me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit
mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters
me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU
Hey OP? What the FUCK does this mean?
decay exists as an extant form of life
That’s a terrifying answer, have a nice day
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#fucking *finally*! #it’s *back*! #that one post with the thing #death tw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
When I ask myself, as I sometimes do, what an astral wizard, alien spirit, or young AGI would do if it found itself in possession of my own body and mind, it’s obvious that one of the first things it would do is start lifting and getting swole. For it is well known to this world’s mindken that human bio-souls work much more consistently when housed in a phylactery that is totally ripped. Truly, any entity entering this world in such a way that wished to mitigate the limited willpower of their new form would immediately work to get fucking jacked.
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#(for any of you who remember that cyber-lich post‚ this is the same guy) #I started working out about three weeks ago #–(having already taken up jogging in 2018)– #and I keep thinking about this post #I’ve still got a ways to go‚ but I *am* starting to see improvement #although at this level‚ the mental-health benefits of being in better shape are very difficult to untangle from #the mental-health benefits of renewed hope #someday‚ not so long from now‚ I will be able to say yes to potential employers who ask me if I can carry 50lb objects #(as a large fraction of potential employers around here do) #less vital but still meaningful‚ someday soon I’m going to carry my *own* softener-salt bags instead of having to ask my brother to do it #(at my pre-workout strength I could‚ just barely‚ move 40lb salt bags from the grocery-store display into my cart) #(but I could *not* carry them into the house and down the basement stairs and pour them into the tank) #((P.S. I waited until after finishing the comment roundup to post this)) #((and I think I overdid it a couple days ago)) #((my neck does seem to be recovering well though)) #((it’s a learning process)) #tag rambles #exercise #that one post with the thing #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
I didn’t know about zeugmas until just now! That is so awesome, everybody:
zeug·ma ˈzo͞oɡmə/
noun
a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses (e.g.,John and his license expired last week ) or to two others of which it semantically suits only one (e.g., with weeping eyes and hearts ).
“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).
“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.
Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.
Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.
Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”
“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”
“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”
At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)
You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.
Because at some point, operating along lines of logic that worked out perfectly so far, you did decide to be a mammal.
A mammal is a machine for adapting to Circumstances. A mammal is a tremendously resilient all-terrain life-support system, with built-in heating, cooling, respiration, and incubators for reproduction. Mammals internalise everything (grudges, eggs) and furthermore are excessively, flamboyantly wet internally. Sure, everyone’s a bag of chemicals; but mammals slosh. Mammals took the concept of an internal ocean and took it in an unnecessarily splashy direction, added aftermarket mods and a climate-control system,
and just to show off, you leaned across the metaphorical gambling table and said: “my internal ocean is so good-“
“Bullshit,” said the shark, keeping it salty (ha)
“My internal ocean is so brilliantly resilient, more so than any of YOURS,” you said, holding their attention with a digit held aloft, “that for my next trick, I shall artistically recreate the ballad of evolution as a performance. I shall craft a complex chemical ballet depicting the origin of multicellular life – using some of my own material, of course-”
“Oh, ANYONE can lay an egg,” yodel the fish, and the ray adds: “ontogeny does NOT recapitulate phylogeny!!”
And you’re like, “yeah no, it’s an artistic rendition, not a literal thing. Basically I’m going to take some cells and brew them up-“
“Like an egg.”
“Like an egg. An egg but internally.”
“Yeah,” said the viviparous reptile, “yeah, like, that can work really well. I’ve always said it’s the highest test of one’s chemical know-how. It’s a lot of work. And forget about support from your family – forget about support from your PHYLUM – all you get is criticism.”
“I’m gonna do it on purpose forever,” you said. “The highest chemical, thermoregulatory, immunological, everything-logical challenge. It’s gonna be my thing.”
“I’m with you,” said a viviparous fish, stoutly. “Representation.”
You kindly don’t point out, once again, that you’re planning to do this outside the ocean, in a range of temperatures; carrying the dividing cells in a perfect 37.5• solution of saline broth in all terrains, breathing oxygen in a complicated matter, you know, bit more difficult; but you need your allies.
“It’s solid,” says the coelacanth.
