A page about nothing

maybe im a stupid asshole but one of my biggest tumblr pet peeves is when i see a popular post that DEFINITELY got posted to r/curatedtumblr or put in a funniest tumblr posts video or whatever and the post is the 3 or 4 original reblogs that make up the og post and then like 25 reblogs in a row of different people all saying some variation of "I CANT BELIEVE I FINALLY FOUND IT" or mentioning hellsite-hall-of-fame or something

this is so valid but i’m so sorry, we (the tumblr masses) could do the funniest thing here

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

From The NY Times:

And from Facebook:

(X)

(Edited to make the first link a mainstream source rather than Substack)

So my friend Buck likes clowns. No he really likes clowns. No like. A lot.

He reluctantly and with great embarrassment told me this, and when teased about having a clown fetish he will retort quite pedantically that a fetish is required for sexual gratification and he only has a kink for clowns. No one else agrees with this hair splitting but it’s okay, it comforts him.

I assumed Buck’s proclivity toward clowns was somewhat private because he was so abashed when he admitted it to me. But when hanging out with him and his new partner she began to tease him that he’d blurt out to the whole VR chat that he loved a gal in clown makeup.

“I thought it was a secret,” I said.

He squirmed and admitted that he liked to get it out of the way in case it was discovered later.

His partner whispered to me when he was in the bathroom that she’d seen his clown folder and while they’d looked at it he’d exclaimed, “Ugh! That one’s a mime,” and moved the offending image to a separate folder. This had me in hysterics. A slippery mime had slipped in amongst his wholesome clown girls.

Later that day at DnD I announced to the group that we’d spent the day with Buck and his girlfriend. Two of them said in unison, “Buck has a girlfriend?!”

The third said at the same time, “Is she a clown?”

I absolutely lost it and asked how he knew about the clowns.

“I’ve met Buck three times. He told me about the clowns every time.”

This story is shared with Buck’s permission.

hitchcock found it long before. more effective as well.

i like working at plant store. sometimes you ring up someone and there's a slug on their plant and so you're like "Oh haha you've got a friend there let me get that for you" and you put the slug on your hand for safekeeping but then its really busy and you dont have time to take the slug outside before the next customer in line so you just have a slug chilling on your hand for 15 minutes. really makes you feel at peace with nature. also it means sometimes i get to say my favorite line which is "would you like this free slug with your purchase"

@holyknuckled you get it. lterally what are we here on earth for if not to occasionally impose gastropods upon unsuspecting customers. this story is delightful

@holyknuckled like that?

oh? my god???

yeah, Exactly like that

It would be funny if nuclear waste warning messages become an attraction for future historical linguists.

I mean look at this thing:

A parallel text in 7 languages, with 4 different scripts between them! And pictograms! All designed to be preserved intact!

maybe nothing of value to you is here

That is legitimately a massive problem that the nuclear waste warning projects are aware of and trying desperately to counteract.

Like, every post about them on tumblr going “lmao let’s be real, if I saw this shit I would stop at nothing to explore it” is highlighting the central conceit of the yucca mountain project.

The project is VERY aware of humanity’s tendency to explore, and the people involved are tormented constantly by the fact that ANYTHING they do to indicate “this specific place is extremely deadly and there’s nothing valuable here, GO AWAY” is going to become a fucking MAGNET for treasure hunters, explorers, adventurers, mystery enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists…like, the MOMENT it’s discovered, people will flood that place.

That’s what makes the project so fascinatingly difficult! There’s so much they have to convey, but at the same time, they have to do so without making the site itself interesting in any way, and without making it significant. Many possible warnings don’t incorporate a message at all, focusing instead on simply making the site as ugly, inconvenient, and unimportant-looking as possible so that it’s just never disturbed because nobody is interested in getting close. (It’s why seemingly crazy ideas like the color-changing cat priesthood are actually more viable than the seemingly “practical” example above, which still depends on written warnings guaranteed to be extremely interesting to future humans AND depends on the idea that those future humans will be able to decipher any of our languages. The most viable ideas focus on exploiting superstition and the subconscious, rather than LITERALLY trying to communicate “This place is not a place of honor” etc in as many words. Those are general ideas to be gotten across, not a script.)

The impossible catch-22 of the nuclear waste warning projects is that they absolutely MUST communicate the level of danger and the importance of keeping your distance…while also being acutely aware that warnings on the walls of ancient burial sites about the horrible curses that would afflict anyone who disturbed them did jack-fuck all to dissuade archaeologists.

