we are already living in the cyberpunk future and i know this because within a span of 3 days we went from this tweet:
to thousands of people making phony images and replying to them with their passionate desire to have them as a tshirt to overload the bots with nonsense and junk and send out warnings to shoppers like this:
Holy shit y’all look at the front page of the site right now
Oh my god
Anyway, I just emailed [email protected] to report the site for very evilly stealing Disney’s IP! Because obviously that is very evil and bad and shit.
I’ve never seen such a perfect example of fighting fire with fire.
This is like a “you gotta get a box of cheese, a mouse, and a cat across the river” puzzle except the goal is to get them all to eat each other somehow
This is why people who stay in my life are neurodiverse like me!
Huh
this!! I swear I lost like all my friendships bc of this, like I had a group of friends in hs that one day I realized “huh I haven’t talked to this people in a while” and popped in to say hi and they were all awkward?? because they hadn’t seen me in a while?? and that’s when I realized that friendship works different for them?? I was like yeah I haven’t talked to you in like four months but it’s not like I’ve forgotten about y'all why would anything change, and they were all like we haven’t talked to you in four months why are you here again acting like nothing happened? and it was really confusing for me
YEAH! THAT!
Also I have a thing where I just put the people on pause. If I don’t see them or contact them, my brain kinda put them in stasis. I don’t think about them nor misses them, and I stay on what I last knew about them (how they look, what they study/work). So when we meet again I’m like “wait, you’ve aged?” and I have the same familiarity with them thanI had before.
Anyway all my mutuals I haven’t messaged in forever - this is why
oh my gods this makes so much sense??? there are people who i haven’t talked to at all for literally over a year and we’ll pick up like nothing happened, but for their people it’s just like…… falling apart but onesided???? i think we’re still on the same level but actually we’re strangers??
Ohhhhhh
OHHHHHHHHH….
Ok but listen, on the other side of this, as a person who moved hundreds of miles away from everyone i knew and then became a hermit for several years, it was SUCH A FUCKING RELIEF to get in contact with an old friend and have him be like, “my friendship levels do not degrade, so in my mind we are still awesome close buddies” and i almost fkn cried. I thought he would be mad or would have moved on because i had slacked on my reaching out to him and staying in touch and doing all the friendship things. But NOPE. 800 miles of distance, depression, and life changing circumstances didnt steal our friendship and i am SO GRATEFUL.
I have literally no friendship degradation whatsoever. I will not have spoken to someone for 5 years or more, and they’re still as much a friend to me as if I had only seen them yesterday. I’m just very bad at communicating if someone is not in my direct orbit. So when Sonja reappeared on this site I basically screeched into her notes like a banshee because I was delighted and we picked straight back up where we’d left off.
Happy to go on the record that I don’t expect regular contact and will welcome hearing from people after a long time
……. I just realized why cons are such a huge deal in the hacker scene and why so many of us are ride or die for people we only see every 1-3 years.
“Excellent! I will see you for three days of hijinks and then not for two years! I love you!”
tumblr in the 1800s meme example here we go. reblog this with which child of the week you are. i’m a tuesday child so i’m full of grace. rip to the wednesday children (full of woe) but i’m different
in case you were curious lmao. these descriptions absolutely define you no takebacks and also i’m sorry for dunking on wednesday children i’d hate to add to the woe. mwah.
My dad was eating pistachios so I reached my hand out and he just started peeling them and giving them to me. Then suddenly went “I really hope you find someone who loves you a lot” and I went “enough to peel my pistachios for me?” And he laughed and said “yeah exactly” before carrying on giving me more
The differences between the story Alma tells and what really happens just kills me because it’s a hint right from the beginning that she’s never allowed herself to process her grief. She turns the single most horrific moment of her life into a romantic story she can tell a child. She divorces any and all feeling from it - the Alma of her story suffers prettily, and on accepts the death of her husband, who valiantly walks into certain death.
The thing is that while the encanto definitely came from love, and is a story of love - her love for her children, her love for Pedro, and Pedro’s love for her - it isn’t a story of romance. There’s nothing romantic about her holding their babies and watching her husband be slaughtered. And the very crucial detail of her grief that’s missing from the story is so Obvious in retrospect.
In the original scene, the men on horses just disappear and the candle lights up gently. But what actually happens is that she screams and her grief blasts them away, very likely even killing the men who murdered her husband! The mountains don’t gently sprout up out of the ground, they shoot out with all the power of her pain. This isn’t a romantic drama, it’s just grief and senseless violence, and she romanticizes the death of her own husband because she can’t deal with what it really means. With the responsibility of protecting them falling only and completely on her. With going through the rest of her very long life without a partner.
Mirabel knows this story but when she sees the devastation on her abuela’s face she’s surprised and heartbroken because it just never occurred to her that Alma was leaving things out, that Alma actually felt that grief so viscerally it turned to a brutal, blinding magic.
