Practically Chaotic

30s. She/Her. Writer. Quilter. IDK.

[skimble-shanks-the-railway-cat]

Receiving a Werther’s Derivative from my poser grandma

[stovetop00-deactivated20230907]

We’re winning.

[lilnasxvevo]

I found his bio on societyofpresidentialdescendants.org and it was so delightful I had to copy paste the whole thing:

“Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave it to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale (BA, 1977), and was trained to be a museum curator in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (MA, 1980). A decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum for thirty-seven years before he retired, Ulysses has never stopped writing for the sheer pleasure of it. Aside from books on Victorian furniture, art pottery, studio ceramics, jewelry, and the White House, Ulysses created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel, appeared in 2012. His most recent novel, Cliffhanger, was released by JMS Books in December 2020.

“Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of 45 years. They have two grown children, adopted in 1996.

“Ulysses is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant. His late mother, Julia, was the President’s last living great-grandchild; youngest daughter of Ulysses S. Grant III, and granddaughter of the president’s eldest son, Frederick. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City. He is also on the board of the U.S. Grant Presidential Library and Museum at Mississippi State University.”

[wakingfromthewater]

And frankly, the novels sound like they slap:

Desmond was nominated for a Lambda Award.

[doctorscienceknowsfandom]

“With his husband of 45 years.” You kids don’t know ... they got together before AIDS, at the peak of the Gay Glam Life. They stayed together as their generation died around them, and made through it to the point where they could marry and have a legal family. He looks like a chipper preppie who never had a serious thought or care in the world, but it took *incredible* determination, commitment, and also luck to get here.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

having now read the first of this man's vampire books, you can absolutely tell that he cares a lot about historical furniture because oh my god he really wanted to tell us about all the historical furniture in this vampire's house. material culture as foreplay. seduction via theses about chairs

[queerliblib]

we’ve got his biography in QLL!!

(& Cliffhanger in our wishlist, hoping to add it to the collection soooon, alas the other Desmond books are not available for us to purchase)

[tilthat]

TIL Ray Bradbury first titled Fahrenheit 451 “The Fireman”, then called a local fire station to ask what temperature it would take to actually ignite books. The responding firemen placed him on hold and burnt a book, then reported that the heat required was “Fahrenheit 451″.

via reddit.com

[fourlughero]

That’s such a fire fighter thing to do.

“You know what? That’s a good question. I’m gonna put you on hold while I find out”

[verdigrisvagabond]

My dad used to design kitchens at Lowe’s and one day he got a dude from one of the national labs looking to buy a countertop. Dad sent him home with a sample of a quartz-composite countertop to make sure the color will look good with his existing cabinets. The dude asks my dad what the composition of the countertop is and whether it’ll melt if he puts a pot on it (since it’s a composite and not pure stone) and Dad gives him some rough numbers and reassures him that it won’t melt if he puts a hot pan on the counter. The dude comes back with week later without the sample. The dude gives dad a detailed list of the countertops composition, to the nearest hundredth of a percentile, and the exact temperature it melts at, because he took it to his lab and melted it down. tldr, it’s not just firefighters.

[kaijuunibyou]

Imagine giving someone a sample of the granite you use to make countertops and they come back a few days later just to tell you they fucking dematerialized it

[ferrous-princess]

Ok, but this is just, like, what people do if they have access to equipment. We just… put shit in it. Just to see. At this point, I’ll try and hit just about anything with an arc, just to see. I’ll sand and polish anything you’ll let me, if I’m bored enough. If I had a machine that could melt something down and tell me exactly what was in it? I’d be just waiting for parts of my world to become “trash” so I could de-materialize it and turn it into knowledge of what it was.

