oh look an update

brin-bellway asked: Do you know of any good ways to backup a DW blog? So far, I have investigated: built-in exporter (doesn’t include comments); wget (doesn’t include access-locked posts); LJMigrate (gives an HTTP 307 error, which I have no idea how to deal with); most other tools on the list of DW-compatible LJ archivers (aren’t available at all anymore); printing every post to PDF and re-printing the relevant post with every new comment (severe, ongoing tedium).

~ Brin ~ 4 Comments

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brin-bellway:

brin-bellway:

dreamwidth-help:

I’m an oldie who used to use Semagic but I haven’t done a backup in a while and I believe Semagic doesn’t work anymore. Let me pitch this to the crowd.

*

I talked to my dad last night, and he said that in theory I should be able to feed wget my Dreamwidth login cookies to give it the ability to scrape locked posts. Will try it later today and report back.

Looks like it worked! Here is my Dreamwidth post with more info.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #oh look an update #oh look an original post #Dreamwidth #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

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brin-bellway asked: Do you know of any good ways to backup a DW blog? So far, I have investigated: built-in exporter (doesn’t include comments); wget (doesn’t include access-locked posts); LJMigrate (gives an HTTP 307 error, which I have no idea how to deal with); most other tools on the list of DW-compatible LJ archivers (aren’t available at all anymore); printing every post to PDF and re-printing the relevant post with every new comment (severe, ongoing tedium).

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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brin-bellway:

dreamwidth-help:

I’m an oldie who used to use Semagic but I haven’t done a backup in a while and I believe Semagic doesn’t work anymore. Let me pitch this to the crowd.

*

I talked to my dad last night, and he said that in theory I should be able to feed wget my Dreamwidth login cookies to give it the ability to scrape locked posts. Will try it later today and report back.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #oh look an update #Dreamwidth #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

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syntaxcoloring asked: Could you elaborate on the rationale for having reblogs deleted along with the original post? If I write out a lengthy, thoughtful response to something, and then the original poster gets embarrassed or whatever…well, it kind of sucks that they can just wipe out my response, doesn’t it?

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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pillowfort-io:

We believe it is of utmost importance for users to have control of their content and how it is accessed. Tumblr’s structure encourages users to think of other people’s content that they reblog as partially their own, but we think that that mentality leads to a lot of the harassment and plain rudeness that has grown on Tumblr over the years. The fact that a post can be reblogged by others, ridiculed, and passed around endlessly after the original user has already decided they don’t want that content to exist and represent them anymore has always struck us as a massive design flaw. On Pillowfort a user’s post is always their post first and foremost, and all reblogs and comments to that post are still under the control of the original user. So yes, while it may be unfortunate to have a post you like disappear from your blog or lose a comment you left, we think it is still more important for a user to be able to delete their own content when they choose. I can’t think of any benefits to non-destructible reblogs that is worth having a user’s control over access to their own content taken away. 

It’s worth noting that users can also delete any individual comments left on their post, because we want to encourage the notion that when you comment on someone’s post you are in THEIR space. It’s a bit of a shift from the way that Tumblr and Twitter have forced users to deal with anyone and everyone putting their own thoughts on your content, but we don’t think users should have to deal with the responses of people who may only be trying to spread harassment or otherwise exploit users’ lack of control over responses to act in bad faith, as we have all seen happen quite often.

 

the-real-seebs:

I just want to make sure people thinking about migrating to pillowfort see this one, because this is an incredible example of a policy that was clearly not thought through by people who have ever tried to keep abusers from doing their thing.

This is a great policy, if your primary goal is to ensure that abusers cannot be challenged or disputed, ever. It is a great policy if you want to actively punish people for putting in any effort at all in conversations.

Yes, we think of things that we write in response to other people as “partially our own”, because we wrote some of the content in the post. When people put effort into responding to me, that effort is theirs. If I make a silly shitpost and someone responds with a 2,000 word essay, their post was more effort than mine.

Fuck’s sake. Look at the writing prompts blog. Think about how this plays out in Pillowfort’s world: You post writing prompts which are a sentence long, other people write multi-page responses, and you get to delete any of those responses any time you want leaving them with no record of the work or effort they put in, no way to retrieve the data, nothing.

