"brevity is the soul of wit" fuck you. oooh fuck off with that. what i gotta be glib to be funny? i gotta be quick? it's gotta be as short as possible otherwise it ain't funny? that's right, is it? there's no way around that? i've gotta be fucking short? i don't wanna hear that from you, shakespeare, old fart. i've read your fucking plays, you didn't shut up, did ya? alas poor yorick now you're both dead, so who's fuckin brief now? you little shit. brevity is the soul of wit, my ass.

and another thing. what's with your shitty little moustache? your moustache is too fuckin small. doesn't make it the soul of wit.

U mad?

i fr can't pass by a dynamic between a cool unhinged threatening woman and a chaotic little silly freak of a man <3

im actually a professional arknights niche challenge player. my niche challenge genre is "favoriteknights". it's a challenge where i only use operators i like. it's very professional.

I get it. I just have Ines throwing knives at everyone forever.

Underneath the ubermensch tones, this feels like a precursor to food safety standards being lowered for meat. They're just tapping into toxic masculinity as a way to repackage what they want.

Americans, if you're able to shop from local processing butchers, especially halal/kosher ones, I'd suggest preparing to make the switch.

I see in the notes people engaging with the White House's announcement at face value and pointing out this is hypocritical/nonsensical.

Of course it's both.

"The War on Protein" is just a slogan to make it look like the previous administration and the Left in general were/are deliberately trying to keep the nation weak. (This slots in well with white supremacist fears about the Great Replacement, etc.)

This is deliberately to rile up folks and further draw Us vs Them lines. In addition, their current base that actually knows science will be forced to parrot this nonsense as a loyalty test.

It doesn't matter that we see protein added in all sorts of things these days, even bottled water. It doesn't matter that America is the land of burgers, hotdogs, and steaks.

Treat this as an example of how this regime tries to sell its bullshit as "beneficial". See how everything is now a "war", and how America needs to be "strong".

This is most likely propaganda to disguise a campaign to lower food safety standards. Probably also to change requirements for food lunches to favor corporate donors whose food is unhealthy/unsafe.

The formula that worked so well to cast public doubt upon COVID and vaccines is being used here to do the same food safety. Expect to hear that regulations are "unreasonable" and actively hurting America.

Again, do not engage this regime with the surface content of their messaging - treat everything as propaganda and look for who stands to benefit.

Guys, it's not about deregulation. It's about the new food pyramid guidelines. The "war on protein" they're talking about is previous guidelines that recommended limiting red meat and had a lower protein recommendation.

I don't know enough about nutrition science to say if the new guidelines are actually healthy - per the article the response from nutritionists has been "mixed." My guess is no, but my guess on this is worth very little, given I have no training or background in this area.

I agree that the language used is intended to evoke reactions, and plays on associations between meat and strength.

But please stop telling people they can't trust their food to be safe based on vibes and assumptions

https://news.northeastern.edu/2026/01/12/food-pyramid-new/

But regulatory oversight and testing literally has been cut in 2025. In part because there is an effort to shift regulations at the federal level to the states, many of which are underfunded.

Many things can be happening here at once. In fact, a new food pyramid combined with easing regulations and testing sort of goes hand in hand.

Some events from 2025 and early 2026:

Deregulation is moving through legislation at the state level, such as in New Hampshire. This is currently at odds with federal standards, but only as far as those standards continue to exist, imo.

Pesticide tracking requirements have been rescinded.

The feds hadn't been using this data for years because of lack of funding, but now preventing any future studies via a data blackout is concerning.

Pork and chicken processing speed has been increased. Faster speeds = more chance for error and worker injury.

Key Federal Food Safety Advisory Committees, NACMCF and NACMPI, Have Been Terminated.

CDC Cuts Back FoodNet Surveillance.

Not all of these examples are directly meat related, but it still points to a pattern where public safety has been impacted.

There have been enough listeria outbreaks since 2025 to where I will no longer buy bagged salad.

And from where I sit in federal space and the cuts and sleight of hand I've personally witnessed on my own program - even while not CDC or USDA related - I am inclined to believe many decisions by this administration are to line pockets at the expense of public safety.