[kaijuno]

Got a new favorite spam email

[kaijuno]

Wait nvm here’s my new fave

[nondelphic]

"just write a little every day" ok but what if i write nothing for 3 weeks and then suddenly type like i’m being hunted by god

[hellenhighwater]

I forgot to eat dinner so I'm having 11 pm corn on the cob. This counts as a meal

... It's possible that I really need to do some grocery shopping

[hellenhighwater]

Okay for those of you living in pitiful ignorance, take a raw ear of corn with the husk on and cut all the way around the base (as pictured: above the point where the husk meets the cob, so that the entire husk is severed but still wrapped around the corn. Do not cut through the cob.) Then, with the husk still on, microwave it for 5-7 minutes. It'll basically steam it inside the husk. Remove from microwave --it will be hot, so use a mitt or a towel--and firmly pull the top of the husk/silk, which should come off easily in one piece, unsheathing a flawless corn on the cob. If it doesn't, you probably need to cut a little higher around the base, so all the leaves are severed. No picking off silk!

[hellenhighwater]

For the nonbelievers (and for me, a second corn)

[hellenhighwater]

This website works so well

[tamamoland-with-a-gun]

me getting 10,000 dollars a week would solve not only all of my problems but also probably most of my friend's problems too

[thememedaddy]

[tragediegh]

stay vigilant. there are still people out there who will try to convince you that eating fruit is somehow bad for your body

[bluejayblueskies]

[depsidase]

[loveridden1999]

doing things at the right age is literally a made up concept. you can start/pursue anything at any age. btw.

[loveridden1999]

remember remember

[wolfsteax]

It is never too late to learn, it is never too late to love, it is never too late to make something, it is never too late stop hating, it is never too late to be better, it is never too late to do the right thing,

Whatever it is you want to chase, it's never too late to start the run.

[zetrystan]

Technically true.

[zetrystan]

He got the job.

[zetrystan]

He takes his job seriously.

[zetrystan]

Prof Rad over on youtube dubbed the Wolf Hunter comic (click here)! 

Go check it out and give them some support! :) (also the end killed me haha) ₍ᐢ•ﻌ•ᐢ₎

[zetrystan]

The farmer sheared the sheep, and it was used to make a gift for Wolf Hunter, so…

[zetrystan]

Wolf Hunter goes to the village markets.

[zetrystan]

Wolf Hunter and his conga line of sheep.

[zetrystan]

Wolf Hunter was looking for them for a while.

[zetrystan]

Not a werewolf.

[zetrystan]

The disappearance. 🐑

[zetrystan]

The worst snowman.

[zetrystan]

As you know, counting sheeps is perfect for sleep. Sheeps take that job very seriously. But some are still learning. It’s fine, I don’t think Wolf Hunter minds. 🐑🐑🐑

Watch with VERY CUTE AUDIO here!:

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

this makes me less sad every time I see it no matter how sad the rest of the world is making me

[jame7t]

tumblr is like an abandoned space station & you all are the thing in the vents

[jame7t]

not me though. im girl with tanktop

[femmchantress]

I don’t care if Monday’s yuck

Tuesday, Wednesday tread through muck

Thursday maybe eat a duck

It’s Friday, Flat as Fuck

[alphacrone]

as a child i assumed that martha’s vineyard was a fancy private vineyard owned by martha stewart and the reason rich people vacationed there was because they were friends with martha

[meanbuddhist]

my body knows something that i don’t and i can’t get her to talk to me

[enki2]

[thebdelliumlady]

For anyone wondering, the PhD student's name is Myra Cheng.

Here's a link to an article about the study from the Stanford Report: link.

[chapscher]

Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.

Myra Cheng et al. "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence." Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).

[lesbiamlycenterforsocialanalysis]

Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but it almost feels as though the original phrasing (that I see being reflected quite heavily in the comments) focuses on Cheng’s inspiration from AI-generated breakup texts. The article goes much further than that; Cheng and her team clearly spent time acquiring data and then processing it to tell the story of how AI-dependence is fundamentally shifting how people interact with others. This change in human interactions didn’t happen overnight. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in how we interact with other people and a simultaneous diminishing of how long people will spend on any given task. Focusing in on the more click-worthy problem of breakup texts overlooks the underlying issue that, after being discovered, can actually influence policy change as Cheng discusses

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

You know how wealthy people turn into stupid arseholes by surrounding themselves with vapid yes-men? ChatGPT is vapid yes-men on tap. Now you, too, can subject yourself to the phenomenon that we've all long known turns people into giant toddlers who are impossible to deal with.

[werpiper]

don't drink from the yes-men tap.