#elon musk saves the day again

[supertoastymutt]

#twitter #funny #twitter memes #toasty speaks #the comedic pacing in this one image is genuinely so good #elon musk saves the day again

[storiesfromgaza]

Hello, everyone.

This may be the finest and most important article I've written since the creation of this blog, so kindly read it carefully and pay attention.

And share it so that everyone can see it.

There are many events happening tonight, and I will try to summarize them for you so that you have a complete understanding of what is happening.

Twelve days ago, a gruesome incident occurred, most of you have probably heard of it: the occupation forces shelled the Al-Ma'madani Hospital in Gaza, resulting in the deaths of over a thousand people, including patients, their families, doctors, and young children.

Has the occupation been content with this? The answer is no.

Since that day, they have been threatening another hospital, Al-Quds Hospital, with the promise of bombing it, leaving civilians and patients inside in a state of terror, awaiting death at any moment.

The first time this happened, it spread across social media platforms, especially Twitter, and many people protested, causing the occupation to halt its actions.

Today, twelve days after the Al-Ma'madani Hospital massacre, they have once again sent severe threats to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) for the immediate evacuation of Al-Quds Hospital, as it is destined to be bombed.

"🔴 Urgent: We have just received severe threats demanding the immediate evacuation of Al-Quds Hospital as it is set to be bombed.

Since the early hours of the morning, the vicinity of Al-Quds Hospital has been witnessing continuous airstrikes, resulting in the destruction of some buildings within a 50-meter radius.

📢 Please share, save Al-Quds Hospital! 📢

#GazaUnderAttack #GazaUnderSiege #Save_Al-Quds_Hospital

"

The second matter, three days ago, specifically on Friday, the twenty-seventh of this month, the occupation completely isolated Gaza from the world by cutting off the internet, telecommunications, and electricity. They were prepared for a brutal massacre that occurred that night and lasted for two days.

I'm talking about indiscriminate bombardment using all kinds of weapons on all areas of Gaza, whether they were churches, mosques, schools, or homes, regardless of their occupants, be they children, young people, women, or the elderly.

During that period, social media platforms and indeed the entire world were abuzz with the issue.

People from various backgrounds, nationalities, and religions unanimously agreed that it was inhumane to isolate them from the world and deny them the right to have a voice.

They were searching for solutions they could implement.

Some took to the streets, demanding the return of the internet, while others began sharing their plight on social media, primarily on Twitter.

They reached out to activists and officials who had the means to help.

One of the most prominent solutions that everyone turned to was contacting Elon Musk, the former owner of Twitter (X) and the current owner of SpaceX, to enable the people of Gaza to use the internet via Starlink's private satellites.

They hoped that he would hear their plea, as it was their only hope.

He tweeted:

"Starlink will support connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza.

[ComStar]

"

On the same day, five hours after the publication of this tweet, the Israeli Minister of Communications commented on it, saying, in essence, that they would use all available means to prevent the supply of Starlink internet to Gaza because Hamas would utilize it. He also threatened that if this were to occur, he would sever all his office's ties with Starlink.

Now, let's discuss the issue of hostages for a moment because it is of utmost importance to understanding the situation.

On the twenty-fourth of this month, Yasmin Porat, one of the hostages, came forward to talk about her experiences during her captivity.

I will now share some of what she mentioned in the interview:

She stated that Israeli forces eliminated everyone, including hostages, amid heavy crossfire and tank shelling.

She highlighted the contrasting behavior of Palestinian fighters who offered hope for safe passage to Gaza. Israeli forces disrupted this hope with a storm of gunfire.

Palestinian fighters treated the hostages humanely, offering them hope of a safe passage to Gaza, despite the chaos.

This compassionate act stands in stark contrast to the chaos that unfolded.

After the interview was broadcast, it was completely deleted and blocked from all social media platforms and even from Kan's website. Moreover, Yasmin's account mysteriously disappeared from the "Haboker Hazeh" program, raising concerns of censorship.

Below, you will find the interview recording.

During that period, the Al-Qassam Brigades continued their communication with the Israeli government in order to release some prisoners for humanitarian reasons, including their age and health, among them two elderly women, one of whom is named Yohav Levisheitz.

But the Israeli government showed no interest in the matter whatsoever.

As a result, they decided to release the two elderly women.

Before leaving, one of them, Yohav Levisheitz, insisted on shaking hands with one of the resistance fighters who she was their captor, as you can see in the following video.

-Tumblr doesn't allow me to post two videos in a single post, so I will provide the video link on the blog-:

https://www.tumblr.com/storiesfromgaza/732027117370572800/al-qassam-brigades-released-two-of-the-hostages?source=share

After this, she insisted on participating in a press conference to share her experience, saying:

"When we arrived in Gaza, they initially told us that they believed in the Quran and that they wouldn't harm us.

They said they would treat us as they do with those around them.

We were under tight security, and medical professionals arrived to ensure we had the medications we always took.

They showed great concern for our health.

Our place of rest was the mattresses.

We had an accompanying doctor who would visit us every two or three days to check on our well-being.

In addition to a paramedic who looked after us and provided us with our medications.

They took on the responsibility and made sure to provide the necessary medications.

They looked after our hygiene meticulously to safeguard our health so that we wouldn't fall ill.

It was they who took care of cleaning the restrooms, not us.

They provided us with everything we needed, and I acknowledge their help in that.

If equivalent medications weren't available, they offered suitable alternatives.

They were remarkably courteous (kind) and ensured we ate well, sharing the same food they ate (bread, cheese, and cucumbers)

We were treated with kindness, and they paid meticulous attention to every detail.

Women among them understood the importance of feminine hygiene and ensured we had everything we needed.

Hamas had meticulously planned everything for a long time, providing us with everything we required, even down to shampoo and conditioner.

The inefficiencies of the army and Shabak (Israel Security Agency - ISA) greatly impacted us; we were pawns in the government's game."

