Roman Snow

Hi, I'm Roman. This is my reblog/personal blog. If I follow a blog or 'like' something it shows up as StateOfBedlamOfficial, but I usually reblog to here.

[mathani]

Normals through three points on a parabola are concurrent iff the sum of their abscissas vanishes.

[svartibaldur]

[shepardlives]

“I’d kill for you. Please ask me to kill for you.” “No.” Is a top tier ship dynamic no I do not take criticism

[shepardlives]

The idea of a person being capable of incredibly immoral acts but held in check but their love of their partner sends me every time

[ii-zi]

yes

[joematar]

pairs well with this one

[prokopetz]

I enjoy when people give me a hard time about using the term "sequential art" because they think it's just a pretentious way of saying "comics", because when I point out that "comics" and "sequential art" are overlapping but non-identical mediums, they invariably demand an example of sequential art that isn't comics, and I get to hit them with "PowerPoint presentations".

[prokopetz]

@urlocallesbiab replied:

i like how you said "overlapping" instead of "one being a wider category than the other" do you have any examples of comics that don't count as sequential art? (this isn't a gotcha question, this is me engaging in good-natured, sportsmanlike pedantry, along with expressing my curiosity)

[rags-to-richards]

Cesare is such a great character bc he's got a really fascinating and dramatic backstory dealing with mortality, loss of autonomy and the fear of pursuing personal expression

but then 90% of his screentime is just

[thelovelygods]

[bogleech]

This is going to actually be a thing, isn't it. A chatgpjesus is going to catch on and cause some fucking cult movement in our lifetimes.

[totally-cis-offical]

I need a “humans are space orcs” thing where all sentient species are weird like that, but in their own unique ways

And a lot of them are aware of this (like we are when we make these “humans are space orcs” stories)

Maybe one species enjoys getting bit by something equivalent to mosquitoes. Maybe one actively avoids the hospitable places on their planet because it’s boring without a challenge. You get the gist.

I want to see a bunch of aliens (+humans) sitting around a table talking about how their own species is a bunch of freaks

Everyone is space orcs

[totally-cis-offical]

Best possible addition. This is a top-tier insight

@hotcheetohatred

[stephenleasheppard]

The thing about "humans are space orcs" is it was originally conceived of as a response to science fiction tropes in which every alien species had its own special thing except humans, whose special thing was either Most Generic, Most Adaptable, or Most Je Ne Sais Quoi. Like, in a lot of science fiction, Klingons are Honorable Warriors, Vulcans are Logical Scientists, Romulans are Cunning Strategists, and humans are all of the above in a way that leaves us slightly less good than any of them at their shtick but better overall and able to triumph because of our lack of specialization and the assumption that we are, somehow, just destined to be the best. See this scene from Enterprise for what I'm talking about. There's a similar scene in Mass Effect where Mordin talks about how humans are more variable and adaptable and less predictable than all the other races in that setting, which is super annoying if you know anything about how much our species is defined by the genetic bottleneck we suffered during the Ice Age -- the generic bottleneck that has left us all so genetically similar to each other that we can do crazy things like donate blood and organs to each other, things other species can't tolerate.

@prokopetz proposed that humans ought to get something special of our own that isn't just "We are the bestest and specialist in some generic way that feels like a vague and unsettling metaphor for American superiority and manifest destiny amidst all the other cultures of the world," and settled on space orcs because "Pursuit predators with freakish endurance" was the ecological niche we occupied during our own evolutionary history up until we started doing the civilization thing. The assumption from the start was that every other sci-fi or fantasy species would each be freaks in their own way, and the point of humans are space orcs was to let us be our own sort of freak, too.

People who expanded on the humans are space orcs stories immediately turned it into a reason to write little stories where humans are the biggest freaks or the only freaks and we are, in fact, the specialest most manifest destinyest je ne sais quoi-laden metaphors for the superiority of American culture over all the other cultures of the world. I hate it I hate it I hate it.

Which is to say you've reinvented the point of humans are space orcs from first principles. That's pretty cool.

[prokopetz]

I think my mistake was failing to appreciate just how readily "humans have exceptionally high cardiovascular endurance due to our real-world evolutionary history as specialised persistence predators" could be twisted around into "humans have superior Will to Power", which is the other problematic special niche humans have historically been assigned in popular science fiction.

