Sí nef aearon

I'm Brian, 31, Pittsburgh. I almost never post anything original. Enjoy the curated content.

[hotvampireadjacent]

[theabigailthorn]

THREE WEED SMOKING GIRLFRIENDS, THE MOVIE

[sashimi55]

Human bodies are so weird like the upper half consists of every single vital organ and the lower half is legs

[dambiex]

[doriangraysrockcollection]

i must say, i am a huge fan of when a book is in the middle of a very exciting plot containing many interesting problems when out of nowhere for a few pages it's like, "hey by the way, real quick, here's a detailed explanation of the city's water filtration system! i'm telling you this for a reason and you should worry about it. anyway! haha okay back to the plot" and you just get to be Scared for a while

[doriangraysrockcollection]

i am kissing you on the mouth right now

you are the only person who understands me. you and the person who tagged a series of unfortunate events

[prokopetz]

"It doesn't help your credibility to exaggerate, most employers wouldn't literally work you to death" like, I used to work in distribution. If booking a truck driver for back to back shifts until they fall asleep at the wheel, crash, and die counts as being worked to death, I have personally met employers who've worked employees to death and gotten away with a slap on the wrist. It may not be universal, but it's a hell of a lot more common than a lot of us would prefer to think.

[simplysnaps]

Death by spreadsheet is an acceptable degree of separation for most in middle management. They can sleep at night without guilt for what they've done, because the system charitably setup twelve degrees of separation between their choices and the real-world harm. But do not be fooled, their choices set that harm into motion. Without their reckless disregard for human life, the harm would not be done.

I used to work at a TV station in Ohio. On weekends, we only had an 11pm news broadcast. Not much happened on weekends, ya know? I worked Monday-Friday 9-5, but someone on the weekend shift quit, so I also had to come in at 9pm on Sat/Sun to work the 11pm news. It was brutal. I worked seven days a week, even if two of them were ~3hrs.

This was a particularly bad winter. One Saturday, we had a level 2 snow emergency: That means you should only travel if you absolutely must. Like, it's not uncommon for cops to pull you over in level 2 emergencies to ask where you're going and why. It is genuinely dangerous to drive in that much snow.

I told my boss as much, how I almost crashed on the way home at 12:30am after a news broadcast. I told him I would need to call off if there were a snow emergency again during a night snow.

He told me, point blank, "If you ever call me about the goddamn snow, I will take it as a call of resignation."

And that was that! The very next Saturday, snow fell again. It was a level 2, but would become level 3 by sunup. Level 3 means driving is literally illegal except for ambulances and snow plows. I stared out the window, watching the snow, and I had to make a choice.

"Will I die for this? Will I kill myself to keep this job?" I made $11/hr.

Yes, managers work you to death. That's their job.

[aspiringsorceress]

Every single labor protection is written in the blood of those who were literally worked to death, and business owners and profiteers would claw those protections back with glee if they could. They will squeeze every red cent from your body if they are allowed, and write off your death for an insurance payout that they'll try to pocket for themselves while hiring your replacement for half the pay they gave to you.

[hotvampireadjacent]

[willowrosenberg1997]

[afloweroutofstone]

You should loudly boo every Democrat who attacks Trump’s deal with Iran for being too Iran-friendly. Any deal to end this war is a good deal. I do not care that we are returning the assets we stole from them. Cry about it. If you don’t want to make concessions to a country you consider an adversary, don’t start pointless wars with them and kill schools full of their children

[seat-safety-switch]

There's a wild phenomenon at play inside the minds of every human being on earth. Because we can't understand the complexity of the universe, we sort of brush it all away and keep going. Do you understand how a toilet works? Science has proven that almost nobody does, but we all still feel fine pooping in it. We have a belief that a toilet is a single discrete thing, like one of your friends or coworkers. When something goes wrong, that illusion is broken.

Keeping with the toilet example, it is instructive to go speak to your closest plumber. Chances are that they have been driven mad, or nearly mad, about some obscure corner-case of plumbing that they are forced to interact with constantly. Everyone breaks their toilets in the same way (flushing wipes down it, failing to maintain seals, or perhaps just the regular old "pooping too much.") Because the toilet used to be a discrete thing before being considered to be many complex parts that are now broken, everyone assumes they are the first ones to experience this problem.

