everybody’s always on writing prompts like “what if there was a world where everyone had a timer ticking down to their death… but you met someone whose timer said infinity!” or “what if everyone had their cause of death tattooed across their forehead… but you met someone whose forehead said THE CREATURE!” Enough -
enough. stop with the shock value. there is no need to insert THE CREATURE; the benign concept of such a world is horrifying enough. not even in urgency, but just in banal, everyday interaction. imagine you meet someone and their timer says two years. not tomorrow, not urgently soon, but two years. enough to do quite a lot. they could fall in love in that time - could they get engaged? have a baby? you might otherwise get to know them, befriend them, but perhaps you opt not to, make a conscious choice not to invest in your own grief. what balancing act would every individual person have to participate in - I have ten years, is that long enough to be a good mother to children? is that long enough to secure a caretaker for my own mother? my wife will die a few months before me. my newborn’s timer reads nineteen years.
and cause of death. you interview for a job and emblazoned across the healthy, smiling face of the HR lady is MALNUTRITION. your country is prospering, safe, but every person you meet on the street from the babies to the old women read BOMB. BOMB. what kind of havoc would fate wreak on the world? what about the loss of privacy? how would that shape our notions of hope? idk man I think a lot of those ancient poems were right, and the fates are monsters. I’m interested by the framing of these ideas as trite horror tales when the premises themselves are so much more disturbing if simply taken to their logical ends
“Oh Rascal Children of Gaza” by Palestinian poet, Khaled Juma.
He was born and raised in Al-Shaboura Palestinian Refugee Camp, in the Gaza Strip. He lives there to this day. Before Israel’s latest war crimes, he worked as a school teacher and writer.
SAG-AFTRA, the union representing thousands of performers, has struck a deal with an AI voice acting platform aimed at making it easier for actors to license their voice for use in video games. …
the agreements cover the creation of so-called “digital voice replicas” and how they can be used by game studios and other companies. The deal has provisions for minimum rates, safe storage and transparency requirements, as well as “limitations on the amount of time that a performance replica can be employed without further payment and consent.”
Notably, the agreement does not cover whether actors’ replicas can be used to train large language models (LLMs), though Replica Studios CEO Shreyas Nivas said the company was interested in pursuing such an arrangement. “We have been talking to so many of the large AAA studios about this use case,” Nivas said. He added that LLMs are “out-of-scope of this agreement” but “they will hopefully [be] things that we will continue to work on and partner on.”
…Even so, some well-known voice actors were immediately skeptical of the news, as the BBC reports. In a press release, SAG-AFTRA said the agreement had been approved by “affected members of the union’s voiceover performer community.” But on X, voice actors said they had not been given advance notice. “How has this agreement passed without notice or vote,” wrote Veronica Taylor, who voiced Ash in Pokémon. “Encouraging/allowing AI replacement is a slippery slope downward.” Roger Clark, who voiced Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2, also suggested he was not notified about the deal. “If I can pay for permission to have an AI rendering of an ‘A-list’ voice actor’s performance for a fraction of their rate I have next to no incentive to employ 90% of the lesser known ‘working’ actors that make up the majority of the industry,” Clark wrote.
SAG-AFTRA’s deal with Replica only covers a sliver of the game industry. Separately, the union is also negotiating with several of the major game studios after authorizing a strike last fall. “I certainly hope that the video game companies will take this as an inspiration to help us move forward in that negotiation,” Crabtree said.
And here are some various reactions I’ve found about things people in/adjacent to this can do
And in OTHER AI games news, Valve is updating it’s TOS to allow AI generated content on steam so long as devs promise they have the rights to use it, which you can read more about on Aftermath in this article by Luke Plunkett
If you fall for a social media prank, do you reblog/pass it on to your followers?
