Spiral Out (Keep Going)

Sorry if you're here for something specific and get a random spam of posts on something unexpected, it will happen again. I frequently ramble about stuff in tags. Don't worry abt it. Bad at expressing self so if I say something that comes across as monotone that's as excited as will be apparent. Alternatively will leave a string of emojis.

[demilypyro]

Send this to that one guy who's still on Twitter.

[bluesky-out-of-context]

[codex-entry]

This is what every other article in Of The Devil reads like.

[sadclowncentral]

my friends held an intervention for me to "stop asking intimidately specific questions". i tried to explain that i am just a good listener but there is apparently "a line between follow-up questions during small talk and interrogation tactics that gets crossed sometimes". turns out my curious nature is "scaring the hoes"

[sadclowncentral]

when i asked for examples i was told that "do you think your tendency to show appreciation through restoration is part of a greater life philosophy or is that coincidental?" and "is your communication with allied forces satellite or radar based and is it vurnerable to cyber attacks?" are apparently "inappropriate questions to ask someone you just met at a club". but i disagree. as if you wouldn't be a little bit curious about the answer? yeah that's what i thought

[sadclowncentral]

[ID: question by anonymous: did they answer the question though ///end ID]

the navy officer i asked about cyber attacks did answer my question very thoroughly. he also answered other questions such as "when refueling on sea, which boat is the primary course holder?" and "would switching to another government branch affect your retirement benefits?" and generally provided a lot of information over the course of a fascinating hour that as a former government employee myself i am pretty sure he should not have told me. but i also think he would have told me his social security number if i asked nicely (i didn't, I was busy learning about the tactical advantages of speedboats).

the guy obsessed with boat refurbishment that i asked about his tendency towards preservation gave me a really haunted look, said "holy fuck" and then after a moment of consideration "i think i am too drunk. i'm going home" and proceeded to leave. in my defense, it was well and truly meant as genuine curiosity and not as the attempt at psychological warfare it turned out to be. he unfortunately did not answer my question.

...he was also the catalyst for the intervention i received.

[findingfeather]

OP your friends are 100% wrong and “that person at the bar who asks you the question that makes you rethink your whole life because they Actually Listened” is a long, storied and honourable place in the pantheon of strangers you will meet. Sounds like you’re doing a bang up job, well done.

[the-real-seebs]

yeah, you're fine, please keep doing that, it's important work.

[beardedmrbean]

ohhhhh pretty

[h0lyshift]

The older i get the more i understand why some people become obsessed with privacy, not because they’re hiding something, but because being constantly perceived starts to feel spiritually exhausting.

[melyzard]

Did you know that soda machines at restaurants and movie theaters spy on you? That most common new cars now record your sexual preferences and send it to the manufacturer (and also data about anyone who also gets in your car, walks by your car, and maybe happens to be within visual range of your car)? That grocery stores are trying to force customers to download an app to scan barcodes on shelves instead of putting up prices, so the app can scan the phone, decide how much that customer should be squeezed for, and adjust the price? That more and more innocent people are being sent to jail for crimes committed hundreds of miles away because an AI facial recognition algorithm spit their faces out and the cops didn't bother to do the most basic of checks?

I am not uptight about privacy because I'm hiding something. I'm uptight about it because the people who dismiss my right to privacy are dangerous to you and me and our families, personally, all the time.

And often, they are assholes, too.

[kominfyrirkattarnef]

Have you guys noticed how much the internet/technology just does not listen to you anymore? I click “don’t show this artist” on Spotify and I get recommended a music video by them on the front page. I click “skip this update” on a pop up every time I open a file organization app and it’s right back there every time. O click unsubscribe on a newsletter and it keeps showing up in my inbox!! I click “delete my account” and the next time I open the website they suggest I “reactivate”.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Power is a funny thing.

[cryptic-curation]

This sick bleach shirt I made. Something to showcase my undying love for prehistoric cave art.

Some of the bleach burned thru the shirt bc this was my first time bleaching anything ever, but it kinda adds to it.

[spaceydragons]

@saltycervid

[generic-internet-name]

talking like point-and-click game narration to the bugs in my room

[generic-internet-name]

you can't get out that way!

[generic-internet-name]

that's not very helpful.

[generic-internet-name]

maybe the open window will help.

[generic-internet-name]

try the open window instead.

[prokopetz]

You'd have so much latitude to mess with people if you were a sorcerously animated skeleton. Space aliens have biology, and robots are least presumably beholden to physics, but skeletons are pure bullshit. Nobody would have the slightest intuition about your whole deal to fall back on, so you could claim it works however you want.

