Month: September 2017

The Evidence:

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

fledgling-witch:

the-macra:

local-shop:

fledgling-witch:

  • The Magic School Bus can time travel
  • When asked, Ms. Frizzle denies that she “knows everything”
  • However, Ms. Frizzle always knows what her students are up to, knows the answer to every question they ask her, and never shows fear even when in extreme mortal peril, as if she’s experienced this all before
  • Although we know she was in a rock band called the Frizzlettes and was a Shakespearean actress, Ms. Frizzle’s childhood remains mysterious
  • Ms. Frizzle is EXACTLY the sort of person to travel back in time to teach herself, and is in fact the most likely fictional character to do so
  • Nobody is ever named “Valerie Frizzle” at birth
  • Ms. Frizzle dresses queerly and laughs at her own bad jokes
  • A lot of the series is about Arnold learning to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy – that phrase is more or less targeted at him as a student
  • Ms. Frizzle looks a lot like a grown-up Arnold

Holy shit???????

She literally has a giant storeroom full of barrels of pickles because she loves pickles so much what more evidence do you need

tumblr_inline_ovqgjjtfmn1tyr6dl_540
tumblr_inline_ovqgjre1fe1tyr6dl_540

Tags:

#… #interesting #Magic School Bus #(I had to google the pickle thing) #(apparently spironolactone causes salt cravings and this often manifests in pickle form)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

kaylapocalypse:

wunkolo:

I had a dream I was able to time travel and I went like 10, 20, 100, 1000, 2000 years into the future but the instant I went to 4,000 I got stuck in a time dilation jail set up by the American government in the year 3,877 in which anyone that tried to time travel back or forth across May 23, 3877 while on Earth would end up stuck in this time dilation chamber trap to stop time travelers but like it was so crazy and mismanaged because it was legit capturing like every single time traveler ever and the place had only been open for 12 minutes and was already getting overpopulated with nonstop multiple recursive instances of this one other guy trying to break previous versions of himself out of this god damn time traveler jail

that is fucking hysterical and absolutely sounds like something the American Government would set up. 

Tags:

#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #story ideas I will never write #time travel #home of the brave

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

Speaking of which:

During the less thought-requiring parts of my job (sweeping and such), I keep thinking about that Suffering vs Oblivion post. Specifically, the bit where a large fraction of respondents say they would rather die than spend every waking moment of the rest of their life working in fast food.

When I first read that post, I’d never worked in fast food. I *suspected* that given only those two options I’d rather live, certainly a strong enough suspicion to give it a shot, but without more experience I couldn’t be sure.

Now, about a month in, I’m more confident that I’d rather live. My time spent at work has been positive utility: not *ideal*, sure, but all else equal I wouldn’t replace it with unconsciousness. Not even close. And most of the negative bits are the times I’m not sure what exactly I ought to be doing, which get less frequent the more experience with the job I have (and I expect this decreasing-frequency trend to continue).

Tags:

#although to be fair I’ve had pretty decent co-workers so far #and I work in a small* Canadian* town #(*+1 modifier to customer niceness) #so thus far the interpersonal aspect has been pretty much a non-issue #*knocks on wood* #in which Brin has a job #(a better paying job than the last one) #(and with more hours) #(though I might try transcription again at some point if I find the time) #(last I checked there was hardly ever anything but I think that might be from people using it as a summer job) #(note to any relevantly magical entities or somesuch: this post does not in itself constitute permission to sentence me to spend the rest of #my waking time working in fast food) #(whether I’d want to do that depends on what the other options are) #(it’s significantly better than death but not as good as the life I have now) #death tw #oh look an original post #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

(This is a complete tangent on a post that’s already long, so I think I’ll split it off.)

You know, while I *had* considered the possibility that my and Dad’s differing baseline approaches to household finances was a generational thing, I’d figured it was because he’s from one of the few patches of space-time where single-breadwinner middle-class households were feasible, common, expected, and he still aims for this no-longer-practical goal. I’d never thought of it in terms of differing conceptions of the *apocalypse*, and yet it fits.

For him (part of what the post calls “Generation Jones”), the central example of an apocalypse is total nuclear war. Quick, sudden, binary, inescapable. Either humanity goes abruptly extinct or it continues on as before, and there is not a damn thing you can do about it either way (unless you are (or can become) one of the few people with power over it).

For me, the central example of an apocalypse is global warming. Long, slow, gradual, mitigate-able. The world has been ending for a hundred years, and it will keep ending for a hundred more. Humanity is unlikely to go *entirely* extinct even in the worst cases, and there are many possible cases other than the worst ones. There are many opportunities (most tiny, some larger; large ones mostly only available to the powerful, but everyone has at least *some* opportunities) to make the apocalypse be just a little milder, or work just a little slower.

The goal is something a bit like longevity escape-velocity. You’re never safe from destruction, not truly. You’re only ever buying time. But you can use the time you buy to buy yourself *more* time, and so on, and with some luck and a lot of diligence, you might never get around to dying. You might even live long enough for the powerful to come up with a way to truly fix things, but even if that doesn’t happen, you can still survive, though with death always nipping at your heels.

As above, so below.

Tags:

#I say this having earlier today done a [s]three-hour[/s] 3.5-hour shift at a fast-food place #(it was going to be three hours but we were busy so I stayed late) #thereby obtaining enough income (money and free food) to cover ~3.4% of the total weekly expenses of my household #(probably more actually) #(that percentage is based on 2016 average expenses) #(and we’ve been gradually getting better at frugality over time) #(likely enough to be a bigger factor than inflation) #I was raised with an every-bit-counts mindset towards saving the world and I approach saving my family the same way #oh look an original post #death tw #scrupulosity tw #I feel like this probably deserves some additional warning tag but I’m not sure what #apocalypse cw? #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism

{{next post in sequence}}