This is funnier on mobile. It’s like hot gluing a coin to the sidewalk but the glue pools out under it making it obvious at a glance that it is a prank.
so background. my fiancée and my mom have been calling each other “BFF” since we started dating over 5 years ago. like that was my mom’s contact name in Selena’s phone for half a decade.
anyway we just got engaged a few days ago, and now the two of them want to update their nicknames to reflect that. and. well. hold on i gotta gear up for this one
they have decided on “mother in law forever” and “daughter in law forever.” fucking. MILF and DILF. yes they are both FULLY aware of what those mean and not even god and his angels can make them stop
The table under the journal is lacquered with ants.
The person holding the skull-creamed coffee paints the underside of their nails. Either that or their natural nails grow red.
The journal’s writing, intentionally made hard to read and partially obscured, is somewhat of a cheat to all the things amiss in the scene. (http://comments.deviantart.com/1/661961724/4372574544) I can make out: “… and eyeball … have to think he is less strange than the horrifying creature that seems to have inhabited the cabinet behind him … all tentacles and teeth … (obscured by cup) … Where in the world can be found such nightmares?!”
Reblogging for the correct source (I didn’t even notice the OP wasn’t the artist oops).
There’s a second one, and there’s even more in this
AAAHH, cool, but AAAAAHHHH
Just a regular morning in Innsmouth.
Passing your perception checks isn’t always a great idea
There’s another one!
These are so neat
This is some twilight zone shit. It’s so cool.
I LOVE THESE KIND OF THINGS CAN YALL TAG ME IN THEM IF YOU SEE STUFF LIKE THIS I LIVE AND BREATHE IT PLEASE AND THANK YOU
Oh man theres a third one now!!
it came back around! and in time for my call sessions. excellent
Someone needs to write the comments on the first picture as the lyrics to a parody song of “Last Friday Night”
i’m firmly a pro abort that thang anti family values anti “and they all lived happily ever after in a perfect little nuclear family” guy but making fankids is really really fun when you only have dysfunctional family models from your own traumatic childhood to go off of. i’m coparenting with these made up people and none of us have any idea what we’re doing. technically this is my kid and i’m the deadbeat dad who left them on their doorstep. i feel like i should be paying child support.
Back in development versions of Minecraft…. Before the world generation became ‘infinite’… There was a feature that let you take isometric screenshot of your world and
The Notebook Game, the only game that actively gets worse intentionally!
Okay, so you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m on about, but trust me, this is possibly my favorite card game and I need more people to experience it!
Required Materials:
Notebook
Playing Cards (possibly multiple decks if you need it)
People
The basic idea is that every time somebody wins, they get to add another rule to the game!
Set Up:
Take your notebook and write down the “core rules” in the first page of the book.
The game begins with everyone being dealt the same amount of cards (agreed on before starting)
On your turn, you can either put down a card with the same suit or value as the previous card played, or pass.
If you break a rule and are called out, draw one card.
At the beginning of a session, rules may be discussed, but after the first game begins, nobody is allowed to discuss rules.
The first person to get rid of all their cards wins. The winner gets to write down another rule in the notebook, announce it to everyone once, and then close the book before starting a next game
Game play
That’s basically it! Keep the notebook and use it for later sessions, it gets so much more fun as people add random rules.
Some rule examples:
When someone plays (suit), everyone must do (action)
No discussion of movies made after 2007 at the table!
You have to thank someone if they call you out
When you have one card left, close your eyes!
Basically whatever random thing you feel like
Genuinely this is my favorite game to play with people, it’s so much fun trying to remember 70 different rules and contingencies while your friends just sit there waiting for you to screw up I can’t reccomend this enough please try it
i just realized i can rb my own posts so i’m just going to throw this one back out because i want to share this with more people
The immediate answer to the seeming contradiction is that the people calling the shots disagree with that official; the larger answer is that both the US and UK have access to millions of pounds of ordinance, and seem to struggle to find solutions that don’t involve using it to murder civilians.
Idk if you guys follow art news but a university canceled a famous Palestinian artist’s show citing “safety concerns.” Her name is Samia Halaby and she does abstract paintings and sculptures.
