Peter Solarz
KIROKAZE
tumblr dot com
@theartofmadeline
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blake kathryn
Xuebing Du
cherry valley forever
Mike Driver
RMH
PR's Tumblrdome
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Sade Olutola
pixel skylines
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
wallacepolsom
Product Placement
hello vonnie
trying on a metaphor
Misplaced Lens Cap
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@jotctumb
Do you guys think about how, in Artificial Condition, the ComfortUnit from Tlacey didn't know that MB's data port was disconnected? How it still had to import the combat override module anyway, because they both had to, and it had no reason to believe that it wouldn't work? How everything could've gone to complete shit after that, no matter what it and MB had talked about? Yeah.
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
as a black gay person real like where y'all be finding this stuff pass the name
for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!
I think I know how this works.
For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.
So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?
Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.
Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm
What’s the solution then? Or if there’s no solution, should we make things even queerer and more diverse?
Genuinely the answer is yes. If you are past the threshold of "existing within view" you have surpassed the comfort zone of bigots. They begin crying wolf at 5%, but have no more volume to give when you reach 50%, so in reality there is no meaningful difference of response once you have shown them one queer person on screen. My dad sincerely would do this all the time (but more specifically would moan about an actor with leftist views being in a show or movie), and frankly his complaints did not differ between 1 person he disliked being present and 12 being there. He's still gonna watch the Jason Bourne movies religiously (yes he hates Matt Damon but watches all his movies)
graffiti wall more like gay sex wall . i love people sometimes 💛
Thank you to @strangebluefishes for some article titles! Here is the latest bot magazine cover, because I cannot be stopped:
I debated not including a picture of Gurathin and his port this time, but ultimately could not resist.
Can we talk about how nervous Gurathin looks during the "'sweet/bitter" scene, even before he starts speaking?
He isn't just uncomfortable or out of place because the team is so loud. He looks like he's actively questioning all the life choices that led him to this restaurant.
Is it because he's stressed before the mission? Or because right now, at this very moment, he decided to share his biggest secret with the rest of the team, even before they called his name?
Also, while they all (except, of course, Mensah) seem surprised by Gurathin’s words, I wonder if they knew at least something about his past before that moment. Or was it a complete revelation? Like, imagine someone you’ve known for six years suddenly confesses during a silly game they’re not quite who you thought they were. Just wow.
just. please know. that giffing scenes like that is a fucking nightmare labor of love.
to wit:
bottom's the raw capture, middle's just flat curve correction to make the footage visible, top is the final coloring with /counts seven adjustment layers to add back in Literally Anything But Yellow
every giffer i know does it out of love for the game, but for the record it's not... easy. it's not just slapping the footage in a cap grabber and posting whatever it spits out. "professional" lighting and color grading has only gotten waaay murkier and flatter in the fifteen years i've been giffing on here, so uh. don't repost gifs, please!
I thought the bottom was a black bar. I didn't even realize that was footage.
Everyone say thank you to your neighbourhood GIF maker! Giffers are so important to the fannish ecosystem, but to so many people the amount of work involved invisible.
in a way john watson is a fantasy (what if you had this brilliant enigmatic friend and what if he liked you in particular and what if he offered you the excitement of youth and adventures and a way out of boring society life and all without having to actually give up your status as a gentleman so you could have the best of both worlds) and in a way sherlock holmes is a fantasy (what if someone never got tired of you despite your various strange habits and mood swings and instead of simply tolerating you they genuinely liked you and what if you didn’t have to live alone forever and what if you never had to give up doing the things you love) and of course there’s the most fantastical part of it all (what if you could afford london housing prices)
Announcing Fanfiction.lol !
hey all! i've built a new ao3 fork called fanfiction.lol 🤙🏽 key differences:
🚫 no invite queue: sign up and start posting immediately. no waiting, no velvet rope.
🏳️🌈 expanded content warnings: added ableism, homophobia/transphobia, racism, rpf and more. plus relationship tags for aro/ace spectrum, qpr, non-binary/genderqueer focus, poly/ensemble, and more.
🏷️ all tags are canonical: everything you tag goes into the searchable record. no volunteer wrangling bottleneck.
💜 fandom-agnostic moderation: i care about the writing, not fandom politics or discourse. write whatever you want, tag it honestly.
it's a small personal project but fan communities deserve independent infrastructure.
if you enjoy fandom, i'd love for you to sign up and poke around. tell me what breaks. the source code is at source.tube/brennan/fanfiction.lol.
find me at brennan.day/accounts or email [email protected].
write whatever the hell you want! 💜
More Information
Hi, I wanted to add some more info about fanfic.lol based on some replies. I was trying to keep the original post short and have done write-ups elsewhere but I'll reiterate here.
