Love, Loliqua

♥ 30+ ♥ F ♥ CAN ♥ ACE ♥ SCO ♥ In a loving relationship with my 3 cats. Obsessed with Purple, Glitter, Sharks, and Sleep. Author of The Otherland Circus. My Love and Support to you all! ♥ - Love, Loliqua

[theconcealedweapon]

[urie]

im about to catsit next month for a (lovingly) crazy woman who is so deeply obsessed with her cat's care its touching truly. he needs insulin shots and she is telling me that shes going to send voice notes to my phone of her saying "copo! baby! its time for your insulin!" "come here handsome!" "its insulin time sweetie!" so that he feels safe getting his insulin from a stranger. im like girl i love it. i love this

[urie]

she was telling me yesterday "sometimes i look at him and he looks at me and i feel like we can hear each other's thoughts. is that crazy" and i was like "no of course not"

[partywithponies]

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

[gingertea116]

Batlantern

[milquetoaast]

source

[yanguang]

[robs-your-robins]

No thoughts, just Bruce helping Diana with her hair. It starts when Bruce and Diana get rostered to be at the Watchtower, with Diana complaining that she forgot a hair tie and her hair is getting in the way of her eating her Pad Thai (she and Bruce always get a takeaway) and Bruce is like here, gets up and starts winding her hair into a bun and using a pen as a hairstick. And it looks fire? So Diana lets Bruce do her hair all the time, braiding it, brushing it and helping her detangle it after fights etc because a) he's actually really good at it and he doesn't tug b) it seems to calm him down and c) it's so much better than doing it herself.

[aviantastic]

Tree Swallows by Linda H. Dulak - Audubon Photography Awards

[fluentisonus]

barn swallows depicted in the “spring fresco”, akrotiri, thera, greece. c. 16th century BC

[cryptidofthecove]

[english-mace]

nonononononono

‘saw from the 1600s’ = ~400 years ago

this fresco is from ~3600 years ago

[lenacraft]

Have been watching the tree swallows for ~3600 years. Wonderful. May we get another ~3600.

[tpwrtrmnky]

Tbh I think the "but data centers are important infrastructure, not just AI" talking point misses that like

Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff that's important happens on roads. Now, let's imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. It's a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.

The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyone's going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting "nah." Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.

In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, there's an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.

That is the problem.

[im-mender]

It's important to note that Chekhov's Gun was not originally about foreshadowing, but a piece of advice to playwrights about how every element in a play should have narrative relevance. The corollary to Chekhov's Gun is that if a gun mounted on the wall in act 1 is never used at all in the entirety of the play, then it should be omitted from the play entirely.

[effervescent-fool]

ive never been able to take "climb him like a tree" as a sexual innuendo seriously because i picture climbing a tree in my mind and then i picture a tall man in my mind and when i put those two things together im not seeing anything sexual. im seeing like. circus tricks.

[imsorrybruce]

Batlantern where Bruce turns into a cat, But he isn't a pretty, regal, well-groomed cat. His fur is patchy from scars, his ear is nicked, his tail is crooked and doesn't have full motion, and he obviously favors one leg when walking. No one would think this is Bruce Wayne. And Hal doesn't too. He finds this bloodied cat in a dark alley and is surprised when such a beaten creature straightlines towards him. He knows cats like that usually fear humans, so when this black voidling headbutts his leg and meows at him, how could he refuse to help? The vet says that the cat is underweight, lacks some vitamins, and has a few broken bones. The treatment is costly, and Hal has to ask Oliver for help funding it, who also becomes attached to Hal's new pet immediately. The official name Hal picked for his cat is "Mr. Void", however, he mostly calls him Spooky. Nursing him back to health is an emotional struggle, and Hal sometimes feels like weeping, but, despite the obvious past maltreatment, Spooky trusts him and doesn't try to attack at all, even though he does mess up Hal's apartment sometimes. But the content purrs and the returned healthy shine of the soft fur are worth it.

Or, Bruce tries to communicate with Hal but instead gets himself into a nice health retreat.

[plaguedocboi]

I feel like starfish are one of those animals that are treated as very “normal” by people but absolutely shouldn’t be. Like they’re a wheel of repeating heads connected by a central stomach. They walk around using thousands of tiny sticky hydraulically powered tentacles. They have an eye on the end of each arm. Instead of having a mouth they just have an opening where their entire stomach can be pushed out to engulf prey. And they’re just allowed to exist like this. It’s not illegal or anything.

