how am i feeling today? im glad you asked.

old drawing but i wanted to post it ^^

rigid lines drawn between "platonic" vs "romantic" relationships will kill the patient. she needs "okay but how important are they to each other" to live

You work inside of the death ray. You're a computer programmer, making sure the death ray functions properly. There are thousands of people who commute to the death ray for work every day. Engineers working in its core making sure it doesn't overheat or fail to fire. People in the upper offices making sure the entire operation functions properly. Everyone working together like a massive clockwork machine that they're only a small part of. Even if you don't agree with how the death ray is used, you have to be impressed by how powerful, how wholesome it is, that you're all working together.

You personally are against most uses of the death ray. It's one of the most powerful weapons of war in the galaxy, it's capable of destroying entire planets and star systems in a few days, or fleets of ships and continents in mere hours. It's only ever used on planets far from yours, in the savage areas of the galaxy where the rights you have in your comfortable inner world don't exist. It's always people you never meet, never see, you're against it but it feels distant, it's hard to even feel like it's real. You understand what it's like, alien civilizations and human offshoots crushed under a grand imperial boot, planets slowly engulfed by that distant fire, taking days to be destroyed as their cities burn and seas boil until no life is possible on their surface. But you don't know the name of anyone whose been hit by the death ray, they're all millions of miles away.

You don't personally agree with the death ray being used the way it is but you're not responsible for it. You just work on the code, you have to make money somehow, the economy is rough, and someone is going to be hired as a programmer in such a competitive position. Also, you're not 'the guy who fires the death ray' (despite your uncle proudly introducing you as that at one point), you just make sure their code is running properly. You're not a killer, not even part of the military, just someone who programs computers, it would be silly to claim you're responsible for what those computers happen to be used for.

And sometimes people around your age will morally grandstand and naively act like you're more responsible than you are. They'll tell you that you're complicit in something that's too big for you to stop. And you try to tell them that you need a job, that you need to make money, and it's like they think you have freedom that you don't. We're all trying to survive right? Do they just expect you to quit your job because of someone you've never seen before, because of a roll so small, that can so easily be replaced? You can disagree with your bosses, right? Everyone doesn't like their boss.

It almost seems like nobody is the person who chooses to fire off the death ray. When it was being built, when there was a pro-war movement as opposed to people who just didn't like the anti-war movement, there were people who chose to build it, and everything around its first firing was in so many people's hands. But now the death ray is so part of normal life, so mundane, that there's very few people who make choices to support it. There aren't politicians who enthusiastically choose for the death ray to destroy a certain place, just politicians who have to continue supporting the death ray to get reelected, and who can't get anti-death ray laws passed because their opposition will call them soft. There aren't generals who choose to destroy anywhere, just military analysts who figure out what places would serve the empire best to be destroyed using logical and scientific calculations. Nobody's more powerful than the system, and it's nobody's job to decide what the system is, it's just so many people's jobs to figure out how to best make the system work. And the people upstairs in the office need to make sure the press isn't against the death ray because then it might not kill people. And it's the engineers' downstairs job to make sure the death ray doesn't overheat because then it won't kill people. And you fix code because if the code is broken, if you weren't maximally competent, the death ray might fail to kill, it might be off, and fire into empty space, and lives would be saved. It's a massive gun with no trigger. People working at hospitals are told they're saving lives. People working in libraries are told they're helping people learn. Even people working for porn companies get to know that they're getting people off. But everyone you work somehow believes that their job does nothing, that they have no consequence, that they mere watch what's happening happen but have made no choices, because the choice they want to make would go against their interest, their actions are thus not theirs'.

You met a girl once from the outer worlds, and she was mad when she found out where you worked. And you thought that she was just another privileged kid who didn't understand your job. But then she told you that she was from a world that was destroyed. She told you she barely got out in time. She said that it first came like a heatwave, but it kept getting hotter. She saw the streets she once walked as a child consumed by fire, knowing she would never walk them again. The river she has seen every day outside her window, a holy river in her culture, dry up, as dead fish were cooked in its bed. It worked so efficiently thanks to code you'd written. She saw her childhood friend take their own life rather than die from the heat. She had to choose between taking her younger brother or younger sister on the escape pod, chose the one she thought would be more likely to make it. You told her you work there because you need to money to survive. She told you she had to kill people to get a spot on that shuttle, wielding a ceremonial blade she never expected to use. You told her that you don't enjoy doing this, you have to for your job. She told you that she doesn't care if the people who killed her family enjoyed it or not, she just cares that they killed them.