After this, Western media outlets, with CNN at the forefront, distorted Yohav's words and published that she said, "I went through hell."

BBC, on the other hand, released two versions of the statement.

They published the original statement by Yohav on their account dedicated to the Arab audience, while on their accounts for Western and Indian audiences, they published a manipulated version of her statement that included the same content as previously published by CNN.

These are the testimonies of two different women captives, both of whom unanimously agree that they were treated with excellent humane treatment, and no one tortured them or attempted to harass or disturb them.

On the other hand, both of them agree that Israel did not care about their safety in any way and, in fact, they would open fire in the presence of the hostages, leaving behind lifeless bodies hit by their deadly bullets.

Now, let's focus for a moment on the point of Israel and the prisoners.

Two days ago, Abu Ubaida, the official spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, made a lengthy recorded speech in which he spoke about the prisoners.

He said:

"There have been numerous contacts in the prisoner file, and there was an opportunity to reach an agreement, but they delayed and did not show real seriousness in releasing the prisoners.

Instead, its barbaric shelling and continuous crimes have led to the killing of nearly fifty of them so far."

Do you understand now that Israel does not care about the prisoners at all, as it claims, and that their use of the prisoner issue is merely to prevent Elon Musk from providing internet access via Starlink in Gaza for its residents?

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#gaza #palestine #gaza strip #free gaza #free palestine #storiesfromgaza #غزة #فلسطين #genocide #humanitarian crisis

[yippeecahier]

NGL, I come from a place of privilege, given that I am under 25 and have no debt.

I have about $30,000 in assets - just my savings, car, tech, jewelry, and all my worldly goods that could be resold put together, at their current value. If I lost that 30k, which is really just (one) medical emergency away from bankruptcy, I would have to strip everything for the cash. In just cash alone, I'm not even close enough for a downpayment on a starter home, a multi year endeavor.

By comparison, millionaires such as Lady Gaga (130 million) and Keanu Reeves (380 million) are far above me. To be on the same level, I would have to earn and retain in financial or asset form, $129,970,000 or $379,970,000 respectively. Anything I spent on rent, insurance, gas, food, medicine, and other consumables that can't be resold doesn't count towards that net worth total.

That's a lot. But this pales in comparison to billionaires such as Jeff Bezos (117 billion) and Elon Musk (191 billion). I would have to retain $116,999,970,000 and $190,999,970,000 respectively. At my current income of $50k, which is above the median income for people with my level of education, assuming I magically don't need to spend any money on consumables and can just bank it all:

It would take me 2,599 years and 146 days to obtain Lady Gaga's wealth, or almost 26 CENTURIES.

It would take me 7,599 years and 146 days to obtain Keanu Reeve's wealth, or almost 76 CENTURIES.

It would take me 2,339,999 years and 146 days to obtain Jeff Bezo's wealth, or almost 2,340 MILLENIA.

It would take me 3,899,999 years to obtain Elon Musk's wealth. It would take me nearly 3,900 MILLENIA.

Oh, this is after having paid off all my debt and with my existing assets, by the way. For even Lady Gaga, the least wealthy of this list, I would have to work tirelessly from before the Roman Empire was even founded.

But that's just me, a college-educated middle-class American citizen who is both debt and child-free.

It's much more fascinating to compare these to each other.

Lady Gaga makes $25 million a year.

Keanu Reeves makes $40 million a year.

So, if I deduct what these millionaires already have in assets and divide the total of the billionaire's assets by their income to find how many years of just banking money (no consumables):

Lady Gaga would have to bank another $116,870,000,000 to have Jeff Bezo's wealth. Assuming she stops spending on consumables like food or whatever and every penny of her $25 million income goes into future asset wealth, it would still take Lady Gaga 4,674 years and 293 days for her to obtain Bezo's wealth.

Keanu Reeves would have to bank another $190,620,000,000 to achieve Elon Musk's wealth. Again, in a fantasy world where Keanu doesn't have to feed and clothe himself, it would take him 4,765 years and 6 months to obtain Elon Musk's wealth.

The gap between the assets of famous multimillionaires like Lady Gaga and Keanu Reeves (who make MILLIONS every year) and that of famous multi-billionaires is a little less than HALF what it would take me to become as wealthy as Lady Gaga at my income level, which is, again, above the median. I could never achieve that wealth in my entire fucking lifetime, because, even if I assumed my income would go up and actually outpace inflation, I still need to eat and I can only use my body for labor until I'm 80, tops, which is only 56 years of work and nowhere near the thousands.

This sounds very conspiracy-brain, but sometimes I think the United States deliberately undermines math education and the corresponding understanding of how to problem-solve and comprehend magnitude of these kinds of numbers. Because if kids sat down and did the math, they just might realize that there is no way to become this rich on your own hard work.

Sure, you can invest in the stock market - but that's gambling. Most people might be able to hamper the effects of inflation on their asset values with stock investment.

The American dream is a lie.

The middle class is closer to becoming homeless than they are to becoming multimillionaires.

Even multimillionaires are closer to becoming middle class or even homeless than they are to becoming multi-billionaires.

Don't fucking tell me to budget and I'll become a millionaire. It's more likely I'll get hit by lightning or lose it all to medical bills.

If this doesn't radicalize you, I don't know what will.

#anti capitalism #late stage capitalism #billionaires should not exist #elongated muskrat #fuck jeff bezos #us politics #economics #math #budget #yip speaks

[phoenixyfriend]

[squints at the MCU] Tony Stark has displayed more ability to weather interrogation and torture than Steve Rogers.

This is "(displayed more)(ability)," not "(displayed)(more ability)," to be clear.

(I know fiction’s depiction of torture is famously propagandafied, but in this case, it’s not about torture for information so much as physical traumas shown on screen.)

(Anyway, have a rant I did on discord the other day.)

