I have activated the NewXKit feature that freezes a GIF till you mouse over it so, when I scrolled down, the reaction image I got was just

which is a much better snapshot of my reaction to the OP than the proper GIF

the other day in the groupchat we were talking about how historical fiction will often try to code aristocrat characters as more sympathetic by only having them have a single servant instead of a whole household of staff but instead this just makes them look like an exploitative employer who’s so cheap he would rather pile impossible amounts of labor upon a single guy than hire enough help to actually run his house

also yes it makes the entire batfam look completely monstrous. Alfred isn’t a butler he’s some kind of career housewife holding himself psychologically hostage.

well no I mean the problem with Alfred is that Batman is a superhero story and suspending your disbelief that Bruce Wayne can dress up as a bat and fight crime with his child sidekicks is just a facet of superheroes existing

the fact that Alfred does all the cooking cleaning lawn care first aid house management chauffeuring operation of the Batcave childcare and usually at least somewhat manages Bruce’s professional and personal obligations does not tell me “wow he’s really competent” it tells me that the writers don’t and never have actually given a fuck what running a house actually entails lol. which like. almost no one wants to read a comic about sweeping so it’s understandable but I’m not sure this is evidence that you’re coming at this from a Servant Accuracy guy

as someone who was a trans teen very recently, i just can’t help but sneer at all of these “concerned parents” spreading the social contagion narrative and think, like, where were you? at that age i was a therapist, a suicide hotline, a friend, a confidant, and a mentor to other trans kids, and they did the same for me. trans community saved my life at that age. and you’re gonna stand around and what, bitch about it? in my experience, other trans kids are trying to keep your kid alive in spite of you. and you think that community safety net is the problem? lmao okay. go fuck yourself.

to any trans kid/teen reading this, listen to me. i am holding your hand rn. it’s not your fault that your parents want a doll instead of a child. i am telling you from experience that it gets better. one day your life will be yours and you’ll be glad you survived long enough to get to that point. just hang in there. it’s gonna be okay. i promise.

"Rings" by ND Stevenson

My absolute favourite comic journal by Stevenson. Made me cry my eyes out. Even when I can't articulate it, it gets to the core of what I think love is.

Voyager's old EMH is still doing his thing, 800 years later at Starfleet Academy

collecting these

HOW could i forget this classic

Third base!

Pulp sci-fi illustration by Italian artist, Aldo Di Gennaro (b. 1938).

This is probably the most culturally important thing I’ll ever seen in my lifetime if I’m being honest. I want this affixed over my mantle, embroidered into my denim, and emblazoned into my flesh so that generations to come may never forget this 1938 gem of an illustration. Put this on my gravestone and name my children after Alfo Di Gennaro. This is what it’s all about.

Artist was obviously a leg man, but I have never seen a female alien love interest designed as THIS alien before. She’s uniquely hairy, bugged-eyed, lines would indicate at least a partial exoskeleton, she has escaped being saddled with the mammories that a non-mammal being would not have, yet she’s got it bad for Space Force Leatherhead and he is so into her. I can practically hear his prose of her cabochon eyes of nebula violet, glowing with the passion to know and be known, in the starlight. The green of her body turning more vivid as discovery (and carnal knowledge) consume her conscious mind.

To suggest a red-blooded, human man could love Greedo’s cousin? Desire her??

This is fantastic, in every sense. How many lives did this change forever?

I enjoy when people give me a hard time about using the term "sequential art" because they think it's just a pretentious way of saying "comics", because when I point out that "comics" and "sequential art" are overlapping but non-identical mediums, they invariably demand an example of sequential art that isn't comics, and I get to hit them with "PowerPoint presentations".

@urlocallesbiab replied:

what is the point of oscar the grouch on sesame street?

It’s okay to not like things and it’s okay to be unhappy. He was created from the idea that “non-destructive deviance” would go over well with kids.

THANK YOU!

