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stochastiz · 4 months

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i recently came across a scanned image (at this website) of an essay written by Theodore Sturgeon, published June 1967 in Cavalier Magazine, where Sturgeon describes his 'signature mark' and the ethos it represents for him. i decided to transcribe the article for future reference, and figured that people who follow me might also find it insightful and inspiring.

especially when it can be so easy to take something that has been presented as a fact at face value, i think we can always benefit from a reminder to ask the next question.

the symbol being described is an uppercase letter Q with a right-facing arrow striking through it. in my transcription i chose to represent the symbol with (-Q->). check out the scanned image of the essay to see how it was originally printed.

⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

I give you this symbol. I want you to wear it between your eyeball and your eyelid and look at the world through it. I want to do this, and I want you to do what I say, because you are not the crawling blob in that big bucket of ooze which, down deep, you think you are: you are Mankind. That isn't the best thing in the Universe to be, but it can be. It can be. It will be, if you do what I tell you. All I ask of you is that you hear me out.

Here is the symbol: (-Q->)

What it means is: Ask the next question.

Every advance this species has ever made is the result of someone, somewhere, looking at his world, his neighborhood, his neighbor, his cave, or himself, and asking that next question. Every deadly error this species has committed, every sin against itself and its high destiny, is the result of not asking the next question, or of not listening to those who do ask it.

That next question, (-Q->), is nothing more than a signboard which points toward the truth; the absolute, furthermost irreducible truth. there are not many absolutes, but we know one thing about them all: they are not complicated. More on that later.

First, an example of (-Q->) in action. Let's take something that has filled countless thousands of newspaper inches, in computable hours of argument and temper, a rich crop of injustice and stupidity, and has wasted a great deal more time than it is worth - the pornography question. We'll start with the warcry "we've got to get that filth off the newsstands!"

This is quite enough, in many communities, to gain a majority support right now. "Right-thinking people" gather up their axe-handles and burning torches and rally round what looks to them like the ultimate and self-defining truth. Now we ask that next question:

(-Q->): Why? A: Because it can get into the hands of young people

At this point, for many people, doors close, shutters bang, and all the lights go out inside. But that answer isn't an answer, as you can discover by asking the next question:

(-Q->): What happens if it gets into the hands of young people? A: It might arouse them.

Slam. Bang. Click... but wait. Isn't there another question? Sure!

(-Q->): What happens if they get aroused?

This will probably get you a variety of answers, and you'll forgive me if I don't pursue them in this question-and-answer format, because I haven't much space and I mean to pack it as full as I can. But you get the pattern: every time anyone answers that next question, that (-Q->), see if there isn't another one which can be asked. In this instance you can run the thing down until you find out on the highest scientific (and morally ethical) authority that it doesn't harm anyone to get sexually stimulated with no outlet; that it happens all the time to virtually everyone; that the list of things which stimulate one person or another at various times are by no means limited to what one finds in the girlie books, but include such things as pieces of string, wash on the line, sunsets, music, dogs howling, and a thousand other things, and if you got rid of all that filth you'd find yourself on a desert or in a cell - where, probably, your imagination would do a whole heap worse than any professional pornographer; further, that if the young person is stimulated to find an outlet it is, in a vast majority of cases, masturbation, which does not make green hairs grow in the palms of your hands, which does not cause pimples, and in the case of hyperactive individuals leaves them less likely to commit rape than more - especially if they are free of guilt about it. How do I know all this? By getting my questions answered, and by unfailingly asking that one more. If you do the same, you'll find the references, the carefully performed and documented experiments, the careful analyses and cross-checked conclusions. Let me here caution you never to abandon the (-Q->) technique when it leads you to a conclusion you like. Ask that one more question again, and ask it again... really, the only time you won't be able to ask it will be when you're up against a truth so basic and so simple that the question can't be asked.

And I've never had an answer that was that close to the truth - not ever. But in looking for it I've gotten rid of an awful lot of well-known facts that just ain't so. It makes you very light-hearted, very sure, and rather hard to hurt.