Call me paranoid, fine, but as has pointed out in the notes, making at effort to patronize local butchers, especially those from underrepresented communities, is good from a community-building standpoint.

I'm not done with the connections behind this announcement.

This promotion of protein also ties into rewarding the production of meat, which has climate and labor impact.

Prison labor is tied to some of the world's most popular food brands.

And with immigrants being so under attack in the US, that means a huge source of labor is dwindling, likely to be picked up by prisons. (Tyson foods is a big offender here.)

Meat's environmental impact.

We already know this administration is denying climate change, which is convenient for an industry that contributes so much to it.

This isn't "just" a new food pyramid. It seeks to prop up a system that is already rife with abuse.

Am I saying you should be afraid of your food? I dunno, maybe a little, to where you need to be more keyed into recalls and the like. The quality of consumer goods has dropped so much due to capitalism that it feels naive to assume food won't follow suit.

You definitely should be more mindful of where it comes from and make the choices that are the most positive and impactful for you and your community.

Yeah

Samuel Vimes of the Ankh Morpork City Watch, Discworld (Terry Pratchett)

Remember calming cat? Remember when tumblr was this color? If you don’t that’s fine. I just feel old and alone.

You’re never alone. There is always calming cat.

fur mew

Thank you for bringing back calming cat, I had lost the previous bookmark for it!

i want to do a painting of a tiger taking a bath to put in a bathroom (bathroom-themed bathroom) and to this end i made a little maquette out of clay and i suspect this will scope creep into having both a painting and sculpture of a tiger or perhaps only a sculpture of a tiger. if i do both should they be displayed together or separately

Tiger maquette by the way 🐅

Working on cutting out a large piece of wood to do the painting on, which is a constraint that will either be really fun or really annoying. Maybe both

Wood primed and underpainted and sketch transferred mostly by cutting it out in different chunks and tracing around them. Stripes to be determined. Nobody let me work on this again for at least two weeks

The finished Ms. Tigers

please tell me this manga/comic/show exists i do not wanna have to make it

okok I've posted about this before but I'm watching animation content on youtube again while getting work done and by GOD I WANNA TALK ABOUT THIS AGAIN

There's a specific concept I want to consume as content/art so badly but it came to me in a stupid dream. BUT. Sometimes, a dream means I DID see a hint of it somewhere and my brain accidentally plagiarized it which provides me with the teensiest sliver of hope that exists already and I don't have to work on it

It's a kind of a reverse isekai, right? But instead of an instant portal, it's time passing. And what I mean by that is that it's a Sun Wukong story, but the branch off is that after the main events of Journey to the West he gets either water temple'd or trapped in magic sleep again, not for a few hundred years but a few THOUSAND.

He wakes up to an incredibly far-flung China that remembers his myth and only his myth.

The art style that operated in this dream was sort of. Textured but 3D? Think nimona's buttery lighting but instead of emphasis on light and shapes to operate with the stained glass and solarpunk-medieval style the models are textured in a way that just invokes traditional brushwork and colour bleed even in a more cyberpunkish setting. Think like. Whenever there's a night scene the astigmatism glow of lamplight bleeds a little, like ink feathering on paper.

It's a little bit of a Steve Rogers treatment in a way, the world has moved past him, but also completely mythologized and capitalized on that mythology. Rather than treat that man out of time narrative as an aspect of backstory, it's the MAIN character narrative, because this ISN'T a world that needs him. This world is doing pretty okay, actually.

This a story about him.

Not about his feats or how cool his powers are or the 8 gajillion things the magic staff can do but just.

How ya doing, bud?

From the vaguely coherent notes that I could garner from my sleepily typed googledoc, it seems that I wanted this to be a love letter of sorts to the Asian diaspora experience? A specific sort of loneliness? Where the world you experience has a sort of disconnect in that it makes plain you belong there but you also don't, you never have, and there's no way to go "back" but going forward feels like groping blind through the muck. How much right to the past does he feel like he has? When it's been built into something he can't recognize and is clearly important to other people.

I want the pickup of the plot to gain him friends, family, maybe even a conflict or two but the stakes should never elevate vis a vis physical enemies to battle.

