It's all geek to me

Wife and mom. Teacher. Star Wars/Game of Thrones/Doctor Who fan. Diehard lover of the Presocratics.

[animentality]

[penpaladinjules]

“Commander Arcturus reporting back from Earth, sir.”

“Yes, Commander? Do you recommend initiating contact with them?”

“To be honest, I am torn on the issue.”

“Do explain.”

“As you know, they are mortal flesh containing a consciousness. But sir … their consciousnesses don’t pass on to a different flesh when the flesh dies.”

“Mmm, they return to one great consciousness, do they?”

“Nnnnnno, sir. There is no one great consciousness. They just *die*. They’re just gone.”

“BUH — WHA — well that’s preposterous, where do they get the new consciousness from?”

“They make a new one. A brand new one. Every time a new human is conceived, they build a new consciousness, and every time a human dies, that consciousness is gone forever. … … … Sir?”

“How do they have any kind of body of knowledge, then? … … … Well that seems incredibly inefficient, it would take years for one of them to learn enough to be able to do anything! But if you say this is how they do it … My stars, man, that means they would be *aware* that they had an expiration date! It means they would know the *new consciousnesses they made* would inevitably die!”

“Yes sir. Mortality weighs heavily upon them.”

“To think such a time-limited species could become intelligent and not any of the normal ones on this planet.”

“Ummmmm. All life on that planet is the same way.”

“… … … I am tempted to simply mark it down as the saddest goddamn thing in the entire universe and move on.”

“Thank you, sir, yes, I agree.”

“Why the thank you?”

“Frankly, I don’t think I could stand to go back. I … made a friend, you see.”

[loonvann]

[wilwheaton]

this is america

Never forget and never forgive the people who did this to us. When this is all over, when he is dead and gone, we must hold every one of these terrorist thugs accountable.

[ultrafacts]

[robertreich]

Masked government agents are killing people in the streets, abducting people from their homes in the middle of the night, and arresting those who speak out. If this were happening in another country, what would you call it? [Cartoon by Mike Luckovich]

[wisconsingrrl]

[dangerously-underrated]

I don't do politics but the fact that Andor doesn't win every award when it's so topical amazes me. There is a man out there about to go after Greenland because he wants what's in the ground!! How much more on point does it have to be?

[dandanmeimei]

Andor is a prequel nobody asked for to a prequel nobody asked for and yet it's the best star wars since the legendary original trilogy because fundamentally it is an exploration of what the personal costs of being a revolutionary are. As Luthen points out in season 1, it means sacrificing everything, including you life, for a better world that you will never live to see. And the show makes you sit with just how terrible yet necessary that is.

[monkleya]

andor: the game

a look into some cassian gameplay

this concept has been rattling around in my head for a day and a half now. (be sure to look real close at that last one...)

[jlynnelse]

If only the truth WAS fiction...

I don't mean to be political, and I'm sorry that I'm being political right now. You see, I live in Minnesota. Yesterday, ICE agents fatally shot a woman as she drove away from an ICE officer forcibly trying to get in her car. The actions of the ICE officers are plain on the video, but I will not argue with you on intention or fault. What makes humanity beautiful is our wonderful minds. I respect your opinions, and I hope you'll respect mine. Bear with me a bit longer if you will.

This incident is one of many recent events that brings to mind the 2nd season of "Andor." This is a Star Wars series about the rise of the Rebellion against the tyranny of the evil Emperor.

When the first Star Wars premiered in 1977, the movie's political struggles and destruction of rebellious worlds seemed so far removed from our world. They were set in a place far, far away (long ago) after all. Forty-eight years later, the fight continues. This is where "Andor" comes in.

The writers of "Andor" very poignantly provided a speech for Mon Mothma as she tries to persuade the senate to speak up against the blatant evil happening in their universe. Re-reading this speech, I felt the weight of these words. Perhaps when you read the words below, you will be equally touched.

I bring this up not just because of the injustice and lies being spoken today. I write about this topic to encourage you to be kind. Kindness matters, especially right now. Help your fellow neighbors. Join hands with your community. Lend someone a help up if they've fallen down. We all stumble from time to time.

I hope we can remember not the tragedy as much as the moments we stood proudly to spread kindness and acceptance.

If only this whole affair was fiction. If it was, though, would we believe it? That's hard to say.