But this is a story of love - so Alma prays for Pedro to show her the way and he sends her Mirabel to love her despite Alma’s increasingly withdrawn and worrying behavior. So Mirabel sees the butterfly and it clicks, finally, that it’s not a lack of feeling that Alma suffers from, but so much feeling she doesn’t know how to process it anymore. And finally, for the first time in the movie, Alma let’s herself grieve in front of her family and can heal.
They’re also shooting for 100% renewable plastic sources by 2030! All of the soft plant/leaf elements in sets right now and going forward are made out of bioplastic made from sugarcane, and they’re working on getting the regular hard plastic bricks out of that, too.
They’ve done it, actually! The full bricks are in the prototype stage now, and are expected to be 100% biodegradable without the need for a commercial compost facility. It’s very cool. Right now they’re testing the durability and playability of the bricks and seeing what needs to be revised/reworked on their final model.
So its that easy huh
Of course it is
Actually, this isn’t “easy” and is hugenews. You see, Lego is absolutely meticulousabout their quality control. Their standards for manufacturing are stupidly high, as are their safety requirements. You know that distinctive “click” when you pop two Lego bricks apart? They engineered that. That sound is so distinctive that it can be used to tell genuine Lego bricks from counterfeits and it’s a sound that would be based on shape and material.
Furthermore, one of the hard requirements for a Lego brick is that it must be compatible with any other Lego brick. If I buy a set today and pull a set from the 1980s? Those bricks would fit together perfectly. This requires a huge amount of precision engineering and controls on manufacturing quality. (I can’t remember the source, but I’ve at least heard that once the brick molds wear to a certain point, they’re pulled from the line and either melted down or turned into construction material for Lego HQ. Point being, no one is getting their hands on a worn Lego mold)
Recycled and non-petroleum plastics are different from other plastic. The chemistry is different. The timing and process to use them is different. This has been a reason why more companies haven’t moved to them, because there’s a drop in quality for material (so they claim).
What Lego just did is completely obliterate that argument. The corporation with some of the strictest quality control requirements for plastic just kicked the basic foundation of the “bad quality” argument out from under it, because if they feel confident enough to guarantee the same experience as using a brick from over 40 years ago, if they are confident enough that they can meet their own metrics at a huge industrial scale….
Anastasia told Iris to go to sleep. She said that the body needs rest in order for to Iris to live, play and imagine. She lit a candle and set it by the open window. Outside, the night was balmy and a thick breeze oozed into the room. It smelled like jasmine, for the night blooming plants had woken to serenade the new moon. The curtains lazily fluttered, and the candle flame flickered as if in a trance. And as such Iris drifted through the thresholds of her myriad dreams.
The minute Iris’s eyes closed, Anastasia pulled the covers up to the younger girl’s chin and stood for a second as still as a statue. Then she stared, and her eyes went as wide as saucers, worried and round. And rounder and rounder, and soon they sucked up all the candlelight and pulled Anastasia inside, where she spiraled deeper and deeper into a black hole.
All the while, the candle burned and the curtains swayed slightly. The night blooming jasmine did not let up her fragrance too. Anastasia drew in a deep breath and rubbed her wide opened eyes and leaned against the wall and looked at Iris as she brooded like a vulture on an eave.
But Iris was Anastasia’s lifeblood. Iris was Anastasia before the whirlpool took host in her eyes. Before she stooped over with the weight of a world on her back. Holding up the ceiling so that Iris wouldn’t have to bend. So that Iris could breathe freely. So that she could live, play and imagine freely. And have sweet dreams at the end of a day.
At the end of a day, I too must sleep, thought Anastasia, and she closed her eyes. Must stalk between boughs of crusted glass. At dawn’s first touch they light up in an ethereal glow. A white mist of ghosts as they fade for the day. And lupine blooms in fields of salt that stretch for miles. Broken only by the sound of jade green waves. They roll over the pebbles and polish them to a shine. That is outdone only by the radiance of a sun that burns. But there is tenderness within. Anastasia smiled and her head drooped to the side. There is tenderness within…
The air in the room was heavy, and it was scented with jasmine. It pervaded all corners of the room. It entered through an open window framed by curtains rippling in a daze. The lone candle flame made circles around itself as it looked for a friend with which to pass the time. But Iris and Anastasia were both asleep. Both had been welcomed into the worlds of their dreams.
We need to be lost within dreams in order for something to be found. We need to drift away abandoning all sensation for our fingers to grasp a lifeline that leads toward light. If we follow a metal rail with open eyes we’ll only find mediocrity in the harsh angles of empty rooms filled with nothing.
I am the mistress of nothing. Not yet, but I will be. Once my frantic chanting and ceaseless pleading to my Lord bear fruit- and I am dedicated. My eyes are rimmed with red as I stare at the walls. The mirrors and paintings and tapestries and censers in my mind’s eye will all manifest as I see them on my curved bone walls. Never mind that the image there is formless too.
It was a starless night. But the full moon stared with round, bulging eyes, so the sky wasn’t lacking for light. My master and I, we kept to the shadows to avoid her gaze- hiding behind bushes, crouching in the shadows of the trees. When the clock struck twelve, we slunk towards the marble fountain, concealed under the breath of a cloud, and my master drew forth a sleek apparatus for collecting moonlight from his long, silky sleeves.