It's not really so much about "resisted the urge to hand over information" as "survived a truly harrowing experience and still came out of it trying to do good."

Tony's very first movie involves getting repeatedly drowned while in constant pain from bomb injuries as a civilian contractor, and I… don't think I can remember anything even a little similar with Steve

I don't think he's ever been captured for long before breaking out? All his injuries are in active battle, not torture.

Like... Steve went through something horrible with the ice and losing Bucky, nobody can argue that. But I think it's very telling, sometimes, that movie Steve, especially 2012 movie Steve, is completely unaware of the absolute nightmare that Tony experienced in his solo movies.

I have so many feelings about Tony Stark being the epitome of "guy who was raised and manipulated into being a bad person by someone he trusted, and (after a horrible experience) attempts to be a better person, constantly and consistently, even if he sometimes fucks up in the execution."

And the way that some fics elide his experiences in cleaning up other people's messes (first Obadiah's, then Howard's) and how that doubtlessly compounded his many neuroses from fixing messes that he did actually create himself is just

I have a lot of feelings

And am also feeling a little bitter and salty about how Tony Stark's MCU incarnation reportedly took some inspo from Elon Musk... and a little petty and satisfied about just how drastically we've all be shown that Musk can never live up to the idea of 'billionaire with inherited wealth who actually, without hesitation, risks his own life to save millions' that he tried to use PR to achieve in the media with 'my electric cars are gonna save the world' stunts about things he didn't actually have a hand in inventing

I'm just reading some fics I really enjoyed when I was still in the YA fandom, and there was a reference to a line Steve said in the movies and I started thinking (again) about how frequently fans take lines from Steve or Sam about Tony as gospel, because they haven't seen Tony's movies, and the lines from the star spangled boys are contextually meant to show that they don't know jackshit about Tony or his life, because they are directly contradicted by multiple prior films.

Also like... how often Steve's traumas get explored (in fic) in a way that Tony's just... don't? At most, his issues about Howard get explored, but that's it.

There's this moment in CACW that people take as Accurate and it infuriates me.

Tony Stark: [Back in the cell.] Just look. Because that is the fellow who was supposed to interrogate Barnes. [He shows a holographic image of Doctor Broussard.] Clearly, I made a mistake. Sam, I was wrong. Sam Wilson: That's a first.

Which, like... it's a bad movie. Obviously. But also

That line is immediately followed by Tony revealing that he's here to help the others and is sabotaging the security to make sure Ross can't take advantage, and yet fanfic still uses Sam's quote to promote anti-Tony agendas!

And 'Tony admits he fucked up' is. Like. Listen to me

Tony's first solo movie is fixing Obadiah's machinations. *

His second solo movie is fixing his Dad's fuckup.

His first team movie is fixing Thor's mistakes.

His third solo movie is fixing something that is only tangentially his fault.

It's not until AoU that the fuck-up is really his and his alone (well, not counting Bruce), and even then, even then, a massive portion of the blame is narratively laid at Wanda's feet!

And only then do we get this man, who has spent five movies seeing what happens when people don't take responsibility for their actions, or have anyone riding them to be ethical, who has criticized himself for neither having that oversight nor providing that oversight for people who snuck shit under his nose, that is when we get Tony weighing in on the side of "most countries on the planet are agreeing with this and it's for a reason, please work with me here, maybe we can get some of it rolled back to be less authoritarian and more reasonable."

* and removing himself from the military industrial complex he was raised and groomed to be in, but that's a system and not an individual act or a set 'villain'

Or as @firebirdeternal put it:

I would say that his first solo movie does have a large element of fixing his own mistakes too, it's just that his "mistake" was Trusting the Wrong Person and not taking personal responsibility for how his actions are affecting the world. (Which, he immediately does upon coming back from being captured? "We're going to immediately stop making weapons, because it's making the world worse" and then when Obadiah cuts him out of the company he goes "Oh. Okay no that didn't work, have to personally fix all this then.") and yeah it's just Tony have plenty of reasons to be on the side of "Someone needs to have oversight over this"

IM1 is such a good exploration of someone in privilege saying "this stops now" in a situation where they do have control because they have been confronted with their mistakes in a way that's unavoidable

It's also like, a great example of the fantasy of the Super Hero. Because Tony Stark, the businessman, even with all his wealth and knowledge, isn't able to stop the systemic harm being caused by His Own Company. One person isn't able to do that, even with the best of intentions. It isn't until he becomes something else, something more, a Super Hero, that he's able to make any kind of meaningful change on his own. Like IM1 is just a phenomenal movie. It understood it's subject material so incredibly well.

And people skip it and then take Steve and Sam at their word about Tony's strength of character and moral convictions and I scream.

THIS MAN FLEW A NUKE INTO A WORMHOLE WITH THE FULL EXPECTATION THAT HE WAS GOING TO DIE

Yeah, like, that Jump on the Grenade mentality is something that he and Steve actually literally share.

They both had 'jump on the explosive to save people' moments in their introductory movies.

I find so much more strength and inspiration in stories like Thor and Tony, where they are inherently fuck-ups and were shitty people and they are trying so damn hard to be better, which is more Tony than Thor really, but both of them and their first movies are just. I find that more inspiring than Steve or T'Challa or any other hero who was already a good person and just Became Great.

Tell me about the person who has to struggle to find that moral choice. Tell me about Natasha dragging herself from her oceans of blood and Tony fighting the government over whether they have the rights to use weapons he's created and about Thor having to reckon with his family's power being born of imperialistic ravaging of other cultures.

I want to hear about the people for whom being good is hard and a choice they don't have to make, but then they make it anyway.

Also I stand by "I am Iron Man. [infinity snap]" being the most amazing bookend the MCU could have done and probably the best part of the Endgame.

