Purification In Progress...

About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.

It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.

So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.

So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.

Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.

The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.

... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.

Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.

Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.

And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.

orginal (its so cool)

"and if the dog bit back?" im in tears

ship ask game 😁1 Who would be first to to bite down anc consume the flesh of the other, euphoric in the taste and the heft and the slide of the blood 2. who is the ant and who is the ophiocordyceps fungus? 3. who is the dog and who is the master? 4 when the roles are blurred or reversed who would be first to die and how? would it be by bulletwound? the phallic blade? strangulation? 5. Cocaine or Heroin? 6. who licks up the other’s cigarette ash? 7 who is julius caesar and who is brutus? 8. who is jesus and who is judas? 9. did jesus want it? did julius caesar know it was coming? are the betrayed ever proud? 10. who is irrumatus and who is irrumans? who is pedicatus and who is pedicans? 11. did they ever kiss and why not? 12 if they are two sides of the same coin who is heads and who is tails? 13. and if the coin was the holey dollar? 14. And if the dog bit back? 15 and if the dog bit back? 16 and if the dog bit back? 17 and if the dog bit back? 18 and if the dog bit back? 19 and if the dog bit back? 20. Who buys the other flowers?🥰

an accident by erin m. riley, 2020, wool & cotton, 82 × 100 inches

Love is a shambling thing, gray-faced and gasping.

It moves in from the west, the setting sun behind it. Those who see it avert their eyes.

Love stumbles and shutters, Love grasps but is not grasped. It sees a man, and the man does not look away.

Love reaches out a gray hand.

The man touches the hand just lightly, just on the palm, and the man feels heat inside of him. His heart is on fire.

This is not a metaphor.

His heart is on fire and so, soon, is his skin, his hair, his teeth become more and more visible as his face shrinks and melts away.

Love watches dispassionately. Love does not love what it does, Love only does it. Love does not have eyes and neither, now, does the man.

Love is a shambling thing.

It climbs through a window into an infant’s bedroom.

When one of the mothers comes in to check on her baby son, there is love, too, in the crib, curled up inside him.

Love murmurs, and the baby spits restlessly. The baby does not burn, the baby will eventually burn, but by then he will not be a baby.

The woman looks down at the ghastly form of Love curled up beside her son and she thinks, “What have I done?” She cries, not because she is happy or sad, but because that is what her body needs to do next.

Love rises from the crib and passes her without a glance.

Love is a shambling thing. It shambles out of her home.

Love, with skin that peels and pops and joints that moan and snap, climbs to the top of a tall building and surveys its surroundings. So many people.

It opens its mouth. Its teeth are the only part of its body that look new and healthy.

It has so many teeth...

It yelps and howls, an inarticulate sermon of lost and loss, and everyone hears it. They hear it as a shudder in their stomach and hitch in their step.

Love does not eat or drink, love separates its many teeth and consumes.

Love is a shambling thing, grey-faced and gasping.

It moves out to the east, the night drawing closed behind it. Those who see it avert their eyes.

hello fellow non-Black tumblr users. welcome to my saw trap. if you'd like to leave, please name one (1) Black woman author who is not Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Octavia Butler, or N.K. Jemisin. bonus points if she's published a book in the last five years.

have you ever been told you look like a celebrity?

yes (who? 👀)

no