sleeping_karkats @sleepingkarkats - Tumblr Blog

I'm back, sincerely doubt anyone remembers me though bc it's been literal years since I tumbled! Man, what a blast from the past, scrolling through my follows; I remember so much and I'm sad (but not really surprised) to see how many blogs went inactive.

Things change, but stay the same in so many ways even after all these years away

Feel free to say hi if you want!!

noodledog

Getting mixed results on this one, lads.

noodledog

I will not be stopped

noodledog

catadromously

hi, as another autistic person whose hyperfixtation is the sea i love ur blog !!! do u have any fun facts abt eels, i love those slippery snake-fish pals

[chanting] more of us! more of us!

moray eels are interspecific cooperative hunters, like humans! they're most often seen working with groupers, which are bulky chase-down predators, very complimentary to the moray's slithery searching style. the moray flushes prey out of their hidey holes, and the grouper catches any sneaky customers who escape.

but this is not just random opportunism. hunting partners stick together for the whole mission and communicate with body signals! a hungry grouper waggles its head to recruit a slithery partner from resting in the rocks, or to encourage it to move on from an empty crevice: "hey, you and me, let's get going!"

scienceandstorytelling

If I can add, the groupers will find prey hiding in little cracks and do a sort of headstand to point at it and show the eel where to swim in and chase it out. Only a handful of animals are documented as being able to point (referential gesturing) and the others are like, crows and chimps and stuff! Fish can point too! And! If the eel doesn’t notice the grouper pointing the grouper will swim over in front of the eel, waggle its head again, and lead it to the crevice before pointing again. This means the grouper is aware of the eel‘s perspective - it’s aware of the eel’s state of mind, it knows that the eel doesn’t know where the prey is and knows that the eel didn’t see it point and therefore it should adjust its behavior! This is called theory of mind (the ability to attribute mental states to others, including knowing someone else has a different perspective) and is considered a big deal in animal psychology - it’s also often studied in monkeys. Idk if it’s been studied rigorously with these fish but it sure seems to be what they’re doing. My other favorite thing is that the groupers recognize the eels as individuals. If the hunt is successful, the grouper will come back to that eel for partnerships in the future. If the eel isn’t a very good partner, the grouper will pick a different eel next time. It does seem to be the groupers which do the most of the initiating and show being aware of the eels’ mental state, and I’d be interested to see research on the eels’ side of things. AFAIK grouper species tend to live in social groups more than eels, so I wonder if groupers are more socially cognizant, or if the eels’ perspective just hasn’t been studied enough.

derinthescarletpescatarian

“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).

derinthescarletpescatarian

“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.

badwificonnection

Blood is what now?

derinthescarletpescatarian

It’s imitation seawater what part is confusing

badwificonnection

derinthescarletpescatarian

#are you telling me#humans are just sentient aquariums?

Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.

Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.

badwificonnection

Thank you that’s…very disturbing

derinthescarletpescatarian

It’s not my fault you’re human.

apatheticshipwreck

Ok but “It’s not my fault you’re human.” Is the best comeback ever.

derinthescarletpescatarian

You can use it against anyone except children that you biologically helped to create.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#/blood is imitation seawater/ is the part that’s confusing

Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”

“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”

“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”

At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)

You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.

And that’s what a human is!

elodieunderglass

Well, there’s another few steps, of course.

Because at some point, operating along lines of logic that worked out perfectly so far, you did decide to be a mammal.

A mammal is a machine for adapting to Circumstances. A mammal is a tremendously resilient all-terrain life-support system, with built-in heating, cooling, respiration, and incubators for reproduction. Mammals internalise everything (grudges, eggs) and furthermore are excessively, flamboyantly wet internally. Sure, everyone’s a bag of chemicals; but mammals slosh. Mammals took the concept of an internal ocean and took it in an unnecessarily splashy direction, added aftermarket mods and a climate-control system,

and just to show off, you leaned across the metaphorical gambling table and said: “my internal ocean is so good-“

“Bullshit,” said the shark, keeping it salty (ha)

“My internal ocean is so brilliantly resilient, more so than any of YOURS,” you said, holding their attention with a digit held aloft, “that for my next trick, I shall artistically recreate the ballad of evolution as a performance. I shall craft a complex chemical ballet depicting the origin of multicellular life - using some of my own material, of course-”

“Oh, ANYONE can lay an egg,” yodel the fish, and the ray adds: “ontogeny does NOT recapitulate phylogeny!!”

