Verdx - Verdx

Once I was caught unexpectedly in a downpour on the top of Mount Pilchuck. In the course of five minutes a bright, clear day that let me see all the way to the Olympic Peninsula turned into a phantasmagorical nightmare. I couldn't see more than a few feet in any direction, my skin was turning a sickly white, the rocks kept sliding out from under me. I almost twisted my ankle several times. If I had remained more than a few hours up there my chances of freezing to death up there would've been high, and my odds of successful navigation on my own seemed slim.

As I struggled, a great black bird appeared before me. I say "appeared" and that should be taken literally — one moment I was cleaning my glasses for the umpteenth time, trying to see through the driving rain, and the next, this incredibly solid and enormous raven is soaring up to me. I would've been scared, but I was already terrified.

The bird could easily have encircled me in its wings. In the almost total darkness, I could see nothing but its outline, outstretched, almost triumphant, fluttering and blowing about like a spruce in a pitch-black tempest, a black flag somehow darker than the fathomless sky.

My guide darted, flickered, and spun, cutting through the torrents of water as I stumbled and staggered endlessly downwards. I expected to risk falling or twisting my ankles, but somehow every time my foot fell on solid, stable ground. Little splinters and spikes of ice seemed to course up my calves, but the nauseating feeling of wrongness that I've felt every time I've twisted or sprained anything never came.

As though I had been hurled out of the forest, I crashed full-speed into the hood of my car with a dull thud. The heater core has long given out on this old jalopy, but I figured at least I could've dried myself off with the paper towels in the trunk, and huddled underneath the thin car-blankets I keep at all times.

However, before I could unlock the passenger door (driver-side lock doesn't work. I told you, jalopy), I found myself looking into a pale face framed by a wild cascade of dark hair. The rain coruscated on his cheeks and ran around his mouth and down his chin. Without the crude intermediary of speech, his intent unfurled in my mind—I must join with him and be part of his company of riders in some Other Land.

I opened my mouth to assent, but before I could make a sound, the curséd voice of pragmatism tumbled out: "I must set my affairs in order! I haven't been to a lawyer recently, my house will end up in probate! It will be hell for my loved ones! Give me a week to decide!"

A sneer curled that noble face. Before I could try to cram the words back down my throat, the strange rider had turned away, and in that motion, he became one with the darkness. The rain gathered itself up from the ground and leapt into the air. The sky brightened with a rapidity that made me stagger, and I was left shivering, soaked to the bone on a bright Summer day.

It's fucking great, it looks as if it has been taken from Disco Elysium, where it represents some genocidal, very much aristocratic monarchy, why the fuuuuckk would they like, publish it?

the thing is the king charles portrait is genuinely incredible and exactly how I would execute a portrait of a member of the british royal family but also I literally cannot fathom why the british royal family would have it made

On Discomfort and Morality

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.

The next time you see something and you automatically think it's disgusting, or wrong, or immoral, I invite you to ask yourself: is this actually wrong or does this just make me uncomfortable?

TW: Pedophilia

Teenagers are rarely taught the reason why they can't consent to sex with adults.

And that's because teaching them that would completely unravel our coercion-based society.

It can be difficult to explain in detail the exact reason and all the specifics in a way that they will understand. But the simplest way to phrase it is that in some cases, even when someone agrees to something and even when they appear enthusiastic about it, there's too much of a power imbalance that it's no different than forcing them. Also, having power and being abusive doesn't require a conscious expectation to be obeyed.

Imagine a world in which every teenager understood that and was easily able to call out anyone who tried to convince them otherwise.

They'd know that there's no such thing as an employee consenting to working for a poverty wage, working in unsafe conditions, working long hours, or working without taking breaks. They'd know that there's no such thing as consenting to paying a bank overdraft fee. They'd know that there's no such thing as consenting to student loan debt. They'd know that there's no such thing as consenting to medical bills. They'd know that there's no such thing as consenting to generating profit for banks or landlords in order to have a place to live and being evicted or foreclosed when you lose your source of income. They'd know that there's no such thing as consenting to a police search. They'd know that there's no such thing as a child who's okay with their parents spanking them. They'd know that being dependent on someone does not mean that you can never criticize them. They'd know that if it's considered abusive to simply play along when someone obeys, then it has to be much more abusive to actively expect to be obeyed, which many adults do to them.

And people who benefit from a society based on coercion masquerading as freedom wouldn't like that.

So instead, teenagers are taught something dismissive. They're taught that what they want doesn't matter. They're taught that they're too young to know what love is. They're taught "it's the law". They're taught things that are insulting to their intelligence, which they'll naturally rebel against.

Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) Medee (Medea) Sarah Bernhardt (1898) Source

“Sarah Bernhardt was so enamored with the snake bracelet that Mucha depicted adorning her arm that she actually had one made by Fouquet for her to wear.”

Yeah, try again and not be frustrated at first, of course, but when the podcast is mentioned, entrepeneurship comes to mind, and, just to remember it, you cant do the 100th podcast(or any entrepeneurial bullshit) if your rich parents haven't paid for the first 99

God I hate how normalized not being in control of your own devices has become. My phone updates in the middle of the night without asking me shit or getting my consent for anything and its like "Oh hi I'm your new AI, please enjoy this forced overlay that you can't exit out of until you go through my tutorial"

"Great fuck you, I would like to uninstall you" "Oh I'm sorry you can't uninstall me! I'm a core system application and if you uninstall me your phone won't function correctly despite the fact that I did not exist yesterday and your phone worked fine" "....." "You can disable parts of my functionality but I will always be here and I will pop up notifications asking you to re-enable me unless you figure out how to disable those too! Then I will still show up in a different color at the top of your settings application telling you that you need to 'fix" a 'problem' with your phone, that problem being that I am disabled. Does that help?"

Like, you know what I can do on my desktop? "sudo pacman -Rdd linux" , this will just fucking remove the entire linux kernel. Fundamentally breaking my computer until I boot up a live disk and chroot in and reinstall it or whatever, and the computer will go "Are you sure (y/n)" or whatever and i'm like "y" and it will just go "Ok you got it boss"

But its mine, I get to do what I want with it. I control the computer, the computer does not control me. I refuse to cede control to my phone or anything else. The thing is a lot of people will joke that like "Oh I love just letting the machine tell me what to do, I don't know what I'm doing, it knows best" or whatever but the thing you have to realize is that when you say that you are abstracting away that "the phone" or whatever is not some value neutral logic driven robot like from sci-fi, it is a collection of the the capitalistic and fascistic desires of the tech oligarch fuckwits that are burning the world to the ground right now. You aren't submitting to the phone, you are submitting to Musk, Bezos, Nadella, Pichai, Cook and all those other evil bastards.

Fuck them, fuck their little AI toys, and fuck this.

one elf cigarette, husbanded carefully, can burn for 3 or 4 human generations. my boy your great grandpappy bummed this ciggie from the leaf-crowned prince of the splendid dales and it has burned on the mantle of our house ever since. on your 14th nameday, my son, you will puff it at last, and become a man