Verliese Art

26-year-old artist and occasional writer. She/her Instagram & Bluesky: @verliese

[neosilverthorn]

So. For those of you who didn't pay attention to the details of the legal spat between Krafton and Unknown Worlds, allow me to give you some details of the finest legal comedy of a generation.

Krafton CEO looks at the hype surrounding Subnautica 2, goes over the contract between Krafton and Unknown Worlds, realizes he'll have to pay out bonuses and freaks out because shelling out those bonuses will make him look like a pushover.

CEO goes to his legal department, asks them to come up with a plan to weasel out of paying bonuses. Legal tells him the contract is iron-clad and to accept the loss.

CEO refuses to take the loss, asks ChatGPT for a plan. ChatGPT says the exact same thing the legal department did.

CEO demands a plan from ChatGPT, which dutifully spits out a plan at this point because clearly the CEO is a goddamn idiot.

CEO deletes the chat logs, failing to understand that 'delete' doesn't permanently remove things.

CEO follows plan, and is surprised when Unknown Worlds sues for breach of contract despite being told by both humans and an LLM that is exactly what would happen.

Court does not go well for Krafton's legal department. It comes out that after ignoring the sound legal advice of human beings, the CEO went to ChatGPT and asked for a plan. When asked for the logs by the court, Krafton's legal team states they were deleted, thus that it's simply herersay. Judge goes "Oh, that's okay, we'll have our IT folks recover them." Krafton's legal team is astounded that's even possible.

The chat logs are recovered. It comes out that even ChatGPT was in agreement with Krafton's legal department, and only spat out a plan after being asked a second time.

The judge, now thoroughly done with the stupidity of Krafton's CEO at this point, rules in favor of Unknown Worlds. Her ruling doesn't simply undo the scheme, but effectively leaves all control over Subnautica 2's development in the hands of Unknown Worlds, including the early access release date, reducing Krafton to just publishing out of contractual obligation. Krafton must also return all social media platforms for Unknown Worlds and Subnautica 2 to Unknown Worlds' control. Financial damages will be determined at a later date.

Krafton proceeds to violate the court order in less than 72 hours by trying to set an early access release date before returning Unknown Worlds' social media platforms.

Summary: In trying not to look like a pushover, Krafton's CEO now looks like a complete idiot who's going to have to fork over bonuses, plus court-mandated damages, plus whatever comes out of violating the court's orders. Krafton's legal department may as well come to court dressed as clowns after this. I suspect Unknown Worlds might buy the rights to Subnautica back after all this and either relegate Krafton to just publishing or find a different publisher for future games altogether.

[captain-price-returns]

[sea-salted-wolverine]

Hey. Heyhey. Do me a favor real quick.

If you don't already know you have issues doing so, squat down real quick. Bend your knees all the way and touch the floor. Just make sure you can do it. Okay? For me? And then stand up all the way and make sure you can balance on one foot.

Like. You don't need to blow it into some huge thing. Just. Make sure all your bits and peices still work the way you think they do.

[sea-salted-wolverine]

Can you turn your head to look behind you without twisting your shoulders? What about standing on your toes? If you sit down on the floor can you get back up without using your hands?

If there was ever a tumblr post worth sending to your mom, it's this one.

Just saying, bodies are a use it or lose it kinda thing.

[sea-salted-wolverine]

okay so every time I see this post crop back up in queues and notifications I end up thinking about it. Because I made the post and even I'm still doing the thing where I read the post about maintaining range of motion in my delicate meatsuit and I nod and hmm and think yeah that's a good idea and then dont move from where I'm curled up shrimp style staring at the nightmare rectangle.

So like. Thinking real hard about moving doesn't count as moving. Major bummer. Anyways. Joints.

[muffinlance]

If your answer to any of those was "no", I cannot emphasize enough that this isn't just "bummer, guess it's gone forever". You can get that mobility back, it is actually very achievable with the right modifications for your level!

This is the very simple "starting from zero muscles" program I followed, highly recommend it or something similar:

Hybrid Programs | Start Your Fitness Journey Today — Hybrid Calisthenics

Explore our hybrid calisthenics programs to build strength, muscle, and help lose fat with adaptable routines for all fitness levels. Achiev

@hybridcalisthenics

[mawofthemagnetar]

What do you mean “chat” is now referring to ChatGPT and not twitch chat? What? What? What the fuck? No?

When I address chat I am speaking to a presumed Greek chorus of real human people shitposting on their lunch break, not a machine that devours lakes to covert electricity into slop.

