Hoot Hoot @owls-parliament - Tumblr Blog

demilypyro

*caresses my big robot* ah you're custom built. just like me.

demilypyro

pilot girl flirting with a hot mechanic girl: after you give her a tune-up, won't you give me one too?

demilypyro

pilot girl having to budget between new upgrades for her mech and new upgrades for her bod

demilypyro

pilot girl who buys HRT and dilators at the same store where she buys pulse blades and missile launchers, deeply confusing the cashier

demilypyro

old photograph of a generic, drab, mass-produced mech with a depressed looking male pilot, contrasted with a recent photo of the same mech. colourful, customized with parts that clearly came from many different sources. a little worn but beautiful for it. and her pilot is much the same

msasterisk

i know this is about AC6 but it reminded me of a trans d.va headcanon i saw a while ago, and i liked the mental image that gave me so:

troutreznor

pigeons but shoot it like a hardcore show

glitter-bomb-disaster

absolutely delighted by this photo of terry pratchett

sforzzz

i'm sorry but this is like the perfect storm. we are going to see a level of annoyingness never before seen.

sforzzz

homestuck indie animation adaptation made by vivziepop with toby fox on the crew dear lord

owls-parliament

This is my CIA trigger phrase

temmiechang

no book only cat

sviteer

Sleep is a rehearsal of death

meltesh28

just need to get it out of my system.. ruan mei in cheongsam...

thisistab

Is it comfortable? Or just what you're used to?

scavengedluxury

Cat, 1986. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.

owls-parliament

Cat

the-astral-express-archive

Honkai: Star Rail CN | Character Teaser Artwork: Argenti

averagefairy

does anyone else think it’s crazy how we just casually reference “the pandemic” now. i catch someone in conversation saying “during the first quarantine…” and as comfortable as it feels to hear and say now, there’s still a twinge of like…. i cannot believe we’re using these words in real life in reference to real events. this isn’t a scifi movie this isn’t a young adult post apocalyptic novel we’re literally casually discussing a global pandemic that ravaged the entire world and it was REAL ?

onetruesirius

you keep saying it like this is a past event, that the pandemic ravaged the entire world, that it was real, etc

The pandemic is still ongoing—hospital admissions jumped 16% in the United States last week, and 30% in my state, as of 9/7/23.

BA.2.86 is on the uptick and we're not 100% sure if the fall vaccines we've made will be effective because once again

we were such eager beavers for the "emergency" to be over, we shut down the metaphorical fire suppression system before the fire department even arrived so we BUNGLED the response to an emergency, and then MORE fire spread to more floors because there was no fire suppression and hey guess what the fire department finally arrived but the building is still fucking burning.

The pandemic is real. Actively real. The most vulnerable people in our communities are still at incredible risk. And yet the world chugs on.

So just a casual reminder, when we speak about the pandemic in past tense: the disaster is not over yet, the only thing we've actually stopped is our disaster response.

floccinaucinihilipilificationa

awed-frog

When an archer is shooting for fun He has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle He is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold He goes blind Or sees two targets – He is out of his mind.

His skill has not changed, But the prize divides him. He cares He thinks more of winning Than of shooting – And the need to win Drains him of power.

Zhuang Zhou (369 BC - 286 BC)

nosiidam

AND THE NEED TO WIN DRAINS HIM OF POWER

mortalityplays

great news, one of the books I was looking for arrived today and it has a whole section on pre french revolution book piracy and the thriving trade in hiding and trafficking banned literature.

mortalityplays

people used to mule illegal books through the mountains, and many contraband smugglers refused to carry them because, unlike drugs or guns, if you were caught with proscribed literature you could be executed or (worse) sentenced to hard labour until you died

mortalityplays

okay! the hazardous and expensive contraband mule strategy was only for the really hot titles that were considered to promote outright treason or blasphemy. most banned literature at the time was actually sold under the counter by mainstream publishing houses, and was incredibly popular and profitable.

publishers around europe would trade inventories of the books they produced to maintain varied inventories they could sell to clients. e.g. publisher A prints thousands of copies of a hundred french titles, publisher B prints thousands of copies of a hundred german titles, they do swapsies, now they both have a range of 200 titles to trade. this applied to banned books too, and the banned books had higher market values due to the additional complications involved in production and shipping — one proscribed book might be worth 2-4 legal books, depending on the heat and the relationship between the publishers.

this trade was kind of an open secret, mostly conducted using code words and tricks like stuffing a crate with safe books on top and illegal works on the bottom or hidden in the packing materials. clients who ordered banned books from their local booksellers would often include that part of the order as a separate, unsigned slip of paper that could be disposed of after reading. sometimes they would make special requests for discreet packaging — one surviving letter asks for a fake receipt to be made out for legal books, so that the customer could get them past the finance department at work. another fun trick was 'larding', where loose leaf pages of the illegal books would be tucked between pages of respectable volumes. one client asked their bookseller to send a quantity of banned pornography larded inside religious texts.

being such a profitable trade, of course there were corrupt inspectors involved too. certain publishers and booksellers had networks of friendly agents who would let their shipments pass through inspection for a cut of the take. this would sometimes mean sending books by weird circuitous routes around europe to make sure they passed through friendly hands and got their stamp of approval before finally making their way back to the client.

I'm still reading on a lot of this and waiting for some other second hand texts to get to me, but every new thing I learn is improving my life and brain x1000

mortalityplays

btw the moral you should take from all this is that the modern publishers and institutions who are currently shaking and shivering and peeing as they cut books on race relations and lgbtq+ topics from their catalogues are uniquely craven and pathetic and would be looked upon with scorn and derision by their forebears throughout human history.