Anything we do to make the warning seem important will guarantee it’s disregarded, but if we fail to make the warning unmistakable enough, we’re responsible for whatever happens to the humans ten thousand years in the future who suffer from our mistakes.

If the area is to become unappealing why not put a landfill over it. To get to the death rocks you’ll have to dig through undecayed cabbage

See above re: archeologists. Who just LOVE garbage dumps for what they can learn about people’s day-to-day lives.

‘And there’s the sign, Ridcully,’ said the Dean. ‘You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says “Do not, under any circumstances, open this door”?’ ‘Of course I’ve read it,’ said Ridcully. ‘Why d’yer think I want it opened?’ ‘Er … why?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘To see why they wanted it shut, of course.’  *

* This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.

– Terry Pratchett - Hogfather

I can’t belive they just dropped “color-changing cat priesthood” with zero explanation, so I googled it and here you go:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_cat

What I find extra funny about the Pratchett quote was he was the press office for a nuclear power plant before he was a full time author.

another big part of the problem is that as soon as you communicate ‘this substance is an odorless poison that works by proximity and especially ingestion, do not hang out near it or eat it, btw it’s in the shape of small pellets,’ it’s going to be extremely valuable because humans fucking love poisoning each other. ‘thing that kills stuff’ is like one of our most valuable trade goods, historically. arsenic, alcohol, salt, sulfur. not only do we want murder weapons for other humans, we want insecticides and antibacterial compounds for pretty much everything. a little cursed pellet you could put in your pantry to keep down mold and maggots would be incredibly useful. until your kid got born without a skull.

but yeah like how do you get people to avoid something that kills them without explaining that the thing kills them, because the minute they know the thing is killing them they’ll start using it to kill on purpose? crazy ass problem.

Gods of my forefathers! We are a brilliantly stupid species.

Hey remember when US and Russia was all like “We’re the best!!! We’ve won the space race!!!!” But India sent a kick-ass space probe to Mars and the whole mission was fuel efficient, costed less and a roaring success in the first try and then they were like “…..wait no that can’t be true” and still have the audacity to call us “underdeveloped” or only view us as a ‘third world country’? :)

For anyone who needs more info, the probe was called Mangalyaan (which literally means space probe vehicle) or Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and you can also get more information here and here

Remember when NYT mocked India for this very thing and an TOI (a major indian newspaper) responded with this? :)

They were being racist asf and we were till respectful literally fuck you if you think ‘third world counties’ can’t be better than you

white people can and should reblog this

and shout out to the women engineers integral to the launch

“Indian staff from the Indian Space Research Organisation celebrate after the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft entered Mars’s orbit.

On November 5, 2013, a rocket launched toward Mars. It was India’s first interplanetary mission, Mangalyaan, and a terrific gamble. Only 40 percent of missions sent to Mars by major space organizations—NASA, Russia’s, Japan’s, or China’s—had ever been a success. No space organization had succeeded on its first attempt. What’s more, India’s space organization, ISRO, had very little funding: while NASA’s Mars probe, Maven, cost $651 million, the budget for this mission was $74 million. 

This was not the only success of the mission. An image of the scientists celebrating in the mission control room went viral. Girls in India and beyond gained new heroes: the kind that wear sarees and tie flowers in their hair, and send rockets into space.”

x

The photo of the women looks like a baroque painting

sucks that "incel" is just like a generic insult now synonymous with "virgin" bc if people had much of an idea of what incel ideology actually entails, we could have a conversation about radical feminism being quite literally, beat for beat, incel shit for girls

radfems 🤝 incels:

like radfems also get blackpilled. they fall down pipelines into the deepest darkest extremes of their ideology, and it's increasingly harder to get these people to reengage with the world specifically because their ideology posits that the world is corrupted and divided into Us and Them, and that the ingroup's victim status is biological and innate. it's a system that lends itself naturally to doomerism and blackpilling due partially to the social isolation that comes with it. and it's equally difficult as with incels to "break through" the isolation because these people do not want help whatsoever. they have been thoroughly conditioned to see attempts at helping as Active Victimization and further proof of the rightness of their beliefs

official anti terf (and incel!) post

reblog this post to let the mutual you reblogged this from know that you still like them

wait do people read first person stories and think they're the ones in the story???

Saw people talking about not liking first person, which is fair, but their reasoning was like "I would not do that" and I don't understand that mindset.