It'd be about 2/3 of this sort of narrative drawn story and the other 1/3 just hogwild worldbuilding and design

I've looked at a few other journey to the west adaptations but they mainly just use him as a funky lil action figure hero that's there to be cool as hell and save the day

99% likely this is just a thing my brain is made up and I'd need a several million budget and about 25 additional skills to start the ball rolling but hey, worth it to ask yall again

I said what I fucking said.

This meme is tongue in cheek, but this too is part of class warfare. In this case, keeping the law too complex for non-experts to even begin to have a chance to understand it means that only those who can afford to hire experts can protect themselves adequately and engage in ventures and activities that don’t directly relate to subsistence.

This is also why reasonable courts are so important. Access to the law should not be a game of gotcha, and the professionals applying the law should understand that.

Thinking about EQ as a weapon more, I think it’s a really interesting type of callousness that I haven’t seen portrayed in fiction very much. The ability to empathize with someone, to make them feel seen and cared about, but all without actually caring about the person - I’ve met one or two people who can really pull it off, and it messes you up. There’s someone who makes you feel like the sun is shining on you, but as soon as they have what they want, they don’t care about you anymore and the light goes off. I’m having trouble thinking of a character that weaponizes empathy like this.

@thegreatyin, this feels likes something the Scoundrel does to himself, but I’m having trouble thinking of a character that does this to another character.

The Knox Family

From Chp 63:

(apologies for blurry pics; my scanner wouldn’t talk to my comp)

Mrs. Knox calls the doc “Honey.” it is VERY CLEAR in the manga that they are not divorced; they simply live separately bc KNOX DOESN’T WANT TO KILL HER IN HIS SLEEP! (an important factor of this tale left out of BH)

And then, there’s Knox’s son. BH leaves out the content of the fourth page of this scene, so the adaptation loses a great deal of his character (that’s more than ¼ of his entire appearance!).

In Chp 57, Alphonse tells Knox how sad it makes him when a family doesn’t get along, and here’s Knox’s son harping on the same beautiful theme of cherishing family.

Also, he’s standing up to his father on how his coping mechanism of running away isn’t bringing him any closer to healing. Quite the bold thing to do after not seeing each other for potentially five to six years. Knox’s son has some srs guts.

The fact that WE SEE KNOX AT THE MEDICAL TENTS set up after the final battle heavily implies that Knox takes his son’s words to heart and returns to working as a doctor. Maybe his wife and son even move back in with him in the months Knox doesn’t appear! Here’s to hoping, since familial reconciliation is a big thing in FMA.

Dangit, Arakawa! These characters don’t even have official first names, and you’re gonna make me cry over them! ;M;

Went looking for Dr. Knox. One of the characters that stuck with me. Dr. Knox is stuck, doesn’t know how to move forwards, and is just trying to deal with his guilt. Alone, because he doesn’t deserve help or love (according to himself). Most of the other characters in FMA have someone, but Dr. Knox doesn’t know how to let himself have anyone.

i normally rock with stoic living weapons who rarely express emotion and generally act like the machines they're expected to be, but i've living-weapon-ified one of my old OCs recently and i'm getting very taken with "friendly, charismatic, jokester living weapon who nonetheless uses their charisma to subtly reinforce/justify their own dehumanisation & reassure their temporary handlers that it's ok to use them, really! that's what they're for!"

also thinking about instant shifts in demeanour. under the command, or just in the presence, of a different superior; or following a cue. handler puts a hand on their neck and they go still, cutting themself off mid-sentence, blank facial expression and body language that suddenly feels predatory

stricter superior enters the room & you instantly notice the Weapon acting differently, standing ramrod straight, speaking briefly and literally, bookending every answer (it takes you a while to notice they never speak unprompted) with snappy honorifics, etc. at first it creeps you out that they changed so much on a dime, but the more you think about it, the more it seems that they didn't actually change much besides their tone and demeanour. did they ever speak to you except in answer? they used your honorific like a little inside joke, but did they ever actually drop it?

Oh, this is really good. Emotional intelligence is absolutely a skill, it can be learned, and it can be a weapon.