41 @pickledfingers - Tumblr Blog

macbeth really is such a fascinating guy because when he's thinking about doing the murder he actually sits with himself for a second and goes "if i do this, i'm signing over my immortal soul, and i'm probably going to be miserable with guilt" and then he does it and is miserable with guilt. and it makes him very very interesting! because it's not an impulse thing! he knows! so what makes a person make that choice? what amount of personal ambition, what lust for glory, what amount of wifely-pressure-fueled conception-of-masculinity-as-violence can get someone to do that?

because it isn't idiocy. he knows damn well. and none of his asides, none of his elaborate visually-fantastical speeches or deft metaphors, are the words of a blundering dumbass. personally, i think the core of macbeth is exactly what we find out before he ever steps on stage: he's a soldier, and more than that, he;s a killer. and he's extremely good at it. fuck diplomacy--basically every single problem he faces in the play is one he tries to kill his way out of, because it's the only strategy he knows. at some point, i don't even think it's just manhood-as-violence for him; it's personhood-as-violence. in 3.1 he threatens to get into the lists against fate, against the price of his own defiled soul; at the end, he resolves to go down fighting no matter what. as much as people love to joke about macbeth being foolhardy and easily-pressured and not looking more than five minutes into the future--the guy knows. but all he's ever done, all he can do, is fight. he's not a fool. he's a machine.

but also, fascination aside, what the fuck is wrong with him lmfao my guy you KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN

butchhamlet

YESSSSSSSSS

tinyyellowflowers-blog

I’m thinking about how this plays out in the scene where he actually seeks out and consults the witches — where he commits to evil on a large scale and is like “I don’t care how you know the future (but I assume evil), I don’t care if this process leads to the destruction of the country I rule or of the world at large (famine, loss of trade, loss of defense, loss of precious monuments ), I must know what’s going to happen.”

And then the witches are like “beware MacDuff!” and he’s like “OK great I’ll kill his family.” It’s such a WEIRD kind of myopia! He doesn’t think of how MacDuff will respond to the murder — he doesn’t think “wow I should be nice to this dude” or “wonder how I can keep him in England”, he goes straight to murdering.

estro-boi

pickledfingers

I feel like there's a lot of people in the Heated Rivalry fandom who think Ottawa is boring (not true) or, somehow, cool (very not true) so as someone who's lived on and off in Ottawa for the last 16 years, here is a list of the things I know Ottawa for

The viral video of a fight in a MacDonald's where a guy pulls a raccoon out of his coat. That MacDonald's was known locally as 99rideau and it was known for being weird as hell at all hours of the night

It has the largest Ikea in north america (or had? Idk if they've built a bigger one)

The drag bar, Swizzles, which was in an alleyway and then down a set of stairs. Sketchy and then fabulous :D

The great Glebe garage sale - every year in summer one of the richer neighborhoods holds a community wide garage sale and over the years it's become bigger and now it's a huge block party

I cant express how easy it is to find great shawarma in this town. We have a huge Lebanese population

During the Ashley Madison leaks Ottawa lit up like a MF Christmas tree because every politician and ambassador has a side piece

It's the capital of Canada and somehow not one outside of Canada knows this

It's the capital of Canada, on the highway between Montreal and Toronto, and yet somehow every band skips us when they go on tour 😭

There's two major universities and one college in Ottawa. One year all three of them had a dry frosh week that ended on the same day, and that day caused a mass casualty incident in Ottawa because of all the drunk students doing dumb things after being sober for so long

The canal. It's 7 km long and connects the two universities, so I used to skate over to see my sister in the winter. Theres little hot chocolate huts every couple km on the ice.

When skating the canal, It's really common to see people in full speed skating gear go rocketing past you.

The experimental farm in the middle of Ottawa which is an agricultural research center and museum. Theres trails and fields and farm animals :)

Ottawa is still in Ontario, the same province as Toronto. During hockey season the entire town divides into Sens fans and Leafs fans. I remember seeing a bus driver in a leafs jersey (jokingly) threaten to shut the door on a guy in a sens jersey when they were playing each other

The drinking age in Ontario is 19, but just across the river is Gatineau, Quebec where you can drink at 18, so underage students will hop the border to go drinking

Gatineau park has a bunch of trails, an abandoned mine, and an abandoned victorian laboratory

Ottawa is a deeply weird government/university town. It is not boring and it is absolutely not hip or cool.

elizabethtenderlyatomic

I love Boston, but it is not cool either! The nightlife shuts down by 2AM. The T shuts down by 1AM, unfortunately for the enjoyers of the nightlife.

World class universities, of course. World-class medical experts, sure, people come here for that. Cool? Only the weather when winter is coming.

Ilya, coming from Moscow, will not find it cool. NYC, LA or Miami are cool. Montreal is cool. Shane had the nightlife available and he doesn't want it.

pickledfingers

Ooo look at me my nightlife lasts later than 9pm

#ok admittedly the market has places that stay open late #they're 99% bars because we are bar people not club or rave people #although there is a 24 hour bagel place near downtown that I would consider part of Ottawa's nightlife

disgruntledinametallicatshirt

you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!

thebaconsandwichofregret

Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.