Dr Jamal Naim, one of the pillars of dentistry in Gaza survived an airstrike by the #IOF while asleep at his house but his daughter and 9-mo old granddaughter did not! He holds her and says: “What did she do to get killed?” 💔
#NotATarget #MedTwitter
— Osaid - #NotATarget 🗝 🇵🇸 (@/OsaidesserMD) January 7, 2024
Dozens of Palestinian men have been filmed blindfolded, lined up and detained by Israeli forces during a raid on a refugee camp in Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank
— Al Jazeera English (@/AJEnglish) January 4, 2024
okay so rewatching hbomberguy’s new video, James Somerton has:
Called ND Stevenson and Rebecca Sugar women so he can make a point about how queer women have it easier
stolen an Asian transmasc person’s very personal essay on Mulan and queer Asian identity
stolen from Alexander Avila, the One somewhat well known transmasc video essayist
Lied about English courts letting Radclyffe Hall “live her happy life” because perceived-female queerness wasn’t legally persecuted, when in actuality, they were charged with obscenity and had their work destroyed
clearly a man whose very normal and chill about transmascs and anyone he sees as a woman i think
& the point Harris makes at the end of the video about James benefiting from queer erasure adds to this. Literally a cis guy taking transmascs’ work– in a field where transmascs have barely any visibility– and capitalizing off of their effort without giving them any credit. in one case, literally taking a person’s essay on Asian transness, cutting out all of their personal stories and experiences with the subject, and claiming he, a white cis man, thought it all up himself.
Mega fuck this dude. You could’ve used your platform to lift up transmasc voices and perspectives but instead you just stole from them and then turned around and complained about how queer people seen as women have it easy.
In almost a week of relentless violence, Palestinian authorities had already recorded 20 families completely wiped out from civil registry, meaning all living members of that family, of all generations, had been killed. It has been three months, and this number only grows. This, along with many of the war crimes Israel commits daily against Palestinians, is a form of genocide.
To kill entire families is to kill their stories, it is to burn a page of a people’s history, their roots. It’s deliberate.
“As the number of victims rises and more and more families disappear from Palestine’s rich tapestry of history and culture, there is a bewildered note to the mourning as people try to come to grips with what these disappearances mean.”
- Mohammed R. Marwish, October 13th, 2023, Al-Jazeera
For Palestinians, oral and material history really relies a lot on family heirlooms and stories. My own family has stuff from aunts and great aunts and great great aunts who have passed that were considered master tatreez makers. We have books we pass down through generations. We tell each other stories about our experiences. Most of what I know about my great grandfather, and his businesses (thereby a peek into economic history of his region) pre-nakba is from my mother’s stories about him.
The targeting of elders and entire families is intentional to erase their histories. That is one of the most frightening parts, that we forget ALL this heritage, and that we forget how to maintain our identity. Israel knows this. One of the things Palestinians have been pleading is not to forget them. But Israel wants to kill their memory because it isn’t enough to kill their flesh.
The amount of times I could have been that white girl in the horror movie could honestly be a movie in itself and it’s honestly a waste that my entire life isn’t constantly recorded on film because it would be HILARIOUS
1. That one time I decided to see what was past the old gate in the woods, but when got there it had been smashed in half and there was a decapitated sheep head with no skin just off the trail, so instead I just turned around and went home.
2. That time some friends and I went camping and we found a pile of bones wrapped in a garbage bag buried under a log, but the adult supervisor told us it was nothing, so we just put it back and didn’t talk about it again.
3. The time I was getting chased through the woods at night and I realized “wait it’s dark as fuck” so I just held still until the guy gave up and left.
4. The time this dude said he was in love with me and so he was going to cut my head off and dump my body in a lake, so I told him to grow the hell up, but then he got caught stealing girl’s underwear a day later and I never saw him again
5. That one time in college where I was taking a shortcut on my home at night and a car followed me into a dark alley, so I stared directly into the driver’s side of the window and walked towards it to psych them out
6. The night I was out on a walk and this old guy told me he’d locked his keys in his truck and that he needed someone my size to crawl in through the back window for him, so I told him “you know that sounds super suspicious right” and told him where to find a pay phone for a tow truck instead
7. The one time this random guy on the street said he was in love with me and so he was going to follow me home on my bus, so I clapped him on the shoulder and told him that if he got that close to my bus then I was going to throw him under the wheels, but then this really nice homeless man from Nigeria told the guy to fuck off and then checked to make sure he didn’t follow me onboard
8. That big cat with yellow eyes who I found in a well and brought home who used to put rotting meat in my closet and wake me up by chewing on my face, until I put him back outside and never saw him again.
