{{Title link: https://reason.com/archives/2016/11/28/the-secret-dangerous-world-of }}
In a country where cash has lost much of its value, and food and other necessities are dangerously scarce, bitcoins are providing many Venezuelans with a lifeline. The same socialist economics that caused the country’s meltdown has made the energy-intensive process of bitcoin mining wildly profitable—but also dangerous.
Tags:
#interesting #Venezuela #bitcoin
I feel like the proportion of my dash that deals with your dick is ….considerably larger than I would have anticipated
rather like your dick I suppose@cymae-mesa
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #nsfw text
fun game for tag talkers: rb this and tag it with everything that comes up when you type ‘i miss’
Tags:
#I have not have Thin Mint ice cream in nine years and I miss it dearly #Mom’s been watching a lot of Cutthroat Kitchen lately and I miss friendly!Alton #tag games
The “horror nerd has valuable skills” trope is quite a respected tradition in film by now. Often, this is subverted by the fact that the nerd is still useless (Scream), sometimes it’s played straight (Monster Squad), and sometimes it’s somewhere in the middle (Lost Boys.) But you know what I haven’t seen?
The same trope applied to readers of paranormal romance.
I want a gory teenage horror movie where one of the survivors is a girl who’s the Catherine Morland of Junior High. She’s read Twilight, she’s read all the Twilight knockoffs, she’s got a shelf full of Harlequin supernatural romances, and when she’s at a thrift store she scours romance book racks for anything with a vampire, werewolf, or fairy on the cover.
So when the supernatural bad guys attack, she feels she’s prepared and knows all about them. And the worst part, that will be most grating to our heroes? She’s absolutely right.
“Alright, Lillith, you need to go and talk to the vampire,” Olympia says, expression sombre as they gather outside of the night club where the rest of their friends have been taken.
“What?” Lillith asks. “Why do I have to go and talk to the vampire?!”
“Because! First of all, your name is ‘Lillith’. Second of all, you are a skinny white brunette who – for some unfathomable reason – has zero self-esteem about your appearance, despite looking almost entirely like a supermodel, a delicate constitution, and let’s be real here, out of everyone you are by far the likeliest to be the reincarnation of some Victorian lady who died tragically of illness before her vampire lover could whisk her off to the shores of immortality.”
Lillith hesitates.
“Oh no,” she says.
“Let me guess. You’ve been having dreams?” Olympia surmises.
“But he’s creepy!” Lillith protests.
“Look, after what happened with Peter and the werewolf, are you really gonna back down now?” Olympia demands. “You don’t have to marry the creep, he’s probably been longing for death of centuries and will be content enough to go if he can explode into dust motes in the sunlight after looking at your face ‘one last time’, okay? So just make with the fated re-introduction so we can get into the club and rescue everyone from the succubi.”
The two young women stare one another down.
Olympia lets out a breath of relief as resolve fills Lillith’s gaze, and she turns and heads towards the conspicuously pale figure making his way towards the club’s entrance.
Things might actually being go well, for a change. But then she hears it. Approaching the club, faintly at first, but then loud enough to almost sound like a car pulling up the street.
The jangling bells of the Fairy King’s coach.
Oh, shit, Olympia thinks, because she knows. This one…
This one is hers.
Tags:
#storytime #vampires
I saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a couple days ago.
(spoilers behind cut)
Thing I liked: the amount of short-range Apparition in this movie. Characters routinely use teleporting to get past grates, to jump from one building rooftop to the next, to dodge attacks. This is a very Correct use of teleportation and I approve.
Thing I did not like: the amount of Obliviation in this movie. Like, even more than I was expecting. Were we supposed to consider the mass mind-wiping of an entire city a happy ending?
I spent most of the movie worried about whether Newt’s Muggle companion* was going to make it through intact. At the end, the President of Wizarding America is like “You’re going to have to obliviate him, but I’ll give you a chance to say goodbye”, and then she and all her lackeys walk away. Now, to someone who is already thinking about the Eleventh Doctor, this is clearly code for “I’m going to look the other way while you smuggle him to safety”. Except Kowalski then does a 180 on his previously-expressed desire to stay in touch with the wizarding world, says some “I was never supposed to know, this is how things should be” bullshit, and deliberately walks out into the rainstorm of Lethe water. *sigh*
(It didn’t just remind me of Doctor Who, you know, but of a movie I saw when I was a child. Another movie with a setting hidden amongst ordinary New Yorkers, and which was far, far more horrifying than it thought it was.)
(when the monsters came for me, they did not wield claws or teeth or guns, but those little silvery sticks)
*My brain insists on referring to Kowalski as a “companion”, because Newt has the same accent as Matt Smith and once that’s gotten you to start seeing Newt as the Doctor, it turns out to be kind of hard to stop.