And you’re like, “yeah no, it’s an artistic rendition, not a literal thing. Basically I’m going to take some cells and brew them up-“

“Like an egg.”

“Like an egg. An egg but internally.”

“Yeah,” said the viviparous reptile, “yeah, like, that can work really well. I’ve always said it’s the highest test of one’s chemical know-how. It’s a lot of work. And forget about support from your family - forget about support from your PHYLUM - all you get is criticism.”

“I’m gonna do it on purpose forever,” you said. “The highest chemical, thermoregulatory, immunological, everything-logical challenge. It’s gonna be my thing.”

“I’m with you,” said a viviparous fish, stoutly. “Representation.”

You kindly don’t point out, once again, that you’re planning to do this outside the ocean, in a range of temperatures; carrying the dividing cells in a perfect 37.5• solution of saline broth in all terrains, breathing oxygen in a complicated matter, you know, bit more difficult; but you need your allies.

“It’s solid,” says the coelacanth.

“But is it metal?” says the deep-vent organism.

“Oh, it’s metal. I will feed the young,” you say, magnificently, “on an echo of the mother ocean. The first rich feast of cellular matter, the first hunt for sustenance, the first bite they sip of our liquid planet-”

Everyone waits.

“Will be a blood byproduct. My own blood byproduct.”

Everyone looks uncomfortable.

“But,” a hagfish says carefully, “don’t you outdoorsy guys still need your blood?”

You cough and explain that if you stay wet enough internally and hydrate frequently, you should be able to produce enough blood byproduct to sustain your hellish new invention until they can eat your peers.

The outrage that follows includes questions like “is this some furry shit?” And: “milk has WATER in it?”

And you won the bet. “My inner ocean is such a perfect homage to the primordial soup that I can personally cook up an entire live hairy mammal in it. And then generate excess blood byproduct from my body and give it to the small mammal until it gets big.”

That is an absolutely bonkers pitch, by the way, and everyone thought you were a showoff, even before the opposable thumbs. When the winter came, and the winter of winters, and the rain was acid and the air was poison on the tender shells of their eggs and choked the children in the shells; when the plants turned to poison, and the ocean turned against you all; when the climate changed, and the world’s children fell to shadow; your internal ocean was it that held true. A bet laid against the changing fates, a bet laid by a small beast against climate and geography and the forces of outer space, that you won. The dinosaurs fell and the pterosaurs fell and the marine reptiles dwindled, and you, furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship, held hope internally at 37.5 degrees. Which is another thing that humans do, sometimes.

stevishabitat

unfuckyourhabitat

Emergency cleaning: Unfuck your whole house in the shortest time possible

So, your landlord/parents/home inspector/favorite movie star is dropping by, and your place is a disaster. You don’t have much time to clean it up. You’re in emergency mode. Let’s get started.

Don’t panic. Panic leads to fear, fear leads to procrastination, procrastination leads to the dark side. You can do this, but you have to stay calm.

Unlike maintenance cleaning, we’re not looking to completely unfuck one space at a time. Instead, we want to decrease the overall mess in stages, spread evenly across the whole area that we’re concerned about. If you think your home is at Level 10 filth, we want to bring the whole thing down to a Level 9, and then down from there. One really clean spot in an otherwise messy home is not going to be helpful here.

Get prepared. You’ll want to shut the computer down (or turn the modem off if you need your computer to play music). Trust me. Get your music going. Gather up trash bags, your vacuum and mop, some rags or paper towel, sponges, and other cleaning supplies. Use what you have on hand. Don’t get distracted running to the store and spending an hour browsing cleaning supplies. A multi-purpose cleaning concentrate or a jug of vinegar will be just fine.