Basically, the point of Oscar the Grouch is so that kids know it’s okay to have fucking emotions and moods that aren’t all cheery. That’s the fucking point. And that’s even more important to the kids who are living in harsh realities. Realities where their families are falling apart or they’re not getting food every day or they’re getting abused. Telling them it’s okay to express that they are NOT HAPPY because they are HURTING is so fucking important I cannot even say it. 

Big Bird is nice, but goddamn, when you’re a kid who’s hungry and you just got beat by your caretaker and all you wanna do is hole up somewhere and tell everyone else to go away because you don’t even have words for how bad things feel? Big Bird is not your dude. Cheery happy, “well, let’s play a happy game!” Big Bird ain’t cutting it for you. Oscar the Grouch is your dude. Oscar the Grouch is the dude who tells you it’s okay to put the lid on your garbage can and be alone and be upset.

Big Bird tries to talk you out of being upset (and maybe sometimes that’s okay). But Oscar the Grouch teaches you that, no, it’s okay to be upset and you have every right to stay upset and grouchy and unhappy until you’re at a point where that can change. Oscar the Grouch teaches you that you have a right to your emotions, whatever they are.

On a more advanced level, the point of Oscar is to start teaching kids that it’s okay to have boundaries, it’s okay to want to just go into your trash can (home/safe place) and not be bothered, it’s okay to defend those boundaries and say “go away!” when you want people to go the fuck away and that you can still have a place on Sesame Street. That not everyone has to be shiny, happy Big Bird. 

That’s the point of Oscar the Grouch.

“what is the point of oscar the grouch” who even made you

Also Oscar the Grouch *likes* things that no one else likes and he’s completely unapologetic about it. 

The fact that people tell you things you like are stupid doesn’t make it’s true. He loves trash. He loves it because it’s trash. That’s important too.

As is the fact that *even though everyone thinks his interests are stupid*, people don’t take his trash away and they don’t drag him out of his can.

Also he has *fantastic* body language. Boundary laden but also very emotional. And just the way he likes stuff and expresses interest…

…Oscar the Grouch = awesome.

This is a wonderful series of texts post that needs to be shared with all of you

#i also think it’s really important that oscar is#a beloved member of the sesame street community#kids often internalize the lesson that No One Loves You When You Misbehave#and seeing all the nice people of the Street consistently be like#aw yeah that’s oscar he’s a little difficult sometimes#but he’s part of the neighborhood and we always include him#yeah i think that matters a lot

DOCTOR WHO | Dark Water

"Stop it with the eyes. Don't do that with the eyes. How do you do that anyway? It's like they inflate."

How have I never noticed Crowley’s “reflection”

Also where crowley’s reflection appears aziraphale’s disappears!

Here's the revelation I like to talk about that I had about this scene

I initially thought Crowley sank when he and Aziraphale enter the ineffable office building because he meant to, because obviously he was walking to the lower escalator (the de-escalator?) which is, just, the way you get where he means to go. Then I saw @strangelyineffable post regarding that scene about how Peter could walk on water just like Jesus till his faith faltered, and made the point that Crowley went through the floor and Aziraphale didn’t because it’s water, which you can’t walk on when you don’t have faith; and the entrance mechanism is set up that way so that angels go up and demons go down. Under the rude mechanical laws governing the matter making up the entrance/lobby, you are supported to get to the up escalator by your faith, or you go down.

This means losing your faith is what causes Falling. And is the sole cause of Falling.

You don’t fall if you break a rule (like, oh I dunno, lying to God’s face about where your flaming sword’s gotten to). You don’t fall if you ask questions and you don’t fall if you saunter vaguely downwards. You fall if you lose your faith.

You fall if you lose your faith.

would be very nice if Tumblr would notify you when someone reblogged your post with an image added and no text...

twice now I almost missed someone responding to me with a great reaction image because the notification had no sign it wasn't just an empty reblog

that's why I tag such reblogs "cartoon reply" or "cartoons" or "i made this" rarely using other than my own images, because the notifications page shows tags. on desktop, I dunno about mobile

Ever wonder what the bling on that white cuff stripe meant in the classic Trek movies?

