A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real

im completely addicted to Open Link in New Tab

if Open Link in New Tab is wrong then baby i dont want to be right

project hail mary is insane bc the first half is like oh my god the world is dying and there's alien bacteria eating the sun and there's some guy alone on a ship and he's having a breakdown and the flashbacks are getting darker and this is a tragedy the likes of which i have never seen. then BAM andy weir says fuck you actually. here's this pokemon guy he's here to save the day with the power of friendship. and it's the best thing you've ever seen in your life

educating yourself on dog whistles of all kinds will have you feeling insane in settings where nobody questions anything they're parroting

As a chronic "good heavens" sayer, and as a casual rhyme enjoyer, it's been really hard not to pepper in the phrase "good heavens six sevens" into my vocabulary. It would be so much fun to say, but it would immediately alienate both young hip people and old antiquated people and really only be enjoyed by whimsically autistic transgender women, so yeah :/

ryland grace is aroace. however he is also stratt’s dead wife, rocky’s red string of fate starcrossed soulmate, & intensely violently homosexual for mark “simon iron lung” iplier. all things are true & all things can coexist. peace & love on planet erid

most euthanizable mutuals of 2026

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is… quite the book. Incredibly frenetic, it answers the question of “what if all Cold War espionage took place in one underground bunker?” Two things that shine are the narration and Lem’s wordplay. The book begins with liberal use of ellipsis, as the tepid and uncertain narrator stumbles from one place to another. As his thoughts grow more variegated and winding, the narration becomes paragraphs of spiraling thoughts, before dissolving into masses of dashed off clauses, which represents the narrators growing paranoia very very well. Lem invents copious amounts of new words (Decerebration and Scoposcopy being some favorites) that mimic the nature of a technologically advanced military evolving numerous layers of jargon (and must have made it an absolute beast to translate. I’m not sure what it’s like in Polish, but conveying Lem’s nonsensical language that the narrator doesn’t understand and can’t explain into equally inscrutable English that still retains some roots is an impressive feat.) The story isn’t the best that’s ever been written, but the whirlwind tour of the Building he takes you on hits you with comic, tragic, and biting world building reflecting the depths of paranoia. It reminds me heavily of a Kafkaesque or Gogolian inscrutable bureaucracy, but adapted for the militaristic era of the Cold War. It was a very fun read, the skill of narration made it entertaining despite lacking the philosophical and comic potentials that hooked me in The Starship Diaries or A Perfect Vacuum.

(As an interesting aside, I find it curious Lem has written twice about infiltrators of some organization succeeding so completely that no original members remain. The swapping of the building and antibuilding in Memoirs, and the robot society comprised entirely of humans pretending to be robots who are afraid of being caught by other humans pretending to be robots from The Starship Diaries.)

many people being introduced to the protomen through Light Up The Night is really funny because while yes it's a banger and it's uplifting out of context, in context it's "hey you should listen to this song about a pair of daring individual heroes and their bold plan to save the world, from my favourite band, Individual Heroism Doesn't Work"