Writhe

A general rule of thumb that I feel people should understand about hard power and empires use of it, is that strong empires deliberately refrain from full displays of hard power where possible, because each display of an empire's full hard-power capabilities, is also a display for any peer-competitors of its limits. Empires at their peak get their way through financial and diplomatic power without having to resort to hard-power solutions.

Happy 10 year anniversary to this absolutely foundational post

#really cannot emphasize enough how much iguanamouth changed the site’s sense of humor and therefore the timeline of the western world

How quickly we forget the dangerous crow boy who’s job it is to destroy plastic

Air to air combat is the easiest form of warfare to argue that both parties consent to. Dogfighting is basically kink and it should turn you on at least a little.

This honestly does it all such little justice. You need to know your opponents airframe intimately- how it handles, turns, how much it weights and how it pulls against the air. How to dance with her body elegantly, and all for just a brief moment under the sights. The strain of your body as you pull the stick, the strain of the engines as they try to give all the force you need. All for a glimpse. The blood rushing from your head as you push forward, the fight for elevation, dominance, potential energy. Position is gained slowly and lost quickly. Eagerness can find you vulnerable, under the eye of your enemy. And all they need too, just a brief glimpse. Just one moment under her sights till you’re undone, penetrated, bleeding oil and smoke and shuddering.

at the core I'm just viscerally repulsed by any idea that can be summed up as "art today is degenerate and rude, so what if the REAL subversive narratives are the ones that dare to be comfortable to me" and hopepunk/cottagecore were very pervasive forms of this

i feel like your group of close knit characters would work better less as a found family and more as a ride or die indie rock band a la lemonade mouth. “whos the mom friend” shut up. whos the bassist.

just saw the absolutely incredible typo “getting fucked soggy style” and now it’s going to rattle around my brain like a pebble in an empty soda can

It kind of fucks with me that somebody killed ötzi the iceman because ötzi himself is like whatever but the silent presence of human hands that drew back the string of the bow that shot the arrow that killed him is crazy. the idea that there were various people involved in that situation and while one of them has had his last hours painstakingly reconstructed and studied to no end, the others now only exist insofar that an arrowhead had to get into his shoulder somehow. imagine killing someone and then suddenly your entire existence is only a vague shadow implied by the fact that you killed them. much to consider

Testing the mummified bone marrow of ötzi to figure out his ancestry whole time there’s definitely another person, maybe more than one, standing in the room with us but I can never see or speak to them because I only know them through the assurance that they were there too in the form of one single arrowhead. I hate prehistory so much it’s unreal

starts the second trojan war in portland by inscribing a golden starbucks cup with "for the least problematic kinkster"

The only problem with this post is that it suggests that the Portland kinksters are as gods. You need someone egotistical and with a lot more power for that role...