Tags:
#in conclusion: #entertaining movie #will make you side-eye your water bottle #amnesia cw #oh look an original post #Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
I like having long hair. I can see the ends vibrate with my pulse.
Wait, really?
*leans over arm of couch, watches waist-length hair dangle*
Huh. It does vibrate. Not sure whether it’s in time with my pulse.
My hair extends down to just below my shoulder blades. When I move it so that it cascades over my right shoulder, any tips that are not in contact with my body vibrate with my pulse. And (obviously) when I vibrate my head.
I think the ends were picking it up from blood flowing through my neck.
Depending on how you are leaning, I may be suprised. Is your hair in contact with your neck? Can you feel your pulse and see if the rates sync up?
Also. You have waist-length hair! I suddenly would like to braid your hair. And pet it and play with it.
[ Point of information: I am *human*. ]
The hair I was watching wasn’t in contact with my neck during the test. I had my hand pressed against my heart to check the pulse. Since I just washed my hair (after making the first post), and it’s now both lying flatter against my body and weighed down with water, I should probably wait before testing over-the-shoulder.
I’ve had hair going to slightly below my waist since before I even reached my adult height. There was a while in my pre- and early-teens where my hair length grew more or less proportionally to the rest of me, and it stabilised around the same time. (This is one of my favourite things about having long hair. The hair length of most short-haired people is always changing, and every so often they have to go out of their way to prevent it from going too far past their desired length. Mine just stays as it is, and has for over a decade. I like that stability.)
I am not in the San Francisco Gravitational Field (I’m in Ontario, and not the one in California), but if we’re ever together, there can probably be hair-playing.
(Mom–who has just-above-shoulder-length hair, and is the reason I thought to put a “most” qualifier on shorter-haired people not having stable hair length–asks to braid/play with my hair sometimes. I’m not sure what the big deal is, but I might just be spoiled by having access to long hair all the time.)
Tags:
#reply via reblog #hair
OH
So this guy’s purpose in life is to hang out in a Pokémon Center on Poni Island and tutor one move that only one Pokémon can learn, a Legendary postgame Pokémon from a Hoenn one/four generations ago. And that Pokémon naturally knows that move anyway.Fuck me, I’m getting a new job. I’ll be standing in a Dunkin Donuts on Staten Island tutoring Spanish. But only if you’re early 19th Venezuelan military leader Simón Bolívar.
Tags:
#Pokemon #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(I do not actually speak Pokemon) #(but the post provides enough context to make the joke at the end funny)
I like having long hair. I can see the ends vibrate with my pulse.
Wait, really?
*leans over arm of couch, watches waist-length hair dangle*
Huh. It does vibrate. Not sure whether it’s in time with my pulse.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #hair #interesting
First paycheck!
Tags:
#like I know it’s not ~a lot~ of money #but it was more profitable than how I would otherwise have spent that time #while not being significantly more unpleasant or inconvenient #(well I mean having a transcript deemed unfit for use last night was unpleasant) #(but that’s technically *next* week’s paycheck) #(and in terms of emotional pain level probably comparable or better than fucking something up on Flight Rising) #((*also* something that affects other people)) #(so as long as I’m more careful not to bite off more than I can chew I should still come out ahead) #anyway unequivocal steps up are worth celebrating regardless of Objective Size #tag rambles #in which Brin has a job #oh look an original post
TOASTYSTATS: Did the US election influence fanfic production?
I’ve heard some folks talking about using fanfic to cope with/distract themselves from the recent US election (I’m in this camp, though I’m not ignoring the real world), and others, like the hosts of @fansplaining, discuss not being able to focus on fandom right now. I wondered which of these impulses was currently stronger overall in fandom.
TL;DR: as of two weeks following the 2016 election, there’s been a big post-election spike in fanfic production on AO3 (~30% increase) – which is unusual for this time of year. Though, of course, correlation is not causation – there could be some other cause(s) at play. And while some people may be turning to fandom for distraction, there’s a bigger increase in ‘Angst’ than ‘Fluff.’
I gathered daily data from AO3 for the pat 5 years in order to compare this year to past ones. I figured even if we did see a spike or a drop in fanworks, that might be normal following an election – or just normal for November. The past 5 years have the benefit of containing another presidential election, as well as a midterm election and two off-years. I looked at the total amount of fanworks produced in each of the two weeks leading up to the US election, and in each of the two weeks following it. (If you look at the above graph, 0 on the x axis is Election Day – Nov 8, 2016.)
Based on the above graph, we can see that most years have a fairly flat production rate surrounding the election. 2016, however, departs strongly from this pattern with a 32% increase from the two weeks leading up to the election.
Tags:
#interesting #AO3 #election 2016
