Nonsensical Esoterics

Sideblog/Archives of @aactaeon

[dykeselfcest]

holy shit okay may have found a game-changer for web searches...with duckduckgo it's easy to turn off the ai features permanently, but regardless of engine there's the increasing problem of the search results themselves leading mostly to ai-generated articles on random ghost websites that say a lot without any information, and then the information they do give is contradictory or otherwise just wrong. this is especially a problem for me when trying to search for, e.g., a current list of the best products in a certain category.

finally searched for a solution and there IS in fact a giant hand-curated list of sites containing this content. it can be imported to ublock origin on desktop or mobile, and even can be used on iOS via the ublacklist extension in the safari app. it's updated regularly, and importing via the link as described should allow those updates to go into effect automatically.

i've only tested it a little bit, but after importing the list and repeating my duckduckgo search for backpack recommendations, my top results now lead to websites that appear to be linked to actual organizations in some form, with an "about us" page and the name of a founder and everything. the text is still often a bit wordy and SEO-optimized, but it now has actual recommendations that are relevant to the query. BIG IF TRUE???

please do not start talking about The Definition Of Art on this post, or Whether Human Creations Have Souls. i am very tired.

[rederiswrites]

Look, it's simple. If a person has to actively work to make money, they're not "the rich" and they're not the problem. A surgeon making $200k a year still stops making money if they stop showing up to do surgery, because they're still selling their labor. The radical discrepancies in how we value different skills are certainly a problem, but the guy who makes money when he doesn't even get out of bed is the one making money on the value of other people's labor.

[monsieurenjlolras]

Time for my favorite chart!

[typewriter-worries]

my favorite reads of 2025

The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

Extremely Online and Incredibly Tedious

Stop Calling My Daughter Pretty

Taylor Swift Is The 21st Century's Most Disorienting Pop Star

No Good Art Comes From Greed

AirPods Are a Tragedy

Only Fads: A Culture (and Economy) of Labubu

As a mother to teen daughters, I'm not that concerned about Sabrina Carpenter's influence (...but I am about Gracie Abrams)

Taylor Swift is not the English teacher she wants you to think she is

The Secret Society of Lightning Strike Survivors

Less TikTok, More Screaming

The era of QAnon capitalism

Puritanism took over online fandom — and then came for the rest of the internet

Scapegoating the Algorithm

You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism

How Wellness and Beauty Influencers Can Be Part of an Alt-Right Pipeline for Teen Girls

Ruins in Reverse

The “Disney adult” industrial complex

A lot of y'all aren't woke, just assholes

Comedy’s Safest Slur

ChatGPT Shaming Is Making Our Writing So Much Worse

AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet — And Thanksgiving Dinner

Is The Love Song Dying?

Hot subpoena summer

The Old Guard That Never Was (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

[purplehairedwonder]

I need Tumblr to get obsessed with Sirens on Netflix. It's a dark comedy with an excellent cast, and it's a fascinating deconstruction of society's portrayal of women as sirens, luring men to their doom with their "feminine wiles."

The three women at the center—Simone, Devon, and Michaela—are ostensibly the titular sirens; at various points, they have men pursuing them and then later blaming them for their mistakes (Ethan with Simone, Ray with Devon, Peter with Michaela). But these are damaged women just trying to survive and cope with intense trauma.

In some ways, Peter, a rich white man, is the true siren, luring women in (Jocelyn then Michaela then Simone), blaming them for his issues (like saying Michaela is to blame for the strained relationship with his kids, but that was all on him), and then getting rid of them the moment he gets bored (literally in the middle of a gala) and replacing them with a younger model.

He has all the power, no matter how laid back and friendly he seems, and he isn't hesitant to use it when it suits him. And, because of his wealth, the society he lives in never pushes back, allowing him to get away with it over and over again.

I could write essays about this show; needless to say, I loved it.