The admin/webmaster: I'm Brennan! I'm a Queer Red River Métis writer and webdev and huge advocate for the IndieWeb. You can get to know to me on my site, brennan.day
I made this for fun, and it's running using a homelab server in my basement. I don't make money or anything else. I'm just doing it for the love of ball.
fanfic.lol is meant to be a small, independent alternative for fanfic and fandom that prioritizes joy and fun. No aims at trying to replace AO3!
I am anti-genAI and so is the site. You can read more about my stance on AI here.
Archive warnings, like everything else, are under construction! I do have to adhere to the laws of my country (Canada). Please be patient.
I am pushing straight to production, which is to say the entire site could explode at anytime, so please do not use it as the only place you put things! :)
I forsee only a handful of people using this site, it def isn't for everyone. If you don't like it that's okay! Whether you want to give me input or just ignore it entirely.
I did a longer write-up here. Thank you everyone for the kind, warm reception of my silly little project. <3
I love the longer write-up. It gives me a much better sense of where you're coming from and why people should trust you—or which users would be a good fit.
I was there for the start of AO3, and we really did think we were going to usher in the next age of archives a la eFiction. It took too long for AO3's code to be in that kind of shape and the internet changed radically around us. We did not mean to create a behemoth. We just wanted venture capital bros to stop disrespecting us.
As a side note, all the comments you're getting like "There already is a fanfiction website. Wtf" are exactly what people said about AO3/OTW in 2007. There was a ton of bitching about us stealing FFN's idea. (Never mind that there were older archives.) There were frequent complaints about how there was already "an archive" and we didn't need another. Most of that discussion got deleted when FFN decided to nuke all of its inactive social spaces one Thanksgiving weekend while nobody was around to object or save their data. But I was there and I remember it and it sounded exactly like these comments now.
The oldschool core of AO3 was into the age of archives. We liked there being lots of different little spaces run by different fans. It's nice to see that energy floating around in 2026. Go indieweb!
I wish you a hundred invested users who want to form a community and nobody else.
do you ever think about... murderbot... and its love of children... and how children naturally welcome it in a way older humans don't? the way teenagers are slower than children but far faster than adults to see it fully as a person and warm to it as soon as they realize how much safer they are in its presence?
do you think about how amena, sofi, and the others will someday be full adults? and mensah and the rest of team presaux will be gone? and murderbot will be surrounded by humans who have loved and cherished it seemingly their whole lives? how it'll be surrounded by humans, both in mensah's family and across preservation and the university in general, who don't remember what life was like before their first encounter with a secunit?
do you think about how someday some of these adults who love it will have their own children? and it will see that first gross little bundle of human offspring and be shocked by the size and frailty? it'll resist offers to hold the baby for fear of hurting something so small and frail (and also some other fear it can't name) (and also: gross). but eventually... something will happen and it will oblige and hold a baby for the first time in its whole existence while the parents run around dealing with whatever emergency. and it'll be absolutely rooted to the spot, thinking about how the baby is actually a bit heavier than it had guessed, thinking about how there isn't even any ROOM for bones in such a small body, thinking about how the baby looks doubtful and a little scared of it. until one of the human adults sweeps by and recommends that it smile and coo at the baby. well, it's not sure about "cooing" but it does get woken from its fearful stupor and hurriedly ups its body temperature, softly bounces the baby like it had seen humans do, and smiles — nervously, but it counts. and the baby... melts. the small little mouth and brows and eyes all slip into a delighted chubby-cheeked smile, still looking up into its eyes. and murderbot thinks, okay, maybe i'll try cooing. do you think about that?
do you think about how someday amena and sofi and the others will be known as nannas and grandpersons themselves, and murderbot will still be beset by children who want to watch shows with it and curl up against its chest when they're sad or hurt? and how sofi can still be found napping on its shoulder, though now she has more wrinkles on her face than naja ever had? and how amena's still bothering it for details about its relationships, anxious to see it loved and cared for after she and her siblings are gone?
do you think about how someday murderbot and its creaky old joints and worn ports are only still functioning because of a dedicated team of university researchers who'd put in thousands of hours into determining how to not let living construct consciousnesses become trapped in failing bodies and developed a protocol for training future researchers in proper construct geriatric care? and can you picture how it will have a few dozen children gathered around it at a cultural festival — their families camping in and around the ancestral home, together once again for the holiday — all those tiny voices clamoring to once more hear the story of how it and their great great great great greatnan amena defeated the aliens and saved the colonists, and could they pretty pretty please meet ART the next time it docks at preservation station?
do you think about how the children it loves growing up to become adults would never take away how safe and comfortable it feels around them?
do you think gurathin had to delete some of his own stuff to make space for secunit.