Here is where the real issue arises. Only the plumber knows it is her 72nd "pooping too much" situation of the week, and it makes her no longer think of human society as one discrete thing. Why is everyone breaking their toilets all the time? They are in fact not. She is herself vulnerable to this same fallacious course of logic! Again, almost ninety-nine percent of people will not break their toilets this week from overshitting, but the plumber will never visit them. Why would she?

Traumatized, she roams the city, behind the wheel of her slightly battered 2006 Chevy Express long-wheelbase plumbers' van, wondering how many people are sitting on a stack of poop that threatens to destroy all of civilization. Eventually, she rams a police car, and starts screaming about flushable wipes until she is sedated. This happens all the time. What I'm trying to say is, don't break your toilet. Treat it like some kind of mystical gift from another dimension. As soon as you see the inside of that thing, you can pretty much draw a straight line from there to getting tazed.

[enki2]

[thebdelliumlady]

For anyone wondering, the PhD student's name is Myra Cheng.

Here's a link to an article about the study from the Stanford Report: link.

[chapscher]

Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.

Myra Cheng et al. "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence." Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).

[synthetic-ultramarine]

you gotta stop using "ego death" to mean "deciding to stop being egotistical and to instead be more humble." that is not what it means. that means ceasing to experience normal individual consciousness due to a mystical experience and/or very intense psychedelic drugs

[synthetic-ultramarine]

what you meant to say: "In order to practice and learn a new skill you need to be humble enough to accept failure"

what you actually said: "in order to practice and learn a new skill you need to take DMT"

[tamamita]

Feels good

[hesperocyon-lesbian]

I genuinely cannot think of any other occasion in which an imperialist power was forced to pay war reparations to a state that isn’t a fellow imperialist power

[tamamita]

The US american tax dollars will finally come to good use, alhamdulillah

[jamabushi]

[killers-anthem]

when harry's name should be deep gold and orange, like a forest fire looming and smelling of liquor, like a tequila sunset because it's too late and sunrise is long gone, but the longer you spend with kim you see the same fire reflected in his glasses turning them golden, he wears an orange jacket and when you wake up for second time still alive the first thing he says to you is *sunrise* parabellum, sunrise prepare-for-war, because it is not too late and him being there proves it

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

I will regret this and shouldn't make wheels at 2am but

This tumblr sexyman is your son!

Are you proud of him

yes!

somewhat

I shouldn't be but yes

No

NO.

I'm disowning him

I am scared of him

Results

Remaining time: 5 days 9 hours

(sorry if your favourite is not in this poll, I went mostly off the contenders from this year's poll and the classics)

[retroactivebakeries]

the principal aim of lying is to accomplish your goal in as few lies as possible, and with the least amount of effort necessary to keep those lies going. It follows naturally that the world’s greatest liar speaks only the truth.

[crookedbluebirdkingdom]

Books on Libby have started disappearing.

My friend pointed it out first, and then I started noticing too. Why would books that multiple libraries definitely, 100% had digital access to a couple of months/weeks/days ago disappear?

Amazon is getting exclusive rights to them.

Ebooks that the public library once had digital copies of are now only available through Amazon. Audible boasts on their covers about Audible-exclusive audiobooks that did not used to be Audible-exclusive. Entire series and collections are disappearing overnight.

Keep your eyes on the privatization of media and your libraries.

[crookedbluebirdkingdom]

According to this article on The Verge, it's been happening since at least 2021, but if I were to make a guess, Amazon has doubled down recently in response to the boycotts: if there are specific books people want, particularly ones only available digitally available, they now have the monopoly, and you are forced to scab, which often also means remaking your account and breaking your boycott altogether.

Now more than ever, support your local libraries, support authors directly when possible, and support your local used bookstores!

[frankendykes-monster]

In a similar vein to sinophobia going down the drain in real time I'm astounded that nobody, regardless of political affiliation, is actually blaming Iran for the closure of the Straight of Hormuz. Like the most negative sentiment expressed about Iran coming from someone who is not a political official or the bourgeoisie these past few months has been "to be honest, yeah, I get it."