pinocchiology

just a whole mess of things here | bi | 20s | she/they | accessible content | semi-runs on unmarked queue | see about | icon ID: medieval art of a badly painted ginger cat | banner ID: the bi flag with a garland of navy and dark magenta roses

[importantcatpics]

[taro-jpg]

[ID: photo of two cats on a ledge. One is sitting with its head tucked and eyes closed while the other is jumping over it. The photo perfectly captures the moment when the jumping cat's back feet have just left the ledge. End ID.]

[lilybeegallery]

Cardos by Bibi Zogbé (1890-1973) Oil on canvas, 34 x 26 in (86.4 x 66 cm), painted 1938 Currently privately owned

[accessible-art]

[ID edited from Alt: art of many brightly colored thistles, mostly blue and yellow but a few red and one purple, are spread out across the canvas, which is painted a pale muted blue. The thistles are surrounded by lush greenery, with little green vines weaving in and out between their stems and ferns bordering the bottom of the canvas. Little blue trumpet-shaped flowers are also woven throughout the thistles. The effect is of a vibrant jumble of color and life. End ID]

[systlin]

In 38 years of life I have learned 1 thing;

If anyone is ever training you to replace them in a position and tells you 'its an easy job I don't do much' what this means is that you are about to spend six months to a year catching up on all the stuff they didn't do and sorting out the stuff they did poorly.

In related news I finally managed to finish un fucking my predecessor's lack of a filing system.

[systlin]

Apparently this post is wildly Jon from Magnus Archives coded but I regret to inform everyone that there were no weird sketchy paranormal occurences. There were only ten banker boxes full of unsorted training records, incident reports, uniform recipts, daily activity reports, and similar quite ordinary and boring paperwork. There have been zero flesh worms or NotEntities. I did find a stash of paper clips in one box under the papers but that's it.

[quasi-normalcy]

I think it's unfortunate that the Nazis inherited an already very efficient German state, industrial and military apparatus, because it created the persistent myth that fascism itself is efficient, which, lol

[quasi-normalcy]

What's a more efficient way to serve the public interest: actually having mechanisms to monitor state officials for corruption and hold them to account, or just letting them loot the public purse to their heart's content so long as they stay loyal to the Leader? If you're not an idiot, the answer won't surprise you!

[captainkirkk]

What they don't tell you about writing is that as you write, you discover scenes and entire plots that you hadn't accounted for that need to be written. So you can spend two hours writing and editing only to realise you're further away from the finish line than you thought you were when you started

[literallyaflame]

love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded

[literallyaflame]

we literally ruined society when we invented the fourth wall. let’s bring back call and response. heckling, even. fuck you hamlet you dumb piece of shit kill your uncle or shut up

[hickeyknife]

"When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side… there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.”

And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period."

Oskar Eustis on ArtBeat Nation

[canadianwheatpirates]

I was in the front row of a Hamlet performance where the "Am I a coward?" was directed at me and I, being a no-impulse-control gremlin, hollered back "Yes!!" (they'd primed us ahead of time that audience interaction was encouraged). Hamlet got right up in my face as he kept talking and just kept going until I gently pushed him back; I forget what line it was on when it happened but he took the direction of the push and reeled away across the stage.

This meant that I had marked myself as someone willing to be fucked with, and so during the graveyard scene later he approached me again. "Here hung those lips that I have kissed--" he booped my mouth with the skull's "-- I know not how oft."

[shimmywhenyoucantbounce]

I have stories related to me from those at Blackfriars, the American Shakespeare Center (they play in a replica of the original Blackfriars, with modern safety conventions like lightbulbs in the chandeliers, but a great dedication to the way structure shaped the original work in the original Blackfriars. Their house is only about 45 ft deep (roughly 15 m I think), which is about the max distance two sighted people can be from each other and still make eye contact. They play with the stage and house equally lit, they talk to the audience, they enter from the audience, they whip up crowds from within the audience. It’s fantastic. But anyway, on to the stories.)

Hamlet. There’s a scene where Hamlet sees Claudius praying and debates whether to kill him now or wait (because if Claudius dies praying he will automatically go to heaven). The actor playing Hamlet was genuinely asking the audience the questions in the speech, and when he got to “and should I kill him now?” someone in the audience shouted “YES KILL HIM HE NEEDS TO DIE!” Hamlet took the entire rest of the monologue to that person, enumerating his reservations so persuasively that they started to nod in agreement.

Romeo and Juliet. In this production, the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt happens in several rounds, of which Mercutio won the first. Mercutio’s actor made the choice, upon his victory, to run down the audience with his hand out for high-fives. He decided this in rehearsal, so he had time to plan for the three responses people would probably give him: a) a high-five back; b) being stunned and not reacting; and c) the old “oops too slow.” What this Mercutio did not prepare for was the audience member who panicked and deposited their handful of M&Ms into his open palm. The way I heard it, Mercutio was still processing this when Benvolio came up beside him and stole the M&Ms out of his hand to eat them.