Conclusion: If you go there, do not attempt to interact with other people. If you want to comment on something someone said, do it by starting a brand new post with no trace of direct connection to theirs, so it will probably be safe.

But really, just… Don’t. This is not sane.

 

genderfight:

“We designed a reblog system that discourages people from ever substantively using the reblog system.”

The maddening part is that I get it. That first paragraph does lay out real ways in which Tumblr is uniquely good at making sure that the dumbest thing you ever said on a social blogging platform becomes an unbanishable ghost that haunts your notifications forever. Clearly that’s not ideal.

But this doesn’t seem like a solution to me.

 

funereal-disease:

Why not, say, keep the content but divorce it from the original poster? Any deleted comments show up in reblogs with no attribution, or just a grey “deleted” icon, while disappearing from the OP’s blog.

 

street-peddler:

To quote @chemicalkin:

Pillowfort is not a clone of tumblr, and does not have a reblog like tumblr.

Pillowfort reblogs are shares that point to the original post. You can’t add commentary to them.

Comments all take place in replies to the post, like livejournal on the OP’s blog. You’re not pulling them into your own space. Anyone who wants to read the full comment chain is going to the OP’s blog. Replying happens in OP’s blog. Again think of livejournal.

Hmm, that’s a potentially good point, especially as someone whose top choice for alternative is currently Dreamwidth. I might be being hypocritical about this. Let me check whether the above is true in the sense that I care about.

[a few minutes later]

Nope, it’s not [link]. Pulled the URL of the post on the top of DemoUser’s dash†, fed it into the Internet Archive’s “Save Page Now” field. The Archive *thought* it succeeded, but the archived page is a useless jumble of broken elements with none of the actual content (edit: upon closer inspection, the page title *is* intact, but nothing else). Compare this archived Dreamwidth post [link], which is perfectly fine right down to the formatting.

Since my plan for coping with the lack of reblogs on Dreamwidth is to post link roundups in which–and this is important–*every crawlable page includes a Wayback alternative link* [link], Pillowfort is still meaningfully worse for me.

(And, given how much Pillowfort uses [being able to erase your posts from existence] as a selling point, if I *did* figure out and enact a PF backup solution that worked on other people’s OPs, I expect a lot of people would be pissed about it. Pillowfort has deliberately tried to attract users who would be pissed about that in a way that Dreamwidth has not.)

—

Note that you *can* still erase your DW post from existence if you really want to: you can make it uncrawlable (most simply by friends-locking), delete it before the Internet Archive notices it, or request the Archive take it down. But Dreamwidth archivability is opt-out, while Pillowfort archivability is–at *best*–opt-in.

(I should probably note here, in case anyone is getting worried: I promise that if you give me access to your friends-locked posts, the only part of them that I will keep copies of is my own comments. No other comments, no OPs.)

—

†Link to the original post, and for when the post inevitably gets deleted some year or other: it’s a pair of pictures of sleeping cats by TheTiniestLizard.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #The Last Tumblr Apocalypse #Dreamwidth #Pillowfort #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #amnesia cw

A better, more positive Tumblr

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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staff:

Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).  

Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.

So what is changing?

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

Why are we doing this?

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

So what’s next?

Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.

Jeff D’Onofrio
CEO

 

nandamai:

I can’t figure out why this feels so familiar … it’s like I’ve lived through this exact experience before …

 

metatxt:

This is so fucking sexist I can hardly believe it. And yeah looking at the new guidelines….I guess I can’t swear anymore either??

All of this as though the only way to crack down on child porn and porn bots is by additionally restricting images of women, fanart, adult sexuality, reproductive health, fanvids, gifs, etc. Is so disingenuous.

Make no mistake this is the impact of tech monopolies and Apple’s puritanical rules of the app store.

 

cosmic-llin:

“Don’t upload any content, including images, videos, GIFs, or illustrations, that depicts sex acts” leaves the door WIDE open for cracking down on written erotica whenever they decide, too.

Also gotta love “it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.” More people. Different people. Not the people who have built a community on this website for the best part of a decade.

