system is different doesn’t make it right by any means.

Roman slavery operated differently from slavery in the antebellum American south which operated differently from slavery in the Ottoman Empire which operated differently from modern prisoner chain gangs.

All of these are still slavery. They’re all cruel and unacceptable. Their diversity does not matter. Their willing participants have still committed the crime of taking away the self ownership and personhood of another human being.

[penrosesun]

My dad is a high school physics teacher, and every year he does an incredibly valuable and deeply uncomfortable exercise with his students to drive home why “the Industrial Revolution” was called that:

In the unit about physical work, he points out that work is, at its core, a measurement of labor, and that labor which isn’t done by a paid laborer had another name before the rise of automation: slavery. He has his students quantify the amount of physical work that you might expect out of a human slave, and then sets them to work calculating what that means for their own standard of living. If you wanted to live like you currently do in the ancient world, how many slaves would you need? Calculate your washing machine in slaves. Calculate your dishwasher in slaves. Calculate your refrigerator and your TV and your HVAC in slaves.

And then he asks them to think about those calculations every time they read about any form of wealth at any point in history prior to the Industrial Revolution, and to ask themselves how many slaves went into creating and supporting that wealth. Sometimes it’s chattel slavery, and sometimes it’s serfs, and sometimes it’s forced marriages, or debt bondage, or penal labor… but scratch the surface of wealth and civilization and leisure time throughout history, and you inevitably find slavery hiding underneath. Sometimes (often) you still find slavery hiding underneath, even in the modern day – but until automation, it’s a virtual guarantee about any culture with a high standard of living at all.

[zebruh]

the post I stole this from got reblog turned off but I wanted to rb it so here

[sawed-on-shotgun]

unfortunate truth of reality is that oftentimes 15 year olds will say/do/believe some stupid bullshit because they are 15 but telling them that they believe that because they are 15 is probably the most counterproductive thing in the entire universe

[prokopetz]

Game where the ancient hero is awakened from the deathless sleep of centuries in the hour of their people's greatest need, only to find that civilisation is thriving and there are no obvious threats on the horizon; the game then becomes a fish-out-of-water detective sim as they try to figure out what woke them up, and also solve other, smaller mysteries along the way.

[nearo]

[boymounter]

[evilscientist3]

the two fundamental truths of historical and contemporary mankind:

we were just as smart then as we are now

we are just as stupid now as we were then