ANTHROPOLOGY

toast / digital painting by dansedelune

at society6 and redbubble.

So I was looking up a certain kind of cellular automata on Wikipedia out of curiosity, and then I ended up seeing a link for something called “billiard ball computers”.

So basically it’s a theoretical construction to show nature has results that can be reversible or something. You do have to let the billiards be frictionless, though. So it’s not like you could implement this in real lif-

Um…

This guy???

Wait,, just look at the pictures they have though. The captions refer to crab groups as “swarm balls”, which is a very endearing term IMO.

Unfortunately, these gates take up a lot of space, so to do big computations you’d need lots of crabs and several hundred feet of cardboard.

Something I’m not 100% sure how to put into words b/c flu but nonetheless woke up thinking about is:

it’s so disappointing when fiction that purports to show the “villain’s side of the story” actually just flips the roles, making the original villain a precious cinnamon roll and the original hero 100% garbage. it’s such a lazy narrative and it makes me wonder if you’ve really thought about *why* you want to tell the story you’re telling.

and like – there’s nothing *wrong* with just writing a power fantasy wherein your villainous fave comes out on top. but it’s always kind of unnerving to me when fandom will jump on those narratives without fully thinking them through, and thus react just as vitriolically to the new villain as an older audience did to the original.

Maleficent has this problem, Orange Is the New Black has this problem, The Shape of Water to some degree has this problem (though concentrated in the fandom and not necessarily in del Toro’s narrative). it’s really bizarre to me how people will walk into a “villain redeemed” narrative and come out with their hatred intact, just shifted to a new, more “deserving” target. like, do you not see how recursive that is? and are you not just a little bit troubled by the knowledge that your sympathies are that easy to manipulate by a shift in narrator?

again, it’s fine if it’s just a power fantasy, but if you’re trying to make any kind of overarching point about villains and narratives and redemption, it’s at least *prudent* not to just switch the vantage points.

well.

Y’know, that makes me think of something, actually.

So if you’re one of those “I can only write when I feel Inspired™” type of writers but you never seem to feel very inspired, and all of the usual “You have to make a schedule and stick to it and sit down and write XYZ words per day” writing tips have never worked for you and only make you feel guilty but you have no idea why,

have you perhaps considered that you might be neurodivergent / mentally ill / have a chronic health condition, and that what you call “inspiration” is what the rest of us call “spoons”?

B/c that is exactly what happened to me.

A GUIDE FOR YOUNG LADIES ENTERING THE SERVICE OF THE FAIRIES, by Rosamund Hodge

I.

This is the lie they will use to break you: no one else has ever loved this way before.

II.

Choose wisely which court you serve. Light or Dark, Summer or Winter, Seelie or Unseelie: they have many names, but the pith of the choice is this: a poisoned flower or a knife in the dark?

(The difference is less and more than you might think.)

Of course, this is only if you go to them for the granting of a wish: to save your father, sister, lover, dearest friend. If you go to get someone back from them, or—most foolish of all—because you fell in love with one of them, you will have no choice at all. You must go to the ones that chose you.

III.

Be kind to the creature that guards your door. Do not mock its broken, bleeding face.

It will never help you in return. But I assure you, someday you will be glad to know that you were kind to something once.

IV.

Do not be surprised how many other mortal girls are there within the halls. The world is full of wishing and of wanting, and the fairies love to play with human hearts.

You will meet all kinds: the terrified ones, who used all their courage just getting there. The hopeful ones, who think that love or cleverness is enough to get them home. The angry ones, who see only one way out. The cold ones, who are already half-fairy.

I would tell you, Do not try to make friends with any of them, but you will anyway.

V.

Sooner or later (if you serve well, if you do not open the forbidden door and let the monster eat you), they will tell you about the game.

Summer battles Winter, Light battles Dark. This is the law of the world. And on the chessboard of the fairies, White battles Black.

In the glory of this battle, the pieces that are brave and strong may win their heart’s desire.

VI.

You already have forgotten how the mortal sun felt upon your face. You already know the bargain that brought you here was a lie.

If you came to save your sick mother, you fear she is dead already. If you came to free your captive sister, your fear she will be sent to Hell for the next tithe. If you came for love of an elf-knight, you are broken with wanting him, and yet he does not seem to know you.

Say yes.

Keep reading

Also like, I think people treated it as some form of bad faith argument to say “when you always use hyperbolic language, you dissolve any meaning your words have and make the words no longer actually useful to describe or even condemn the thing they refer to.”