He drummed his long, wizened fingers on the fountain’s rim as the delicate flask filled up with a strange silver liquid.
Just when the wisp of cloud dissipated, my master snatched his contraption and flask in one fluid motion and melted into a shadow on the ground.
“Master-“ I whispered, but just then, the moon swung her eyes over the fountain and I pressed myself against its side, half prostrating, my heart hammering, until a different scrap of cloud gave me the cover to slink away, and I left the fountain of moonlight with only the barest traces of silver glowing on my fingertips.
When I asked my master later that day, in his laboratory whose very air was thick with humid, color-changing vapor, if he could spare me some silver he rolled his eyes and chuckled as he said I should have collected some for myself.
I protested, but he brushed me away, already deeply engrossed in his experiment. The flask of moonlight sat on a ledge by a gleaming, intricate metal machine which was already distilling one single drop of moonlight into countless substances, all as clear and vivid as a spring day. My heart hungered to reach out and taste one of the beaker’s contents, but this time my master bodily pushed me out of the room, muttering discontentedly to himself on my incompetence.
I stood on the step of my master’s door and stretched out my arms. I flexed my fingers and examined the silvery glow. The barest essence, the slivers of a whisper. I shuddered as I thought of going back to the moon’s domain and being ensnared by her ghastly gaze. And my master- I sighed, and once again curled my fingers. I would have to make do with their opalescent glow.
I became a student of the echo. Of the shadow as it flits, and of the half-light. Of the reflection on the water’s ripples, and of the faint scent of the sun as it approaches noon. I distilled the moonlit dust on my fingers into three draughts, which I kept firmly corked and stored on a back shelf.
Incompetent I may have been, but I was no fool. And so I kept the draughts hidden, until they became forgotten, and that is where the problem lay. And that is where the problem lies to this day too.
One day, I wondered how my master fared, so I made the trek to his laboratory. On the step to the wooden front door I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, and then let myself in with strengthened resolve.
I found the wizard sprawled over his books in a fitful sleep. At my very step he sprung awake and seized me by the shoulders.
“Have you found it? Have you cracked the code?” he wheezed, and then doubled over in a coughing fit.
“Master,” I said wonderingly. “What has happened to you in these long years?”
“Years?” He scoffed, raising a wild eyebrow. His beady eyes glowed earnestly beneath it. “It has been but a day for me, a day spent running in pointless circles!”
My eyes swept over a dusty machine with a multitude of empty beakers, and a rusted flask sitting to its side.
“What of the moonlight, master?” I asked.
“Wasted!” he started. “At the first light of every day! At first I hardly noticed, and then could do nothing for my supply had dwindled to nearly nothing. The elixir I crafted, my magnum opus- dust! Dust upon dust! ”
“A travesty,” I lamented, and I meant it. “I too, brewed a potion of moonlight’s faintest glimmer. It must have dried up into nothingness as well.”
My master gave me a hard look and demanded I take him to my potions chamber.
I brought forth the flasks without a thought, and I presented them to my master openly too. He popped open the cork of the first bottle and breathed in its scent deeply, ignoring my reactionary “master-don’t-“. He was perfectly fine, however, and chuckled as he screwed the cork back in its place.
“You may well have created what I’ve sought all these years. Alas, you shall never know,” He began coughing once more, and rasped on, “Unless you taste it- one drop- or three- immortality- or” he coughed again, long and hard, spitting up blood as red and dark as the liquid in my flask.
Even now, I cannot say what his gaze held towards me in that moment. Sympathy and kindness, but something deeper lurked too. The madness of one who exchanged his life for a truth that was just out of reach every step of the way.
All I saw was the first mask, and my heart ached for my master who had watched over me all these years, teaching me all he knew. He didn’t deserve to die this way, especially not if my draught was true. And so I told him master, you can drink from this draught I have brewed and I’ll drink too.
Is it foolish to dream? To be lost in these worlds that say my name with a familiarity that strums the strings to my soul, and so I stay because I believe I’m safe, and I believe I belong. I tell stories to myself as I drift along; my favorite is of the apprentice who drank a draught that trapped her soul in another plane. I like to think of her sometimes, though she’s not real and never has been. But in my dream-scape she’s a flesh and blood woman with color in her eyes and dampness in her hair. When I open my eyes she ceases to exist, is whittled away into dust. And at those moments I find myself in an empty room with dust in the corners. I try to imagine color on the walls and a fragrance in the air, and I am dedicated in this task; my eyes are even rimmed in red.
But my imagination fails me. For some souls need to eat, but all my soul needs is to sleep.
[Tiktok: white text asking “Musicians, what instruments do you play?” Cuts to a man asking the question aloud. Cuts to another man in a pink shirt who proceeds to play ‘Fireflies’ by Owl City on a seemingly unending series of instruments, initially only doing one note of the song per instrument.]
video ID loses points for not mentioning that the rendition of Fireflies is ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS
