Thembossing Closer to the Sun

Likes Puns, Physics/Math/Econ Enby, Bi, They/Them * And Man shall look down upon the gods * That's the Anthropocene baby! * Someone will hold you when you run out of clever words * Divorce Supporter * Proud Party Pooper * Trans, Human, Transhuman * Isn't that wonderful to imagine, genderfluid stranger? * Stancilhead * This is elevated Posting *

[catilinas]

friendly reminder that [the most cherrypicked interpretation of the text possible] <3

[collapsedsquid]

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), a close Trump ally, announced Thursday that he will introduce legislation to sanction Canada and Canadian officials over the huge wildfires that have poured smoke and haze across the United States, creating hazardous air-quality conditions. “I’ll be introducing a bill next week to sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity,” Moreno posted on social media.

“We are done accepting apologies in place of action. If Canada will not manage its forests to prevent these fires, the United States will look elsewhere, and act on our own, to protect our people,” the GOP lawmakers wrote. “That means our own agencies exploring direct involvement in cross-border fuel reduction and firefighting capacity. It means reconsidering how much benefit of the doubt this relationship continues to earn on an issue where American lungs are paying the price for Canadian inaction, year after year,” they warned.

America gonna douse Canada's forests in agent orange until they get their shit together.

[kaiasky]

vvvv in favor of this I think "your pollution killing someone (or statistically causing an additional death) outside your borders is a violation of our sovereignty & casus belli for us to do whatever environmental mitigations we want, by force if necessary" would be the funniest possible justification for warfare. president xi the global warming caused by the USA has taken too many lives parachute in 1 billion square kilometers of solar panels and enough spec-ops electricians to hook them up to the grid.

[toskarin]

[surrounded exclusively by the highly cultivated circle of people I don't find it difficult to be around] it's crazy how every media property I dislike is widely panned yet still succeeds

[machine-unlearning]

One chapter into Ulysses and I have 10 times more appreciation for that "Ogre barely even Literate!" meme

[machine-unlearning]

Everyone call Ogre stupid and it True! Ogre can only understand popular quotations like "Very well then, I contradict myself" and "Introibo ad altare Dei" not obscure references like "Thalatta!" and "the rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror" that contextualize the characters' perspective on life within the lens of culture and literature!

[machine-unlearning]

Ogre so dumb he isn't even aware of the best-known quotations of ancient Greek literature intended to expose the character’s shallowness! At this rate Ogre will never get through Chapter 3!

[moggiem]

My new favourite GLaDOS character trait is that, as per her announcer pack for DOTA, she thinks high fantasy is stupid and doesn't make any sense. Her refusal to engage seriously with anything she isn't familiar with really drives home the fact that she's literally just an old woman.

[txttletale]

if you've followed me for a while, you've probably seen me mention Underside, my dark cape TTRPG inspired by deconstructive superhero stories like Worm, Astro City, Watchmen, and the first season of Gen V.

it's a project i've spent a lot of time on, trying to build a system that tells the kind of superhero stories i like; the shit that treats them as a subculture with a body count, that digs into the dissociative tension of the secret identity, that asks what it means to feel so completely ejected from regular society that you can only go out in a mask and costume.

for a while now, a playtest edition of Underside has been available on my patreon; now, as it's slowly become more and more complete over the course of a year, i'm putting the most recent one up on itch.io

i want to be clear: while this playtest edition is enough to play a full campaign and contains all the mechanics that are going to be in the finished book, it's still a playtest. there's no fancy layout and an entire section (guidance for the Administrator, the game's GM-equivalent role) hasn't been written yet. but for a while, every time i talk about Underside i get the question: "where can i get my hands on it?". so here's an answer to that question; right now, while it's still in beta--if you want to support the project and help me get it over the finish line, or you just can't wait until it's out For Real, you can get it here.

UNDERSIDE Playtest Edition by the HORIZON MACHINE

costumed violence in the dark

[markovchaingang]

i'll fucking give you something to be sorry about [raises you so beautifully and perfectly for 18 years that you feel intensely sorry that you ever misbehaved in the first place]

[aorish]

...catholic guilt?

[peoplegettingreallymadatghosts]

“But they forget”

[zerounitrgb]

🏳️‍⚧️ Trans Ally Seto Kaiba 🏳️‍⚧️

[crisantoflowerking]

[invertebrateinvert]

i'll really have to reread csm part 1 again at some point but my impression at the time was 'makima is right' and everything i've seen since then has only made that seem more true.

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

such an interesting take on the utterly ruthless utilitarianish archetype... unlike most of them, her plan will almost certainly work. unlike most of them, her victims are the characters we care most about. she's not bloodless or detached, she likes hurting them! and it would still be pretty unambiguously better for the world if she won.

[phaeton-flier]

"would omelas have been justified if the child was a subby teenage boy"

[argumate]

"The law prohibits, currently, on currency, the likeness of any person — not just the president — who is alive," said Jeremy Paul, a professor and former dean at Northeastern University School of Law who specializes in constitutional law.

The Treasury Department argues coins do not apply, citing a law that Congress passed in 2020 authorizing the creation of a special-edition 250th coin.

Paul says the coin question could potentially reach the courts. Either way, he believes, the break with tradition should be cause for concern.

"Regardless of careful parsing of the language of these individual statutes, this plan the president and Secretary Bessent have cooked up is inconsistent with the principles of our country, and it politicizes something that's not supposed to be political," he said.

it does seem like getting acclaim after you're no longer in power is more meaningful than just demanding it as president, but realistically it's not likely in this case is it.

[morlock-holmes]

Apparently not!

I always feel like paying people to complement you seems hollow and pointless but the President sure loves it.

[phaeton-flier]

I have an idea on how he can be on the coin without breaking the law!

[phaeton-flier]

honestly don't get why it took until Joseph Smith to do "if you follow the religion right and give me lots of money, you too can become a god and rule over a world of your own".

[phaeton-flier]

Like a proper pyramid scheme, you need the modern form of a sales company to make work or everyone will just be confused about the concept. A ponzi scheme you need a big enough city to make the borrowing work for a few years and there aren't that many in the premodern era. But "worship my god, become a god" even beats "eternal life in heaven".

"You don't even need to be the emperor—just follow these simple rules!"

[phaeton-flier]

On second thought. I just had the funniest new theory for the origin of the Bronze Age Collapse

[catilinas]

mike’s hard problem of consciousness

[animentality]

[achievement-hunter]

[textandimageenjoyer]

[soup-mother]

Step back everyone. This post requires the delicate touch of an annoying gimmick blog

[ar0kal]

@914ny

[phaeton-flier]

Less sore throat, more headache. Possibly from sinuses? Except I check what I thought were the sinus spots and they don't seem painful to touch. And of course we can't forget the coughing or sneezing, which have increased in the last day