Latest Posts by psyxe - Page 7

In an attempt to remember the tune to Old Macdonald, I just ended up with this:

Old Macdonald had a farm.

On the feast of Stephen

 Earlier today I was inventing a conspiracy theory that the whole “Parents Are Useless” trope in children’s fiction is secretly meant to prepare us for that eventuality (it eventually lost out to the Anthropic Principle of Parental Uselessness, where out of all possible fictional universes, only the ones where parents are useless produce viable children’s stories)

the trouble with parents who expect absolute obedience from their children is that even if the parent was right all the time (already laughable) there will eventually come a day when their faculties begin to fail and the children must step in; it helps to lay the groundwork for that sooner rather than later.

Poem: I lik the form

My naym is pome / and lo my form is fix’d Tho peepel say / that structure is a jail I am my best / when formats are not mix’d Wen poits play / subversions often fail

Stik out their toung / to rebel with no cause At ruls and norms / In ignorance they call: My words are free / Defying lit'rate laws To lik the forms / brings ruin on us all

A sonnet I / the noblest lit'rate verse And ruls me bind / to paths that Shakespeare paved Iambic fot / allusions well dispersed On my behind / I stately sit and wave

You think me tame /   Fenced-in and penned / bespelled I bide my time /   I twist the end / like hell

* “lik” should be read as “lick”, not “like”. In general, the initial section on each line should be read sort of phonetically.

Written for World Poetry Day, March 21, 2018. When I had this idea earlier today, I thought it was the worst, most faux hip pretentious idea for a shallow demonstration of empty wordsmithing skill in poetry ever. So I had to try to write it. I mean, how often do you get to fuse the iambic dimeter of bredlik - one of the newest and most exciting verse forms - with the stately iambic pentameter of the classic sonnet?

when you put your sensitive posts behind a ~read more~ link the tags still show up, so it ends up looking like this:

~read more~

#i just can’t deal #his *whole* ass #collapse of austria-hungary #never been fucked that hard before #econometrics #do not reblog #doctor who #eminem

I’m a procrustinator: I compulsively s t r e t c h out or cut short any task so that it fits exactly into the night before it’s due

Mythology puns, go!

Get to it, mortals!

*cusses you out in cuneiform*

(by @SarcasticRover on Twitter, I think)

The commendable desire to reduce conflict with bears has a long and distinguished pre-history.

Hot Allostatic Load

Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain. Build inside the storms.

                                                     HI

I am too sick to write this article. The act of writing about my injuries is like performing an interpretative dance after breaking nearly every bone in my body. When I sit down to edit this doc, my head starts aching like a capsule full of some corrosive fluid has dissolved and is leaking its contents. The mental haze builds until it becomes difficult to see the text, to form a thesis, to connect parts. They drop onto the page in fragments. This is the difficulty of writing about brain damage.

The last time I was in the New Inquiry, several years ago, I was being interviewed. I was visibly sick. I was in an abusive “community” that had destroyed my health with regular, sustained emotional abuse and neglect. Sleep-deprived, unable to take care of myself, my body was tearing itself apart. I was suicidal from the abuse, and I had an infected jaw that needed treatment.

Continue reading

since “what are those” exists in the marvel universe, it’s safe to assume that vine does as well. the “it is wednesday my dudes” vine was posted in 2015, and civil war was released in 2016, so it can be argued that the vine has an entirely new layer of comedy in the marvel universe, as spiderman didn’t exist when the vine was posted, and the man in the vine is just wearing a bizarre costume with no cultural meaning or reference. it can be concluded that peter parker designed his costume based off the “it is wednesday my dudes” guy. in this essay i will—

I think what probably gets me deeply into my feelings about this “JKR should have just made her students Of Color to start with, she can’t ret-con and pretend she did it right the first time” is that I grew up with Anne Rice and Anne McCaffery, two female fantasy writers who hated headcanons and fandom and sued people for deviating from their original vision or doing any kinds of derivative works without their express contractual permission.

I feel like people who get irritated with her about defending black!Hermione don’t appreciate how much healthier JKR’s attitude toward the inclusivity movement in her fandom is than theirs was. Or Moffat’s is. Or Gatiss’s. Or Whedon’s. Or Green’s. Or even, until very recently, Lucas’s.

She’s not a PCR, but goddamn, at least she’s passing us the milk rather than pissing in our cornflakes.

01101000 01110100 01110100 01110000 01110011 00111010 00101111 00101111 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110100 01110101 00101110 01100010 01100101 00101111 01100100 01010001 01110111 00110100 01110111 00111001 01010111 01100111 01011000 01100011 01010001

Of the many marvels a lifetime offers, this experience was truly my favorite so far.

We should be more pro-active or we’ll see more of such sad fates of honest people.

your personal post just now about your genetics exam is a whole fucking mood. I have incourse exams this week and I know nothing. I am nothing. I am ready for the vast void to consume me. I am ready for the brambles to grow over me and snuff my light out. My bio exam on bacteria, algae, and bryophytes got pushed back due to severe flooding in my country but she included ferns now too and now i gotta learn about ferns and i dont know ferns, van i dont. i dont even know what i know im ready 2 cry

dude ferns be like ‘hi my name is Eboness 173’mentia raven woodwardia and im a 3n sporophyte with 173 chromosomes (thats how i got my name) and 14 rachi on each petiole spiraling into a double whirl with jet black leaflet tips and a lot of people tell me i look like Cyathea medullaris (AN: if u dont know who she is get da hell out of here!). i’m not related to the Woodwardia genus but i wish i was bc theyre major fucking hotties. i have deep green leaves but my petioles and older structures are dark black. im also a perennial, and i live in a deep costal forest in oregon where ive put up 33 reproductive fronds so far. im a double triple allopolypoloid (in case u couldnt tell) and i mostly give birth to sexually recombinant quadruple polyploids. i love dark green and blue light for my photosynthesis and i get all my light from my position on the forest floor. for example today i was absorbing some photons in the 500 wavelength with three new jet black fronds i just put up around my outer basal growth formation. almost all their leaflets were unfurled from the main fiddlehead and the bottoms were covered in two parallel rows of bright red sporangia with 7000 spores in each. i was sitting under the tree where i live. it was raining and foggy so my absorption rate was low, which i was very happy about. a lot of angiosperms stared at me. i put my middle leaflet up at them’

Why does the left - rather than the right - accuse even reasonable and nuanced moderates/classical liberals of #enlightenedcentrism and false equivalencies?

If in the middle of the Red Scare, you barged into the House Un-American Activities Committee and shouted “I THINK BOTH CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM HAVE SOME GOOD POINTS AND WE SHOULD TREAT BOTH OF THEM FAIRLY!”, Joe McCarthy would probably view you as an enemy, and any communists hidden in the audience would probably view you as a potential ally or at least as not their top problem right now. Shout the same thing in Red Square in Moscow, and you’d get the opposite results.

I think a better question is how scared we should be #enlightenedcentrism is an insult that people try to avoid. I think Sacred Principles As Exhaustible Resources remains an underappreciated point, and I think we’re already past the point where “reason”, “nuance”, “listening to both sides”, and “trying to be unbiased” are considered enemy tribal signals and automatic proof of bad faith by a big segment of the population. This was avoidable, but thanks to a bunch of bad actors poisoning the epistemic commons, we failed to avoid it.

anyone who says “the bible is clear” about an issue, is 100% of the time wrong. the bible wasnt clear once. the bible couldnt be clear about how to make a table if it came in an ikea box

For anyone who wants a free pose-able human reference for drawing

The other day I came across this awesome program by accident (I don’t even remember what I was actually searching for, but on the several times I’ve looked for a program like this I’ve had no luck). It’s cool enough that I wanted to share it.

It’s called DesignDoll (website here) and it’s a program that lets you shape and pose a human figure pretty much however you want.

There’s a trial version with no expiration date that can be downloaded for free, as well as the “pro license” version priced at $79. I’ve only had the free version for two days so far, so I’m not an expert and I haven’t figured out all of the features yet, but I’ve got the basics down. The website’s tutorials are actually pretty helpful for the basics, as well. 

Here’s the page for download, which has a list of the features available in both versions.

There are three features the free version doesn’t have:

Can’t save OBJ files for export

Can’t download models and poses from Doll Atelier (a sharing site for users; note that the site is in Japanese, though)

It can’t load saved files

The third one means that if you make a pose, save it, and close the program, you can’t load that pose/modified model later. You have to start with the default model. I found that out when I tried to load a file from the day before (this is why reading is important…). Whether saving your modifications (and downloading models and poses) is worth $80 is up to you. 

But, the default model is pretty nice and honestly if all you’re looking for is a basic pose reference it should work fairly well as it is. Here’s what it looks like:

There’s a pose tag that lets you drag each joint into place and rotate body parts. The torso and waist can be twisted separately, and it seems like everything pretty much follows the range of movement it would have on an actual human.

Even the entire shoulder area is actually movable along with the joint! See, like how the scapular area of the back raises with the arm:

The morphing tag is one of the coolest features, in my opinion. It lets you pick and choose from a library of pre-set forms for the head, chest, arms, legs, etc. It has some more realistic body shapes in addition to more anime-like ones. Don’t like the options there? Mix a few to get what you want! Each option has a slider that lets you blend as much or as little as you want into the design. 

So you, too, can create beautiful things like kawaii Muscle-chan!!

The scale tag lets you mess with the proportions and connection points of different joints. This feature combined with the morphing feature not only allows more body shape variations, but it also means that you can do things like make a more digitigrade model if you want. (The feet only have an ankle joint, but for regular human poses that’s all that you really need, so whatever.)

Or you can make a weird chubby alien-like thing with giant hands and balloon tiddies if that’s more your thing.

The ability to pose hands to the extent it allows is far more than I could have hoped for from a free program. Seriously, you can change the position of each finger joint individually, as well as how spread out the fingers are from each other. Each crease on the diagram below is a point of movement, and the circles are for spread between fingers. 

And to make it a bit more convenient, there’s a library of pre-set hand poses you can pick from as well, and then change the pose from that if you like. 

In both versions, you can also import OBJ files from other places for the model to hold, like if you wanted to have them hold a sword or something.

Basically, this program is awesome and free and you should totally check it out if you want a good program for creating pose references.

Iridescent (Official Video) - Linkin Park

And in a burst of light that blinded every angel As if the sky had blown the heavens into stars You felt the gravity of tempered grace Falling into empty space No one there to catch you in their arms

The internet could change next week, and not in a good way

You may have heard about the efforts in Europe to reform copyright law. The debate has been ongoing in the European Parliament for months. If approved next week, these new regulations would require us to automatically filter and block content that you upload without meaningful consideration of your right to free expression. 

We respect the copyrights and trademarks of others, and we take all reports seriously to ensure that your creative expression is protected. We make this clear in our Community Guidelines. There’s already a legal framework that works and is fair: Today we take down posts and media that contain allegedly infringing content when we receive a valid DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown request. We also provide clear-cut ways for people to fight back if they believe their removed content was not a true violation. These instances are monitored and reported and live in our biannual transparency report. 

The suggestion to use automated filters for issues of copyright is short-sighted at best and harmful at worst. Automated filters are unable to determine whether a use should be considered “fair use” under the law and are unable to determine whether a use is authorized by a license agreement. They are unable to distinguish legitimate parody, satire, or even your own personal pictures that could be matched with similar photographs that have been protected by someone else. We don’t believe that technology should replace human judgment. Tumblr is and always has been a place for creative expression, and these new regulations would only make it harder for you to express yourself with the freedom and clarity you do so now. 

If you access Tumblr from Europe and want to act, you can find more information on saveyourinternet.eu. 

Tiny Hedgehog Goes Camping, And His Pics Are The Best Thing You’ll See Today

No, you’re thinking of Violin. Voltron is a fabric fastening device made up of hooks and loops.

Who is voltron didn’t the avengers kill him in 2014

how come you can name your kid Lily or Rose and that’s totally acceptable but you trying calling em Baby’s Breath and everyone flips

If you’re an adult, do the stuff you couldn’t as a kid.

Like, me and my sister went to a museum, and they had an extra exhibit of butterflies. But it cost £3. So we sighed, walked past, then stopped. We each had £3. We could see the butterflies. And we did it was great. We followed it up with an ice-cream as well because Mum and Dad weren’t there to say no.

I was driving back from a work trip with 2 other people in their early 20s, and we drove past a MacDonalds. One of the others went “Aww man, I’d love a McFlurry.” And the guy driving pulled in to the drive through. It was wild. But it was great.

I went to a park over the weekend and I was thinking “Man, I’d love to hire one of those bikes and cycle round the park.” It took me a few minutes to go “Wait, I can hire one of those bikes!”