So, uh, apparently when I started talking [first link, second link] about looking for Tumblr alternatives “just in case”, I was literally thirteen hours ahead of the curve.

As I’ve said before [link], I cannot live on a platform with obscenity laws. It may start with images of genitals, but that is never how it ends, and paraphiles get cracked down on sooner rather than later.

—

I have marked my entire WordPress archive public, most notably this part [link]. (The older intra-blog links in this post are to WordPress, but–perhaps from a surge in interest–the Tumblr-to-Wordpress exporter seems to be having some issues, so I don’t yet have WordPress copies of posts from after ~10 PM yesterday.) I’ll be cleaning up the formatting in chronological order as I find the time: in the meanwhile, please forgive the dust.

—

While I expect I will stop posting here soon (less sure about reading; at the very least, there will be a transitional period where I keep an eye on my dashboard for announcements of where people are moving to), this will *not* be my last post. Stay tuned for updates on the next steps.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #(I hope I shall be able to use that tag again someday) #oh look an update #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #The Last Tumblr Apocalypse #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #Wordpress

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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brin-bellway:

Today, I am thankful that my workplace does not play Christmas music.

Our radio developed some issue a while back that severely restricts which stations it can pick up, so this year–for lack of better options–we *are* on a Christmas-music station.

I’m actually coping a lot better than I thought I would. I think there’s a lot more pressure on *children* to like Christmas, and as I spend more time away from that it seems to be getting easier to appreciate Christmas on my own terms. And understanding what my problem with “The Little Drummer Boy” is [link] seems to have taken the sting out of that song. And IIRC, all of the co-workers whose shifts overlap with mine are first-gen immigrants from non-Christian societies, which lets them take an outsider-but-laid-back-about it attitude towards Christmas that might be rubbing off on me.

My preference ordering tends to go hymns –> songs that aren’t about Jesus but *are* explicitly about Christmas –> secular winter music: the hymns tend to be prettier, and the secular songs can feel dishonest and…nonconsensually inclusive? Just because you didn’t say the C word doesn’t mean you aren’t *thinking* it–in fact, I *know* you’re thinking it because the announcer literally just called this a Christmas music mix–and it doesn’t mean I should be happy to join you in a celebration that isn’t mine. Please go back to singing about Jesus so I can go back to Your Culture Is Not My Culture But Your Culture Is Okay.

(Also, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” is still fucking creepy.)

But overall, it’s actually been surprisingly okay.

Tags:

#on Black Friday (the first Christmas-music day) my (apathetically Hindu) manager wished me a happy Christmas and split a cookie with me #and I find I have no objections to this #music #Christmas #oh look an original post #oh look an update #in which Brin has a job

Benjamin Skuse on a No-Longer-Sacred Artifact

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

scienceetfiction:

readthispart:

“On the outskirts of Paris, eight metres below ground in a climate-controlled vault, sits a 143-year-old platinum alloy cylinder. Standing just 39 mm tall, it has never been touched by human hands. Like a delicate Russian doll, the cylinder is caged inside three nested glass bells in a room that can be accessed only with three keys kept by three different people. Surrounding the mysterious object are ‘the witnesses’: six ‘identical’ cylinders cast from the same platinum alloy.

“Though preservation efforts rival those of the Turin Shroud, the cylinder is not a sacred religious object. It is the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK), the one and only true kilogram against which all others are measured. Housed in the Pavillon de Breteuil – home to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) – the IPK will soon lose its unique status and become a relic of a bygone age. It will then be as quaint as the International Prototype Metre (IPM) – a platinum alloy bar also housed at the BIPM – that served as the world’s official metre until 1960.”

Benjamin Skuse, SI gets a makeover

Good article about the history of the kilogram and the new definition that was officially adopted yesterday (November 16th).  

About the vote, another article:  “Scientists for whom the update represents decades of work clapped, cheered and even wept as the 50-plus nations one by one said “yes” or “oui” to the update in the French city of Versailles on Friday (local time). 

Nobel prize winner William Phillips called it “the greatest revolution in measurement since the French revolution”, which ushered in the metric system of metres and kilograms.   “ 

Tags:

#oh look an update #the power of science

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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Update:

I am now officially an accounting major.