9. My one cousin who used to come over for the summer who kept calling me ‘piñata’ and hitting me with sticks, until he went back home and was sent to juvie cause he finally got caught torturing animals
10. The time I got lost on the way to a meeting and wound up at a circus tent instead, and got followed by a full-out clown for three vacant street blocks
11. The pet hamster I had when I was seven who would scream all night and eventually escaped by ripping a bar out of its cage and wiggling through the hole. My mom caught it and put it back but it lived another year and a half until one night the screaming just stopped
12. The time I was whistling in the woods and something started whistling back, so I went home
13. That one night at summer camp where a group of girls got together to play ‘bloody mary’ in the lavatory and invited me to come with them so I said “no thanks” and stayed with the camp councillors and drank soup instead.
14. The old abandoned house I just moved into with the door that leads into a big empty room full of dirt and empty cooking pots that I just sort of… locked up forever and never go near
15. Once when I was at an ihop I saw a coffee mug do a full 360º spin with nobody touching it, so I said ‘that was neat’ and never ate there again
16. The time I took a photo of a big old raven sitting on the crucifix on top of the old town church cause it was the most goth thing I’d ever seen, right? But then it swooped down towards me, so I apologized immediately for being rude, and I felt a little silly for a while but the car that hit me on the way home didn’t even leave a bruise so idk be nice to birds
one thing i need to start living by is “become the thing that you want” if i want friends who throw themed parties maybe i should start throwing those parties. if i want someone who writes me love letters maybe i should start writing letters for the people i love. if i want to hang out at museums and pretty cafes maybe i should invite my friends to these places. and maybe even then i won’t find the kind of people i want to be around. but then i would have become the exact person i want to be around. and maybe that’s good enough.
with my nakba posts, here’s some website recommendations if you want to learn on the history of specific depopulated palestinian areas:
palestine remembered is probably the most famous and comprehensive website with full documentations of former locations and depopulated villages. it also lists information on palestinian refugee camps, guestbooks, and the ability to upload pictures. information on each village varies.
zochrot is an organization dedicated to teaching both palestinians and israelis about the 1948 nakba (which is not covered well if at all in israeli schools, as you can probably imagine), which includes documenting information on villages and even an app. information on each village varies.
many villages also have their own websites, and many of them are also in english (for example, the one i linked for kafr bir'im). honestly just look up (village name) + website and if it’s there you’ll find it.
wikipedia also has surprisingly comprehensive coverage of the villages, the articles include a little more of the “war” background than the other websites do.
HEY WAIT A MINUTE!! Wasnt there a post like that? Like someone liveblogged being attacked and they just played possum because they felt awkward?? Or maybe they pretended to drown in someone’s pool just to be a dick and didn’t know when to stop until they were hidden in a closet. Or something
Tumblr staff: ten options is enough for polls, right? No one needs more than that on a regular basis. The average tumblr user: Hey guys which element of the periodic table do you think is the most fuckable?
Posting hole
Lol
yeah yeah carbon nanotubes. but what about the copper nanotubes.
I bet you’d need some high quality copper for that huh?
I feed my son one kraft single a day and every time he complains about it he loses $10 from his $420/week robux allowance
I have to watch him tho because sometimes he trades his robux for ketamine
He could eat something else but his dad was killed in a tragic cheese accident at the kraft factory and he wants to become immune to it in advance just in case
What does him being a cat have to do with anything?
I don’t know if anyone needs to hear this but if you’re gender non-conforming, I love you. Your existence makes me happy. I see you in the street and I smile.
ALT
ALT