“But is it metal?” says the deep-vent organism.
“Oh, it’s metal. I will feed the young,” you say, magnificently, “on an echo of the mother ocean. The first rich feast of cellular matter, the first hunt for sustenance, the first bite they sip of our liquid planet-”
Everyone waits.
“Will be a blood byproduct. My own blood byproduct.”
Everyone looks uncomfortable.
“But,” a hagfish says carefully, “don’t you outdoorsy guys still need your blood?”
You cough and explain that if you stay wet enough internally and hydrate frequently, you should be able to produce enough blood byproduct to sustain your hellish new invention until they can eat your peers.
The outrage that follows includes questions like “is this some furry shit?” And: “milk has WATER in it?”
And you won the bet. “My inner ocean is such a perfect homage to the primordial soup that I can personally cook up an entire live hairy mammal in it. And then generate excess blood byproduct from my body and give it to the small mammal until it gets big.”
That is an absolutely bonkers pitch, by the way, and everyone thought you were a showoff, even before the opposable thumbs. When the winter came, and the winter of winters, and the rain was acid and the air was poison on the tender shells of their eggs and choked the children in the shells; when the plants turned to poison, and the ocean turned against you all; when the climate changed, and the world’s children fell to shadow; your internal ocean was it that held true. A bet laid against the changing fates, a bet laid by a small beast against climate and geography and the forces of outer space, that you won. The dinosaurs fell and the pterosaurs fell and the marine reptiles dwindled, and you, furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship, held hope internally at 37.5 degrees. Which is another thing that humans do, sometimes.
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#I have been wavering on whether to reblog this for several months #I am not altogether comfortable reblogging something that self-describes as‚ quote‚ ”dangerous inaccuracy” #but think of it as something more like a creation myth #storytime #biology #that one post with the thing #(…I think the 37.5 degrees bit is *trying* to evoke a post-luteal body temperature) #(but I run cold and 37.5 is *definitely* a fever) #(anyway) #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #discourse cw? #unreality cw? #body horror? #unsanitary cw?
The British should put a time limit on the Monarchy.
Not like declaring a republic tomorrow, but deciding on a date in the future that ends the British Monarchy.
And there’s a perfect date for it coming up!
October 14th, 2066.
A thousand years since the Battle of Hastings. A thousand years of this one specific bloodline ruling England.
Call time on the Monarchy after exactly one thousand years. Nice, and neat.
Even better: Charles isn’t living 44 years. He’ll be gone in about twenty. Now William? He’s what, 40? Yeah, he can live another 44 years. His great grandmother was over a hundred, his granny was 96, William can make it to 84 barring accident or assassination.
So on October 14th 2066, William the Last steps down a thousand years after William the First won the crown.
Nice, neat, and fair. William gets the crown he’s been waiting forty years for already, but ten-year-old George grows up without expectation of it.
Have a nice big abdication ceremony, even.
Plus, what an absolute baller move to announce your regnal name as William the Last.
the Final Bill
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#Britain #that one post with the thing #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
PEOPLE WITH NORMAL SEXUAL INTERESTS: Surrounded by an endless sea of hyperstimulus pornography human brains aren’t equipped to handle, doomed to become porn addicts, unable to sustain arousal in the presence of other human beings
PEOPLE WITH INCREDIBLY NICHE FETISHES: Encounter porn they like roughly as often as a child growing up in the 80s might stumble upon an adult’s Playboy stash, maintain normal brain chemistry, belong to welcoming communities where they can find partners with shared interests
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#the author of ”Give These People a Break” came out with a second bonus chapter and‚ not unrelatedly‚ I am thinking about this post again #I always did pity the people (presumably out there) who are actually into the kind of women they use in sex-sells commercials #must be awful to have everybody and their brother trying to hijack your salience mechanisms #but it’s more than just a matter of salience‚ isn’t it? #until recently† I had never read porn that was actually well-suited to my tastes #(and not for lack of trying) #(everything was cousin conditions and approximations and picking my way carefully through minefields of squick) #but now I have #don’t get me wrong‚ I’m genuinely very glad to have that experience #I absolutely endorse that #I would all three of want/like/approve having *some* more works like it #…but I think I begin to see how it could pose a problem‚ if there were *thousands* #overall I do still believe I will probably do okay in #the rapidly approaching future where you can get competently written incredibly niche porn made to order out of a vending machine #(I’ve handled access to superstimuli decently well in the past) #(not perfectly‚ but like‚ a solid B+) #but in August I was casually confident that of *course* it would be okay‚ and that’s not the case anymore #[†I originally wrote here ”when I first read OP”‚ but then I actually dug up the post I was thinking of and I saw it eleven days *later* #(maybe etirabys’s reblog wasn’t the first one I saw: OP *is* actually years old (2019-12-16) and it *feels* like it’s been around for years #but etirabys’s was the one that came to mind)] ↩ #tag rambles #that one post with the thing #sexuality and lack thereof #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #disappointed permanent resident of The Future #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #apocalypse cw? #drugs cw?