#Tony Stark #character analysis #phoenix talks #MCU #Iron Man Movies #Iron Man #Avengers #AoU #CACW #AEG #torture mention

[tanadrin]

In Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany, Esra Özyürek describes the way that German politicians, officials and journalists, now that the far right is in the ascendant, have been cranking up the old mechanism of sanitising Germany by demonising Muslims. In December 2022, German police foiled a coup attempt by Reichsbürger, an extremist group with more than twenty thousand members, which was planning an assault on the Bundestag. Alternative für Deutschland, which has neo-Nazi affiliations, has become the country’s second most popular party, partly in response to economic mismanagement by the coalition led by Olaf Scholz. Yet despite the undisguised antisemitism of even mainstream politicians such as Hubert Aiwanger, the deputy minister-president of Bavaria, ‘white Christian-background Germans’ see themselves ‘as having reached their destination of redemption and re-democratisation’, according to Özyürek. The ‘general German social problem of antisemitism’ is projected onto a minority of Arab immigrants, who are then further stigmatised as ‘the most unrepentant antisemites’ in need of ‘additional education and disciplining’. ...

Netanyahu, too, has learned from Germany’s postwar efforts at whitewashing. In 2015 he claimed that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had persuaded Hitler to murder rather than simply expel the Jews. Three years later, after initially criticising a move by the Law and Justice Party in Poland to criminalise references to Polish collaboration, he endorsed the law making such references punishable by a fine. He has since legitimised Shoah revisionism in Lithuania and Hungary, commending both countries for their valiant struggle against antisemitism. (Efraim Zuroff, a historian who has helped bring many former Nazis to trial, compared this to ‘praising the Ku Klux Klan for improving racial relations in the South’.) More recently, Netanyahu accompanied Elon Musk to one of the kibbutzim targeted by Hamas, just days after Musk tweeted in support of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Since 7 October, he has seemed to be reading from the Eichmann trial script. He regularly announces that he is fighting the ‘new Nazis’ in Gaza in order to save ‘Western civilisation’, while others in his cohort of Jewish supremacists keep up a supporting chorus. The people of Gaza are ‘subhuman’, ‘animals’, ‘Nazis’. ...

In a more unnerving illustration of the postwar German-Israeli symbiosis, the German health minister, Karl Lauterbach, approvingly retweeted a video in which Douglas Murray, a mouthpiece of the English far right, claims that the Nazis were more decent than Hamas. ‘Watch and listen,’ retweeted Karin Prien, deputy chair of the Christian Democratic Union and education minister for Schleswig-Holstein. ‘This is great,’ Jan Fleischhauer, a former contributing editor at Der Spiegel, wrote. ‘Really great,’ echoed Veronika Grimm, a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, which in 2021 ‘outed’ five Lebanese and Palestinian journalists at Deutsche Welle as antisemites, with equally flimsy evidence exposed the Indian poet and art historian Ranjit Hoskote as a calumniator of Jews for comparing Zionism with Hindu nationalism. Die Zeit alerted German readers to another moral outrage: ‘Greta Thunberg openly sympathises with the Palestinians.’ An open letter from Adam Tooze, Samuel Moyn and other academics criticising Jürgen Habermas’s statement in support of Israel’s actions provoked an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to claim that Jews have an ‘enemy’ at universities in the form of postcolonial studies. Der Spiegel ran a cover picture of Scholz alongside his claim that ‘we need to deport on a grand scale again.’ ... Susan Neiman, who wrote admiringly of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Learning from the Germans (2020), now says she has changed her mind. ‘German historical reckoning has gone haywire,’ she wrote in October. ‘This philosemitic fury ... has been used to attack Jews in Germany.’ In Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust, which examines the German response to mass killings in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans, Andrew Port suggests that their ‘otherwise admirable reckoning with the Holocaust may have unwittingly desensitised Germans. The conviction that they had left the rabid racism of their forebears far behind them may have paradoxically allowed for the unabashed expression of different forms of racism.’

(source)

#german politics #deutschland #israel #palestine

[kp777]

By Gene Marks

The Guardian Opinions

April 9, 2023

Everyone seems to be worried about the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) these days. Even technology leaders including Elon Musk and the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak have signed a public petition urging OpenAI, the makers of the conversational chatbot ChatGPT, to suspend development for six months so it can be “rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts”.

Their concerns about the impact AI may have on humanity in the future are justified – we are talking some serious Terminator stuff, without a Schwarzenegger to save us. But that’s the future. Unfortunately, there’s AI that’s being used right now which is already starting to have a big impact – even financially destroy – businesses and individuals. So much so that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) felt the need to issue a warning about an AI scam which, according to this NPR report “sounds like a plot from a science fiction story”.

But this is not science fiction. Using deepfake AI technology, scammers last year stole approximately $11m from unsuspecting consumers by fabricating the voices of loved ones, doctors and attorneys requesting money from their relatives and friends.

“All [the scammer] needs is a short audio clip of your family member’s voice – which he could get from content posted online – and a voice-cloning program,” the FTC says. “When the scammer calls you, he’ll sound just like your loved one.”

And these incidents aren’t limited to just consumers. Businesses of all sizes are quickly falling victim to this new type of fraud.

That’s what happened to a bank manager in Hong Kong, who received deep-faked calls from a bank director requesting a transfer that were so good that he eventually transferred $35m, and never saw it again. A similar incident occurred at a UK-based energy firm where an unwitting employee transferred approximately $250,000 to criminals after being deep-faked into thinking that the recipient was the CEO of the firm’s parent. The FBI is now warning businesses that criminals are using deepfakes to create “employees” online for remote-work positions in order to gain access to corporate information.

Deepfake video technology has been growing in use over the past few years, mostly targeting celebrities and politicians like Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Cruise, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. And I’m sure that this election year will be filled with a growing number of very real-looking fake videos that will attempt to influence voters.

But it’s the potential impact on the many unsuspecting small business owners I know that worries me the most. Many of us have appeared on publicly accessed videos, be it on YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn. But even those that haven’t appeared on videos can have their voices “stolen” by fraudsters copying outgoing voicemail messages or even by making pretend calls to engage a target in a conversation with the only objective of recording their voice.