First person stories are still about a character. A character making their own decisions. First person isn't about you???? At least I thought it wasn't. What am I missing? I've always seen first person as just a more in-depth look into a character's mind and stricter POV. Not as a reader stand-in.

I see first person stories like I'm sitting down across from the narrator getting the wildest tea imaginable

Most accurate way to read a first person story

second person stories are about you

Me: So anyway, I went down to the shops yesterday and --

Person I'm talking to: What? I didn't do that!

What if abilities changed the appearance of a Pokemon?

A master post of all the ability forms drawings I've done! It's been such a fun series to work on and it makes me so happy that it's brought you all so much joy!

I regret not starting the little additional descriptions earlier and I thought of fixing that but I desperately need a nap so nope.

I did fix the one that ruffled the most feathers though - quite literally! The Skarmory saga is finally complete!

Other Ability Forms posts!

Find me and my art elsewhere!  

Pokemon headcanon that once Absol are studied and people realize they prevent disasters instead of causing them, particularly dangerous workplaces get themselves a workplace Absol and it also decreases accidents.

Construction sites and fishing ships and factories will have one that pretty much just lazes about until it just gets up howling one day and knocks a dude down. They almost never figure out what would have happened but they're always like "yes absol thank you absol I am so grateful to be on the floor right now. Can I offer you a treat in this trying time"

Diversity win! Absol is OSHA Compliant!

@osha-official-the-sequel

@bedrock-to-buildheight I thought about your Pokémon au when I saw this today

I legally must add them. For safety

I’m watching Splash (1984) which is a romcom about a guy who falls in love with a mermaid, and when she chooses a human name she chooses Madison and guy says “that’s not a real name, but alright” which seems to imply that Madison was not a name until at least the 80’s and all girls named Madison are actually named after the mermaid. thought you should know

I think...you might be right

what the fuck

It’s sad how much of what is taught in school is useless to over 99% of the population.

There are literally math concepts taught in high school and middle school that are only used in extremely specialized fields or that are even so outdated they aren’t used anymore!

I took calculus my senior year of high school, and I really liked the way our teacher framed this on the first day of class.

He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, “When are we going to use this in our everyday life?”

“NEVER!!” the teacher exclaimed. “You will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.” Then he paused. “So would you like to know why should care?”

Several us nodded.

He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. “You practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?” asked the teacher.

“Yeah,” replied Tim. “Almost every day.”

“Do you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?”

“Yeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.”

“But why?” asked the teacher. “Is there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why lift weights?”

“Because it makes us stronger,” said Tim.

“Bingo!!” said the teacher. “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”

And I’ve never forgotten that.

THIS.

When it’s taught right, learning math teaches you logic and how to organize your brain, how to take a problem one step at a time and make sure every step can bear weight before you move to the next one.  Most adults don’t need to know integrals, but goddamn if I don’t wish everyone making arguments on the internet understood geometric proofs.

Scientific concepts broaden our understanding of how the world is put together, which does not mean that most adults ever really understand how light is refracted through a lens or why spinning copper wire creates electricity–and they don’t need to.  But science classes in general are meant to teach the scientific method: how to make observations and use them to draw conclusions, how to test those conclusions, how to be wrong and grow stronger from it.

History isn’t about dates and names of battles, it’s about people, patterns, things we’ve tried before and ought to learn from.  It’s about how everything is linked, how changing one circumstance can lead to changes in fifty others, cascading infinitely.  Literature is about critical thinking, pattern recognition, learning to listen to what somebody is saying and decide what it means to you, how you feel about it, and what you want to do with it.

Some facts matter: every adult should know how to read a graph, how global warming works, some of the basic themes and symbols that crop up in every piece of fiction.  But ultimately, content is less important later in life than context.

The good thing is, students who learn the content are likely to pick up at least some of the context, some of the patterns of thinking, even if they don’t realize it.  (The unfortunate thing is how the current educational system prioritizes content so much that a lot of students, and a lot of adults, don’t see the point in learning either, and teachers are overworked and held to standardize test grading scales such that it’s hard for them to emphasize patterns of thinking over rote memorization, etc etc etc, but that is a whole different discussion.)

I would also add that giving as broad an education to as many as possible gives everyone the opportunity to follow a career that might use calculus. Or colour theory. Or electromagnetism. Or [insert specialism here]. If we gatekeep specialisms, those careers are only available for the ones who were privileged enough to have the background training. That’s why Classics as a degree subject is full of private school kids: it’s not offered in state education.