King Lear. Edmund has a speech in which he asks whether he should marry “Goneril? Regan? Both? Neither?” Again, the actor was legitimately asking the audience, and again he’d prepared for the audience to respond in favor of any of those choices. What makes it even cooler was that the next line is “Neither can be enjoyed while both remain alive,” which works as a response to any of those options. One night, though, Edmund got his answer as “KILL THEM BOTH AND TAKE THEIR MONEY!” To which he gleefully agreed, “Neither can be enjoyed while both remain alive!!”

[rionsanura]

#Oh I have SO many stories from peak audience moments at the American shakespeare center#I have been to plays there that legit felt more like rock concerts#And I don't even mean the parts of the show where the cast is also a live band and they play#Covers of songs relating to the show#Fair maid of the west with Ginna Hoben#We were all SO on her side we absolutely lost our whole shit any time she even entered or exited#Knight of the burning pestle where Rick would pick a random audience member to be his lady love he was fighting for every night#And one time (I saw it thrice) he picked an older lady#And there's a part of the show where iirc he like gets almost defeated?#And he calls out to his lady love to like inspire him to keep fighting smth like that#And she Got Up Out Of Her Seat and went over to him and kissed him on the cheek#And no one was expecting that least of all Rick#And we all lost our shit whooping and hollering#They did a hamlet where...I forget who was polonius that year but there's a line where he's like 'what was I gonna say again'#And he paused SO long on that line you were legit unsure if he the actor had actually forgotten it#And once someone in the audience called out the next line and he was like 'oh that's right' and carried on#It was scripted though there were other nights no one said anything and we all sat there#In wonderful horrid awkward silence#Until he resumed#Please go if you get a chance#And sit stateside (via @rootingformephistopheles)

[lb1205rb]

I was in a production of Hamlet in a small black box theatre, when a drunk guy came in from from outside, wandered onstage and started singing "We built this city on rock and roll." The guy playing Hamlet just went with it until the stage manager and crew could usher the drunk guy back outside. Then Hamlet continued with his next line, which was (no joke) "Now I am alone." Brought the house down.

[ndnbutch]

personally I am of the opinion that vegans who are like “the way our food system currently works under capitalism on a large scale is exceptionally cruel to all animals including humans and is not sustainable, so I’m doing what I can to make the most ethical choices available to me about what I eat and encourage others to do the same” are generally very reasonable people who I agree with in spades. but vegans who seem to think human beings are not themselves animals who are ultimately also part of the food chain but instead some kind of other paternalistic higher entity that can never engage in ethical and sustainable hunting practices (and especially the fringe I’ve seen who think other carnivorous animal predators are also evil and need to be eliminated) are people I regard as foolish at best if not actively anti-indigenous and racist

[goldcrescent]

I also think that the strength gap is at least partially manufactured women would in fact be stronger overall if little girls were encouraged to do physically taxing games and activities and eat their fill while they’re growing vs having to constantly diet and be sedentary indoors (or god forbid do intense cardio while under-eating). The amount of adult women honestly afraid to lift weights bc they think they’ll get bulky as though bulking isn’t a full time job that athletes have to spend all their time on and anyone on earth gets shredded from just using their adult muscles for their intended purpose, girl your bone density 🥀

[goldcrescent]

if you say women are intentionally nerfed from birth in 2026 people look at you like you’re insane and start condescendingly telling you about how women are just better at different things (but not during their periods haha) but this was a completely basic feminist talking point I grew up with like “girls can do it too! [shot of little girls climbing and running with boys]” nickelodeon commercial tier base level I hate it how is everyone suddenly dumber than the average 7 year old

[rederiswrites]

Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

It's rude.

[katsdom]

The above is doubly true if the content of the email is something that will be important to the person receiving - especially something that affects them negatively. They see that this thing that affected them so much didn't matter enough to you to write it yourself. I was a bystander to such a thing not long ago and it was just awful.

[tiktaalic]

I was born in the exact right generation I love being an unmarried woman in my twenties with my own bank account and no children

[lliveonthesunn]

every other week, my mom would make a giant pot of vegetable soup. she'd pack half of it in a tupperware and take it to her best friend's house. they both had three kids whose ages aligned. they'd lock us out of the house and go through each room, finding every piece of dirty laundry and then spend the afternoon keeping the washer and dryer running, folding and putting away each load while gossiping.

every alternate week, her best friend would come to our house with a tupperware full of chicken spaghetti. they'd stick us in front of a tv with a stack of disney vhs tapes and go through each room, finding every dirty dish, and then spend the afternoon at the kitchen sink, washing each dish by hand while gossiping.

it wasn't always soup and spaghetti and laundry and dishes. but it was almost always a meal and a chore. here is a night you don't have to cook dinner. here is a chore you can cross off your list. and here is a day you don't have to spend alone. because really food and friendship and a feeling of accomplishment are what we all need most.

