small immunities

"But there was nothing about the little, low-rambling, more or less identical homes of Northumberland Estates to interest or to haunt, no chance of loot that would be any more than the ordinary, waking-world kind the cops hauled you in for taking; no small immunities, no possibilities for hidden life or otherworldly presence; no trees, secret routes, shortcuts, culverts, thickets that could be made hollow in the middle – everything in the place was right out in the open, everything could be seen at a glance; and behind it, under it, around the corners of its houses and down the safe, gentle curves of its streets, you came back, you kept coming back, to nothing; nothing but the cheerless earth." Thomas Pynchon, "The Secret Integration" This is Ian Mathers' Tumblr. I live in Canada. Hi. ismathers @ bsky

[icaseybaybee]

[imathers]

And so the work week comes to an end! I've been working on the sleep/work stuff I mentioned last week and it's mostly been going well. Using all sorts of songs as my alarm now, which helps. Also been playing lots of TTRPGs, and this weekend I'm running my first TorontoDND session. So still prepping for that. And you know, keeping busy otherwise. Anyway, good luck to us all in our you vs you matches, I hope you win.

[tasty-tiktoks]

[houseofglass]

oh!

[sashayed]

has anyone figured out how to turn off the thing where you love your pet so much it slides inexorably into grief-borrowing

[boomstab-papa]

[your-cosmic-creature]

“For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

[prokopetz]

You know, when I've remarked that a lot of the responses to my posts feel like people are just plucking out keywords they think they recognise based on the shape of them and replying to what they imagine the post says based on that, the possibility never occurred to me that this is actually how many American schools are currently teaching kids to read.

[herpsandbirds]

Brook's Squat Frog aka Brook's Burrowing Frog (Glyphoglossus brooksi), family Microhylidae, Sarawak, Borneo

This species had not been seen for 14 years, when this individual was observed in the forest after a heavy rain. (2025)

Max length of up to 7 cm.

photographs by Forrest Galante

[farmlesbians]

it’s talking heads kermit friday

[cryptotheism]

ct my friend im moving soon whats the scariest painting i can put in the bathroom

Francis Bacon portrait of Innocent X

[cryptotheism]

Category 1 Papal Toilet Event

[shesnake]

Sam Neill in Possession (1981) dir. Andrzej Żuławski

[bootleg-black-marble]

that one mutual that has seen the skull

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

[itwashotwestayedinthewater]

[itwashotwestayedinthewater]

happy decade to the horrible beast i have wrought

[technofeudalism]

[merely-another-fool]

[3liza]

idk where I picked up the ability to just be comfortable with not fucking understanding what im reading, maybe it was learning to read before I was in kindergarten and naturally blasting through books I couldn't possibly grasp or contextualize and just being fine with that because I was a tiny child, but I am begging everyone reading this to stop trying to Solve books and movies and even ARGs and spooky YouTube projects.

you must let the unanswered questions linger while you absorb the rest of the text. the author is using questions and ambiguities to create landscapes in your mind. the best kind of reading gifts you with questions you do not answer until years later, or never. the questions are gifts because they make you wonder about things, sometimes for the rest of your life

please just chill out. experience a narrative. a major factor of many challenging and grown up narratives in all mediums, written or otherwise, is ambiguity and mystery and a lack of answers. this type of negative space in good storytelling allows the reader to expand to fill that space. approaching everything you read or watch with a gamer mindset is anti-intellectual, and will prevent you from experiencing the pace and Vibe of a story because you will be stopping every four words to try to answer every single question raised by the text. that's not the correct way to read things. the unanswered question is itself a narrative tool. "[popular prestige television show] FINALLY SOLVED! (1:34:06)" fuck yourself. fuck Off. you are the enemy of all art. you are a philistine and a ruiner

[3liza]

i would start a fight about this so vicious it would cause a social rift we would never recover from. i would go to hell and eat devil shit for five hundred years rather than watch anything with these people

[sarahsscrapbook]

RIP Sam Neill. He was part of my childhood as Alan in Jurassic Park but what I'll always remember him for is this story from Event Horizon:

“All of the crew has a flag on part of their uniform that indicated their origins, but they asked me what the Australian flag would look like in 50 years’ time. “My response was there would be no way that a Union Jack would still be on that flag. That is because I was certain it would be a republic by that time. “Second, it seemed to me that Australians would have sufficient generosity and common sense to replace that Union Jack with an acknowledgement of Indigenous settlement (Always was, always will be) for at least 60,000 years. “Both of these issues led me to be wearing a flag that looks the way it is - and it pleases me that I insisted on that."

[jessaerys]

how do i say "horror novels these days are too woke" without sounding like a right winger. what i mean is: this one is about a woman serial killer who kills Bad Men, that one is about ~anticapitalist activists~, this one is ~queer~, that one is about *spins wheel* someone dealing with the ghosts of their immigrant roots, all of them are about intergenerational traumaaaaa. okay. cool. but is it good though. is it fucking scary

[jessaerys]

something something, losing the ability to convey horror through abstraction, through metaphor, through symbolism, through allegory, through raw unexamined un-psychiatrized feeling. if the real horror is.... dun dun dun! the patriarchy then i just feel preached to. don't use fiction as a vehicle for Saying Something About Society. write with total vulnerability and then see what it says. it will be probably be far more interesting and horrifying than what if the monster was uhh my mom's abuse or whatever. this brand of new horror writers are all so terrified of actually disclosing anything about themselves. it's like if an instagram infographic performance was a mediocre contemporary novel

[some-stars]

YOU ARE MAKING THE TEXT DO THE WORK OF ANALYSIS!!!!!!!

[riseofthecommonwoodpile]

as much as i disagree with the stance i really like when people who position pornography and erotic art as different things take the time to try and delineate them because it always ALWAYS boils down to “i like one category and i don’t like the other” and that just tickles me pink

[xxxxactly]

Brutalist maze, Seattle

[3liza]

its called Freeway Park and while it is one of the most interesting single examples of Brutalism in the united states and im proud of it, it is so poorly designed in terms of public safety that it has been renovated twice(?) but continues to be geographically troubling, as its design has facilitated a lot of murders over the years. it was the subject of a funny but gruesome article in the STranger in 2002 called Topography of Terror. the city doesnt keep official tally of how many murders or assaults have happened IN the park but two men in their 30s were stabbed nonfatally during a robbery there earlier this year, for example.