He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.

The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”

It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.

He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.

Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.

You’re not Terry Pratchett.

You are you.

And Terry would love that.

rsfcommonplace

I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.

“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”

He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.

poetrylesbian

terpsikeraunos

Women have consistently earned a larger share of humanities degrees than men, but the humanities constitute a diminishing proportion of the

Women currently earn the majority of advanced degrees in the humanities. This has been the case at the master’s degree level since 1970 and

sources for gender distribution of classics degrees

archaeologistproblems

Archaeologist problems: Women (in the US at least, likely similar in many other countries) currently earning 70% of recent archaeology degrees, but still being forced to listen to some random guy's (uncited and unfounded) sea peoples theories.

targetedknowledge

frankiesbullshit

someone tell OP i did it, i spent about 3 hours on it

hometoursandotherstuff

elusivemellifluence

[Image description: screenshot of a conversation on social media.

tanwi_wangikar says: When will you tell us which park you keep the unicorns and dragons in???

nationalparkservice replies: When we feel the safety messages on not feeding squirrels and keeping a safe distance from bison have been fully received, perhaps then we'll turn our focus to releasing the dragon and unicorn locations. #KeepUnicornsWild🦄 #KeepDragonsWild🐉

End ID]

phantomrose96

I'm very very glad that my knee-jerk, gut-feeling, primal-instinct reaction to seeing a Default Influencer is embarrassment. I think this saves me from a lot of bullshit.

phantomrose96

Some lip-filler lady on enough Ozempic to euthanize a horse: "The sad truth is an elite lifestyle takes money and discipline. Buy these brands on credit if you have to. Skip meals."

Me: "Oh. Oh I'm physically experiencing the effects of secondhand embarrassment. You live like this? This is your life? Your interiority? If I was anything like this I'd kill myself I think."

phantomrose96

To be clear ☝️, absolutely not gender-exclusive. Some broccoli-haired shirtless 23-year-old man on enough trenbolone to euthanize a different horse starts talking about how to be a high-value male and I start thinking instantly about how I'd have 4,000 slugs use me as a jungle-gym before I'd want this man within cootie-contagion distance of me.

phantomrose96

refuzz

phantomrose96

Respect for my soldiers… she’s saving him… the hons…

movementnudge

Movement nudge, for hands and wrists!

livlina-angel

posting this with every artist tag i can think of, even if you dont do crochet, PLEASE TAKE RESTS FOR YOUR HANDS!!! no matter what medium artist you are, take care of your articulations

creature-wizard

So, you know how certain Christian missionaries are trained to act in a very obnoxious way, so that most people they preach to will reject them outright, so they feel like the world hates them for being Christian and they can only be friends with fellow Christians? You know that thing?

I think as activists, we sometimes need to stop and ask ourselves whether we're acting like those missionaries. I think this type of behavior is a little more ingrained into our society than some of us realize, and some of us have internalized it without realizing what it's actually meant to do.

penrosesun

OP I know that this is probably a different direction than you were going, but genuinely this advice would do so so much to help people not fall into secular political cults.

A lot of high control groups use this tactic to isolate their members. It’s absolutely not just evangelizing Christians. New age wellness cults often encourage their members to make outlandish and offensive accusations regarding the mental and physical health of other people or their children, because they know that the backlash their members receive will reinforce the idea that the “mainstream” simply has no room for people who like crystals and essential oils. White supremacist cults will seed the vocabulary of new recruits with Nazi dog whistles that fly over those recruits heads, specifically so that they will get clocked as possible neo-Nazis and shunned by anyone who might offer them another perspective and help them to get out before it’s too late. And a lot of left-leaning political cults strongly encourage members to share their views in the most inflammatory ways possible, and then say “you see? everyone outside of this small circle is evil and cannot be relied on” when, inevitably, that produces bad results.

Sometimes I think that activists fall into these patterns completely accidentally, either because they were raised in culturally Christian evangelical environments and never unpacked it, or else because they just aren’t any good at approaching things in a non-inflammatory way and no one’s shown them how.

…But sometimes, these structures emerge in activist circles because those circles are legitimately becoming high control groups.

I think some things to watch out for especially in this regard are:

Are you being directed to behave in an extremely hostile and alienating way? (even if it’s by someone who you trust!)

Does the group you are in immediately shut down any conversation about the effectiveness of an antagonistic strategy? In particular, do they shut that conversation down using in-group stock phrases?

Is experiencing harsh rejection seen as something of a rite of passage?

Do you receive more validation from the group you are in after you have been rejected by someone outside the group than at any other time?

Have you ever been concerned that the antagonistic strategy you are using hurt someone you cared about, only to be quickly advised by members of the group that that person was toxic and that you should actually completely cut them out of your life?

These to me are all pretty significant red flags about the group in question, whatever the specific thing that brings people together there is. If you start noticing them in a group that you are a part of, be that an in-person activist circle or a Discord server or anything in between, take a step back and seriously consider the possibility that the good thing that you joined is turning into something different, and possibly dangerous.

