A quite intentional trans allegory that also stands as exploring a lot of parallel concepts, and since transness is not popular, its better not to admit it and let trans-panic scare away Matrix fans who couldn’t handle it.

The Matrix analogy works better for me compared to my ASD experiences than my midlife enby status.

The D&D one has material components, including bat dung IIRC. I think the wizard spell is essentially an enhanced molotov.

Gen X here. The great slasher era of cinema started when I was a teen, and was morally inspired by Silent-generation commentary on the boomers and us. It was supposed to warn us If you indulge in sex and drugs and rock-&-roll (Satan approved!) and you’ll come to a bad end.

So Friday the 13th (1980 with Kevin Bacon) was the same as Reefer Madness except for general debauchery and bacchanalia rather than just for cannabis. And mostly the silents were pissed that they didn’t get to party while young with sex and drugs, and instead drowned their sorrows with hard liquor and cigars.

Curiously, the slasher format came not from classic horror but mystery. The Ur-slasher was And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, regarded as one of her greatest stories, from an author that was prolific like Stephen King.

As per many of Christie’s novels, ATTWN was an experiment in defying the (alleged) rules of mystery writing (e.g. the detective must be beyond reproach ) and still being a valid whodunit. She’s had the story told by the killer before, and this time the narrative followed one of the victims.

Crystal Lake was a closed circle much like Soldier Island, and the neighborhood of Elm Street was made inescapable because everyone sleeps.

Remember also that Jason Voorhees was actually dead, and the slasher was doing the (double-plus grisly) murders for vengeance of camp councilors for their negligence, while they got high and got freaky. So technically it wasn’t about the sex, it was about being AWOL when duty called. (Says the latch-key kid with major depression.)

Also, pre-internet, boobs on screen was one of the few times grown men people who like looking at boobs got to see some that were not their spouse’s / exclusive partner’s (or just their own), and people having sex on screen was an excuse for flying free. Truthfully, until the Skinemax era of late-night cable soft porn, the love scene and the nude scene were commonly different scenes. By the aughts, the obligatory horror titties became only optional and by the age of the internet they almost faded out entirely …until the age of subscription television series like Game of Thrones and Sopranos and nudity came back swingin’

But this cartoon points to a curious reality in the United States: The birth-rate is imploding. Given in 2022, one of the justifications for the Dobbs decision was white babies as a commodity (seriously), they were expecting the new generations to keep churning out new generations of school kids to be indoctrinated into the next working / fighting force. But it’s not happening. Young men and women are just less interested in that old time romance. This is what has J. D. Vance (and his shadowy billionaire masters) freaked out about childless cat ladies.

It’s no wonder, really. 80%+ of the households live in precarity. Employers are skipping the OSHA rules and Millennials and Zoomers are being worked like old-time miners on the truck system ( another day older and deeper in debt… ). Upward mobility is a joke. Wages aren’t enough to sustain one adult, let alone a family. The dream of a homestead? Gone. We can’t even afford a car. Everyone knows they’re going to work and be miserable until they drop dead from exhaustion, where’s the point in having kids? Tommy and Gina, are living on a prayer and on accumulated debt until their limit drives them out of their rental.

Gen-Z doesn’t have time for Crystal Lake, and are glad for a weekend sleeping in. If it’s a holiday, they expect the boss will call them in and then forget to pay them holiday time. The horror zoomers have to face is not slashers in the dark, but the society gone dystopian, making it literally impossible to make ends meet, while tracking you like Big Brother from all the telescreens. Your horror isn’t Jason, but Ingsoc.

And that’s before global agriculture collapses from water shortage, which is expected to happen when you’re middle-aged (in your forties and fifties), at which point your life becomes a Roland Emmerich film. Or Slaughterhouse Five.

The first XKCD that comes to mind

Ellision sounds like the kind of guy that wants an unstoppable army of robot swarms.

Representative Jamie Raskin recently brought up the term neo-monarchy.

From a philosophical standpoint beauty correlates to veracity ( / validity / authority) is a principle. Just not one that serves very well, IRL.

I will seek the best interests of beautiful women in order to increase my chances of mating with them is a valid survival strategy. I’d argue it’s a better one than those strategies expressed by folk in the alt-right (incels, gamergaters, the manosphere, alpha males, etc.)

Thank you for reminding me of one of the best ad campaigns ever! ( on YouTube )

I’d assume middle school teachers are fairly cringe just for being middle school teachers but if one is trying to learn the new lingo, at least they’re trying to communicate.

Then again, I was a Trekkie misfit in the 70s and 80s when we didn’t have TNG yet, and was commonly regarded as skibidi ohio.

Also, to be fair, Ohio was cringe and weird in the 1960s, especially after Kent State and CSN made Ohio into a folk song, and it’s lit if that’s where Alpha vibe gets its cred.