I don't mean anything dramatic like childhood memories or important like spy records, like he'd probably just sift through some technical stuff, sort it by the least used or last opened and go for it, not like he has time and brain capacity to think
...three months later mensah's having déjà vu sitting with gurathin next to a broken space wheat harvester or whatever like "right... so what you're saying is you deleted the Space Wheat Harvester 3000.PRE.X5 manual to make space for sanctuary moon" and he's like "...yeah" and then they're both just
Yes. He totally had to delete. He got extremely ill, what the heck was he doing to get so ill? Because computer storage space should either be there or not. I suppose some of the strain could have come from trying to track various half-full storage spaces but IMO the main strain was from Gurathin frantically deleting stuff while also trying to direct the data stream to the spaces he freed up. While also analyzing the data so he could decide what not to take, given that he didn't have room for it all.
Although now that Mensah has breathed the crystal air, I bet she will be sympathetic to his decision to delete the Space Wheat Harvester 3000.PRE.X5 and HE will be the one sulking!
moss mfriday #3: Glacier Mice
[image credit]
That's right - it's glacier mice. One of my favorite things maybe on the entire planet. Let's talk about these freaky fuzzy little rats!!
Glacier mice are balls of moss that live in large herds like this in a few select glaciers. They are moss all the way through, with a center consisting of dead moss matter, implying that they begin as small growths of moss and simply accumulate over time, like snowballs. However, their outside surface is alive and well on all sides. Glacier mice have been observed, through tagging and tracking, to roll across the glacier like a majestic herd of wildebeest, exposing all of their sides to the sunlight. They trundle along at a pace of about 2.5 cm per day. That's 30 feet in a year! They're really schmovin'! Certainly further than most mosses can claim to travel.
What's really exciting, though, is that they all move in the same direction, and we're not sure why or how. Scientists experimented to try and attribute their coordinated behavior to wind, sunlight, and the direction that their grazing ground slopes, but to no avail. They speed up, slow down, and change direction in unison, based on some mysterious moss code that we haven't cracked yet.
Cross-section of a glacier mouse. Note the dead moss matter inside, and the short gametophytes on the outside, adapted to harsh winds and sunlight. [image credit]
We have figured out how they roll, though - while the moss ball sits on the ice, it insulates the ice directly underneath it, protecting it from melting. This forms a little pillar of ice that the moss eventually rolls off of. The insulating power of glacier mice also gives it the wonderful ability to host all kinds of microorganisms that otherwise wouldn't survive the glacier's harsh conditions, and their ability to move makes it possible for microorganisms to spread from one habitable spot to another. They're like a bunch of little tardigrade passenger ships, braving the dangerous glacier to go where no water bear has gone before!!
Glacier mice have been found to consist of several moss species, most of which must reproduce asexually in order to survive in the dry climate. They've been observed to live for at least six years, but are projected to live much, much longer. I love them. So much. I hope they know that I love them!! I LOVE THEM!!!!
[source][source][source]
Time to clean the blorbo! Pick an action
gently run a lintroller over them
steam clean
handwash only
machine wash hot, longest cycle
use a power washer
sandblast them
let them stay filthy
other
plz reblog for sampo size
I think it is so funny that the blurb of Platform Decay has Murderbot making a point to imply that it doesn't like kids.
Meanwhile Murderbot's actual interactions with children throughout the books:
(Not pictured is Sofi spamming her best friend Secunit with heart emojis or it carrying Tula around because she feels safe with it or Amena calling it Mom)
You are good with kids!! You are a person who likes kids!!! Would it kill you to say it? There's no shame in saying it.
MY MEMORY WAS IN fragments. I didn’t feel great about it, but it wasn’t the disaster it would have been for a full bot. My human neural tissue, normally the weak link in my whole data storage system, couldn’t be wiped. I had to rely on it to put the fragments back in order and unfortunately its access speed was terrible. It was taking fucking forever. I wandered through random images, bursts of pain, landscapes, corridors, walls. Wow, that was a lot of walls.
So canonically SecUnit literally wanders through visuals of its shattered memory while doing a rebuild. If the TV adaption uses this scene, it could be so trippy and cool!
I don't know what to do with this one yet, but I adore it so much, I needed to share it anyway
look at his little face
Janity and Murderbot parallels [1/4]
x files studies but this time I tired to achieve that VHS feeling. I very vaguely remember watching some episodes as a kid, and I think this is as close as I've ever got to recreating that memory of a small, grainy tv in a dark room
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