Breaks are very important. Depending on your time constraints, work in 20/10s (20 minutes working, 10-minute break) or 45/15s. But take breaks because otherwise you’re marathoning, and marathon cleaning is no one’s friend. Keep hydrated, don’t forget to eat, and check in with yourself frequently to make sure you’re physically doing OK.

Make your bed. This will be your home base if you get overwhelmed or need somewhere clear to take a break.

Start with the garbage. Going from room to room, throw out anything that is obvious trash. Once you fill a bag, take it out. Repeat as many times as necessary.

Move on to dishes. Gather the dishes from all over your house and bring them to the kitchen. If you can, start them soaking in a sink of hot, soapy water or start loading the dishwasher. After the dishes are all in one place, spend one 20/10 getting started getting them under control.

Now it’s time for your flat surfaces. Countertops, tables, dresser tops, etc. Clear them off and wipe them down. Don’t get distracted in too much sorting and organizing. We’re in crisis mode here. There will be time to get in-depth once this is all done. The same applies to cabinets and closets. Unless you have reason to believe people will be opening closed doors, leave these alone for now.

Attack the floordrobe and shoe pile. Get your clothes either put away or in the hamper. Start a load of laundry if you need to, but keep in mind that laundry and dishes have three steps: wash, dry, and put it away, goddammit!

Get random stuff up off the floors. If something is trash-worthy, throw it away now rather than just move it around a bunch of times. Otherwise, put stuff where it belongs.

Take another 20/10 or 45/15 to catch up on more dishes, if needed.

Head into the bathroom. Pour some cleaner in the toilet bowl, fill the sink with hot water and cleaner, and either spray the tub and shower with cleaner, or fill the tub up with some hot water and add cleaner and let it soak. Put everything away that’s out and shouldn’t be, clean the mirror, counters, and toilet seat. Sweep or dry mop the floor. Wipe down the sink and tub/shower, and give the toilet bowl a scrub. Mop the floor.

Sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

Vacuum everything you can, and sweep everything you can’t.

Walk outside of your house (don’t lock yourself out, please). Walk back in and see what catches your eye first. Go and deal with that.

If you’re being inspected or your landlord is coming in for repairs, spend time on whatever area they’ll be focusing on.

Give the whole place one more once-over and pay attention to anything you’ve missed so far.

It’s an old trick, but if your place is a little funky-smelling, put a pan of water on the stove on low heat and add some citrus or cinnamon or vanilla. Don’t leave it unattended or forget about it.

Take a shower, put on something clean, and eat something.

You can do this. It’s overwhelming, yes, but it is not impossible. You just need to do it. You have a list. You have directions. You have a whole bunch of Internet strangers who have been there before and who are cheering you on. You can do this, but you need to get started.

Why are you still here? GO. START. NOW.

river-b

the number of times in my past that I desperately wanted/needed someone to sit me down and tell me this stuff. I will never get back the hours and hours lost to headless-chicken mode, but it’s nice to know that in the last year I’ve learned so many coping mechanisms :D

robotlyra

Don’t confuse my hatred of the hyperwealthy for jealousy over what they have. I don’t want a six figure sports car, or a 40 room mansion, or a gold leaf truffle wagyu steak dinner. I want redistribution of wealth that allows for infrastructural support of all citizens’ basic survival needs.

livebloggingmydescentintomadness

while i completely agree with this statement, i feel like there’s this disconnect between the common man’s desire to experience what life has to offer and the hyperwealthy’s desire to exploit the masses in order to hoard resources to the active detriment of others.

i want to experience driving a fancy sports car down a big open road, the top down and the wind blowing in my hair. i don’t want a garage of 20 sports cars that i never touch.