#the fuck you mean I’ve never reblogged Radical Saturday #I know I generally don’t participate in Tumblr traditions with a periodicity that small but I thought I’d reblogged it *once* #Tumblr traditions #that one post with the thing
During the Bubonic Plague, doctors wore these bird-like masks to avoid becoming sick. They would fill the beaks with spices and rose petals, so they wouldn’t have to smell the rotting bodies.
A theory during the Bubonic Plague was that the plague was caused by evil spirits. To scare the spirits away, the masks were intentionally designed to be creepy.
Mission fucking accomplished
Okay so I love this but it doesn’t cover the half of why the design is awesome and actually borders on making sense.
It wasn’t just that they didn’t want to smell the infected and dead, they thought it was crucial to protecting themselves. They had no way of knowing about what actually caused the plague, and so one of the other theories was that the smell of the infected all by itself was evil and could transmit the plague. So not only would they fill their masks with aromatic herbs and flowers, they would also burn fires in public areas, so that the smell of the smoke would “clear the air”. This all related to the miasma theory of contagion, which was one of the major theories out there until the 19th century. And it makes sense, in a way. Plague victims smelled awful, and there’s a general correlation between horrible septic smells and getting horribly sick if you’re around what causes them for too long.
You can see now that we’ve got two different theories as to what caused the plague that were worked into the design. That’s because the whole thing was an attempt by the doctors to cover as many bases as they could think of, and we’re still not done.
The glass eyepieces. They were either darkened or red, not something you generally want to have to contend with when examining patients. But the plague might be spread by eye contact via the evil eye, so best to ward that off too.
The illustration shows a doctor holding a stick. This was an examination tool, that helped the doctors keep some distance between themselves and the infected. They already had gloves on, but the extra level of separation was apparently deemed necessary. You could even take a pulse with it. Or keep people the fuck away from you, which was apparently a documented use.
Finally, the robe. It’s not just to look fancy, the cloth was waxed, as were all of the rest of their clothes. What’s one of the properties of wax? Water-based fluids aren’t absorbed by it. This was the closest you could get to a sterile, fully protecting garment back then. Because at least one person along the line was smart enough to think “Gee, I’d really rather not have the stuff coming out of those weeping sores anywhere on my person”.
So between all of these there’s a real sense that a lot of real thought was put into making sure the doctors were protected, even if they couldn’t exactly be sure from what. They worked with what information they had. And frankly, it’s a great design given what was available! You limit exposure to aspirated liquids, limit exposure to contaminated liquids already present, you limit contact with the infected. You also don’t give fleas any really good place to hop onto. That’s actually useful.
Beyond that, there were contracts the doctors would sign before they even got near a patient. They were to be under quarantine themselves, they wouldn’t treat patients without a custodian monitoring them and helping when something had to be physically contacted, and they would not treat non-plague patients for the duration. There was an actual system in place by the time the plague doctors really became a thing to make sure they didn’t infect anyone either.
These guys were the product of the scientific process at work, and the scientific process made a bitchin’ proto-hazmat suit. And containment protocols!
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#I think about this post every time I see someone wearing a bifold N95 #(I know I’ve talked about that before‚ but here is the specific post I had in mind) #history #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #that one post with the thing #illness tw #proud citizen of The Future
Brinens and Things 