(Specifically, I’m in the one-year† accounting certificate program. This then leads into the two-year† advanced accounting certificate, and from there a bachelor’s.)

I’m coming up on the end of this semester, and next semester I’m going to take a course (microeconomics) that–though mandatory for accounting–doesn’t fit into any of my remaining slots for a CS program, so I figured it was time.

—

†”Year” here being a standardised unit of measurement meaning “10 courses”. At my current part-time rate I expect it will take me about two years to get the first-level certificate.

Tags:

#adventures in University Land #oh look an original post #oh look an update #a couple nights ago #(after I’d already decided to do this) #Mom and I were talking about how my ”first job” was accounting data-entry #when I was a pre-teen Dad would give me a nickel for every receipt I typed into his household-expense-tracking program #”we should have known then” she said‚ only partly joking #(I wrote this draft a couple days ago) #(today I took my final exam for this course and signed up for econ) #((I didn’t *have* to do them in that order that’s just how it worked out)) #(I’m going to take a week off from school and then get a head start on reading the economics textbook) #(it’s an ebook so it’ll probably have arrived by then)

the chilliad: book three | ofgeography.com | a trashbag full of donuts

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://www.ofgeography.com/single-post/2018/08/29/the-chilliad-book-three }}

ofgeography:

homer drops his forehead against the table. he’s been awake for so long, a million years at least, and now that the alcohol isn’t blurring time in his brain every second ticks by like knuckles rapping against his skull. Ray Ban had brought him a glass of water, clearly sympathetic to the desperate way that homer wants to be really, genuinely, permanently dead.

“let this be a lesson to you in the dangers of alcohol consumption,” Donut Mouth tells him, sounding almost amused. homer thinks he’s coming around, though. he’s stopped trying to get homer to cut to the chase, and he’d even patted homer’s shoulder when he tried gulping the water down and had to spit it out when the cold of it hurt his teeth.

homer groans, long and low. “i’m dying, man. listen – can i just – a nap. a quick one. under the table. i’ll pick up again right after, i swear to god.”

“if you’re gonna be a man at night, you gotta be a man in the morning,” Ray Ban counsels, and homer lifts his head to scowl at him, or at least in the direction of him.

“don’t come for me with mine own words,” he grumbles. “jesus. okay. where was i?” he scrubs at his forehead, trying to massage the headache back and away, and takes another sip of water, slower this time. god, his whole mouth tastes like he’s been eating cigarettes, tangy and cottony and awful. he’s never drinking again. he’s gonna quit life. he’s gonna become a hermit. people will wonder if he was even ever really there, or just a mass hallucination.

Donut Mouth pats his arm with gentle condescension. “your ex-roommates had just moved in with the alpha sigs.”

“oh, right,” homer remembers. he holds the water glass against his temple and sighs into the sweetness of its cold. “okay. so that went wrong, like, almost immediately.”

–

it wasn’t quite accurate to say that the whole thing went wrong immediately; actually, bree moved in with AC and PK and, to the surprise of everybody, the arrangement worked brilliantly. bree had always liked PK, ever since they took a class together on art therapy. she was going into special education, and they’d done a joint project on using photography to help nonverbal kids with self-expression. he was also, she happened to know, a sweetly proficient guitar player, though the only songs he had memorized were “wonderwall” and the entirety of taylor swift’s “1989.”

“once you’ve mastered the greats, there’s really no reason to keep learning,” AC said supportively, when bree giggled about this fact. “also, i’m just gonna say it, she’s a bisexual icon.”

PK sighed, shaking his head. “taylor swift is straight, dude,” he said, in the voice of someone who has said it many, many times before.

“taylor swift is, or was, at the very least, in a romantic friendship with karlie klaus,” AC returned. “and you should honor the bisexual spirit that built this fuckin house.” AC puffed out his chest, and then relaxed. “not literally, because this house was built in like … the middle ages, probably by some repressed pilgrim who believed sex was a kind of witchcraft, or whatever.”

bree nodded thoughtfully. “no, yeah, the house is a metaphor for your relationship, i got it,” she said.

two loud slams came from the wall behind bree’s head. “taylor swift and karlie klaus were in love,” chrys shouted through the wall. “this. is. undeniable.”