[trippedintoa-volcano]

Imagine that everywhere in the mechanical engineering world suddenly got infatuated with lasers.

Lasers have a lot of uses! Measuring things, heating things, cutting things, entertaining cats, particle physics. Lasers are pretty cool. Very versatile, very useful, potential to be very powerful.

Someone shows up one day and says "I have developed a never before seen technology! I call it a Death Star."

And it's a 3.4mW laser. Well no, we haven't seen this exact size of laser much since that's not really standard, but that's a bit of a misnomer, and I wouldn't call it new -

"HOLY SHIT GUYS! This Death Star is so entertaining! My cat loves it and it has such a nice color!" The Death Star becomes a viral novelty, and is mildly entertaining, as laser pointers often are.

Somehow, seemingly overnight, this leads to mania. "Lets stick lasers in EVERYTHING! The public loves them!"

More companies make 3.4mW lasers to jump on the bandwagon. Everyone that makes anything vaguely mechanical starts sticking lasers into their designs.

Everyone is calling them Death Stars. Any time there is a "Death Star innovation", it is just that they made a bigger laser.

Ford's next truck comes out and it has "Death Star integrated headlights", where they have just stuck giant lasers in place of their previously functional headlights.

An electric toothbrush is now "Powered by Death Stars" and shoots a laser at the tooth its cleaning. You think that maybe this could have actual applications as a sanitizing device if you're being generous, but when you actually look at the product, its laser has no purpose but to point at the tooth and drain the battery.

Mechanical products across the board get noticeably worse as everyone starts stuffing lasers in places where lasers have no right to be.

The lamp business gets in on it. "Here's a Death Star powered lamp!" These guys haven't even tried to stick a laser in their damn lamps. They've just started calling their light bulbs Death Stars and hoped you bought it before you could tell the difference. You at least appreciate that they haven't ruined their lamp about it.

Death Stars are lauded as the solution to all the world's problems. If it's not working, you should stick a laser in it! That'll fix it, everyone says. Once in a blue moon, it's even true! Weather prediction is really good now. But most things are garbage. Like "Death Star powered washing machines". What the fuck does that even mean?

Meanwhile, since all functioning mechanisms are being replaced with lasers, problems start showing up. All mirrors now cost $1000+ dollars, because the whole supply is being used up to make more lasers. The earth heats up, because everyone's blasting lasers at everything. People keep going blind, on account of all the lasers.

You, in fact, study optical mechanics. You know what a laser is, and how it works, and that it was invented many years before any of this nonsense actually started. People keep asking you about Death Stars, since surely you must know so much about them.

You explain that this is not really what lasers are for, except you have to call them Death Stars now, and that they're causing a lot of harm, so you don't like them much.

"Oh, but they're still such new tech!" they reply. "They'll figure out how to make Death Stars that don't burn your eyes out soon, and then it won't be an issue anymore!"

Somewhere, deep and buried, you remember lasers being used in particle accelerators, or in telescopes, or in laser cutters, or funny cat videos. They are, in fact, still interesting. Still cool.

But by this point they have replaced roads with "Death Star Powered Pathways", which are just laser pointers propped up on tooth picks pointing vaguely through the forests.

And you think you are going mad.

And they are still just FUCKING LASERS.

This post is about AI.

[birdbigbutch]

Peeling the lid off of a yogurt and it's a big spiral staircase going down forever

[sanctus-ingenium]

Victorious

[marzipanandminutiae]

many of our ancestors worked so hard to be not farming and I deeply appreciate that

I love not farming

I respect the hell out of farmers and I'm glad that's someone's dream. because it's sure not mine

I would not be taken in by the tradwife influencer grift about milking a cow in a sundress. I have been around cows. my uncle was a dairy farmer. I love not milking a cow. I love getting milk from a store. I love getting vegetables and fruit and meat and bread from a store.

would I rather it be a local farm's store or a local bakery or butcher shop? yes! maybe when I make more money!

but oh. my god. I love not farming so much

[andhumanslovedstories]

look I'm not gonna pretend I know anything about electronics, but sometimes a plug is so big it blocks another socket, and I'm always like "who the fuck do you think you are"

[maxknightley]

"it would be so good if it was good" will haunt you but "it's extremely good, except for the one or two parts which are so bad it's genuinely kind of insulting" will straight up drive you insane

[maxknightley]

one has you making posts like "okay but if the author UNDERSTOOD the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of the story they were telling, and leaned into it, it would actually be a really interesting exploration of..."

the other has you pacing your bedroom at one in the morning going "why. why would you ever in a million years do it like that. genuinely what possible thought process was involved. was the writer possessed by a fucking ghost or something."