[spooky-cowfish]

A recreation of what I saw when I was passing my boss's desk

[shamebats]

Everyone thinks being a witcher would be so cool and badass meanwhile this poor bastard is stuck doing fantasy tech support

[discount-supervillain]

[prokopetz]

When I was a kid, my father straight up did not understand transient preferences in food. If you ever expressed that you would prefer not to have a particular food today, he universally interpreted that as meaning you hated it now and never wanted to have it ever again; he went through life firmly convinced that everyone around him was crazy because they were constantly flip-flopping between loving and hating certain foods without rhyme or reason, which led to some fascinating meal planning challenges.

Decades later, I'm reading studies talking about how autism is probably hereditary and thinking: you don't say.

[prokopetz]

Every time I bring up one of these anecdotes I get a bunch of folks in the notes insisting that that's just normal dad behaviour, and I think it's just slightly possible that a lot of you have autistic dads.

[oatmealaddiction]

So I've seen the post going around that's kind of like "kids should be able to read whatever they want and not have their choices censored by adults" and I largely agree with one caveat which is that children need to be able to opt in. I remember being 12 and sneaking some dirty books, and being interested and excited to read a book with something more sexy in it, and no one died, and everything was fine, and I was not forever scarred. However I do remember being shown a a horror film at seven by a babysitter and not being able to sleep for three weeks, and if I'd known how scary the movie was I wouldn't have wanted to watch it.

Kids can usually know what they can handle. Kids cover their eyes at scary points in films, kids read past stuff they aren't ready for. But it is good to be clear like "Oh that book might have some scary parts you might not like, are you sure you want to get that one?" Or "Oh this book has some grown up things in them that you might have a hard time understanding, I want to check that your okay with that." Like give kids the warnings and options and they will probably make a safe and informed decision. It doesn't have to be either or.

[helloiamacashier]

I also think kids should be allowed to be wrong about what they can handle without getting in trouble for it. They should be able to go to the adults in their life and ask for help processing what they saw or read without fear of judgement or punishment.

[trollitics]

[classicalmonoblogue]

Apparently the dude who runs the crematorium is just fundamentally confused about how advertising works. He actually thought that the way you made an ad was you found a picture that got people’s attention … and then also included information about your company. He was genuinely surprised and baffled when people thought there was any relationship between the (independently nonsensical) captioned image and his cremation business. There were two more ads in the series that are equally, just… so much…

_______________________________________________________________

[cornerof5thandvermouth]

this is somehow incredibly effective tbh

[memix]

Petition for all advertisements to be shitposts from now on

[sigmaleph]

“I was just trying to get people to stop for a second and see the picture, and then my company’s name. That was it,” Oliver King tells the Riverfront Times. “The two are not supposed to be related, except that’s my daughter and my company.”

For some inexplicable reason, not everyone understood that distinction. “I got people calling and complaining, like, ‘Are you going to kill her? Is she going to kill someone?’ ” says King. “I couldn’t believe that went somewhere in their minds that they thought that was what I was trying to say.”

(source)

on the one hand, i guess ads for cremation services must be a tricky thing to keep on theme without being too depressing/morbid/etc, so I can see how “just grab their attention with anything, doesn’t have to be related” would be an appealing advertising strategy.

on the other, i am fascinated by how someone who runs a crematorium “couldn’t believe” that people would associate their business with, uh, death.

[fionn-o-nassus]

the “tumblr ad” school of advertisement

[jooshthepunished-deactivated202]

Genius marketing tbh

[teaboot]

One time in highschool our teacher said that it was never under any circumstances okay for a boy to hit a girl and I asked “not even in self defense?” and he said “no” so I pointed to the kid next to me and said “so if I just started whaling on this guy then he’d just have to take it? What the hell” and he was like “you two have had the same homeroom for three years do you not know his name” and I was like “that’s not the point right now” and Mr. K if you’re out there reading this I’m still mad about it

[teaboot]

the argument actually took up most of the class after that but there was a point where he said “why do you want men to hit women so badly?” And I answered “I don’t want anybody to hit anybody, I just think assuming that no woman you meet could possibly hurt you is kind of insulting” and I didn’t WIN per se but you could kind of feel the air shift as the conversation went from “chivalry good” to “girls might WANT to kick your ass”

[teaboot]

Anyhow it’s been like 15 years now but I still swear by “capacity for harm is not gender-specific”, “nobody should be hurting anybody”, “men can be abused too”, and “gender equality means accepting that women CAN hurt you” so suck it, Mr. K

[bopsterlobster]

livin the dream

[keytarsolo]

the stunning sequel to last year’s birthday cake 

[apunkinspace]

Cringe cannot exist in a vacuum.

Take art from my alt because like I said I’m tired of keeping my cringe secret.