Now about basics and simplicity: complicated and subtle things can be overwhelming and they can change your whole life and the face of the world, but if they are complicated they are not (in the most important sense) important. Now here's a simple basic: living things change. Growth is one of the many kinds of change; what you can be sure of is that anything that has stopped changing has stopped living. Got it?

You are alive. Your family and your town and the county and state and nation are, each in its way, living things. All living things want to feel secure. Human beings are accursed with something that makes most of them, at one time or another in his life, seek security by stopping. He wants things stable and permanent and unchanging, like a pyramid. But there is another kind of stability - dynamic stability - the steadiness of a gull's flight. It's something that cannot happen unless the bird is in motion.

And by and large, friend, gulls outlast pyramids.

This is the kind of conclusion that the (-Q->) process leads you to, and armed with it you can look about you with a kind of Man from Mars astonishment. Living things (nations, cities, towns, families, people) trying to be dead. Trying to stop - stop time, stop change, stop thought, when they could spread their wings and rise it... Listen:

Laws are always late. Usually in the past, and certainly in a faster-and-ever-faster moving future, by the time a law is passed the circumstances which brought it about have already begun to change, which is why so many of them rule us by "the dead hand." As far as I know, no human group has ever tried to establish a whole body of laws with tenure - laws which would expire on a certain date unless the community voted to continue them! How much public apathy do you think you'd find in a democracy like that? Listen:

(-Q->): What is the function of the incest taboo? No - wait - don't give me those answers that "everybody knows," because nobody knows. If you start out on that recessive defective gene bit, with the idiot children of first cousins and all that, I'll only refer you to animal breeders the world over, and hope you enjoyed those idiot pork chops last night, and have fun with the loot you picked up at the $2 window, courtesy of the dark horse who paid 83 to 1 and who is the result of a dozen generations of inbreeding. Men are different from hogs and horses - but biologically they are not all that different. Listen:

Olaf Stapledon, bless his memory, wrote a book called Last and First Men which traces the history of Man through the next couple of hundred billion years. He speaks of something similar to what I call the (-Q->) process, and calls it "the precious insight." Through the generations, he says, it appears repeatedly and is repeatedly struck down by accidents large or small (well, we can't do much about that) "or," he says, "by an access of racial imbecility, or by the mere cowardice and vertigo that dares not look down the precipice of the fact."

I think we are in such a period of "racial imbecility" as he describes. I think that there are a few people around - you, for example - who can cure it because they are not afraid to look down the precipice of the fact, no matter how deep the pit, no matter how different.

All I ask of you is that you look at what is there, and ask that next question. In exchange I offer more than those who claim that this act idea, or that, will save this species from extinction. I offer this species its maturity and triumph.

I just heard a voice from one of you:

(-Q->): Just who the hell do you think you are? A: That's it. Don't stop there.

-- TheodoreSturgeon, 1967

#more emphasis: i didn't write this #please let me know if there are any transcription errors!#i just really wanted to transcribe it to personally draw from later and figured i might as well share it with anyone who might be intereste #it also started me down a bit of a rabbit hole about who theodore sturgeon was and i've found some pretty cool stuff #plus i always find it fascinating when something 'from so long ago' is so incredibly relevant to current affairs and this essay definitely #falls into that category #theodore sturgeon #ask the next question #media literacy #critical thinking #essay #stochastic ramblings #long post

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spacedace · 10 months

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dp x dc prompt/mini blurb thing:

Somewhere along the line, stealing the Batmobile had seemed like the best option.

Elle would stand by that - admittedly short-sighted and kind of panic induced - logic. It was a vehicle that no one would try and stop. It was fast. The keys were in the ignition. Easiest car theft of her life. Or, well, unlife. Whatever. Still the easiest.

She may have forgotten that Superman could fly as fast as the stupid tank of a car could go. Or that Gotham had other vigilantes, that had bikes that were way more maneuverable, or that Billy was a big baby about car chases.

“WATCH THE ROAD!”