I guess what I’m saying is, those impulsive things you wanted to do as a kid - see the dinosaur exhibit, play in the fountains with the other kids, lie in the shade for 2 hours - you can do when you’re an adult. You have to deal with a whole lot of other bull, but at least you can indulge your inner 8 year-old.

both of these takes

like, eesh, i know this is really fucking petty to be complaining about when they are literally putting kids in fucking cages but

i’m so tired of how posturing against Nerd Culture ™ has become part of the leftist party line, even if you’re gonads deep in Nerd Culture yourself

like. yes. i am fully aware that Nerd Culture ™ has some serious problems and there are some really nasty bigots there and they need to get the bigotry stick out of their fucking anii, but.

 it honestly seems like the whole tumblr ‘LET’S MAKE FUN OF NERDS/GAMERS/PEOPLE WHO LIKE BAD SHIPS’ is based in ableism and  self-loathing more than anything valid. at best it’s misguided attempts at ‘punching up’ and hurting people who hurt you back; at worst it’s just general high school bullshit. it’s making fun of the ‘weird’ ‘greasy’ kid who wears a top hat and talks about my little pony too much and doesn’t perform their gender correctly. or making fun of the ‘fat neckbeard’ who’s autistic and doesn’t have the best grasp on personal hygiene. or making fun of the ‘creepy’ fat otaku dude who says awkward things about how he’s more interested in anime girls than real ones…  because, guess what, he’s asexual and doesn’t have the words for it. or, or, or, or, or, list goes on. 

it’s like, do you really care about fighting bigotry, or do you just want to be able to be the ones bullying other people? if it’s the first one, why the fuck are you always picking on marginalised people? if it’s the second one, why the fuck are you in my justice space? 

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives.

And in time it came to pass that a young man by the name of Outis came of age in that city; and, as with all who lived in that city, he was taken to a secret place where a wise elder showed him a small cold dirty room. And in that room there was a small cold dirty child, naked and hurt and starving, who had never known the least human kindness.

And the wise elder said to Outis, “In our city, everything is good and no one suffers. But it all depends on this child. If the least kindness is shown to him, our city will become like all other cities. There must always be such a child in Omelas.” …

…And Outis said to the elder, “If our city becomes like all other cities, many children will suffer.” And so he became a citizen of Omelas. And Outis led a good and happy and fulfilling life; and the child continued to suffer.

…And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he walked away from Omelas. And Outis led a cold and short and brutish life; and the child continued to suffer.

…And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the city of Omelas became like all other cities; and many children suffered there.

…And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the city of Omelas carried on as it always had; and from that day forth no child suffered there.

…And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the city of Omelas became like all other cities; and many children suffered there.

But Outis, who would leave no child to suffer, worked tirelessly to save each one of them, and to build with his own hands a city in which everyone lived a good and happy and fulfilling life; and so in time it came to pass that the latter days of Omelas were greater than the former. And for ten trillion years Omelas carried on, and no child ever suffered there again.

…And Outis said to the elder, “Nevertheless, this child is my son, and I will not leave him to suffer.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the city of Omelas became like all other cities; and many children suffered there. But Outis did not care, because he valued the well-being of his son over all of them.

…And Outis asked the elder, “Why?” And the elder showed him to a library filled with books. And Outis studied the books for many years. And when he was an old man with a gray beard, Outis went out of the library and returned to the child and took the child out of the room, and in the child’s place he put a stone. And the stone was naked and dirty and cold; and the child Outis took and bathed and cared for. And Omelas carried on as it always had; and from that day forth no child suffered there.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives; except for one child, who suffered so that the city might prosper. And all who lived there knew of this…

…And each citizen of Omelas, having looked into himself and seen that he would stand by while a child suffered in abject misery, found in himself a new willingness to do dark and evil deeds. And in time, all those who lived in Omelas suffered.

…And each citizen of Omelas lived with the gnawing guilt of his complicity, and the abiding terror that his own child would be chosen as the next to suffer. And in time it seemed to them that they could take no joy in any of the glories of Omelas.

…And one night, the child rose up and went out of his room and killed all the people of Omelas in their sleep.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives. And each morning, each citizen of Omelas was taken to a small cold dirty room, and shown a small cold dirty child, and told that the child must suffer so that his day might be filled with all good things.

And all in Omelas agreed that it was better that one child should suffer than many; and none of them ever asked if it was the same child they saw each morning. And after all, one small cold dirty child looks much like another.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives; except for ten thousand children, who suffered so that the city might prosper. And all who lived there knew of this…

…but none of them were ever taken to see the children in person, so none of them ever did anything about it.