Abre a cortina do passado
Tira a mãe preta do cerrado
Bota o rei Congo no congado…

We the public have to keep making better ad blockers that better detect ads and prevent them from being displayed (or in some cases, activating their malware payload).

YouTube is trying to either detect ad blockers and deny service, or change the insertion paradigm so that ads cannot be blocked. We cannot let them succeed doing either.

If a guy likes the d but identifies as straight, then yes, he’s straight.

If a guy likes the d (and less so the v) but also musicals and brunching and still identifies as straight, then he’s straight.

At very least, the closet continues to be a necessity for some folk in intolerant circumstances.

Identity is something one works out for themselves. Heck the Kinsey scale implies almost everyone should be bi, (even if not very bi) and yet our booleanist society seems to want to categorize only Kinsey-0 as straight (with everyone else as Oh-So-Gay).

So about the Ohio pet eating, the first thing that made me ❌ Doubt is that we (folks in western civilization) eaten cats before, and they are desperation food world wide. Captured cats turned into food was called roof rabbit during the London blitz. There’s little meat to bone, and reports say it’s extremely gamey. Even scavengers will pass on kittens if they’re not desperate.

There are some Asian cultures that eat dog, which is a regional food in some parts of China, what is a product of living in a region where wild dogs (such as dholes) dwell and prey on children and wildlife. But this isn’t a food of choice, nor one for which they’ll hunt pets unless they’re desperate (in which case, some blame has to fall on social services for letting people go hungry), and there are markets for dog that has been specifically bred to be eaten, which is different from fancy dog breeds we are used to.

The local wildlife such as Florida’s alligators, or California’s coyote population (coyotes lurk everywhere across the US) are often that desperate and will totally eat your pets or livestock, so if Mr. Bitey goes missing, that’s your culprit in the rurals. In the meantime law enforcement in the United States will indiscriminately kill dogs, with officers afraid of even chihuahuas and toy terriers. The police kill rate for dogs averages around 50,000 dead pooches a year.

There are some Deep Rock Galactic gun builds (color and framework) that look like this.

This presents a good demonstration of what we can expect Alphabet / Google / Youtube to do if ever it should win its war on adblockers, or convince people to watch YouTube without vetting. Any time it promises to compromise and make a tolerable user experience, it will ratchet up advertisement plugs until it becomes intolerable.

This is why we can’t relent, ever.

This is a good place for that reminder that the big lexicon of sexualities, romantic orientations and gender identities are something to help you figure out what your business is. Other people will sometimes have identities that do not appear to match their behavior, and that is fine.

This was the whole point of Russell T. Davies television series Bob & Rose (Bob is gay man who falls in love with Rose, a straight woman, and everybody freaks the fuck out. )

Or to put it another way, if a friend of yours is a lesbian but sometimes likes the d, or has a d or is enby, id est, not a woman, they are still a lesbian.

Most of the lesbian community is down with this, in my experience, but the lesbian community – and the LGBT+ community in general – has a long history of gatekeeping, especially of shutting out bi folk and trans folk. And we need peers, friends and allies on the same page. So here we are with the bus driver tapping the sign.

Waiting for Stheno and Euryale, Medusa’s sisters and main crew.

Lawrence Wright wrote that the hijackers chose the date when John III Sobieski, the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, began the battle that turned back the Ottoman Empire’s Muslim armies that were attempting to capture Vienna (present-day capital of Austria) on September 11, 1683. During 1683, Vienna was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg monarchy, both major powers in Europe at the time. For Osama bin Laden, this was a date when the West gained some dominance over Islam, and by attacking on this date, he hoped to make a step in Islam “winning” the war for worldwide power and influence. – Wikipedia on the 9/11 attacks

The real terrorists were the ones we were brewing here at home all along.

I’d like to see the 9/11 attacks become something like Pearl Harbor day (December 7th, 1941) in something we acknowledge happened but don’t actually have department store sales over, and speeches by elected officials are optional, usually if victims / veterans are getting together for a pageant.

From a statecraft standpoint, I remain impressed with just how low the 9/11 attacks smote the US, and I’m sure even Bin Laden regarded it as a lucky hit, intending it to be a sting like the Doolittle raid, but with such perfect timing that it accelerated the US dissolution towards one-party autocracy. Now, many of the failings of the United States as a free democracy are laid plain, and it’s our mess to clean up or to leave to fester.

If Harris wins in 2024, we’ll get that chance, but Obama also promised hope and change and didn’t deliver, and it cost us dearly. Again. So we’ll see.

So I’m a dumb who doesn’t know anything, but isn’t powdered metal like kinda valuable?

He may not be catching powdered metal that is refined to a proper standard, or enough for it to be valuable, but to me, a naïve dork who doesn’t know anything, it sounds plausible.

I’d totally be just that sucker, catching sparks for recycling.

Pepsi-Free was clear like 7-Up. I’d assume any cola without coloring would be clear as well.