lord have mercy on me @undermarcotics - Tumblr Blog

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vonkarn

happy fat tail good friday

vonkarn

anyway now for suck her dick easter sunday!

othersystems

urbanpineapplefarmer

It is really important to me that all of you learn about Al Bean, astronaut on Apollo 12 and the fourth man to walk on the moon, who after 20 years in the US Navy and 18 years with NASA during which he spent 69 days in space and more than 10 hours doing EVAs on the moon , retired to become a painter.

He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.

Like, look at this stuff????

It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!

Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.

And then there's this one:

The Fantasy

For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.

The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.

But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.

Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.

This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.

"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.

"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.

"We often fantasized about Dick's joining us on the moon but we never found a way. In my paintings, though, I can have it my way. Now, at last, our best friend has come the last sixty miles." - Al Bean, about The Fantasy.

futureevilscientist

There’s also Alexei Leonov, writer and artist and first person to conduct a spacewalk!

This is his art.

sevensmallsphinxes

You can't forget this, the first art made in space.

March 1965, Alexei Leonov made this drawing only moments after narrowly surviving the very first space walk.

altcomics

Jaakko Pallasvuo

makingdonalddrumpfagain

eatingcroutons

Found a source for this one - it was originally posted privately by Emily Parker, software engineer, formerly of the US State Department, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. She confirms she wrote it (and gives permission for people to keep sharing it) in the comments of another post on her Facebook page.

She also recommends checking out this Twitter thread and this blog post by Aakash Gupta for a more in-depth analysis, as her original comments were only meant to be some general thoughts she shared with her friends.

The comments on the Facebook post linked above also include one of the most hilariously obvious examples of sea-lioning I've ever seen, which Parker gives absolutely zero ground to, if anyone wants a good laugh at a troll utterly failing to get their way

the-evil-twin

Dirty Pair (1985 anime) S1:E7 - “Love is Everything. Risk Your Life to Elope!!” (Watch the clip here)

This mid-80′s anime really said trans rights 🏳️‍⚧️

And interestingly enough, Joanca was voiced by Masako Katsuki, who would go on to voice another groundbreaking LGBTQ+ character nearly a decade later… Michiru Kaioh/Sailor Neptune!

starkeaton

headspace-hotel

I'm trying to write a post about tick safety and avoiding tick bites, but a lot of the info on websites is like "Avoid going in the woods, in plants, and where there are wild animals" and "Activities like hiking and gardening can put you at risk" and I'm like thanks! This is worthless!

As ticks and tick borne illnesses are expanding their range, I think it's important for people to be educated about these things, and I think it's especially important to give people actual advice on how to protect themselves instead of telling them to just...avoid the natural world

Rough draft version of Tick Advice:

Ticks don't jump down on you from trees, they get on you when you brush against grass, brush, bushes etc.

Ticks get brought to an area when they get done feeding from an animal and fall off them. In the USA, the main tick-bringing animal is deer, but I've seen plenty ticks on feral cats and songbirds.

Ticks get killed when they dry out so drier areas with more sunlight are less favorable to ticks.

The above is useful for figuring out whether an area is likely to have lots of ticks, and how vigilant you have to be in that area.

Wear light-colored, long pants outside. Tuck your pants into your socks, and tuck your shirt into the waist of your pants. Invest in light, breathable fabrics idc

IMMEDIATELY change out of your outside clothes when you come back from a tick-prone area, wash them, and dry them on high heat to kill any ticks that might be stuck on.

Shower and check yourself for ticks after coming inside. Hair, armpits, and nether regions in particular. You can use a handheld mirror or rely on touch; an attached tick will feel like a bump kinda like a scab

While you're outside, you can just periodically check for ticks by running your hands down your legs and checking visually to see if anything is crawling on your clothes. Light colors make them easy to spot, and they don't move fast.

Combing through each others' hair to check for creepy crawly critters is a time-honored primate ritual and is not weird. When hiking, bring a friend who will have your back when you feel something on your neck and need to know if it's sweat or a tick

If you're careful, you can usually catch ticks before they bite you, but if one does bite you, it's not the end of the world. Since tickborne diseases are different regionally i suspect this advice will differ based on where you are, but the important thing is remove the tick with tweezers (DON'T use butter, a lit match, or anything that kills the tick while it's still attached, please) and contact a doctor to see what to watch for. Most illnesses you can catch from ticks are easily treatable if you recognize them when symptoms first appear

mackdaddyofthecravate

Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol

sazandorable

a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:

NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.

Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.

YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.

DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.

SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.

YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.

As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.

(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)

shatterpath

bring the healthy fun back to fandom!

greenteaandtattoos

If ever a time comes when I don’t reblog this when it appears on my dash, assume I’m dead

secondlina

He’s the SWORD GUARDIAN, GUARDIAN of the INVENTORY.