[notbecauseofvictories]

A customer contacted our team with questions, and then finished their email with: "I am daunted by the complexities and unknowns." I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

[cameoappearance]

Reblog if you are daunted by the complexities and unknowns

[un-monstre]

Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.

[un-monstre]

I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.

[jimmythejiver]

Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:

[writerlyn]

The idea of “but everyone knows that” needs to stop.

I saw a post about someone chiding Millennials for not knowing about JKRowlings transphobia, and asking how it is at all possible that people can exist in the world and the internet and, you know, not know.

Which I mean, I get. It is so present in so many of my online spaces that it seems astounding that someone could simply be ignorant! It feels impossible!

But let me tell you a story:

I went on a girls trip with a bunch of friends. All of us are rather incredibly liberal and all of us are incredibly online.

One girl would not stop talking about Harry Potter.

At one point, another girl asked her why she was ok with supporting it, and she had no real clue that JK Rowling was at all transphobic. She had heard that she likes to support Lesbian causes and thought “oh ok cool!” And that was it. She was AGOG with the news and rather horrified.

I must once again emphasize that she was an incredibly online person. She’s a foodie and a restaurant blogger.

Later in the trip we were picking restaurants and I suggested one I found on Google, and she gasped at me. Actually gasped, asking how I could ever be okay picking that one.

The shock must’ve been on my face, because she then told me all of the shitty things that restaurateur does. He abuses staff. Underpays them. Fires them on a whim. Is known for being one of the worst people to his employees in the entire restaurant business on this coast.

And she was so shocked I had never heard of this. Because in her mind, I was just as online as her. And in her online world, EVERYONE knew about this guy.

So I think the moral of this story is: always approach the other person with some empathy. Even online people, even people you think MUST know about how bad people are, may not have heard. It may truly be just them being on a different sphere of the internet than you.

So be gentle, be kind when letting people know they might not have heard about the cancellation of XYZ person. Don’t assume that everyone knows all the same info as you.

By all means, let them know so they can make informed decisions, but being kind will go a lot further than attacking them for some info they might not know yet.

[saywhat-politics]

it’s probably worth noting that for all of the right-wing narrative around Minneapolis being unsafe, there has only been *one* homicide in the city so far this year.

it happened today and was committed by a masked ICE agent

[prokopetz]

That thing about how cats think humans are big kittens is a myth, y’know.

It’s basically born of false assumptions; folks were trying to explain how a naturally solitary animal could form such complex social bonds with humans, and the explanation they settled on is “it’s a displaced parent/child bond”.

The trouble is, cats aren’t naturally solitary. We just assumed they were based on observations of European wildcats - but housecats aren’t descended from European wildcats. They’re descended from African wildcats, which are known to hunt in bonded pairs and family groupings, and that social tendency is even stronger in their domesticated relatives. The natural social unit of the housecat is a colony: a loose affiliation of cats centred around a shared territory held by alliance of dominant females, who raise all of the colony’s kittens communally.

It’s often remarked that dogs understand that humans are different, while cats just think humans are big, clumsy cats, and that’s totally true - but they regard us as adult colonymates, not as kittens, and all of their social behaviour toward us makes a lot more sense through that lens.

They like to cuddle because communal grooming is how cats bond with colonymates - it establishes a shared scent-identity for the colony and helps clean spots that they can’t easily reach on their own.

They bring us dead animals because cats transport surplus kills back to the colony’s shared territory for consumption by pregnant, nursing, or sick colonymates who can’t easily hunt on their own. Indeed, that’s why they kill so much more than they individually need - it’s not for fun, but to generate enough surplus kills to sustain the colony’s non-hunting members.

They’re okay with us messing with their kittens because communal parenting is the norm in a colony setting, and us being colonymates in their minds automatically makes us co-parents.

It’s even why many cats are so much more tolerant toward very small children, as long as those children are related to one of their regular humans: they can tell the difference between human adults and human “kittens”, and your kittens are their kittens.

Basically, you’re going to have a much easier time getting a handle on why your cat does why your cat does if you remember that the natural mode of social organisation for cats is not as isolated solitary hunters, but as a big communal catpile - and for that purpose, you count as a cat.

[marlynnofmany]

This all makes me very happy to know.

[cartoonpolitics]

(cartoon Mike Luckovich)