“man, these walls are thin,” bree said. “that’s got to be awkward, um … intimately speaking.”

AC shrugged. “sock on the door means knock no more,” he recited, raising a finger.

“also, aggy spends a lot of nights at nessa’s,” PK added. “and geni is taking an astronomy class that keeps her out until like, three or four in the morning doing, idk, star bullshit. so.”

bree nodded. she folded her feet underneath her, sitting cross-legged and leaning back against the wall. they’d pushed the two beds together, using a large sheet and one blanket, and she could already see that separating the beds would be a nightmare for the rooms, like, vibe.

“hmm,” she mused, looking around. “well … i mean, i could sleep on the floor.”

PK frowned at her. “absolutely the fuck not, babe,” he said. “we’ll split up the beds. it won’t be that hard.”

“oooooor,” AC wheedled, grinning.

PK shot him a glare. “don’t,” he warned, elbowing him sharply in the ribs.

“aw, c’mon.”

“you’re gonna make her uncomfortable.”

“no i’m not! she’s chill! bree, you’re chill, right?”

she blinked. “uh,” she said. “i guess?”

“he wants you to sleep with us,” PK cut in, before AC could say anything else. “he’s really attached to this fuckin bed frame.”

“i built it myself!” AC cried, preening. “i fuckin … magic mike’d that shit.”

PK shared a glance with bree and gave his head a minute, but fond, shake. he reached out to tweak AC’s ear. “it’s a square, bud. anyone can assemble a square. it’s honestly not that different from buying it from IKEA.”

“fuck you! i’m a master carpenter!”

bree reached out and patted AC’s bicep. “it’s really nice,” she complimented, sincerely. bree believed in the power of positive reinforcement. “you did a really good job.”

AC beamed.

PK pinched the bridge of his nose, but when he met bree’s eyes, he was smiling. bree felt, suddenly, out of nowhere, a swell of affection for the both of them – for the very stupid muscle tee AC was wearing, which said DON’T BRO ME IF YOU DON’T KNOW ME; for the high heels discarded in the corner, next to the acoustic guitar with an COEXIST sticker from 2005 on it; and especially for the way PK was looking at AC out of the corner of his eyes, warm and wrinkled.

“aw, you big dummies,” she said, without quite meaning to. she reached into her bag and pulled out her ream of star stickers, which she always carried with her, just in case. she stuck gold stars on both of their foreheads and said, “no sex stuff while i’m in bed with you, but yeah. i think we can probably make this work.” 

*

helen stood in the driveway with one hand on her hips and one hand shading her eyes, squinting up at the roof of the alpha delta chi house. dité was stretched out in her bikini on a plastic chaise. there was a winding wooden staircase leading from helen and dité’s shared window up to the roof. it had a railing.

“look what paris had built,” dité called down, without stirring or removing her sunglasses. “you ruining your life is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

helen sighed. she’d mentioned to paris yesterday that the roof was hard to get up to, but that it got the best sun. she’d said it in passing. it was just whining, she hadn’t expected him to like, do anything about it.

“i have to dump him,” she said, aloud but mostly to herself.

“uhhhh, j’excuse?” dité called down, sitting up. “the fuck you do, what are you smoking? this is the fucking best. he’s like a magic genie. i’ve been begging nas to build us a ramp for years, and all you gotta do is think about it and your boy comes through.”

sappho took a long, bubbly sip of her iced coffee. “maybe you’re a witch,” she mused. “maybe you’ve been influencing people with your magic powers all this time and didn’t even know it.”

“shut up, saph,” helen muttered. “nessa is going to kill me. she’s going to come home and see this extremely illegal addition to the house and she’s going to have me jumped.”

at that moment, athena’s head popped out of the window. “BITCHES, I MADE FROSÉ,” she announced, and began climbing the steps. she flexed her arms, a clear pitcher with pink slush in it in each hand. her baseball cap, backwards on her head, had the logo of the interim lacrosse team on it; helen knew because ares was on the team, too. athena was the only girl, though she fit right in with her knee-length board shorts and glaring white socks pulled halfway up her calves.