This is worse than malware or ransomware. If used effectively it can turn into significant, immediate losses. So what do you do? You implement controls. And you enforce them.

This means that any financial manager in your business should not be allowed to undertake any financial transaction such as a transfer of cash based on an incoming phone call. Everyone requires a call back, even the CEO of the company, to verify the source.

And just as importantly, no transaction over a certain predetermined amount must be authorized without the prior written approval of multiple executives in the company. Of course there must also be written documentation – a signed request or contract – that underlies the transaction request.

These types of controls are easier to implement in a larger company that has more structure. But accountants at smaller businesses often find themselves victim of management override which can best be explained by “I don’t care what the rules are, this is my business, so transfer the cash now, dammit!” If you’re a business owner reading this then please: establish rules and follow them. It’s for your own good.

So, yes, AI technology like ChatGPT presents some terrifying future risks for humanity. But that’s the future. Deepfake technology that imitates executives and spoofs employees is here right now and will only increase in frequency.

#ai #artificial intelligence #deep fake ai #deep fake voice #deep fake video #deep fake technology

[turtlemagnum]

there's this online recreation of the sans fight that i played religiously back in middle school before i even owned a device capable of running undertale, still up. i got good enough at it that under normal circumstances, i can usually do it first try. a bit of a banging my head against a brick wall thing, but damn did it eventually break. honestly i think doing that before ever actually playing undertale was a bit like goku training in 100x gravity, except instead of landing on namek to fight frieza he went and fought raditz again and just absolutely wrecked his shit. at least, until i got to undyne, still not great at her. god i love her. adhd, getting distracted, i had a goddamn point i was trying to make. so, notice that i said "under normal circumstances" as a caveat. what i would consider not normal circumstances would be, say, playing with fucked up arrow keys. such as, the ones that seem to be on every goddamn modern laptop where up and down are both collectively taking up the same amount of real estate as a single normal key, because apparently right shift needs that extra fucking space. like seriously who the fuck even uses right shift, top 10 useless keys right there, right next to caps lock and most of the function keys. guess i've just gotta suck it up until i can afford to get an actual gamer laptop and not a budget office clunker that i got for the admittedly nice CPU

honestly like, i think my ideal laptop would be halfway between the Ultra Gucci Gamer shit and what i have now. give me like, 16 gigs of RAM, a decent CPU for emulation, a low end but modern and power efficient discrete GPU, and a big fuckin SSD. no RGB shit, just a power waste, though i do like having backlit keys at times i think the more efficient way to go about it would just paint em with something glow in the dark. is glowstick fluid toxic to get your hands on? i remember hearing about a guy who died because he injected that shit at a rave, but i don't know how much of that is This Shit Is Poison vs Dont Put Things That Arent Blood In Your Blood Sacks You Moron, y'know. for some reason radium popped into my head, but after thinking about it for more than an instant i'm like 85% sure that shit's what done killed marie curie, and now i can't help but imagine that's something elon musk would tell his engineers to do. "yeah. just a, uh, gamer key-board. with, radium paint on the lettering. saves power, good for the planet." what was i saying

anyways yeah like. the only other specs i can think of would be just having as many ports as possible, 1080p screen @ 60hz, y'know the bare minimum in Current Year. i will say that my current laptop has given me problems with screens i've never had on a computer before, there have been times where i see something i know for a fact is a different, more saturated color on other screens and having it be barely different from the background. also? i want that motherfucker bulky god dammit, i'm tired of everything being thin and light and having absolute dogshit battery life. i miss when i could charge my gameboy once a week and have it entertain me the entire goddamn time, y'know. i'm lucky if i get half a day of consistent use out of a laptop or my switch without charging it, y'know. to be honest, you should be able to murder someone with your technology. i could kill a man with a gamecube or the PC my dad left me as a kid, if i tried to bash a man's skull open with my laptop the laptop would take more damage than the skull. like don't get me wrong, it'd fucking hurt, but i'm not sure there's any singular component in this thing less than 95% cheap polymer by volume. a goddamn disgrace, lemme tells ya. back in ancient rome we had the technology to build bridges strong enough to still be used today, there are guns from the world wars that you can shoot to this day, you're tellin me you can't make a laptop sturdier than a saltine cracker? well, i'm pretty sure they're mostly designed by crackers, so i guess i can't blame em too hard for their inadequacies. such is lief i suppose (sic)

#i feel like i get my most stream-of-consciousness-y when i'm some degree of sleep deprived #my sleep schedule is in a bit of what we in the biz like to call a transitory period. absolutely wretched livin like this lemme tell ya

[enki2]

i've been on bluesky for a couple days and my verdict is: it's twitter again, by the guy who did twitter the first time, and leans very normie (having none of the interesting subcultures that made twitter interesting except furries and cute-animal bots, both of which fedi is much better on). it's probably a good fit for people whose only problem with twitter is elon musk, & who thought it was perfect a couple years ago. they've rebranded saved searches as 'feeds' and they're trying to pitch it as a UI revolution, which it might be in the context of an app that looks and acts like somebody replaced the icon pack in the official twitter app. so far as i can tell it's very liberal and i'm one of only a handful of anarchists even on there.

[kravitzkrusher]

Idk i don't do well with the whole "the pandemic affected everyone and the entire world suffered" because yes. Sure. Everyone for the most part stayed inside for a couple weeks. But the pandemic DECIMATED the lifestyles of so many people in some ways that just straight up didn't happen to others.

The millions of people who died or lost family members to COVID.

The cost of food and housing became too much for most families and now over 60% of American kids live in poverty and are also food insecure.