You could stop properly doing your job. Write code that's purposefully wrong. You wouldn't stop the death ray forever, but you might cause it to stall for a day, or take longer to destroy planets, or to miss and give people a warning before it lands a lethal blow. You could give people, not all the people, but thousands to millions of people, more time to escape, more time to build escape vassals, even just more time to say goodbye. You'd save at least one life. You almost certainly wouldn't be arrested for writing bad code. You'd be fired, and if you played your cards right you could be written up, or reprimanded, or passed up for promotion the first few times before eventually being fired. But if writing code badly means saving lives, then all of the times you did you job properly it would mean things you can't bear to think about. And anyway, you have a promotion coming up very soon, maybe you can think about this later.

tv pitch: a completely average workplace sitcom except that it’s established at the end of the pilot that it takes place on the 90th floor of the world trade center in 2000. every episode the date is shown, just to build the sense of impending doom. the show is otherwise a completely generic the office ripoff. the intro sequence is a montage of airplanes taking off.

at the end of the second season, we reach 9/10/01. after six months of waiting, season 3 drops. now it’s 9/12/01. nothing has happened. the characters carry on as normal. fans of the series go insane. the show never explains what happened, and continues to pretend it’s a normal sitcom.

You ever see something innocuous, minding its own business on the clearance shelf at Michael’s and before you know it, it takes over your life for a few weeks?

So it was with this desktop greenhouse.

I took it home and after taking an appropriate time to “season” my idea in my mind (read: a month or two) I set to make my vision of a mini botanical garden a reality.

I started by removing the heavy glass panels and building a raised floor above the latch. I wanted to use the base as a foundation on the building.

I wrapped the foundation in plastic stone textured flooring (meant for Christmas villages) and built a pond at one end of the same. I then gave it a more realistic paint job and designed a rough layout for my plants and displays.

I also knew I wanted to make the ironwork significantly more intricate, but I wasn’t sure how just yet…

Up next - PLANTS! I went wild making all kinds of plants. Some were specific species and some were more conceptual.

I made several trees with polymer clay and moss, cacti out of beads and flocking, cattails out of raffia, hot glue and coffee grounds, and giant monstera leaves out of paper and wire.

This part should have taken me a long time, but it really came together fast. I loved finding ways to replicate natural shapes and patterns using bits of this and that.

I did make adjustments to my plans as I went like eliminating benches in favor of a simpler overall design.

Then I needed to fill my pond with water. For this I used resin. Lily pads were added to the top layer, and I wired in simple LED fairy lights. The batteries are kept in the box under the foundation.

In a weekend frenzy I added more plants, metal (paper) steps, new (plexi)glass windows, a roof, wrought-iron vines (paper again), doors that open, and a hose reel disguising the latch. Suddenly, a project I thought would take months was finished…

I love my desktop botanical garden. Right now it sits on a simple lazy Susan in my office. But I’d love to get it a proper display box to protect from dust.

Thank you for coming on this little journey with me. This piece packs a lot of joy into a tiny space. I always love building miniatures, and I’ll be doing more in the future I’m sure.

moment i experienced in a hospital elevator last month

Is it Better than Imagine: Party Babyz?: Sam & Max Save the World

IGN rating for Sam & Max Save the World: 6.9

IGN rating for Imagine: Party Babyz: 7.5

Conclusion: No.

the AI bros are always trying to install in us this fear of falling behind and being abandoned by society if we won't start using AI, and let me just say - men have been telling me I'll "end up alone with seven cats if I don't give them a chance" for AGES. I can smell the barely hidden desperation underneath that axe body spray like a shark, and boy am I about to make you cry from frustration

You work inside of the death ray. You're a computer programmer, making sure the death ray functions properly. There are thousands of people who commute to the death ray for work every day. Engineers working in its core making sure it doesn't overheat or fail to fire. People in the upper offices making sure the entire operation functions properly. Everyone working together like a massive clockwork machine that they're only a small part of. Even if you don't agree with how the death ray is used, you have to be impressed by how powerful, how wholesome it is, that you're all working together.

You personally are against most uses of the death ray. It's one of the most powerful weapons of war in the galaxy, it's capable of destroying entire planets and star systems in a few days, or fleets of ships and continents in mere hours. It's only ever used on planets far from yours, in the savage areas of the galaxy where the rights you have in your comfortable inner world don't exist. It's always people you never meet, never see, you're against it but it feels distant, it's hard to even feel like it's real. You understand what it's like, alien civilizations and human offshoots crushed under a grand imperial boot, planets slowly engulfed by that distant fire, taking days to be destroyed as their cities burn and seas boil until no life is possible on their surface. But you don't know the name of anyone whose been hit by the death ray, they're all millions of miles away.