i want a nice, comfortable, tastefully decorated house that’s big enough for me, my family, my pets, my hobbies, and any friends i might want to invite over. i don’t want a megmansion with more space than i could ever possibly use, that i only own because i want my house to be bigger than someone else’s house.

i want to experience eating the best steak dinner that the culinary world can offer. i don’t want to eat gold, which has literally no flavor, just because i can.

i want to travel to different cities around the world, see beautiful places, experience different cultures, and meet interesting people. i don’t want to buy up swathes of land and push natives out so i can build my twelfth house in hawaii or greece or somewhere else i’ll barely ever visit.

i want to dress in nice, well-made clothes that represent my style and make me feel good about myself. i don’t want to carry a thirty thousand dollar handbag or rolex watch just because it costs thirty thousand dollars.

i want to be able to give my friends gifts, i want to be able to invest in causes that i believe in, i want to be able to buy myself things like books, art, electronics, theater tickets, and nice food without having to worry about how much it costs. i don’t want to buy elections or shoot myself into space.

the average person’s concept of luxury is so far removed from the hyperwealthy’s everyday life that the distance cannot even be measured in ways that we can comprehend.

so while of course it’s more important that we work towards everyone’s basic needs being met rather than achieving luxury for ourselves, you, an ordinary person, shouldn’t feel guilty just for wanting to experience exciting and comfortable things. life should not be unyielding drudgery.

raptorific

funniest thing would be if when Queen Elizabeth dies or steps down and Charles is all ready to assume the throne, here comes King Arthur, Excalibur in hand, sauntering back from Avalon like “oof what a nap! thanks for keeping the chair warm I’m back to be king again”

raptorific

like, given that “King Arthur isn’t actually dead, he’ll be back to be King again someday” is, like, an actual aspect of the legend and a thing that a lot of people purport to believe, has anyone ever actually tried it? showing up to buckingham palace claiming to be Arthur Pendragon, The Once And Future King, and assume the throne? does the british government have a protocol for checking whether someone claiming to be King Arthur actually is? does parliament have a secret picture of the Real Excalibur kept under lock and key, only viewed if someone claims to be King Arthur, that they can use to confirm or refute the identity of alleged Kings Arthur? if not, how do they deter every jackass with a sward from pretending to be him? does filing a false King Arthur report constitute treason?

lunetta-suzie-jewel

The rules are simple. “Arthur” has to show up with a sword. They give the sword to the Lady of the Lake, and if she throws it back to the claimant, he’s legit and gets to be king again.

pargolettasworld

So the test for King Arthur’s identity falls to the even less officially identifiable Lady of the Lake. No one can even agree on which Lady, or which lake, is the official one, much less how to tell if you’ve got The Lady of The Lake. All of which suggests that all you need to accomplish this is one (1) sword, a willing female acquaintance, and a nearby body of water.

There isn’t even any requirement for “Arthur” to catch the sword, so the Lady can just javelin an epee right at him.

lunetta-suzie-jewel

Well when you look at it that way, one might conclude that strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

thatdisasterauthor

Okay but I want someone claiming to be Arthur as a book now. It would be such fun chaos.

blatantescapism

Concept:

Bored out of their minds in lockdown, a small splinter group from the Society for Creative Anachronism decide to put on a short play about King Arthur as a quarantine project.

The Arts & Crafts folk immediately set to making costumes and props, after some brief bickering over whether to base goods in the 12th or the 6th century. (They end up going with the 12th. This will be hilarious later.)

The role of Arthur is naturally given to a Millennial/Gen Z guy who does SCA jousting demos and, crucially, owns his own horses. Guinevere is a trans woman who is very good at acting improv and Heavy Combat. (She is widely known and feared at Pennsic. This will be hilarious later.)

King Pellinore is a beloved older SCA veteran who is basically everyone’s favorite eccentric gay uncle. His husband, a retired fireman, is more introverted and gruff in a kind of benignly grumpy way, and usually limits his participation to being an excellent camp cook or occasional field medic. However, he has been talked into portraying Merlin and setting off some small ‘magic’ fireworks, on the condition that he doesn’t actually have to say anything.