Kids who went to middle/high school during the pandemic and had to be stuck inside with their parents 24/7 while abuse rates skyrocketed. On top of literally getting their asses beat every day, they missed their prom/homecoming/graduation/first date/first school sports game ALL OF THAT NORMAL BASIC TEENAGE LIFE was gone. And they're in their 20s now without any of those core memories.

The younger kids whose parents didn't teach them the basics because they were too busy. The kids who can't read in the 6th grade. The kids who were raised by Andrew Tate and Sexxy Red because once again, their parents are too busy and for whatever reason couldn't be bothered.

The wives who left their husbands in DROVES making this one of the biggest mass exodus of marriage.

The Only Fans girlies who made a couple good paychecks before their job got oversaturated with celebrities and now their nudes are online forever for like $2.

The immunocompromised who never got their lives back.

The people who bought NFTs and lost all their money.

The people who worked with anti maskers and anti vaxxers and had to work in unsafe environments, risking their lives

The people who got long COVID and are permanently disabled with no resources to help them

The essential workers doctors/grocery/dentist/delivery that never took a break from work and never stayed home and never "experienced the bitter lonely solitude of the pandemic that everyone went through". because they HAD to be close asf to people every single day and work their asses off so we literally DIDN'T ALL DIE off in 2020.

The people who got kicked out of their homes, Mary!! The people who became homeless!! Because they lost their jobs and couldn't pay rent! And the landlords didn't care!

I could go on. But the fact of the matter is the pandemic did NOT affect us all the same.

We all struggled yes but in completely different ways. Some more than others. I was lucky enough to be a grown single adult at the time, so kids or spouse was stressing me out, but I very much lost my home and was forced to sleep on an antivaxxers couch for six months until I could afford housing again. I very much did have an abuser reach out to me trying to use the deathfear of this pandemic to get me back in their clutches. I have had people wave life saving money in front of my face, trying to lure me to do all kinds of horrible degrading shit. Everyone didn't go through that. It would be dumb of me to assume other people struggled the way I did.

Yes, this pandemic traumatized everyone but please. Ellen Degenerate was not suffering. Elon Musk was not suffering. Dwayne the Rock Johnson was not suffering. I'm not saying some people did not go through shit but by June 2020 some of y'all were still in your house, still making money, still taking care of business, and still healthy. And that is SO FUCKING MUCH to take for granted especially in the year 2024 after successfully living through a world bending nightmare.

The pandemic did affect everyone. But not everyone suffered.

#admin imah

[lesbx]

By the way if you thought that at least now elon’s fanboys would’ve realized twitter is burning down and it’s because of him and maybe they’ve reconsidered their worship of him- they have not.

the current narrative they are pushing if you look in the replies of any of musk’s tweets, where they are fighting for their fucking lives, is that all of the layoffs and the 75% of employees resigning were, literally, ALL “diversity hires” that did absolutely nothing for the company and now Twitter is profitable again because it its no longer burning money on those “woke” employees. They believe this wholeheartedly and genuinely think that twitter is thriving under musk literally just because he says so. the other day he tweeted that twitter is seeing “an all time high” of users, and the replies are full of dudes just unironically being like god yes thank you so much for saving this website you sir have won the interwebz for today

[askmalal]

If you could have corrupted won over any of the Loyalist Primarchs, which would you have favored?

What makes you think I haven’t?

For the purposes of your thought experiment, let us assess each, albeit briefly.

1. The Lion:

Arrogant, truly convinced he knows best, and many times he does. Maybe… maybe.

5. The Khan:

Brilliant tactician. Appreciates a fine horse. A good sense of humor. But not a subtle bone in his body, save for snark. Pass.

6. The Russ:

You want me to -turn- The Russ? There are bitter old women in Potato famine era Ireland who would easier be turned to love Queen Victoria. Still, what a fear it would be to make this one a tool of real change. Imagine what it would be to have such a being in your corner. The wonders.

There is one other bit: I am deeply unsatisfied that a being so brilliant could be so easily manipulated by Horus, a man he deeply disliked. He lost a few brownie points there. And remember: Horus was following -my- script at the time.

7. Rogal Dorn:

Just about the only Primarch more Roman than Roboute Guilliman. Coldly calculating, insightful,dutiful to a fault. When misled, however, appallingly short sighted. You were to destroy Perturarbo’s perfect trap, Rogal. Not walk into it!

9. The Angel:

There’s a joke somewhere in here about walking up to the pearly gates and asking to talk to St. Michael for a bit about possibly “roughing up” The Creator.

The joke is that you would think I would be so blatantly stupid.

Signus wasn’t a failure for everyone.

(Except for the fool who spelt it “Signus” and not “Cygnus.”)

10. The Gorgon:

I am a throughly evil being, but even I know that dismissing the people you are meant to be protecting as “weak” is akin to admitting you can’t do your job. Hard pass.

11. Delicious.

13. Guilliman:

Absent my cosmological imperatives, I like this man. I rather like him. But would he be turned? Could be be turned? More than one Praetorian has been turned against more than one Augustus, and the best ones have never been caught…

18. Vulkan:

I have said it before, in many places. I will say it again, here. He is the best of you. Of all of you. Of forty thousand years of human evolution and forty thousand years of human civilization. None of you deserve him. None.

And I would have better luck turning Elon Musk into a competent leader.

19. Corax:

Oh… this one. This one. He is a born revolutionary. A born iconoclast. The kind of man who would tear down the walls of his own fortress just to kill a rat inside.

And I even like the colors.

He is a true marvel to witness in The Warp, these days.

Thank you for your question, little mortal. It was nice to receive another that didn’t involve waifus, whatever the hell a “gootch” is, or whether or not I am canon. Keep them coming.

-M.

#malal #malice #askmalal #ask me questions #warhammer30k #chaos gods #warhammer40k #horus heresy #the primarchs #loyalist primarchs

[captaindibbzy]

One of the things that has been on my mind lately is how going forward the government wants us to use "less energy" and to "reduce overall usage" to deal with our own energy bills cause if prices remain high in 2024 it's tough shit.