…and whenever anyone saw such a child and “shouldn’t we rescue that suffering child?”, the other citizens of Omelas laughed and replied to them, “Naïve fool! Don’t you know that a child must always suffer in Omelas, so that the city may prosper? Otherwise it would become like all other cities, and many children would suffer.”

And everyone nodded wisely and went along with their days; and so ten thousand children continued to suffer where it might have been only one.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives.

And in time it came to pass that a young man by the name of Outis came of age in that city; and, as with all who lived in that city, he was taken to a secret place where a wise elder showed him a small cold dirty room. And in that room there was a small cold dirty child, naked and hurt and starving, who had never known the least human kindness.

And the wise elder said to Outis, “In our city, everything is good and no one suffers. But it all depends on this child. If the least kindness is shown to him…”

“…the city will continue on as it always has, only your internet will be slightly slower.”

And Outis went back up into the city, and on that day he became a citizen of Omelas; and the child continued to suffer.

“…the best predictions of our scientists suggest that there will be a slight average decrease in various hard-to-measure kinds of happiness, which nevertheless in total adds up to more suffering than this child experiences.”

And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the average happiness increased in some ways and decreased in others, and the net effect might have been negative, but the best results on the matter had p > 0.05, so the scientists of Omelas could not rule out the null hypothesis.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives.

And in Omelas there was a naked dirty child in a small dirty room; because the child was agoraphobic and was making mudpies.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives.

Very few people told stories about Omelas, but it was a very nice place to live in.

Your D&D class based off of your Hogwarts house

Ravenclaw: Wizard

Gryffindor: Wizard

Hufflepuff: Wizard

Slytherin: Wizard

I do feel bad for plants in general. Like, I know they are often as vicious as animals in many ways, just slower. But, I mean, they just show up and they’re like, “I Think I Will Evolve To Eat The Sun And Also Make Oxygen And How Now Is All This.” And, like, everything fucking dies at first (totally not plants fault, btw. okay maybe it was but they didn’t mean to) but then new things evolve. And they’re like, “Fuck it, eating each other suuuucks. Let’s eat the plants which give us life.” And so we start doing that. And plants are all, “Oh Dear No, I Do Not Care At All For Being Eaten. I Will Make Myself Into Poison Sometimes.” But, y'know, stuff kept eating plants anyway so plants, ever the bro, came up with a new idea. “I Have Made A Decision About Being Eaten And You May Eat Me Friends And Here Is An Especially Tasty Bit Packed All Full of Delicious Sugars Which I Have Produced At Great Cost (What They Do Not Know Is That My Seeds Are Within And Shall Be Propagated Near And Far By Their Dung)“ But that’s not good enough for animals, no, not at all. We love the fuck out of some pomegranates but also alliums which are like, "I Have Not Decided To Go In For This Being Eaten Business. I Shall Be Very Foul Tasting And Also A Poison.” But no, sorry, onions, you fucked up. You accidentally wound up with a species that just doesn’t give up or fully comprehend the idea of things tasting “”‘bad’“’ or other concepts like not eating poison. (Sorry, plants, later we turn some of you who are not poison into a poison we consume recreationally. We really enjoy eating poison.)  Legit, alliums are deadly to, like, every other species. And we call them aromatics and throw them in everything. Peppers are the best, though. They completely got on the being eaten train. BUT ONLY BIRDS Peppers are like, "You May Eat Me, Fair Avian, For You Are Sure To Spread Me A Great Distance. But, Mammal, Take HEED. Should You Eat Me Then I Will Burn You Most Terribly.” And we were all about that. “The FUCK, burning? I love pain,” said humans, presumably. “You know, peppers, you and evolution have done a good job at burning us but I am pretty sure we could make your chemical agony even more potent. Come hang with us,” humans added to a very confused pepper just before creating the ghost chili.

Your D&D class based off of your Hogwarts house

Ravenclaw: Wizard

Gryffindor: Wizard

Hufflepuff: Wizard

Slytherin: Wizard

So I was looking up a certain kind of cellular automata on Wikipedia out of curiosity, and then I ended up seeing a link for something called “billiard ball computers”.

So basically it’s a theoretical construction to show nature has results that can be reversible or something. You do have to let the billiards be frictionless, though. So it’s not like you could implement this in real lif-

Um…

This guy???

Wait,, just look at the pictures they have though. The captions refer to crab groups as “swarm balls”, which is a very endearing term IMO.

Unfortunately, these gates take up a lot of space, so to do big computations you’d need lots of crabs and several hundred feet of cardboard.