Latest Posts by jjgaut - Page 2

Yeah, a lot of what bothers me about fantasy settings (especially D&D) is that people try to run wizards like they're academics, but their only exposure to academics is authoritative professors telling them The Truth, so they don't realize that all academics are always 5 seconds away from trying to strangle each other over questions like 'does time really pass or does it just seem to pass'

the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck

So a free tool called GLAZE has been developed that allows artists to cloak their artwork so it can't be mimicked by AI art tools.

AI art bros are big mad about it.

Sometimes reading Arthuriana feels like reading Alice in Wonderland.

“Well,” said Alice, “these are a dreadfully strange assortment of objects!”

“They all symbolize different aspects of Our Lord’s martyrdom,” said the Fisher King, casting a line into his teacup.

“Indeed. I am sure everything symbolizes something else, for if everything was only itself I should be very confused. Might I ask what the point of the bleeding lance is?”

Alice regretted asking the question as soon as she had done so, for she saw the pun that would likely be made about the word point. Instead, however, the room erupted in applause and shouts of “The Grail! She has achieved the Grail!”

The next castle she visited, Alice resolved to herself as the inhabitants of this one danced for joy, would be more sensible.

We need to bring back private rail cars as the cool, sexy, exclusive way to travel, so instead of dumping the carbon budget of a small nation in the global south on private jets, celebrities have to attach their luxury pull an cars to the back of an Amtrak. Then the celebrities will lobby for Amtrak lines to be better

Seriously when did this

Become sexier than this

Like isn't it nice to watch the scenery, to be able to open a window and have fresh air, to be able to stand up all the way, not have your ears pop?

I don't know if it's the depression speaking but these days I find it incredibly hard to enjoy anything about the Internet.

Literally every website has become a thousand times more inconvenient, bloated with promoted or recommended shit, stupid UI/UX changes pushed by out of touch billionaires.

The tipping point this week was Google changing the regular "Web - Images - Videos - Etc." tabs with fucking stupid ever-changing search suggestions, making the site a thousand times less accessible and so much more annoying to use

I'm tired. I want forums back. I want ugly html pages that give useful information back. I want to connect with other Internet users in a meaningful way again. Fuck modern corporate UI design. Fuck social media. I want out.

HOLY SHIT WHAT???

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.

Neurotypicals will be like “I know you have a disability that affects your ability to stay organized, manage your time properly, socialize, or control what you’re able to think about or focus on, but that’s not an excuse to have trouble staying organized, managing your time properly, socializing, or controlling what you need to think about or focus on.” And then demand that they aren’t ableist. I’m tired.

i feel so bad for nikola tesla like imagine spending years beefing with a guy who has conned the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and you end up dying broke and starving and alone and then 100 years later another guy cons the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and he's doing it all IN YOUR NAME. he must be rolling in his grave like a fucking rotisserie chicken

I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.

My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813

*electric guitar riff*

And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like

poll time because something my mother said pissed me off lmao

and in the tags tell me your gender and age?

It is almost five centuries ago, and the girl who will one day be a swordswoman is lying in the red-tinged mud. She can't get up—broken bone? severed tendon? She can't tell. She's yet to cultivate her palate for pain. Her enemy towers over her, a cataphract mailed in screaming steel and poisoned light. His warhammer falls, and it is death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable.

"No," says a part of her. She is not even seventeen years old. Her body is mangled and broken, wound piled upon wound piled upon wound. A dull kitchen knife is her only weapon, though she lost that in the mud the second her grip faltered. Her enemy is no thing of this earth. And yet—

"No. It is not death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable. It is only a hammer, falling. It is only 'an attack.'"

And the girl understood.

~~~

It is the better part of three centuries ago, as best the swordswoman can reckon, and she is beset on all sides by foes. They are not monsters—just mountain bandits, or highland rebels, as one cares to see it. But they outnumber her by dozens, and even an exceptional swordswoman might struggle against but two opponents of lesser skill.

From in front of her, beside her, behind her they advance, striking from every angle with spears and blades and axes. Others fill the air with arrows, sling stones, firepots. It would be effortless, to parry any single blow. It would be impossible, physically impossible, to defend against them all.

"No," says a part of her.

"You are not outnumbered. You do not face 'multiple' foes. It would be impossible to defend against every attack — but there is no 'every' attack. Only one."

"Oh," the swordswoman said. And it was, in fact, effortless.