“how does she always look like she just walked off the set of bill and ted’s excellent adventure?” sappho marveled, delighted. “like, it’s still so hot out, what is even the point of tying a flannel around your waist?”

“the hashtag aesthetic, mama!” athena called down cheerfully. “are you assholes gonna stand down there marveling at the gunshow all afternoon or are you gonna come up to our cool new tanning bed and get blasted on frosé? it’s strong. i put a lot of booze in it.” she leaned over and sniffed one of the pitchers, winced, and withdrew. “like maybe … too much booze in it.”

“no such thing, my beautiful christina-ricci-in-now-and-then daydream,” sappho assured her, kicking up the porch steps, ponytail swinging. helen hesitated just long enough for dité to notice, and by the time helen got up to the roof she had finally removing her sunglasses so she could glare down up at helen’s face.

“girl, what,” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “like, for real. we got a sweet new set of stairs. paris revs your engine, for god knows what reason. none of us have to pretend to be interested in how many reps manny can do at the gym. don’t look a gift apple in the stem, babe.”

manny had been leaving longer and progressively more depressing voicemails on her phone. helen honestly was starting to feel bad. like, manny had been her boyfriend for a long time. it felt kind of dumb that it would end this way.

on the other hand, he was really embarrassing, and he’d filled up priam’s car with popcorn for no goddamn reason, and she didn’t love that he was acting like if he just out-pranked the trojans, she’d come running back to him like some … war prize, or whatever. helen was her own woman, okay. she has her own source of income, which she doesn’t even have to work that hard at because everyone loves buying weed from a hot girl, and she’s got like, literally hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. she’s verified on twitter. like, what, manny successfully filling some future hamptons-house-owning asshole’s car with popcorn is going to make her lose her mind?

come on.

anyway, this is how it’s been, lately; she feels bad and then gets annoyed and then bones paris and then feels bad again.

it’s exhausting. helen is not built for this kind of emotional complexity; she’s not sappho, for god’s sake.

“i can literally do like forty more reps than him,” athena said, drinking directly from the pitcher. sappho lifted her personalized plastic martini glass and cheersed athena with it. “i’m not even bragging, i’m just saying, like, i’ve been working out with jax and phoenix because we want to do american ninja warrior together, and jax said that manny hasn’t been to the gym literally since y’all broke up.”

sappho gasped, clutching her chest. “holy shit, i can’t believe you literally murdered manny’s whole personality, helen mellon,” she said. something twisted in helen’s stomach that she didn’t care for.

“shut up, saph,” she said again. “or i’ll take my branch out promise back.”

sappho gasped, scandalized, and athena let out a loud whoop before chugging the rest of the pitcher of frosé.

“chug, chug, chug,” sappho chanted.

dité reached out and patted helen’s arm. “just enjoy yourself, it’s all going to be fine,” she soothed. “and if it isn’t, who cares? we’re graduating. what, were you gonna marry manny atreus?”

“no,” helen said, making a face. “i mean. probably not.”

“so then chill,” dité advised. “have a little fun. it’s senior year, babe. if it’s not epic, what was the point?”

helen sighed. she reached out a hand and snapped her fingers until athena, laughing, put a red solo cup with frosé in it.

“bottoms up, bitches,” she said.

read book three

Tags:

#oh look an update #Iliad #fanfic #(yes I intend to keep an eye on this and reblog every chapter) #(I don’t want you guys to miss out)

the chilliad: book two | a trashbag full of donuts

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://www.ofgeography.com/single-post/2018/08/10/the-chilliad-book-two }}

ofgeography:

{book one}

“the thing you have to understand is that, helen aside, things were kind of like, brewing,” homer says. to be fair, up until this point he really could not have given less of a shit about greek life politics. he’d rushed alpha sig because he wanted to lose his virginity, make friends, drink a lot of beer, and because lowkey he wanted to be like capi from ABC’s greek. he loved that guy. that guy was the shit.

anyway, the point is, now that homer’s really giving it some thought, yeah: the thing between troy and alpha sig had been building for a while, long before homer got anywhere near campus. helen was kind of just like, the final straw.