[delinquentbookworm]

one time I went over to a friend's house and their housemate was making paper in the living room, and we saw this big tub full of water they were using to dissolve old scrap paper into a slurry, and everyone was immediately like "oh, you need scrap paper?" and started turning out their jacket pockets and producing expired coupons and bus tickets and crumpled receipts and old shopping lists and whatever else they'd been carrying round with them for no good reason, and passing it all to the paper-making housemate to make sure it was suitable before it got torn up and dropped into the tub, while people took turns stirring the slurry with a big wooden stick. it was strangely ritualistic, like presenting an offering to some kind of temple elder for inspection before placing it in a watery shrine to be devoured and reformed. pulp for the pulp god.

[theconcealedweapon]

[frankenmouse]

It is so ridiculously easy to gain a reputation for being competent by just reading signs.

This is not metaphorical. I mean actual, literal pieces of paper/plastic/metal/whatever explicitly erected to inform the public.

“How did you know this was the right trail?” I read the sign.

“Wow, how did you know what that flower is?” There’s a SIGN.

“How did you know we needed to use the side door?” THERE IS A SIGN POSTED ON THE FRONT DOOR.

Just…why are we having such different experiences of the world? People can read. I KNOW they can read. There’s nothing wrong with their vision.

Just. READ. THE. GOD. DAMN. SIGN.

This also applies to:

Syllabi

Instructions

[velvetvexations]

Weird Fantasy (1950) #18 written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Joe Orlando, with editor Bill Gaines

[velvetvexations]

So he said it can't be a Black. So I said, "For God's sakes, Judge Murphy, that's the whole point of the Goddamn story!" So he said, "No, it can't be a Black". Bill just called him up and raised the roof, and finally they said, "Well, you gotta take the perspiration off". I had the stars glistening in the perspiration on his Black skin. Bill said, "Fuck you", and he hung up.

Al Feldstein, Tales of Terror: The EC Companion

[iconuk01]

Just to add context for those not aware of the impact of this story.

The reason it was so important for narrative purposes, was that the plot concerns the visit of the Astronaut, in his completely opaque spacesuit, to a planet populated entirely by self-aware robots (originally from Earth) who have built their own society and are petitioning to be allowed to interact with Earth again as equals.

They have a democratic government and free choice of careers etc. as the orange robot serving as guide tells the Astronaut.

The Astronaut notices that there are two different types of robot on this world; the orange ones, who are in charge, gifted access to all information and facilities. and the blue robots, who are seen as more limited in function, have less access to information and resources, and are not allowed positions of power or as wide a choice of employment opportunities. Even transportation is segregated.

The Astronaut investigates further and discovers that the blue and orange robots are actually structurally identical, there is absolutely no difference between their potential or capabilities, and it is only because the orange robots are instructed by their Educator system to consider themselves superior, that the difference exists.

The Astronaut tells the robots they are not ready for re-alignment with Earth, until they come to terms with their own unfairness, and how Earth had had to deal with this issue themselves. When that time comes, the robots will be able to ally with Earth.

Then he leaves in his spaceship, and it's only in that one final panel that we see the Astronaut is black.

Not subtle, nor should it be, but for 1950 this was a breathtakingly powerful statement, perhaps the first of it's kind in the genre.

The black character was not a caricature, or comedy relief, he was a main character in his own right, a human who "simply" was black.

[assortedinsanities]

Ok, but this story is sadly revolutionary even now. That is not just a human who happens to be black, as far as every other character in this story is concerned this is the most important, maybe even the only human they ever see, who happens to be black.

As depressing as that is, but a black person just casually representing the entirety of humanity is a breathtakingly powerfull statement even today, a quarter of a century later.

[about-faces]

[anarchistmemedistro]

*a breathtakingly powerful statement even today, three quarters of a century later

[nateconnolly]

These days, lots of public libraries have a "library of things" collection where you can check out kitchen appliances or yard tools or toys, and, as a children's library assistant, the most popular library of things item that I handle regularly is a plastic scepter thingy called like "unicorn princess magic wand". And whenever I check it out I make a big show of looking at the little kid and being like "do you solemnly swear to use your unicorn princess magic powers only for good and never for evil?"

And pretty much without fail, the little kid will get the world's most mischievous grin and go "I'm gonna use it for EVIL!!!"