According to Lora Johnson's Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise (1987), it's service length. But some have pointed out that the layouts of the other crewmembers' don't sync up correctly.

Starfleet Officer Requirements #1 (David Schmidt, 1985) says it's a complicated system of patterns indicating everyone's area of specialization. Really, you might as well just write the words.

But then I found this, from Star Trek I-III wardrobe designer Robert Fletcher's hand written booklet of notes:

So, after all these years, pips and squeaks is what it's supposed to be... even though, as pointed out, that doesn't sync up either and would mean Kirk had 15 years of service at the time of Wrath of Khan🤦‍♂️

According to its own dialog Wrath of Khan was fifteen years after Space Seed, which was during Kirk's early command of the Enterprise in his early thirties after he'd been in the service, academy and space assignment, presumably since he hit what we'd call secondary or postsecondary school age.

But the movies were shit about chronology anyway. In Search for Spock Morrow says the Enterprise is twenty years old. This is days after Wrath of Khan which, if it's fifteen years since Space Seed, is at least fifteen years since The Menagerie. Spock's dialog in The Menagerie places The Cage, during Pike's command, eighteen years before that. And Pike was famously the Enterprise's second captain after Robert April. Even positing that April only took the Enterprise for a few weeks or months, or days, Pike had had it long enough by The Cage that the crew had just faced a battle together. Fifteen years and eighteen years and some indeterminate time is at least thirty three years, Harry. I'm still salty about this. No wonder they drummed Morrow out of CinC by The Voyage Home three months later.

On a more positive note, the one creative on the movies who seemed to be paying attention to chronology was Nick Meyer. TMP came ten years after TOS but was set two years after. WOK, Meyer screenplay, came fifteen years after Space Seed and was set fifteen years after Space Seed. SFS, TVH, and TFF each had two years between premiers and were all set only days or months after their predecessors. TUD, directed by Meyer, was made twenty five years after TOS and set twenty five years after TOS. The man draws analogies between Star Trek and the way Sherlock Holmes overshadowed Doyle's other work (Meyer is also the author of The Seven Per Cent Solution and The West End Horror) but it's his own fault for being so good at it.

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I have my own take on this, based on experience assembling a Superman hall costume cosplay in the 80s

Replicator hardware is pretty cool, but man it would be so cool to work on the software. How to best represent huge assemblies of atoms so the file size is small and easy to store/quick to transmit. How to pick the best file format during a scan. Foods probably benefit from a different compression algorithm than engine parts; we don’t want proteins misfolding because the atom placements got averaged out into a “flawless” lattice.

How to adjust that format when someone wants to edit a pattern. People usually aren’t looking to pluck individual atoms from one pile to another, and depending on the object polygons might not be the easiest primitives either (someone editing a garment wouldn’t want to nudge a bunch of tiny triangles to adjust thread tension). CAD primitives work in some cases but they’re mostly designed around subtractive manufacturing. Even 3D printing tools are optimized for fewer materials and layer-by-layer construction.

How to facilitate someone “zooming in” to mess with the crystal structure of a material, then going back to working on large macro-scale shapes. How many in-between levels of fidelity to simulate and store between those zoom levels. How to handle materials that have a smooth gradient from one material to another, so there’s no sharp dividing line where we can assume there’s a bunch of identical molecules.

How many background calculations to run. In addition to the basic physics, do we predict failure points? Replicator energy consumption? Can someone zip bomb a replicator by replicating something that seems simple but actually consumes an ever-increasing amount of power?

Do we scan for compatibility with other items already in the replicator library? Speaking of which, how do we organize the library for efficient search? Are there Federation citizens whose full-time calling is to be tag wranglers for replicator patterns?