The Lady of the Lake is a Black woman whose other hobby is free diving. They set her costume up to accommodate a hidden thermal wetsuit and snorkel tube.

Morgan le Fay is actually Morgan le Fay.

Like, most of the Arthurian legends were completely made up or didn’t happen exactly the way they were later portrayed, but she is genuinely an immortal entity with magic powers who did some of the stuff attributed to Morgan le Fay, and has been keeping a low profile for the last few centuries just bopping around doing whatever the fuck she wants.

They’ve just finished a dress rehearsal and the Lady of the Lake is scrolling through Tumblr when she sees the above posts by @raptorific and reads them out loud to the group, for the lulz.

Morgan le Fay gets a terrible, awful idea.

She teleports the group to the Kensington Palace Gardens at a strategic moment in their performance. Shit ends up going down like a cross between the con artist plot of “A Knight’s Tale” and an inverse version of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”.

Between their sudden appearance, Guinevere’s brilliant improv skills, and the fact that Merlin (with Morgan le Fay’s secret help) can suddenly turn policemen into trees, they attract a ton of media attention. A jaded professor is the first to figure out the truth of what exactly the fuck is going on.

She has a bitter grudge against a misogynistic Arthurian scholar and decides to troll the hell out of him by coaching the SCAdians in how to answer interview questions in the most infuriating, quasi-plausible way possible.

Shenanigans ensue, stuff happens, Prince Andrew is impaled on a spear, Morgan le Fay has a dramatic magical duel with the court necromancer who’s been propping up the Queen

Award-winning screenplay by @systlin or @natalieironside

natalieironside

I’m in

systlin

I’m in

filmnoirsbian

Obviously there are many things to dislike about adulthood but as someone who grew up in an abusive household for whom adulthood offered the only chance at an escape, it's incredibly important to me that i romanticize adulthood whenever possible because i know there are kids and teenagers like me out there who are seeing nothing but complaints about rent and taxes and the loneliness of living on your own and i know they're going to internalize all of that and assume it means that adulthood won't offer them the freedom and safety they've been dreaming of. So while i never want to minimize the difficulties of being an adult, i also want to highlight how incredibly nice it can be to finally have ownership of your life and your body and your time and money and food and everything else in a way that you never had before. You can choose when you wake up! You can choose what you have for breakfast! You can choose when to go to sleep or if you want to (inadvisably) stay up all night watching tv in the living room! In the living room! You can choose what to watch! These are little things, but they are worth taking pleasure in, and they are worth looking forward to.

stitch-n-time

Oh. Man. I'm in my 40s now, but can STILL remember the first apartment I lived in alone. The first week, I had nothing. NOTHING. I slept on the floor wrapped up in curtains, until a friend came to visit and was like "welp. This ain't keepin' on" and gave me a folding bed and a couple of blankets. There were part of it that were just... not fun. You know what I did, though? I made cookies. Because I wanted them, and nobody could keep me from using the kitchen. I got a cat, because nobody could tell me "no". I took long, hot bubble baths because the bathroom - and the bathtub - were MINE and nobody else's. I turned MY music up and danced around MY living room all day (but was aware of the family with children downstairs, so shut down the one person party before it got too late). I bought a cast-off couch for cheap and had friends help me bring it in, and sat on MY couch and sewed. And crocheted. And started to teach myself to knit. The only one there to tell me "no" was the kitten, and she loved playing with the yarn. There were things about it that were exceptionally hard. I was a pregnant single waitress truly struggling to pay bills and put food on the table. But that's not what stuck. What stayed with me, and what was important, was those little things that made being an adult worthwhile.

cwicseolfor

You will get out and you will get free and it still rains, sometimes, but you get to decide whether to stay in or put up your umbrella or just let it pour down your face while you stomp puddles. You get to choose. It's not paradise, but it is, in the end, yours, which is such a relief. And all the things they say about the best of life being free - that's true. You will have happiness of your own making.

dynastylnoire

The best part is no one from your family can get you there. You have a key that locks/unlocks a place you cultivate. And if you visit and your mom etc starts her bullshit, you can just go. Like you can leave and not come back for as long as you want.

