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APRIL '26 READINGS

My Friend Chooses How and When to Die • prose

A Timeline of Harassment • prose (tw: sexual assault)

#213: Reaching no-plan nirvana • prose

Onomatopoeia Odyssey • website

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London • prose

In Defense of Temporary Obsessions • prose

danger! at the dry goods store • prose

Your Art is a Tool and Beauty is an Emergency • interview transcript

Anti-Intellectualism Has a Hidden Target • prose

There Is Only a God in Grief • prose

Allowing fluidity • prose

3 ways to prove you’re human online • prose

Cozy Comfort • website

Flying in the Sky • prose

The Great AI Art Heist • prose

The hidden cost of letting AI make your life easier • prose

A Puzzle • comic

Men Are Not More Rational. They Are Just More Powerful. • prose

Why Every Major Religion Is Obsessed With Women • prose

How to be at home anywhere • prose

Colin Drohan's "Bear Witness" • poetry, prose

how white fear killed the romantic comedy • prose

Harpooning the Self: “Moby-Dick,” Fatphobia, and the Monomaniacal Pursuit of Control • prose (tw: fatphobia, self-harm, body dysmorphia)

Stick a Clock in Me I’m Pregnant • prose

More Human: On Science Fairs, Artificial Intelligence, and Educational Experiments • prose

Patriarchy Is a Time Thief • prose

discombobulated is the word • prose

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#j.recs

punkrock-bottom

If you stay up late to hang out with friends I don’t think you should have to be tired in the morning. I think it should be a freebie

sabertoothwalrus

aint it crazy how everyone is famous nowadays and yet I dont know who anyone is. there are countless people that will have more followers on instagram than the population of Sacramento and no one I know irl has ever heard of them

alleesaur

the productivity creatures

poopjournalist

Excuse me ma'am you can't go in that elevator it can only hold 2 tablespoons

peppermoths

does anyone want to see a really good picture of my kitty cat

not a cat, first off

snale

I Defeated the Demon Lord but it Turns Out the Demon Army was Largely Unaffected and I Fell Victim to a Flawed Belief in Great Man Theory

leftcosine

I Executed The Demon Lord With One Flawless Strike And After A Brief Power Struggle The New Demon Government Is Substantially More Committed To The War Because Of Some Reason I Don't Know

trollfist

I Successfully Overthrew The Demon Lord And Instituted Demon Democracy But They Voted For A Commie So The CIA Not Some Fantasy Equivalent The Actual CIA Who Have Known About Magic And Alternate Realms The Whole Damn Time But Won't Just Unisekai Me Launched A Counter Coup And That's When Things Really Went To Shit

brazenautomaton

I've seen this post a few times now and, like, seriously

Do you think that believing armies require leaders to function and removing their leadership causes harm to them is "a flawed belief in Great Man theory?"

samueldays

It's hard to know what unit to measure "greatness" with, but I find it helps thought to have at least some idea of a scale where Great Men can be measured in units, and one reframing for that is Value Above Replacement (VAR).

If a time traveler slips birth control to Napoleon's mom, how much worse is the 'average' French general who replaces Napoleon in the timeline? How much earlier does alt-hist-France lose or back down? How much less influential is the Napoleonic Code and accompanying legal reforms?

Or turn it around: are there Incompetent Men, or is everyone between average and helpless in the face of structural forces? If the alternative timeline imperator of France is tactically incompetent or isolationist, do you think the French footsoldiers are nonetheless destined to mutiny so they can subjugate half of Europe in spite of their commander? Surely not.

brazenautomaton

Listen Napoleon's VOR is one thing

But even if Napoleon had zero VOR, killing him in the middle of a military campaign would have a significant negative effect on that campaign and that is the part I'm talking about.

samueldays

Also valid

leviathan-supersystem

typical illiterate response from brazen here (had to reblog from one of his orbiters because brazen has me blocked, as he is a coward)

op never indicated that armies don't need leadership, nor that removing leadership wouldn't have a detrimental effect- however, how severe that detrimental effects would be depends heavily on things like "are there people ready to replace them as leader" and "how long does a power struggle last between prospective replacements"

this is touched on in the thread! "after a brief power struggle the new demon government [etc]." like, all you had to do was read brazen.

chestnutroan

I think the 'Fruit Sniffer' will be big on here

raccooncomic

221. Peanut Butter

sleepytoycollection

figure I started with -> figure I ended with

queenofsquids

love a good before n after

maliciousindungeon

sleepytoycollection

Happy Pride Everyone

starjasmines

symbols have been fun but it's time for truth now.

holy-punks

My favourite translator said that when she was an ambassador for Hungary she took all these Japanese politicians on a tour and she was trying to circumtranslate ‘merry go round’ cause she didn’t know the Japanese word for it by calling it a ‘horse tornado for children’ and they had no blessed idea what she was saying and she finally started running in circles going up and down and they go ‘ohhhhh, in Japan we call those ‘merry-go-rounds’”