Read more Crow Time here.

theinturnetexplorer

laser-free diet.

floatingwithobrien

y'all need to hear about gerb.

gerb was my high school physics teacher. (gerb is short for mr. gerber.) when we were learning about radiation and whatnot, and we touched on radiation poisoning, gerb decided to tell us a story.

when gerb was in high school, he worked in a supermarket. a cashier. there was this one little old lady, mrs. cassopolis, who was a regular. mrs. cassopolis firmly believed that the lasers used to scan her food items would give her radiation poisoning. they tried to explain that’s not a thing. but old cass wouldn’t hear a word of it.

the employees had to punch in every. last. grocery. item. MANUALLY.

and this woman would buy cartfulls of food every week, like any good grandma trying to feed her five children and eighteen grandchildren every time they come for a Sunday visit. so pretty soon, the employees figured out a strategy to get her on her way and get on with their lives.

one or more employees would distract old cass while the cashier would scan all the items he could as fast as humanly possible while she wasn’t paying attention.

now this supermarket had a rewards program for its most efficient workers. the computer would track how quickly the cashiers scanned items, and how many total they scanned in one day, that kind of thing. so one day, gerb’s boss came to him and said “uh,”

“you scanned three hundred items in six minutes last Tuesday during your shift” and gerb says “i recall” “that’s about four times faster than anything i’ve ever seen” and gerb says “yea ok” “jeremy what happened?”

and gerb says

“i had to save a little old woman from placebo radiation”

thechekhov

if you think about it, every time we tranquilize animals to transport them safely to another place, we are the sleep paralysis demon

maxbytes

imagine being an animal without a tail i'd be livid

maxbytes

wait

skaldish

To my international friends: If you ever wonder why Americans are the way they are, just remember that 1/3rd of all US citizens are in a cult that teaches them to suppress the activity of their prefrontal cortex, particularly when it comes to doubt, critical thinking, and differentiating emotional responses from personal values.

skaldish

1/3rd of Americans are Evangelical, and Evangelical Protestantism is a cult. We just don’t think of it as one because it’s so normalized. However, it follows the B.I.T.E. model of cult dynamics.

Evangelism teaches its followers to always maintain states of bliss and ecstasy for Jesus. What this does is condition the brain to always operate out of less-evolved parts; areas that are responsible for more primal emotions like euphoria, anger, and fear. Because of how we’ve evolved to survive, the brain will actually shut down our higher functioning—including critical thinking skills—in favor of these primal emotions, when they’re active.

Always feeling bliss = never questioning or feeling doubt. Evangelicals may actually fear the thoughts that do originate from their higher brain-parts because they think it’s the devil tempting them away from their religion. They’ll engage in self-indoctrination techniques to make this stop.

This creates a cognitive dissonance so great that many Americans have no separation between how they feel and what they believe. This is really bad because their minds have literally no defense against undue influence. They’ll vote for the dude who hyped them up enough. They’ll buy into the conspiracy theory that excites them the most. They’ll side with whatever gets the best reaction out of them, and getting a rise out of people is super easy to do.

Things like financial insecurity and low employment make this worse, too.

skaldish

And just to be clear, this kind of conditioning can happen to anyone, regardless of their intellectual capacity.

Cult conditioning has nothing to do with how smart or dumb people are. You can condition literally any brain with the right time and environment.

Counteracting undue influence is a skill, and like any skill, it needs to be taught.

derinthescarletpescatarian

Cult experts frequently point out that the smarter people are, the more susceptible they are to this once the initial hooks are in, and the harder they are to deprogram. This is because while this kind of conditioning does not rely on intelligence, the ability to rationalise does -- the smarter someone is, the better they can rationalise what they already believe, so if they’re committed to following their feelings, a smart person is much better at making it seem (to themselves as well as others) that they’re actually using logic and reason rather than making ad-hoc justifications after the fact.

Also, people who know (or believe) that they’re smarter than average tend to assume that this makes them harder to fool, conditon, or lie to. Which makes somebody much easier to fool, condition, or lie to.

faint-petrichor-deactivated2026

So I am from the US but now live in Argentina, and as The American(tm) I often get reasonably asked the question, "Why are Americans, you know, like that?"

The best and most immediate answer I could come up with, and the one I've stuck to, is telling people that America is a country defined by being a haven for cults and religious extremists since its inception. And people are always like "god that makes so much sense."

But you know, the wildest thing is if I tried to tell any given American this (which I have) chances are they'd be like, "No way, that's absurd." And I think the thing is, if you're an American and have lived most or all of your life in America, this is just your normal. But when you live somewhere that is less saturated with religious dogma, cults and anti-intellectualism, it's readily apparent.