There's so much peace and joy and safety in just that alone.

wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva

Man, when I was like 16 I got so sick of being made fun of for being the fat kid that I took an axe down inna woods, chopped down a tree, and started doing log-lifts all the time. I got strong as fuck, but I didn’t lose no weight. I actually got bigger.

Same thing happened when I got into fighting. I got even stronger, and I got *fast*, man, and nimble, like a cat. Still chubby.

Body-building culture is a bunch of crap, my dude. Functional muscle is not necessarily toned or lean. You can be swole as hell and still be heavy. And that’s cool.

Embrace your inner barbarian. And when fatphobic little gym twinks try to body shame you, you should DESTROY THEM with your MIGHTY AXE

littlegreydove

Can comfirm, i am Quite Fat ™ but i still hit my punching bag hard enough last week make it touch the ceiling and broke a finger in the process

systlin

You know, I train with (martial arts) a bunch of dudes, and a few bodybuilders have showed up over the years.

And every damn one of those huge shredded motherfuckers has the endurance of a fucking newborn puppy. Fifteen minutes into warmups and they’re panting for air like like they’re about to die. I’ve sparred them and every one of them telegraphs their moves about two weeks in advance, and are slower than my dead grandpa because their huge useless muscles get in the damn way.

Now. I also work with a couple of guys who are not weightlifters. They do, however, do very physical jobs and are Big Dudes. Picture this sort of build.

No abs to speak of, a bit of a tummy, and those motherfuckers can pick up one of the weightlifters and throw them.

And they’re fast. Like, unfair fast.

Bodybuilding culture is bullshit. Embrace your status as a giant barbarian and if anyone gives you crap throw them off a mountain.

spark1eheartemoji

i love and support all strong, fat people

baggytrousers27

tiktoksthataregood-ish

sapphireclaw

Oh my god Chloe you’re right and you should say it

aspiringwarriorlibrarian

Fun fact: Victor Gruen, the “inventor” of the modern shopping mall, wanted his malls to be full of apartments, schools, medical facilities, and indoor parks in addition to the stores, so people could live, work, and shop under one roof. This never happened and instead all the space was used for stores, something that he hated.

It’s not just a case of ‘hey it would be easy to repurpose all this space’, malls were originally designed to be living centers and it wouldn’t take that much tweaking to bring them back to it.

ohboy-herewegoagain

I want Lil Nas X to do a cover of Santa Baby. He’d make it as suggestive as Eartha Kitt intended

reversetimelord

Step 1: fuck Satan

Step 2: fuck Santa

applecherry108

shit let’s be santa

in-need-of-lotion-deactivated20

never too early for the kringlefucker

applecherry108

did…did you have this queued for an entire year?

variablejabberwocky

merry christmas 1st

rainbowbarnacle

MERRY CHRISTMAS 1ST

kadzhi

one good thing about december on this hellsite is that this gif will be making its rounds again

pouring-midnight-rain

It’s baaackkkkkk :’D

wordfather

some great ideas on how to be a menace to society

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

suggestions for gender neutral version of mom/dad? something less formal than just ‘parent’

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

please note that while progenitor, guardian, spawnpoint etc are all respected titles, they are more the equivalent of mother/father than an affectionate nickname you would scream through the house multiple times a day. gimme something we can use people

whyarehterecomendednamesstupid

I just tried to combine the words and got “dom” and i cant-

tinkering-goblin

but wait, if we reverse ‘dom’ you get ‘mod’. I suggest we use ‘moderator’ as a gender neutral version of mom/dad

madskittens-202-deactivated2026

Admin and op would work makes them sound powerful and in charge of everything

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

Admin (respectful) Op (derogatory)

doggoneloser

i was going to add something else to this but instead i got to thinking and i was like huh. what could you use.

