mrrao

I keep seeing comments and reblogs around Tumblr along the lines of "wow, all of those words and you didn't even bother to mention x 🙄".

The thing about replies like this that there's a strong insinuation that either x was left out intentionally and maliciously, or that the person writing the post is an idiot for not already knowing about and including x, or both. Either way wording it this way is an insult and a put-down to whoever wrote the post.

Maybe sometimes people didn't mention x for malicious reasons, but 9 times out of 10 that's not the case. Most of the time people either generally didn't know or weren't fully aware. Or maybe just genuinely forgot. Either way, it's not called for to insult and attack people who are total strangers to you on the internet.

And there really needs to be more emphasis on the whole "people on Tumblr are strangers to you", it's rarely called for to attack or insult strangers unprovoked. Say some of your new co-workers or classmates you haven't really gotten to know yet are talking about how your city is going to be getting rid of some of the bike paths, and one of them is talking about how this is bad for the environment. You (hopefully) wouldn't butt in and say "wow, all those words and you didn't even bother to mention how this affects lower class people who can't afford cars 🙄😒" and if you would actually do that, you seriously need to work on your boundaries because it's really inappropriate to just attack and insult people unprovoked like that.

Of course you could say something like "oh it's not just an environmental issue, this is really going to hurt lower class people who can't afford a car!". You can actually just add it in a neutral way like that without attacking or insulting anyone in the process for not already saying it.

I used to prep, wash dishes, and cook at mellow mushroom. I had chronic pain that wasn't NEARLY as bad as it is today, but it was still very debilitating. I told my employer "i cannot stand more than 4 to 6 hours. I CANNOT do shifts longer than this due to my illness." And even though i made my boundaries VERY clear, everyday i worked it was 8 hours at the least and 10 or 12 at the most. I would go up to my manager and say "look i really need to leave, my shift is over, my chronic pain is killing me." And he'd say "we really need to here, you HAVE to push through." And so i did, and after one, ONE month of that job my crps got incredibly worse to the point where i could no longer walk my dog around the block which was .5 miles. I quit, and that was FOUR years ago, and ever since that day I HAVE BEEN BEDRIDDEN AND HAVE TO USE A WHEELCHAIR. It is my biggest regret in life.

My best friend who has seen my whole journey has recently developed undiagnosed chronic pain, and she is in the EXACT same scenario i was 4 years ago. Busting her ass at a pizza place with extreme pain that hurts her so much she tells me "im in so much pain i don't even feel like a person." She doesn't feel LUCID. And her manager and coworkers are saying the same thing "if you don't help us you will let us down, we'll be in the shit."

i wonder how far you could take this? a bunch of intertwined, interlinked chains of ants could easily form a sort of prehensile tendril of sorts, but it's stronger the tighter the bugs are linked together.

imagine if a bug like this could have an organ that interlocks with the same organ on another bugs, and essentially lets them link their circulatory and nervous systems. they'd never have to disconnect from each other, so they could aggregate into a collective that can do things the little bugs couldn't

if you combined this with how e.g. the bagworm moth larva builds cocoons out of sticks, you get a weird sort of tool use where they could reinforce the design of their collective body with scavanged matter.

if you take this all way to the extreme, imagining if their collectives get big enough to start doing very intelligent problem solving, you wind up with a pretty alien society.

i don't think these bug-masses would have much distinction between like... engineering or medicine or politics. almost everything is alive for them, everything designed, everything at once willful and willing. people, tools, houses, all are the same type of thing and in cases everything's a little bit of all three.

the only things that wouldn't be connected is if different lineages had incompatible blood types. and you'd want to disconnect if parts of you got a disease.

[Extreme breach of scientific ethics]

[Violent abuse of power]

[Method that actually doesn't obtain any information]

[Controlled double-blind studies of phenomena where that is literally impossible]

[Seeking empirical proof that a word has the meaning that it's defined as]

[Study that would have a dropoff rate of 100%]

like there were deep cuts in 40K, WHO, and PIP that were exciting to me, but they were exciting because i was seeing a character or element that i liked being creatively represented through magic's mechanics.

i love trazyn the infinite's vast collection and ability to upload his mind being represented by giving him all the activated abilities of artifacts in your graveyard, incidentally making him a crazy niche combo piece. i love the valeyard, the prosecutor in the corrupt kangaroo court from trial of a time lord, rigging votes. i love yes man changing controllers whenever you use him to represent his inability to decline orders from whoever stumbles across him

i love those cards because they make weird, niche use of magic mechanics to convey something about the narrative of the source material. i cannot imagine that i would love any of these cards if they were draft archetype glue in a standard legal set with text like "whenever you SETMECHANIC, gain 1 life". and so like, i just can't imagine what a superfan of [checkes set reveals] Agent Maria Hill or Viv Vision Teen Synthezoid is getting out of these completely uninspired generic card designs other than literally being able to point and go "i recognize that character design and name!"