“YOU WATCH THE ROAD I’M DRIVING HERE!”

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introspectivememories · 3 months

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street interviewer: what's your type?

tim who's just trying to get to work: i have a boyfriend

street interviewer: so what's your type then?

tim: my boyfriend

street interviewer: and what does he look like?

tim who will absolutely gatekeep bernard from the general public: he looks like my boyfriend

street interviewer: so what would you rate me out of 10?

tim: um i can't do that

street interviewer: can't rate me at all?

tim: i can't rate you at all

street interviewer finally realizing that this is going absolutely nowhere: what would you rate your boyfriend out of 10?

tim smiling stupidly: he broke my scale cause he's so beautiful

#this is 100% the way he comes out to gotham btw #also you cannot tell me that gotham doesn't have a bunch of annoying people doing street interviews #cant even walk down the beach without sm1 being like 'for $20 can you tell me your worst secret?'#also that video definitely makes it back to his siblings who mock him endlessly on twt #one of them ends up tagging bear and tim shows up to patrol the next day covered in hickies #this is also sooo jonjay coded btw #jon would 100% do this just in the middle of an interview #some reporter is asking questions and jon keeps going off on tangents about jay #bernard dowd #tim drake #timber #timbern #dc

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driftwoodthrone · 1 year

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ARE WE LIT?

— Gates McFadden, The Shuttlepod Show, Ancient Proverb

#trekedit #picardedit #star trek picard #gates mcfadden #beverly crusher #just saw the trailer for the next episode...#they are absolutely Not Lit :(#*cries in gifmaker*#trekdaily #gates is out here asking the hard hitting questions... an ally #*trek #*

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velidewrites · 4 months

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What is Lucien reaching for?

a) A glass of faerie wine

b) A book

c) Elain’s face

#‘hey velide are you ever going to post anything that’s not a half assed sketch?’ you ask #‘excellent question’ I nod then disappear into the void for the next 1000 years #lucien vanserra #lucien acotar #elucien #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #myart #velidedraws

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charlietheepicwriter7 · 4 months

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We've seen DP and DC be different universes where Danny and Valerie are the only heroes in DP, but there are thousands of heroes in DC. We've seen where DP and DC are in the same universe, and Amity Park just thinks the Justice League are ignoring them.

But what if DP and DC are different universes, BUT Danny and Val aren't the only heroes?

If we treat superheroes as basically cops/military with superpowers, then we can infer what heroes would be like using cop/military statistics. You could even use My Hero Academia society as a basis. Things like "heroes are more interested in protecting private property than serving the public" and "Heroes have high levels of PTSD and physical disability and aren't helped after they retire" are common knowledge in Danny's universe.

And specifically, the one I wanted to make clear for this prompt: In Danny's universe, heroes are highly likely to abuse their family/sidekicks outside the mask.

Suddenly, Danny's in the DC universe. For a low-stakes reason; if he's there because the DP universe imploded or his parents tried to kill him, he'd be too concerned about himself to act on his instincts. No, Danny's there for a vacation and there are so many heroes and kid heroes that he feels sick.

Maybe he catches Batman being rough with his kids, or overhears Superman "belittling" Superboy (Conner). Nevertheless...

Danny ends up thinking that all the Justice League are abusing their sidekicks and families and becomes a villain to save them.

#dc x dp #dp x dc #dpxdc #dcxdp #dc x dp prompt #Danny's trying really hard to help and superheroes in his home dimension are really bad so he thinks the worst #C: danny fenton #c: bruce wanye #c: clark kent #c: connor kent #danny becomes a supervillain in one city after another #discovers that the hero he's menacing isn't abusive #and that the mentee isn't abused #then goes to the next one #occasionally there is an abusive hero #like he calls green arrow out on his bullshit regarding roy #but danny getting the sneaking suspicion that something's weird about the heroes here #all the kid heroes know danny's not a threat because all he does is feed them fudge and ask questions like a social worker

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shootingstarrfish · 5 months

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some silly guys!! the silliest guys around!!!!!! :)