[prokopetz]

[alphacrone]

i don't really want to weight in on the "using big words in your writing is ableist" discourse happening on tiktok because i'm like 90% certain it's an anti-intellectual psyop to stir up drama in online circles to promote the use of ai to summarize literally everything and thus feeding the LLMs and lowering the populace's mistrust of such tools but i also have to say: dictionaries and thesauruses are the most accessible they've ever been. if you use an e-reader of any kind you can look up a word without leaving the page. there's a plethora of online dictionaries and if you just type a word + "meaning" into google it'll usually give you a definition. we used to have pocket dictionaries we used when reading in class. i have two on my shelf right now that i used in high school. stop letting the fascists purposefully misuse anti-ableism rhetoric to trick you into never thinking again.

[yamada-ryo]

"Don't you dare" <- normal. expected phrase

"Do not you dare" <- ???

[tropiyas]

[thevulturesquadron]

No, cause this is funnier and always needs to be reblogged with the full context.

On that note, I don’t think we should ever shame the youth for not knowing things. However, there is a serious problem with how self-congratulatory the lack of research before making an observation is these days.

[mortalityplays]

Americans will see someone express mild discomfort that they teach their children obliterating two civilian cities in the most horrific manner humanity has yet devised was a defensible wartime strategy and be like "to be fair,"

[ninefoldrin]

Fun fact! The Japanese were literally trying to surrender and were going through the Soviets (the US' allies throughout WW2) to negotiate but were only really holding out because they wanted assurances that America wouldn't execute the emperor (go figure, the leader didn't want to die because he said he gave up). America wasn't actually planning to execute him, but refused to accept anything less than unconditional surrender, and that was a condition. Regardless of conditions, Japan was going to be surrendering the moment the USSR invaded, which was planned to happen imminently. America knew this. America knew that once the USSR entered the war with Japan, they would have a seat at the negotiating table.

Anti-communist sentiments were already strong in US leadership. The US didn't want communists gaining any more ground on the world stage and nuking Japan was a way to kill two birds with one bomb: end the war before the USSR entered and show the USSR that the USA could wipe out any of their cities in the blink of an eye. People sometimes try to argue that the second bomb had to be dropped because Japan didn't surrender after the first, but Japanese leadership didn't even meet to discuss the first bomb until shortly before the second dropped. At that point, losing an entire city had little effect on leadership. They already had entire cities leveled with conventional weapons. They hadn't yet processed that Hiroshima was leveled by a single bomb. It didn't matter though. The fact that they delayed at all gave America an excuse to prove to the USSR that they could do it again. The US obliterated two cities in Japan ultimately as a shot across the bow for the USSR.

What popular history likes to gloss over is the chain of events that lead to Perl Harbor. The US initially supported Japan (along with selling resources to all sides in the European war), even as Japan committed war crimes across China and Korea. The US had good relations with Japan at that point and saw Japan's invasion of China as a way to get a foothold in a country that had a history of being restrictive of foreign trade. Japan didn't roll out the red carpet for America though; they realized that they had something that the USA wanted and planned to use that to their advantage in global politics and trade. In response, the US stopped selling steel to Japan for their war effort. US leaders/strategists were very aware that cutting Japan off from resources they'd been relying on for their war would invite retaliation, and thus Perl Harbor happened. The US only ever cared about gaining greater access to markets and labor and was willing to fight a war over it, but in such a way that Japan would make the first move.

The US might have ended up on the right side of WW2, but not for the right reasons. The war in Europe was already going in the allies' favor and the entrance of the US only really expedited the war, but it gave the US a seat at the table when deciding what happened after the war. It let the US build military bases in Europe and bring more US businesses into Europe. The US suffered the least from the war and was able to take advantage of the fact that they didn't need to rebuild entire cities like every European country did. it was politically and financially beneficial to the US to join the war late on the side that was already set up to win, especially with a little extra push.

And for the future, the US had a chance to show the world that they weren't afraid to wipe out entire cities with a single bomb. They didn't care about the children incinerated at school, or the handful of survivors who would die because of the radiation. There was no reason for the US to obliterate two cities in a single moment. The US could have chosen to end the war by then but refused to accept any conditions of surrender. The US only used those bombs to show the world how heartless they could be, and then spent decades feeding the public propaganda about how it was necessary so that no one would question why they would ever be willing to do something so horrific.

[targetedknowledge]

[werewolfoffeverswamp]

my sister and her husband go see new movies a lot and a place near the theater they go to does $5 margaritas on monday so they’ve started doing marg movie mondays where they go see a movie and get a marg but they call the margaritas different things based on what they’re seeing. as far as naming goes “wuthering margs” was a little bit of a miss for me but it was preceded by “margipliers” when we saw iron lung so thats kind of a lot to live up to

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[ghostdaartist]

Bro videos are always 🔥 💯.. instant collaborations

[whatacartouchebag]

[viralfrog]