[freakyfreak01]

watched the entirety of sirens today and it really is just a massive gut-punch reminder about how infuriatingly inescapable the patriarchy is, even in modern society, because of how deeply ingrained it is within men to perceive themselves as a knight in shining armour and how they project that onto the women around them until she becomes indistinguishable from what he provides her… honestly broke my heart

[metamorphesque]

this is what it means to be human

Everything, Mary Oliver

The Breathing, Denise Levertov

A Prayer by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

Like a Small Café, That’s Love by Mahmoud Darwish (translated by Mohammad Shaheen)

Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee

The Orange by Wendy Cope

The Quiet Machine, Ada Limón

To Go Mad, Paruyr Sevak

Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro

Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Peace XVIII, Khalil Gibran

Your Unripe Love, Paruyr Sevak (from “Anthology of Armenian poetry")

Here and Now by Peter Balakian

Ich finde dich (I find you) by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

I Want to Write Something So Simply by Mary Oliver

What's Not to Love by Brendan Constantine

Where does such tenderness come from? by Marina Tsvetaeva

You Are Tired (I Think) by E. E. Cummings

Living With the News by W.S.Merwin

What the Living Do by Marie Howe

[mealymeals]

tongue behind my teeth

[musicmakesyousmart]

Visit Original Link

[asleepinawell]

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Since this game seems to have slipped under the radar for the most part, I wanted to give it a shout out and recommend it to all lovers of puzzle games.

The basic premise is that you play as a woman invited to a secluded and almost completely uninhabited hotel somewhere in central europe. You're given almost no information to start out and it's up to you to piece together what is happening (and what already happened).

In the house there are puzzles. So many puzzles. Several people have compared the puzzle aspect to Professor Layton (which I have not played). They range from logic puzzles, to patterns, to spotting hidden elements in images, manipulating and mirroring, memory games, etc, etc.

It's not an action game; there are no enemies or combat. I also wouldn't call it horror so much as mystery, though it is a little creepy at times.

The visual aesthetic of it is quite striking, being in black and white with only splashes of red/violet in certain places. Also the soundtrack was fantastic.

It draws a lot of inspiration from things like surrealist cinema, horror games (think original resident evil without combat), and more. Several reviews have said it has Twin Peak vibes. And it has things to say about art and capitalism.

While there are some minor annoyances with the controls (no dedicated back button in menus is the big one), overall it played really well and I never got bored. It's also really fun to play with a second person (no online co-op or anything, just through streaming on discord or something) and work together on the puzzles.

So if you like puzzle games in creepy houses with slowly unfurling mysteries, it's definitely worth grabbing.

[justlifewelle]

The beauty of having the earthy feel when you study.

@briechyne on Instagram

[luxe-pauvre]

What we hardly talk about is how we’ve reorganized not just industrial activity but any activity to be capturable by computer, a radical expansion of what can be mined. Friendship is ground zero for the metrics of the inner world, the first unquantifiable shorn into data points: Friendster testimonials, the MySpace Top 8, friending. Likewise, the search for romance has been refigured by dating apps that sell paid-for rankings and paid access to “quality” matches. Or, if there’s an off-duty pursuit you love—giving tarot readings, polishing beach rocks—it’s a great compliment to say: “You should do that for money.” Join the passion economy, give the market final say on the value of your delights. Even engaging with art—say, encountering some uncanny reflection of yourself in a novel, or having a transformative epiphany from listening, on repeat, to the way that singer’s voice breaks over the bridge—can be spat out as a figure, on Goodreads or your Spotify year in review. And those ascetics who disavow all socials? They are still caught in the network. Acts of pure leisure—photographing a sidewalk cat with a camera app or watching a video on how to make a curry—are transmuted into data to grade how well the app or the creators’ deliverables are delivering. If we’re not being tallied, we affect the tally of others. We are all data workers. Twenty years ago, anti-capitalist activists campaigned against ads posted in public bathroom stalls: too invasive, there needs to be a limit to capital’s reach. Now, ads by the toilet are quaint. Clocking out is obsolete when, in the deep quiet of our minds, we lack the pay grade to determine worth.