#obey me #obey me nightbringer #belphegor #omswd #beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me beelzebub #belphie #beel #obey me art #my art #omg so a story related to this drawing #my 7 year old little sister loves walking into my room while im drawing to ask questions #belphie is kinda iconic to my sisters in that they dont know who he is necessarily but they both know of him as 'emo cow'#he has no name he is just emo cow #so she sees me drawing belphie and shes like omggg is that emo cow?? whos that next to him?#“oh thats his brother” “HE HAS A BROTHER????” “yeah he has 6 of them” “WHAT?????????”#cue like 50 questions about who his brothers are “are his brothers also emo?” “are his brothers also cows?” “are his brothers also animals?#then she gets to “so what animal is this guy next to him?” “a fly” “PFFFFFT HAHAHAHAHA EWWWWWWW WHY IS HE A FLY HAHAHAHAHA”#“next youre gonna say he has little wings that go bzzzzt” “....yeah he does” “PFFFFFT HAHAHAHAHAHAHA WHATTTTT”#she saw me drawing asmo yesterday so i pulled him up and i said hes a scorpion and she thought he was the coolest >:DDD #unrelated but mourning the fact that i accidentally covered beel up so much that i couldnt draw his muscles :( someday someday

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ceaseless-rambler · 11 months

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As a queer trans person, I often find myself being stared at and asked uncomfortably invasive questions. That's why this pride month, I'm partnering with The Magnus Institu

#next time a cis person asks me a weird question about my sex life we're Beholding them #it's only happened once but like it was a 60yo man and i was in high school #to be fair he was in my precalc class at the community college so I'm sure he assumed i was older but not THAT much older #uncomfortable nonetheless #tma #the magnus archives #the beholding

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mollyjames · 10 months

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I made this post the other day on impulse, it's mostly just me banging the old "reverse the nsfw ban" drum that I'm sure staff has already heard a million times. It wasn't meant to be like a researched thing, but I do want to say like, I know staff can't just flip a switch and magically turn the porn back on. I know FOSTA-SESTA is a thing, I know credit card companies are getting stricter, I know tumblr doesn't want to get pulled from the app store. I get all that. I'm sympathetic even. That doesn't mean I think it's impossible, or that it wouldn't be worth the effort both from a cultural and a financial perspective, but I get it. But folks

Folks it has been such a shit year to be an artist.

Between AI art, Imgur banning nsfw content, reddit's impending implosion, and twitter asphyxiating... it's fucking rough out there right now. And I'm lucky. I stayed on tumblr, and my content all falls comfortably within the (poorly defined, arbitrarily implemented) nsfw guidelines. There are thousands of artists way more talented than me, way bigger than me, who are starting from essentially scratch. Who are now picking up the pieces and figuring out where they can even go from here. You know how we always joke about how if you wanted to make money as an artist, draw furry porn? That... can't really happen anymore. You can open a patreon, get lucky, get some commissions, but the platforms for building a robust audience just aren't there like they used to be. It sucks.

Look, fact is tumblr doesn't have to do anything. They can do what they like, keep the nsfw policy in this nebulous grey area where they don't have to commit to repealing it or enforcing it. And that's probably fine enough for them. But if it's not going to be tumblr? I don't think it's going to be... anything. Not for a while. Not until we get something new.

#ah but what about xyz platform?#thank you for asking no one is using them next question #this post also applies to sex workers #I didn't mention it because it's not my field #but we are together in this

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fiendpact · 5 months

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20 Tav QOTDs

a compilation of questions i’ve seen on twitter + ones i’ve come up with myself <3 can be used as an ask game or as a daily game!

what do they smell like at their freshest? (and/or after a tenday. your choice)

what would their blood taste like to vampires?

how would they kiss their LI?

how do they sleep with their LI (what position, does one steal the blankets, is one too hot/cold, etc)?

what does their tent area look like? where do they prefer to pitch their tent (next to water, covered on three sides, etc)?

if they had a set of dnd dice, what would they look like?