And idk about your house but as a general rule we don't just leave shit running for giggles? And what's one lightbulb anyway? Or a TV on standby instead of turned off at the socket? A phone on charge or a computer screen? How are we supposed to make the house more energy efficient when you can't scrape together enough money for repairs on your single glazed windows and we have to keep the dehumidifier running cause the building that was built the other side of 1900 has rising damp issues?

And then there are skyscrapers with all their windows lit up in the night. Every time a country is awarded a sporting event they knock up entire sports villages and stadiums that are ultimately demolished and left when the games are over and never really used again. Private jets flying from one end of a city to the other. Elon Musk telling people to fucking fly to Twitter HQ to see him in person if they work remote unless they have a really good reason not to.

How the fuck does turning my electricity off at the fuse box help when there are people out there who feel so entitled to resources they use more in a day than I personally use in a year?

And then they have the gumption to say that disabled people use too much energy staying alive and that's selfish of them.

It gets dark at 4pm. It's cold all the time. It's god damn November and it's pissing with rain. What am I supposed to do? Live in the dark and the cold and let the mold grow round the condensation, take cold showers and learn to photosynthesis in the weak sunlight to avoid making food waste? What does my suffering contribute to the world? So you can keep electric advertisement billboards running while turning streetlights off to save money?

This is not an individual's game.

#personal

[keeganmantle]

Good morning! So with August going on? What do you think Musk is gonna do to Twitter this month? Every month, guys! I'm so immune I'm just gonna have to prepare every day for Twitter to just go berserk again.😔

At least I survived 2 years on there. Guys, I really do hate Elon Musk. I have good reasons. He triggered my anxiety. So much paranoia. Twitter is what saved me from Facebook and now the Twitter I ran to is gone.😥

I'm a Facebook survivor. And now, cougars & scammers are kinda bothering me again on Twitter! It's not fair! That's why I ran to here as well 'cause Musk just keeps breaking the platform. Also, no one in their right mind is gonna call it, X!!! So yeah, please keep me safe on here. Any older women who hit on me is gonna get blocked and probably lectured.😎

Any scammers who harass me will suffer the same fate. You weirdos, don't even try me! This is why I stick with Marina. At least until I find a girlfriend who is around my age, Marina's the closest to a woman I feel safe with.😊

#good morning #twitter #screw elon musk #screw x #screw scammers #screw cougars #marina ida #splatoon #comfort characters

[theficblog]

lil sis!! the last chapter of hearts is basically a romcom ㅠㅠㅠㅠ humour+ love are always the best ㅠㅠ♡♡♡♡♡ especially the very last sentence was like a curtain call 🥺🥺🥺 it's just so perfect…ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ♡♡♡♡♡

and yooooooooo the VERY unexpected jaeyong moment!!!!!!!!!! i TOTALLY didn't see it coming ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ but it's so sweet though 🥺🥺🤍🤍🤍 this addition is literally cherry on top ㅠㅠ♡♡♡♡♡

thank you for the ending ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ (and for not crushing my heart ㅠㅠ and for not making jeno cry again ㅠㅠㅠㅠ😆😆😆) jaemin just has such a big heart, doesn't he? ㅠㅠㅠㅠ blessing the person you love to be with their happily ever after, that's how much he loves her omg..😢 i hope he will eventually find his true love too 🥺🥺🤍🤍🤍 has this always been what you planned to write? do you have an alternative ending in mind? 👀 and will you wanna torture your readers in the future with more angst? gashsjjs 😈😈🙈💔💔💔💔

i tend to feel lost if the fiction i read has > 2 or 3 people bc my pea-sized brain can't imagine so many people at once 😭 —— unless the characters have very contrasting and lively personalities, and your writing did that so i was able to keep up everyone's role here ♡♡♡

im so so sorry for the late message ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ tumblr ate my reblog 😭😭😭 i hope writers never encounter this problem, bc that can be so frustrating 😭😭😭 (always save your work somewhere else, guys!! tumblr can be as stupid as elon musk sometimes 😭)

big sis 🙈🙈 awwwwww 🥺🥺 this is so precious the little details you never fail to notice have my heart <3

the ending was so hard to write i had to include some funny elements or else i thought i'd be very bland ahahahah and yes the taeyong and jaehyun one, honestly i was so skeptical about that until the second i clicked on the "post now" cos people come for anything these days fuck homophobes btw

jaemin was such a sweetheart totally, i always had in mind that he would be this type of character cos these kinds of men are not found outside of books and movies, he was just flawless but still, if you love someone you love the regardless of the flaws says who has never loved but yeahh

ohhhh interesting, more angst would have been nice im so cruel for this but i love angst so much hahahahaha 😈 but idk if i will be capable of adding a plot to this, my thought was to "have two guys and then one perfect guy and frat kinda guy and then this" lololol

awwww that is such a huge compliment ohmygod stop you are gonna make me blush 😳

thank you for staying with hearts all this time, i'm so happy you enjoyed it ❤️

#my big sis #hearts #jeno #jaemin #AAAAHHHHH ILYSMMMMM #the best #elon musk i delivered a two min monologue about his stupidity at lunch only today #he'd get cancelled everyday in the kpop world #YOUR HUMOURRRRR>>>>>>>

[cornsnake-pit]

I have not updated this blog in a long time, and for good reason.

First, I did move away from tumblr as a whole due to a personal dislike of where the site was headed. I was hoping to find a new space in Twitter, but the takeover by Elon Musk makes tumblr seem much more interesting again. So, I am back!

Second, and the much bigger as well as much sadder reason was the death of Jörmungandr. I do not know how closely people followed this blog, but some of you may remember Jörmi.

He was my first pet snake, and my first pet in general. I had gotten him shortly after my 18th birthday as a gift, one of which I had been saving for for months. When I got him, his terrarium had been ready for over a month and I was beyond excited.