in most languages the word for ‘mother’ usually starts with an M, because phonetically [m] is one of the easiest sounds for a newborn to make when they start babbling, and mothers tend to be the one most around the child. so in my mind that crosses M off the list, because it’s automatically associated with a feminine figure

similarly, ‘father’ tends to start with D, T, P, or B. (phonetically these sounds are very close together; [p, b] and [d, t] are all only different because of being voiced or unvoiced.) these are also phonetically easy letters and ones kids pick up on earlier.

now the hard sounds for kids are the following: [ɹ, d͡ʒ, tʃ, θ, ð] or in normal speak: the English R, the “j” or “dge” sound in “judge,” the “th” sound in “thigh” and the “th” sound in “the.” and we don’t want kids unable to say their parent’s name for years, so those are also off the list.

additionally, it’s easiest for young kids to just repeat the same sound twice rather than figuring out the tongue gymnastics of putting different sounds together, which is why kids will say Ma-Ma or Da-Da and not Ma-Mo or Da-Po. and we’ll want to stick with low back vowels like “ah” and avoid ones like the hard “i” or “ee.”

so what does that leave us? when we want a sound kids can learn easily and early but don’t want to just put a funky spin on “mama” or “dada”?

my suggestions: G, K, W, L. i personally lean towards W and L. they’re called liquids, since they’re the consonants that kind of aren’t consonants, and kids (and ESL learners) will tend to swap out the English R for a W or L until they can learn the R.

if i ever have a child, they’ll start calling me Wawa. then when they get older, they’ll call me Wala, or maybe even Wally.

and then, once they’re finally phonetically developed, they can call me by my true title as their nonbinary guardian for their 18+ years:

Waluigi.

cipheramnesia

far--from-h0me

Okay, but on an actually serious note, Baba is used in several different languages, but the meaning changes between mother, father, or grandparent. However, it is not used in English afaik, so it could be a good English option.

shayvaalski

baba is what I use as a nonbinary parent (it has a long history for butches!) and this post hit me like a two-by-four to the back of the goddamn HEAD

buurenaar

How about Tata, because no matter what, they’re gonna try to latch onto a nipple

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

wait wait wait, do babies try to latch on to the nipples of non-lactating parents too? is this a thing? do babies just automatically zero in on any nipple in the vicinity, regardless of the presence of breasts or breast milk? is this an experience cis men deal with I need to KNOW

UPDATE: based on the notes the answer is a resounding YES!!!

sleepingkarkats

I go by pompa bc I'm enby but with a slight masc lean, and I think it's cute

guerrillatech

reagan-was-a-horrible-president

Yeah, they’re gonna lift the working class right into a company town.

Only rich people would think this was a good idea.

beaniebaneenie

Learn your history, people!

We DID this shit- for DECADES. It was fucking awful. Companies paid people in “scrip” which was only good for use at the Company Store. So effectively, the company got your money coming and going, and they didn’t pay you at all. And the longer it went on, the less likely you were to have savings that could have helped you move away or get a different job.

I’ve already seen one ad trying very sneakily to promote the idea of “AmazonBucks”, including giving them to workers as rewards, or instead of things like healthcare, sick days, and PTO.

Here’s your reminder that scrip is fucking illegal, that company towns are always a shit idea that should stay dead and buried, and that if unions didn’t work? Every big company out there wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to destroy them.

#UnionStrong #SolidarityForever

boykeats

[ID: tweet from The Broletariat @/Scholf_A_Loaf dated Sept. 16, 2021 reading, '“You’re calling in sick? That’s funny, your Alexa house says your temp is normal. We’ll see you at the start of your shift, ok?”'

the tweet includes a link to an opinion article from bloomberg, also dated Sept. 16. the headline reads, "Amazon’s New ‘Factory Towns’ Will Lift the Working Class." the link is accompanied by a picture of an amazon warehouse. /end ID]

link to broletariat's tweet

link to bloomberg article

burrburro-deactivated20240111

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