In the words of Jonestown survivor Deborah Layton, “Nobody joins a cult. You join a self-help group, a religious movement, a political organization. They change so gradually, by the time you realize you’re entrapped – and almost everybody does – you can’t figure a safe way back out.”

livebloggingmydescentintomadness

this is a pdf detailing the BITE model of authoritarian control, a method for determining whether or not you're in a cult.

even if you feel confident you are not and have never been in a cult, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the signs, just in case one begins to sneak up on you in the future.

penrosesun

Ok, I actually want to talk about this for a moment.

Jonestown, one of the most infamous cults in history, with a mass suicide / mass murder that left more than 900 people dead of cyanide poisoning, hundreds of whom were children… was a leftist political cult. That fact is an unambiguous and completely undebatable matter of historical record.

This isn’t a footnote in the story of Jonestown, and it isn’t a weird anti-leftist gotcha either. Jonestown attracted people to their cause with anti-segregation and anti-poverty activist work, and they did actual, meaningful good for those causes. The People’s Temple was a leftist org, unambiguously. They created mutual aid networks for food aid, and rent assistance, and job placement services, and clothing donations, and winter heating. They leaned heavily on the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in order to push desegregation, and led sit-ins and boycotts and protests. They participated in significant voter registration efforts. They led the fight against the eviction of tenants from San Francisco's International Hotel.

People joined The People’s Temple because it was a good thing when they joined it. They didn’t start out as brainwashed cultists, and they didn’t gravitate towards the leadership of Jim Jones out of masochism, or inherent submissiveness, or a perverse love of creeping authoritarianism. They fell in line under Jim Jones because he’d built a community that was genuinely helping people, and was advancing a political cause that seemed worth fighting. They followed Jim Jones because he earned their trust.

Jim Jones then used the trust and the social capital that he had gained from all of the above in order to elevate himself to the status of a messianic figure, and abuse and profit off of his followers. Slowly but surely, he boiled the frog. It was all good – and then it was mostly good – and then, well there was some abuse, but it wasn’t that bad, and it wasn’t really his fault – and then there was a lot of abuse, but the outside world would destroy them if given the chance, so wasn’t it the lesser of the two evils? And then, eventually, it got so bad that hundreds of people poisoned themselves and their children at his command, and murdered everyone in the compound who refused and resisted.

Your cause of choice is not immune from abusers taking advantage of it!

It doesn’t matter if you’re right. It doesn’t matter if your cause is just. It does not matter if your good thing really is a good thing, because there is always the possibility that it will one day be co-opted by a monster. And if the fact that it started good is enough for you to ignore that gradual, subtle change, you could end up in a truly horrible situation.

One of my best friends in undergrad got sucked into a cult. Years later, we talked about it, and he told me something that I’ll never forget which is, it’s only when you look all the way back at things that they seem crazy. You start off with things that are totally normal and innocuous: “we’re stronger together”; “oppression is bad”; “you can accomplish more if you believe in yourself”; “empathy is important and we should all try to bring more of it into our lives”; etc. Then, you move to something that’s just a little step away from that. And then again. And then again. And then again. But it never feels like a big jump, because it’s not! A -> Z is crazy, but A -> B wasn’t, and B -> C wasn’t, and C -> D wasn’t, and…

This friend was smart, and rational, and independent, and normal, and by the time he and his wife left, they’d gone from just thinking that we should all practice more emotional mindfulness, to being terrified that leaving the cult and the cult leader would literally kill them, via the cult leader having magical powers.

If your only analysis is “Where I started was good, and no single step since then has been crazy” that is utterly insufficient to keep you safe.

“This can’t possibly be a cult, because when I joined it was a leftist political org and there’s never been a single instance where it suddenly changed” is literally the exact logic that kept people in Jonestown until it was too late.

verygoodcomments

metfell

i think that harry styles dies really frequently to like putting forks in outlets n shit, and they gotta use a factory to make more harries. but one day one of the fucked up defective harries escaped and they couldnt catch him in time before he became famous and so they just had to let him do this thing. and thats timothee chalamet

probablyasocialecologist

Games from older consoles are being made less and less available to the point so much of the industry's history could easily vanish without

gay-jesus-probably

Preserving classic videogames from consoles past.

I'm just gonna slide this on in here for anyone that is interested in preserving old games. They take it very seriously too, they want an archive of every single game. Like, they have lists of every game ever released for a system, and once that system gets old enough, they add it to their archive and start collecting. Their latest addition was the Xbox 360, they opened that vault up in September 2022, and proudly announced they'd finished their collection of games for it back in April.

Also, while their game archives are almost entirely complete, they've got another project of archiving the manuals that came with those games, and that is... considerably less well filled out. Their collection of Xbox 360 manuals is especially rough, they've only gotten manuals for three games. So if you've got some Xbox 360 games kicking around, and the manual's still with them, please consider scanning them and submitting them to the site!

Game preservation is important, but people rarely consider preserving the manuals as well; I really respect Vimm's Lair for being so thorough in their archival work.

anachronic-cobra

I've been using Vimm's Lair for years, I have yet to see a single bad link or virus on the entire site. It's arguably the safest and most comprehensive archive of video games in existence. Preserved history