[batsandboba]

“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know

[chekhovsglock]

it's scary the amount of people who wholeheartedly believe that men and women are fundamentally different creatures

[manicpixiedckgirl]

[theaudientvoid]

There are multiple chapters that are set in hospitals where the characters are attempting to recover from injuries that never fully heal. I must once again stress that my experience in WWI was perfectly normal.

[aro-ace-from-outer-space22]

There is a giant horrible mudplain full of unrecoverable and perfectly preserved dead bodies that the characters have to walk through in a land where the air is poisoned gas, and on a compLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: WWI WAS TOTALLY FINE AND NORMAL!!

[kingercainedaddyissues]

Uh??? Tolkien did not claim that???

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead."

He talked about how WWI affected his writing all the time, he was not in denial for how it affected??? Am I missing something????

[alexseanchai]

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2017/09/tolkien-as-war-novelist-another-way-of-dealing-with-trauma-through-writing/

what Tolkien was adamant about, which has been confusing people for several decades now, is that he wasn't writing about World War Two

[beatrice-otter]

He was also very clear that he was not writing allegory. Now, some people are not very clear on what allegory means. "Allegory" and "symbols" are not the same thing. Allegory is a type of symbolism, but there are a lot of ways of doing symbolism that aren't allegory ... and a lot of people are kind of fuzzy on that. The way allegory is most commonly used in literary and religious analysis is that there is a direct, almost 1:1 correspondence between the literary figure and what it is standing in for.

So, for example, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of Christian salvation. It's sort of a novel? There are characters who do stuff? but also they are very one-dimensional. The main character is a guy named Christian--yes, really!--who is journeying from his hometown ("the city of destruction") to the Celestial City (heaven). There is not much subtlety to it. It is pretty much what it is. There is no slippage, no playing around with the theme, no places where the symbolism is ambiguous. John Bunyan, the author, is hitting you over the head every step of the way with the Meaning That You Are Supposed To Be Getting From The Story.

Not all allegories are that crude or simplistic; the Narnia books are also allegory for Christianity. They have a lot more subtlety to them and a lot more nuance, and there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't allegorical, but on the crucial matters there is still a 1:1 correspondence. Aslan is Jesus. He's not like Jesus, he's not a character that has some similarities to Jesus or takes themes from the stories of Jesus, he is Jesus.

Tolkien is not doing allegory. Tolkien is taking the material of his life--his faith, his experiences in WWI, his linguistic and historical knowledge, his favorite books--and using them as the building blocks of his story. The themes and imagery and symbols draw heavily from all of that, the characters and settings draw heavily from all of that, but they are too complex to be allegorical. There's a lot of symbolism! It's not allegory.

So, for example, let's take the Dead Marshes referenced above. Does the experience of walking through this muddy wasteland with corpses all around that are rotting but still look like people draw from Tolkien's WWI battlefield experience of dead bodies in the trenches? Of course it does! but there are also a lot of differences. These dead are not from the current war, they are from a previous one--they are a reminder of old conflicts, of the ways the systems and powers of the current war have not come out of nowhere, there is history here. There is meaning that is not drawn from the Somme. And they are also drawing from literary references Tolkien was familiar with--primarily William Morris. Modern readers don't get the references because we have generally not read The House of the Wolflings, but that doesn't mean that the references aren't there.

So people read Tolkien's insistence that he didn't write allegory, and take that to mean that he's saying there isn't symbolic and thematic references. And that isn't what he meant! And also, we focus so much on the thematic references to WWI and Christianity, and we miss most of the other references, which makes it seem like Tolkien's only drawing on WWI, when he's actually doing something more complex.

[supertaliart]

Happy May the Fourth! I added a second page to this comic from last year!

[jeansbookshelf-deactivated20250]

I got 60 out of 1000 😂

1000 Books You May Have Actually Read

Based on the number of ratings each book has on Goodreads. And if you haven't read them, maybe you can use for a literature bucket list.

[tinyasafirefly]

Anyone who says they’ve read all 1000 is a liar because one of them is a huge cookbook and no one is actively joy reading that.

[mbrainspaz]

with some of these it’s like “fuck, I did read that,” and with some it’s like “Oh fuck, I did read that.”

I got 99, but I counted a few that I had only mostly-read before deciding I didn’t like them and never finishing them.

[awwnutbunnies]

66, but it’s a weird collection of Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, assorted Manga, and the slightest smattering of Machiavelli.

Do not read into this.

[jeza-red]

“no one is joy reading a cook book” girl I was joy reading boxes of washing powder as a kid, cookbooks were a delight!