But lol it’s true. Like that’s 100% accurate and nothing you hear hysterical woke people say can actually have any rhetorical weight because you never know if them using the word “pedophile” refers to some kindof fanfic nonsense or a 30-year-old dating a 25-year-old; or whether they’re talking about actual child sexual abuse.

When I’m a “literal nazi” for saying that the word ‘elite’ is not an antisemitic slur (lol), then I have no way of knowing who is actually being referred to by the word “nazi”. It could apply to basically everyone.

One of the Jacobin writers apparently found some 1856 articles about wealth inequality by Frederick Douglass that have never been republished before. They’re really incredible, and it’s fascinating to realize that Douglass appears to share the liberal socialist views of abolitionist Wendell Phillips, whom Douglass was friends with. According to the second article, he was a proto-Georgist too.

“The Accumulation of Wealth,” Frederick Douglass’s Paper, November 28, 1856:

…it is not wealth of itself that produces the dreaded effects, but its accumulation in the hands of a few — creating an aristocracy of wealth, ready to be the tool of an aggressive tyranny, or to become aggressive upon its own account. With an increase of wealth comes an increase of selfishness, devotion to private affairs, and a contempt of public — unless politics can be made to minister to the all absorbing selfishness of the individual…

We are ready to grant that the condition of man, cast as he is into the world naked, and surrounded by elements unfriendly to his continued existence, renders a degree of acquisitiveness necessary for the security of life; but is it just to plead this moderate degree of accumulation, indicated by nature, in justification of the unlimited hoarding of wealth, and monopolies of land, which has converted the entire civilized world into an abode of millionaires and beggars; which renders the enslavement of the peoples of the world possible, and shrouds the future of liberty with gloom?…

Wealth has ever been the tool of the tyrant, the readiest means by which liberty is overthrown. A nation starting with free institutions and customs, begins to increase in wealth, and that wealth to accumulate in the hands of a few, and here is the lever by which, eventually and certainly, the liberties gained in a simpler age will be overthrown.

Wealth is averse to agitation; it abhors revolutions; it calls for peace, at whatever sacrifice. A tyranny of an individual or a class may be winding its subtle meshes around the wealthy, depriving them of the right of unrestrained locomotion, the right of speech, the right of private judgment; but if it leaves them the privilege of grasping and accumulating gold, they are content — nay, will aid the tyranny to subject them who value their liberties enough to struggle for them; for the agitation might endanger their gains…

Louis Napoleon holds his seat today, and other tyrants with him, because they have enlisted the sympathies of capital, by professions of law and order; encouraging and increasing the facilities for growing rich. Say to one of these blinded instruments of tyranny, that personal liberty, the freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, is overthrown; and they will answer you, that commerce flourishes, manufactures increase, public securities are at par. The golden calf set up, they fall down and worship, and shut their eyes to the foul wrongs perpetrated every day on human rights.

Poverty, the natural consequence of wealth unduly accumulated, plays its part in the drama of national degradation. Wherever the palaces tower highest, and enclose within their walls the greatest accumulations of luxury and wealth, there does the peasant grovel lowest in ignorance and misery; there is tyranny most secure and freedom most hopeless…

From whence, in our own country, comes the danger to liberty? Who are the ready tools and apologists of slavery…? The plain answer is, the wealth and the poverty of the nation… We have the controllers of our commercial centres, blinding or buying the poverty-stricken, ignorant masses that fester in their alleys, to the unblushing support of the policy of slaveholding tyranny…

If such a statesman shall devise measures, which, while they will not hamper private enterprise, shall yet prevent the undue accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals or associations, he will have merited and secured a fame more lasting than has yet fallen to the lot of man. He will have founded a nation which, though subject to human vicissitudes, will yet possess elements of prosperity and permanence, such as no nation has yet enjoyed.

I’d really like structural critiques to move away from using words like “scum” in general. Individualist moralizing doesn’t belong in discussion of systemic forces; in fact, the two are directly at odds. And it’s a mindfuck of a double-bind for people who are prone to taking ideas seriously: “this issue is very large and touches many aspects of society, and you personally are directly responsible for it.” Structural problems will not be solved by obsessively purifying your own heart. 

Dear tumblr, have we heard about the sweeping reforms announced by the new LA DA?? Because I read a thread by the guy this morning that actually made me weep.