Unlearning How White People Ask Personal Questions

stupid leftists and their belief in *checks notes* the intrinsic value of human life

most people make it seem harder than it is. imagine.

how do i break the cycle

prepare yourself for the absolutely insufferable lack of satisfaction found in forgiveness

Thought experiment: the crew of a hypothetical Star Trek style TV show that’s been deliberately contrived to cause as many arguments as possible between canon-conscious fanfic authors.

A chief engineer whose facial appearance is apparently shockingly unusual, but whose face is never actually seen. The engineering deck is often obscured by steam, and their responsibilities frequently require them to wear a full-face protective shield, while any time they’re encountered outside of engineering they’re shot exclusively from the back, or with some foreground object conveniently blocking their face. There’s a running gag where any time someone tries to describe them they just can’t seem to come up with the right word.  

A tactical officer who may or may not actually have a name. Unlike the chief engineer, above, no conspicuous concealment ever occurs; the show’s plot and dialogue are simply structured so that their name just happens never to come up, in such a way that a given audience member might not notice until someone points it out to them. The character is, of course, one half of the show’s primary canon ship. The show’s supplementary material is likewise phrased in such a way that the character’s name is never stated, with the character’s actor being credited as “also featuring”.  

A chief medical officer who manages to deploy a strangely topical anecdote from their implausibly extensive prior career in nearly every episode. These anecdotes are careful never to directly contradict each other, but in aggregate form a personal history which cannot conceivably be true. The possibility that they’re just spinning tall tales is ruled out by the fact that their anecdotes are frequently corroborated by comments from other crew members who’ve either heard about the incident in question or were present themselves for some (generally unspecified) reason.  

A communications officer and a science officer who are played by the same actor. They’re never seen on screen together, even while off duty. (e.g., at any gathering where one of them appears, the other “couldn’t make it”.) The circumstances that prevent them from ever being in the same room are often set up to lead the audience to suspect that they’re looking at one character pretending to be two separate people for some unspecified reason, but only characters who aren’t members of the crew ever notice the fact that they’re identical apart from the colour of their uniforms; the other crew members simply don’t see the resemblance.  

The captain, who appears in every single episode and often plays a central role in the plot, yet has no regular actor, being portrayed by an endless parade of guest stars. Their age, gender, and overall appearance is usually wildly different from episode to episode, though they always wear the same distinctive headgear in order to allow the audience to easily recognise them. This is apparently a diegetic phenomenon, as other characters will occasionally comment in passing on the captain’s current appearance, but the phenomenon is otherwise so unremarkable to them that its significance is never discussed.

Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.

VIDEO

Washington Post

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes

Doctors sound alarm about patients in their 30s and 40s left debilitated or dead by strokes. Some didn’t even know they were infected by cor

Well I don’t love this.

I realized why the idea of constellations has always swayed me. constellations are so very human.

our wonder of the stars is bone-sunk; we’ve been thinking and dreaming and watching and watching and watching since the beginning of time, and we looked for so long that we started making connections. 

we played a celestial game of connect-the-dots; trying to find order in something so vast and trying to show that the stars are in everything and everything is in the stars.

we plucked pictures out of the infinite; there’s a dog, there’s a bear, there’s a lion, see? look, right there; the stars hold and mirror back everything. 

but then it went a step further. instead of everyday things, we stopped picking out the cups and the bears, and instead we saw stories. 

look, there’s Andromeda, chained to a rock and waiting to be devoured by Cetus. there’s Orion, and Hercules, and do you see Orpheus’ lyre? Zeus sent an eagle to retrieve it after Orpheus’ death and he placed it in the sky. 

we did the most human thing imaginable: we wrote our stories into the stars. we filled the night sky; previously so vast, so unknowable; with our history. we forged connections to the stars and made it so our children will always know where they come from. 

actually not emotional over graduating university, just over losing my jstor access

The best advice really is to just write. Write badly - purple prose, stilted conversations, rambling descriptions. Don't delete it, pass go, take your $200, save all your garbage in a big folder. Look at how much you've made - it doesn't matter if it isn't perfect, isn't polished, it was practice. Every time you write you learn a little more, and find another piece of your voice.

Magic?