~~~

It is eighty years ago, or thereabouts. A coiling spire of stony flesh and verdigrised copper throbs like a tumor on the horizon, coaxed from the earth by spell and sacrifice. It is the tower of a sorcerer-prince, and a birthing place of abominations.

Seven locks of rune-etched metal are opened with her single key. Wretched shapelings beasts, grown by sorcery in vitreous nodules, flee wailing from her, absconding before she even draws her blade. Demons sworn to thousand-year pacts of guardianship find the binding provisions of such agreements unexpectedly severed.

These things dissatisfy the sorcerer-prince. Waxing wroth, he makes signs and chants incantations. With a flask of godling's blood, he draws the binding sigil inscribed upon the moon's dark face. With cold fire burning in his eyes, he speaks the secret name of Death. It is a king among curses, all-corrupting, all-consuming, and it falls from his lips upon the swordswoman.

"No," she says, and she turns it aside with her blade.

The sorcerer-prince's brow furrows. How did she even do that?

"Parried it."

But—

"With my sword."

No—

"See, like this."

Stop—

"Well," the swordswoman finally says, "I figured that if I just...looked at it right, and thought about it, and construed your curse as a kind of attack...then I could block it."

That's not how it works at all!

"If you insist," says the swordswoman, shrugging, and decapitates him.

~~~

It is now. It is the end. Death couldn't take the swordswoman, not when she'd spent all her life cutting it up. At times, Death might sidle up to one of her friends, or peer down into a grandchild's crib, and she'd just give it a look. That's all it took, by then.

Heartache couldn't take her, either. Bad things happened to her, and they hurt, and she lived in that hurt, but if it was ever more than she could take...she'd just, move her sword in a way that's difficult to describe. And she'd keep going.

Kingdoms fell, and she kept going. Continents crumbled and sank into the sea. Her planet's star faded and froze. She started carrying a lantern. Universes were torn apart and scattered, until all that had been matter was redistributed in thermodynamic equilibrium. With one exception.

But now it is the end. There is no time left; time is already dead. The swordswoman has outlived reality, but there is simply no further she can go. This is not a thing that can be blocked. This is the absence of anything further to block.

"No," says the girl who will one day be a swordswoman. "This isn't the ending. And even if it was, it's not the ending that matters."

The swordswoman looks back at who she was, at the countless selves she's been between them. She looks forward, at the rapidly contracting point that remains of the future. She grasps the all of linear time in her mind, and sees that it is shaped like a spear.

Meanwhile, Monday is extremely 2 + 2 = 5 energy

nobody gets me like they get me

Tonight I am contemplating the intimacy of someone borrowing my headphones without asking

Like. In many cases that would be somewhat annoying. In this case I'm all 🥰 about it. I think it's for the same reason either way--there's this intimacy to borrowing something without asking

Unwelcome intimacy is uncomfortable, a violation even if minor, like someone asking a question you don't want to answer, but welcome intimacy is just a, like, look how close we are kind of thing

She borrowed my headphones because she knew I'd say yes if she asked (because I'd give her anything (because I love her))

choking on water is the worst because how do you stop choking? drink something? well ive got some bad news for you

Making a shitty one-page RPG called Oh Shit It’s the Killer. The premise is simple: you’re a high schooler spending the weekend in the woods with your besties. The Killer is there also. He is trying to the Kill you

This will explain some of Indian dance methodology.

You are now trapped in the last movie you watched with the last person you texted. Reblog and put how screwed you are in the tags

Now you see, I’ve watched enough cartoons to know that this square of the carpet is on a separate animation cell from the background & therefore something funky will happen if I step on it. You won’t catch me making a rookie mistake like that no sir!

A tree trunk throne in Kendall, England.

You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist

look at this

Who are the Anti-Stratfordians?

People who think Shakespeare wasn’t actually Shakespeare, but that ‘Shakespeare’ was a secret pseudonym for someone more important and better educated, like the Earl of Oxford. 

See also: imbeciles.

I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say