He was a "leftover". The last of his clutch nobody had wanted. His siblings had been sold months ago, but nobody had wanted him. He was male, and normal coloured. Sadly, that's enough for many reptile keepers to consider him uninteresting. The breeder was more than happy to gift him to me so that he would finally, after almost a year, find his forever home.

Things went more than well. Jörmungandr had a fantastic personality. Despite being a corn snake, who are known to be skittish, he was the personification of calmness. Nothing could spook him, he didn't mind being touched anywhere (including his nose!) and he ate well. All in all, he was a dream pet.

Sadly, after having him for only six years, he started developing problems. The cause remains a mystery for both myself and the vet. Within weeks, Jörmi went from a healthy snake to a severely ill one. He had developed neurological issues. He could no longer hold his body still and would wobble when trying to eat or drink. He cramped up for no apparent reason and would not try to correct his position when I laid him on his back.

At first I thought this was something we could deal with. Maybe with some extra help he could still have an enjoyable life. I quickly realized however that this was not the case. Jörmi was suffering. He struggled to move and drink and soon he would refuse to eat as well.

With a heavy heart, I decided to end his suffering and he was euthanized. It all happened pretty quickly. In less than two months, Jörmi had deteriorated from a healthy snake to a dying one. Letting him go was hard, but it was a mercy.

His death was hard for me to accept, especially after having lost Ouroboros just a year before. But, like it had been with Boro, seeing the empty terrarium every day hurt me too much to bare. And so, just two months after Jörmi's death, I adopted another snake.

Like Amaru, the new snake came from the reptile rescue station in Munich where he had spent the past nine years. His age is not quite clear, though I would guess him to he around 12 or 13 years by now. He is clearly old, a bit slow, most likely partially blind (or just really bad at aiming) and a tad grumpy, but that's quite alright!

He did not have a name at the rescue station and so I called him Fulgrim.

He is a corn snake hybrid, though it is not known what his other half is. Personally, I would guess bull snake because of how wide his head is and the shape of his scales.

Over the course of the last year, I managed to gain his trust enough to be able to touch him. He is not a fan of being picked up, but he doesn't bite so I can safely get him to the vet if I ever have to.

He has also become very curious!

For the first months, he would usually just hide away but eventually he proved to be a very observant fellow. Though he clearly can not see well, he does see movement and light, both of which seem to intrigue him. I often catch him peeking out of his terrarium, staring at either my computer screen or me when I do something. He was especially observant when I assembled my new office chair in front of his enclosure!

All in all, Fulgrim helped me get over Jörmi's death and I am very glad to have him! Although I might not have him for long, considering his age, I am happy to see him every day, usually sunbathing in his favourite spot.

I hope to upload more again in the future and while the two OGs of the blog are gone, my passion for these beautiful animals is as strong as ever, and I hope yours is, too!

Lots of love from the snake pit, and from across the rainbow bridge 🐍🐍🌈🐍🐍

#corn snake #reptiblr #snekblr #snake

[rockbottomwithashovel]

You can one crime no matter how major and get away with it completely free.

What are you doing?

*pulls out whiteboard and markers* boy, am I GLAD YOU ASKED!

First I need to explain a little bit of background first: between the ages of 10-13, I was at a private christian school. Yikes, right? It's a miracle that I still believe in God. I was put through extreme mental/psychological and emotional abuse, then physical and bullying. This was my whole year group against me, and the teachers were worse than the students, pretending to care but literally turning away when i was being bullied, throwing out my lunch, and worst of all, bribing some kids to be my friend (because I was that much of a target no one would dare associate with me). It doesn't sound that bad but TO THIS DAY I STILL SUFFER FROM PTSD NIGHTMARES. So it's hard to recover when your brain torments you about it nightly.

How does this relate to my crime? Because what I'd do is revenge. Now what I really want to do is murder all the people who hurt me, but I believe in karma and I'm not going to risk my soul for their blood (God knows I've seen enough of it). Plus, we were kids. While I want to watch them hurt, I'm not going to get them for it because we were all shitty, we were kids in a bad environment, the majority of us didn't have a choice.

But you know who did? The principle. One of the worst bullies was his granddaughter. He let it all slide. So what my crime would be is kinda a 3 part-er.

Step 1: steal LITERALLY ALL OF THE MONEY FROM THE SCHOOL, I'm talking about all the money they made, from the principle, to the teacher's savings, to that total bitch who worked in the office. Steal. All. Of. Their. Shit. And more books from the library, because taking one was so not enough. Basically anything that I like, it's mine now. You know what, fuck it, I'm also stealing all the money from those shit's that convinced me to kill myself.

Step 2: break into the library, again, but also the rest of the school. I'd need to do this to steal shit anyway, but I mean literally break in, I'm talking smashing windows and shit, because that's ✨theraputic✨

Step 3: make sure that there are no kangaroos, wallabies, or bushwalkers on site, and that the surroundings are safe enough from fire, because bitch, I ain't starting no bushfires in Australia.

Step 4: just get. Some fuckin'. Petrol. And pour it. All over campus. Just. Just light that fucker up. Set it on fire. WATCH THAT FUCK BURN MWAHAHAHAHAAAA

Step 5: then I'd leave a special message spray painted, enough to know who did it but have no proof.

Man that is nice to think about. Honestly all my friends know at this point if that school ever gets burnt down, don't come looking for me. I should not be thinking this hard about it XD

ALTERNATIVELY!!!!

I'm hacking Jeff Bezo's AND Elon Musk, paying all of their workers a bonus like, 10,000 cause they can afford it, taking about 2 million for my own funsies and donating the rest to charities, funding green climate stuff and giving fistfulls of cash to homeless people like if Robin Hood was a chick. Yeah.

... but thank you for asking!!! <33

#I hope I didn't scare you too much #not me trauma dumping a little #tw bullying #rock rambles #asks #not me actually planning setting the school on fire though