“the trojans aren’t even greek, is the thing,” he explains. “like, they used to be, um … i dunno, some national chapter, i forget because who cares. but they got kicked off campus and then just renamed themselves after the street their new house was on. priam’s nice but he’s not exactly creative.”

“why did they get kicked off campus?”

“well, a deer got drunk at one of their parties, and then the deer got hit by a car, and then there were all these protests by the vegan club.”

“why did they get a deer drunk?”

“is this on the record?”

“son, you’re at a police station. everything is on the record.”

homer hesitates. he’s pretty sure they’re past the statute of limitations on getting animals drunk, and also he doesn’t think that’s technically illegal, just a real dick move.

“well … they didn’t,” he admits. “but – okay. look, don’t tell anyone i told you, but the real truth is aggy did it.”

“aggy got them kicked off campus?”

“no, aggy got the deer drunk. it was on trojan property, though. and – this is extremely on the DL, i’m very serious about this, boys – it wasn’t the vegans who protested. or i mean, it was the vegans, but how did the vegans find out, you know what i’m saying?”

there’s a thoughtful hum. homer isn’t sure if it’s coming from Ray Ban or Donut Mouth, but he thinks it might be Donut Mouth because he smells a hint of bear claw on the exhale.

“so how did they find out?” Ray Ban asks. his words are a little squished, like he’s resting his chin on one of his hands.

“roy,” Donut Mouth mutters. “c’mon, this isn’t relevant.”

“so?” Ray Ban answers, unapologetic. “it’s fucking interesting. you so desperate to go write up your reports that you wanna get out of here? you itching to sit in the bullpen listening to frank powerwash the floors for the next four hours?”

homer grins. he holds his hand out for a high-five. “my main man ray ban,” he says. Ray Ban takes the five.

“it’s roy, actually,” he says.

“rick and roy, that’s cute, actually,” homer answers. “i’m still gonna call you ray ban, though. it’s like, your vibe. rick, sorry man, but you’ve been donut mouth to me this whole time and i just don’t think that’s gonna change for you.”

“for god’s sake,” Donut Mouth says, “can we please focus?”

homer, nodding, feels around the table until he finds the corner of what he’s pretty sure is the donut box. he raises his eyebrows in question and is gratified to hear Donut Mouth sigh before nudging the box forward so he can get his hand in. he grabs whatever is closest – no such thing as a bad donut, after all – and says, mouth full of strawberry glaze, “okay, so, someone told the muses and the muses told me that it was emi hunter, olly hunter’s twin sister. she’s not a vegan herself but is BIG into like, animal husbandry. their whole family have been butchers since like, the 1600s or some shit. i heard she only eats meat she’s killed herself, which is super hot and very scary.”

he waits, but neither Ray Ban nor Donut Mouth have anything to say about emi hunter. “… anyway, she found out that someone at this party had gotten the deer drunk and that the deer had gotten hit by a car and died, and also nobody even used the venison, and she sicced the vegans on them.”

“why didn’t she report them herself?”

“well,” says homer.

READ BOOK TWO

Tags:

#oh look an update #fanfic #Iliad #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(though I was already planning to reblog it)

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Quarterly report’s done!

(sorry about the tininess of the picture: Tumblr is not very good at images significantly wider than they are tall. you may need to click on it to see it clearly.)

Tags:

#notice how the number on the right is bigger than the number on the left #what a lovely novelty #(fun fact: removing any one person’s effect on the income would be enough to drop it below expenses) #(this is very much a group effort) #(while Brother is by far the highest earner we are *all* of vital importance) #((ftr ”outstanding” deposits here mean paycheques sitting in people’s wallets at June 30th)) #((if we were living paycheque-to-paycheque or otherwise needed that money available ASAP we *could* easily)) #((have gotten it into the bank by the end of the quarter)) #((and I’m not going to make our income appear artificially low just because we hadn’t gotten around to visiting the bank that fortnight)) #(((don’t worry I remembered to remove the outstanding deposits from *last* quarter from the calculations so as not to double-count them))) #adventures in human capitalism #oh look an update #tag rambles #oh look an original post #\o/