Thea Lim, The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

[lakemichiganbaby-moved-deactiva]

btw being excessively nonconfrontational is NOT a positive trait. it does not mean u are “too nice” or just too kind to hurt people, it means u have a problem communicating and you need to work on it.

[fangbangrr]

I happened.

Two versions of a very self indulgent drawing and color study because I’m a bit exhausted of seeing only one type of transmasc body drawn (while also understanding the fears of it being censored…). Not everyone has access to or even wants top surgery and seeing non-op art always makes me happy so I hope this can maybe do the same :]

[nevver]

Black cat, Oliver Clegg

[rawrda]

This is your daily reminder to not be ashamed of making your life easy for yourself.

Cut your food into small pieces, make the font size 30 on your e book, use straws to drink, get a pen that’s comfortable to hold, take more naps, walk slowly, eat another cookie, buy velcro shoes, re-watch the part you couldn’t understand the first time, write things on your hands so you don’t forget it… whatever you want and/or need

Don’t let anyone tell you how you should be doing things. We don’t need to prove each other anything

[emmie-bee]

OH LORD HE’S DONE

I spent 1,025 hours over 3 years making this glitter bomb of a jacket 😭😭😭

wtf do I do now though

[ancientegyptdaily]

Hieroglyphs vs real life examples:

Egyptian vulture (ꜣ = “ah”)

flowering reed  (i = “ee”)

quail chick (w = “oo”)

reed mat (p)

reed basket (k)

horned viper (f)

[saydams]

These are much more accurate than i had assumed.

[rudjedet]

We can actually determine different species of birds based on their hieroglyphic counterparts. Ancient Egyptians were sticklers for details.

[nathanielthecurious]

The point about being sticklers for details makes me want to learn about hieroglyphic paleography. Does less “careful” or less “formal” writing (or just certain mediums like book hand vs. monumental inscriptions) tend to simplify the more detailed bird hieroglyphs, for instance?

[rudjedet]

Oh yes, absolutely! “Book” hand is either cursive hieroglyphs or Hieratic, both of which are a lot lower on the detail than the carved hieroglyphs by virtue of the difference in medium. They’re different types of handwriting used for writing down the non-monumental version of the classical Egyptian languages. Monumental inscriptions themselves do tend to differ somewhat in terms of details, but in that case it doesn’t depend on formal/informal, since carved hieroglyphs are always formal because of their monumental nature. Any differences in portrayal of e.g. birds changes between the type of relief (raised/low or even painted), but it can also be a stylistic choice, or quite simply be a small idiosyncracy on that particular craftsman’s part.

For example, the White Chapel birds/glyphs overall look like this:

They are supremely detailed and quite honestly a lot of Egyptologists agree that Senwosret I commissioned some of the most beautiful hieroglyphic inscriptions in existence with the White Chapel.

And this is an example from the tomb of Seti I, where the carved details are additionally highlighted by the paint work:

As you can see, both the vulture and the quail chick have a similar type of detail compared to the White Chapel.

But then we also have incriptions like this one of Intef, chancellor during the reign of Hatshepsut/Thutmose III, which is a low relief and, as you can see, a lot simpler:

Still great craftsmanship, mind you, and you can still tell birds apart. Monumental inscriptions are by and large the most detailed because of the medium (stone), though even when written with ink on papyrus or pot sherds we are able to discern each bird from the other because of their respective unique features.

Egyptian paleography and epigraphy are honestly amazing, you can tell for instance when several workmen worked on the same inscription/stelae (happened a lot!) just by looking at things like the spacing, glyph height, the small idiosyncracies I mentioned above, etc. Sometimes the differences are minute, sometimes they’re very clear.

The only time we’re unable to discern a vulture from, say, the tiw-bird or the owl is when we’re dealing with one of Kurt “I’m making my hieroglyphic handwriting everyone else’s problem” Sethe’s transcriptions.