You don't personally agree with the death ray being used the way it is but you're not responsible for it. You just work on the code, you have to make money somehow, the economy is rough, and someone is going to be hired as a programmer in such a competitive position. Also, you're not 'the guy who fires the death ray' (despite your uncle proudly introducing you as that at one point), you just make sure their code is running properly. You're not a killer, not even part of the military, just someone who programs computers, it would be silly to claim you're responsible for what those computers happen to be used for.

And sometimes people around your age will morally grandstand and naively act like you're more responsible than you are. They'll tell you that you're complicit in something that's too big for you to stop. And you try to tell them that you need a job, that you need to make money, and it's like they think you have freedom that you don't. We're all trying to survive right? Do they just expect you to quit your job because of someone you've never seen before, because of a roll so small, that can so easily be replaced? You can disagree with your bosses, right? Everyone doesn't like their boss.

It almost seems like nobody is the person who chooses to fire off the death ray. When it was being built, when there was a pro-war movement as opposed to people who just didn't like the anti-war movement, there were people who chose to build it, and everything around its first firing was in so many people's hands. But now the death ray is so part of normal life, so mundane, that there's very few people who make choices to support it. There aren't politicians who enthusiastically choose for the death ray to destroy a certain place, just politicians who have to continue supporting the death ray to get reelected, and who can't get anti-death ray laws passed because their opposition will call them soft. There aren't generals who choose to destroy anywhere, just military analysts who figure out what places would serve the empire best to be destroyed using logical and scientific calculations. Nobody's more powerful than the system, and it's nobody's job to decide what the system is, it's just so many people's jobs to figure out how to best make the system work. And the people upstairs in the office need to make sure the press isn't against the death ray because then it might not kill people. And it's the engineers' downstairs job to make sure the death ray doesn't overheat because then it won't kill people. And you fix code because if the code is broken, if you weren't maximally competent, the death ray might fail to kill, it might be off, and fire into empty space, and lives would be saved. It's a massive gun with no trigger. People working at hospitals are told they're saving lives. People working in libraries are told they're helping people learn. Even people working for porn companies get to know that they're getting people off. But everyone you work somehow believes that their job does nothing, that they have no consequence, that they mere watch what's happening happen but have made no choices, because the choice they want to make would go against their interest, their actions are thus not theirs'.

You met a girl once from the outer worlds, and she was mad when she found out where you worked. And you thought that she was just another privileged kid who didn't understand your job. But then she told you that she was from a world that was destroyed. She told you she barely got out in time. She said that it first came like a heatwave, but it kept getting hotter. She saw the streets she once walked as a child consumed by fire, knowing she would never walk them again. The river she has seen every day outside her window, a holy river in her culture, dry up, as dead fish were cooked in its bed. It worked so efficiently thanks to code you'd written. She saw her childhood friend take their own life rather than die from the heat. She had to choose between taking her younger brother or younger sister on the escape pod, chose the one she thought would be more likely to make it. You told her you work there because you need to money to survive. She told you she had to kill people to get a spot on that shuttle, wielding a ceremonial blade she never expected to use. You told her that you don't enjoy doing this, you have to for your job. She told you that she doesn't care if the people who killed her family enjoyed it or not, she just cares that they killed them.

You could stop properly doing your job. Write code that's purposefully wrong. You wouldn't stop the death ray forever, but you might cause it to stall for a day, or take longer to destroy planets, or to miss and give people a warning before it lands a lethal blow. You could give people, not all the people, but thousands to millions of people, more time to escape, more time to build escape vassals, even just more time to say goodbye. You'd save at least one life. You almost certainly wouldn't be arrested for writing bad code. You'd be fired, and if you played your cards right you could be written up, or reprimanded, or passed up for promotion the first few times before eventually being fired. But if writing code badly means saving lives, then all of the times you did you job properly it would mean things you can't bear to think about. And anyway, you have a promotion coming up very soon, maybe you can think about this later.

this video is so full of life

this is a message to all babytrans. you may come across a subreddit or maybe even a 4chan board that is made up entirely of the most miserable trans people you’ve ever met. they have their own lingo borrowed straight from incel communities. but instead of being an incel where cishet men tell each other that women will never want to fuck them because of 2 mm of browbone, it’s trans women telling each other that they will never be a woman because of 2 mm of browbone. it’s trans men calling other trans men pooners for having a round face instead of a chiseled gigachad jawline. but they swear it’s not a toxic community because they’re all hiding under several layers of irony, so you can never really tell if someone is being serious. and it’s very important that you never visit these forums, even out of morbid curiosity

since this post is making rounds i feel like resharing this for no reason in particular

There is a perpetual Ralsei rotating in my brain like a rotisserie chicken

“There's something more important than reaching the ending”

Me remembering Undertale