[verliese]

This list reminded me of all the unread books I have on my shelf 😅

[saphrodoe]

thank u for the fem kiliel love (and love in general)… here’s them in modern au bc I couldn’t get them out of my head

[nudityandnerdery]

I saw this post on Facebook today, and was gonna make a joke about how he's so good in the lab because, when it comes to experiment samples, he knows you gotta keep 'em separated.

But I happened to search the lyric online really quick, and found this:

AMAZING. It's actually where the line came from! Bravo, sir.

Keep 'em separated

Dexter Holland, the lead singer of the punk-rock band The Offspring, has a lot of different interests. One of them is biology.

[vaspider]

So i jumped out of bed to go tell my wife this (bc she woke up, she has a tendency to wake up around 2 am bc we're different brands of weirdo) & she said, "Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. He also flies their tour plane a lot of the time bc he just really likes flying." Apparently, he holds CFI, CFII, & ATP certifications, so he's not just a pilot. He's rated as an instructor. And he owns a hot sauce brand, bc why not?

[what-even-is-thiss]

Once in a while I dip into like fashion and fashion history YouTube and the things they talk about as if they’re common problems is insane, frankly.

I saw someone was doing a “challenge” to not buy any new clothes for 40 days.

I have bought like three shirts in the past year and all of those were because I got gift cards from my family who noticed that I keep my shirts for so long that they’re falling apart.

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[chaifootsteps]

#Please little bird

[meriwetherwrites]

I love that the modern-day tumblr post equivalent of chain emails only requires me to reblog a relatively pleasant image instead of forward an email to a bunch of my friends and family members to quell my raging anxiety.

[nightguardmod]

It’s a win win. I get a bit of hope, you get a cute birb photo

[autistobrat]

this too shall pass but the fuck was that for

[cocklessboy]

The other day I told a friend of mine that I never forget to take my ADHD meds because I fucking love my ADHD meds. I'm in my late 30s, I didn't finally get a diagnosis and meds until less than two years ago, and they have changed my entire life.

And he raised his eyebrow at me. We'd been discussing addictive medications a few minutes before, like the Tramadol I finally got from the pain specialist to take once a week or so to give me a break from my chronic pain, so I reassured him that methylpenidate (Ritalin/Concerta) is not addictive (at least not in people with ADHD).

His response? To raise his eyebrow even harder and say "Well it sure SOUNDS like it's addictive!"

And I had to explain to this man - who works in a healthcare related job by the way - that just because medication makes you feel good and helps you, just because you look forward to taking it, that doesn't make it addictive or dangerous. And he wasn't convinced.

The simple fact that I was excited to take a daily pill that has literally changed my life, after decades of fighting to get that medication, made him think I shouldn't be taking it so often. That it must inherently be dangerous.

I'm not even in America, but I'm pretty sure this attitude began there and then spread over here to Europe. This Puritan idea of "if something feels good, you must beware of it. Pleasure is dangerous, it is sinful, it is addiction, it is evil."

I know too many people who subconsciously believe that pleasure = addictive = dangerous = bad. Joy is a slippery slope to hell.

So here is your reminder for today that you don't need to be afraid of feeling good. If something improves your life, use it. Even if it is addictive - learn what that addiction means, whether the addiction is inherently dangerous or not, and whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and risks.

My ADHD meds are, in fact, not addictive. But I will take them every day because they make my life orders of magnitude easier. I will enjoy them every time I take them.

My tramadol is addictive. I will still take it. I will keep it on a schedule to avoid becoming addicted, primarily because addiction in this case would mean reduced effectiveness. But I am not afraid of my painkillers. They are life changing.

Take your meds, everyone. Don't let anyone scare you away from doing something that improves your life.

[inbabylontheywept]

There is something so sinister about the idea that a medication made to improve your life cannot be trusted if it improves your life so much that you like taking it. Bleh.

[inbabylontheywept]

It puts this weird moral obligation on suffering. Like if you’re actually comfortable with yourself and your treatment you’re somehow failing. That you need to be ashamed somehow that the medication helps you and need to be looking for alternatives.

But you don’t. You found a solution that worked great and then you moved on to something else.

[saphrodoe]

2 girls smokin old toby

[abigailspinach]

[dduane]

Exactly this. 😏

[drgrlfriend]

Especially like this analogy because you know he's mowing down ACTUAL runners on his way to the finish line in his SUV.

[verliese]

I've been unfollowing everyone who shares images or videos of the new Avatar movie leak, as well as anyone who happily admits to having seen it.

Y'all can't even support artists who make art that you claim to be a fan of. FFS.