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Moondance 40 x 40 inches, Oil, 2023 “In a way, it’s really science that’s been inspiring rituals all along. Beneath the specifics of all our beliefs, sacred texts, origin stories, and dogmas, we humans have been celebrating the same two things since the dawn of time: astronomy and biology. The changing of the seasons, the long summer days, the harvest, the endless winter nights, and the blossoming spring are all by-products of how the Earth orbits the sun. The phases of the moon, which have dictated the timing of rituals since the dawn of civilization, are the result of how the moon orbits us. Birth, puberty, reproduction, and death are the biological processes of being human. Throughout the history of our species, these have been the miracles, for lack of a better word, that have given us meaning. They are the real, tangible events upon which countless celebrations have been built, mirroring one another even among societies who had no contact.” - Sasha Sagan, For Small Creature Such as We
Prints: https://robrey.storenvy.com
the ship of theseus wikipedia article in 2003. 20 years later, after 1792 total edits, 0% of its original phrasing remains. (x)
And yet it's still the same article, the article designated to be about theseus' ship. Debate solved i guess
easy as fuck . were they stupid?
this one. fuck this poem.
i wanted to share this not to come off as corrective but because i actually think it really adds to the text to know that not only is it not from a poem, but that there’s a fuller version of this quote that is just as good. and it’s actually really good advice on how to a write emotion without becoming sentimental. james hall, the interviewer, is himself a poet worth looking into if you’re unfamiliar.
James Hall: I love that you risk sentimentality in the poems. Can you talk about how you construct a poem’s emotion without letting that emotion subsume the poem? What tools are available to a poet to mitigate emotion successfully?
Richard Siken: I didn’t see it as risking anything, and I suppose the tool for mitigating emotion is undercutting, but I’ll try to answer the question sideways: Even if you don’t believe in God, you have to believe in narrative. Things happen, one after another, world without end. Just because you’re self-aware doesn’t mean you can change what’s happening. Eventually someone is going to break your heart. Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking “I am falling to the floor crying” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it—you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well and when you’re having sex with your next lover on this very floor they will also notice that you didn’t paint it very well and they will think less of you for it. And then you think “Is that sentence too long?” And then you have to hold the contradictions of sobbing uncontrollably and wondering about grammar in your head at the same time. I think if you are true to the entire experience, not just the sad part, you don’t risk sentimentality because you’re not overloading the experience with fake, melodramatic feeling. I also hear that whispering helps.
here’s to everyone who looked for this in crush and was confused because it isn’t there. the original interview is kind of hard to source nowadays because of how often it’s misattributed: https://web.archive.org/web/20060501211545/http://www.gulfcoastmag.org/GCIssues/gc18.1%20folder/18.1%20Samples/18.1IntSiken(Hall).html
it's been incredibly freeing to realize that i'm entitled to never having to come up with anything original ever again because i already made cookie clicker and i can be satisfied with that. sorry this isn't meant to be relatable the rest of y'all still gotta try
"hey orteil you posted a joke but someone else already made that post like a month ago" don't care. popularized a game genre
🎉✨️happy 10th anniversary to PEAK 🎉🎊
+ closer on the two halves bc its a pretty long canvas. I wasn't originally going to make a piece and then decided last minute because I mean. come on I gotta!!! Not only is the game itself 10 years old but this also marks 10 years I've been a fan of it :) shoutout to asriel dreemurr for being my absolute goat when I was in middle school
some of you are painfully unaware that part of the whole reason many kinksters are like "what happens in my or someone else's bedroom is no one else's business"
is because people have been arrested and put in fucking PRISON just for having gay sex in the privacy of their own homes. in the United States. this millennia.
if you think i'm joking, look up Lawrence v. Texas (2003). 14 out of the 50 US States STILL had laws on the books criminalizing sodomy--and yes, you could be imprisoned for multiple years and sometimes even life for repeat offenses.
in the years directly leading up to the landmark case, enforcement even in those 14 states varied, but it was absolutely weaponized against queer people, especially when stacked on top of other offenses to make up a longer sentence.
um so anyway, what happens between two or more consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes is none of my OR YOUR business, and i'm not fucking kidding!
Important additional context:
"Sodomy" does not, in a legal context, mean "anal sex."
It means "any sexual act the court has decided is deviant."
BDSM? Sodomy.
Crossdressing for sexual pleasure? Sodomy.
Jacking off to nude photos or video your consenting adult lover sent you of themselves? Sodomy.
Het oral sex? SODOMY!!!
If you're starting to think "but how could anyone prove that happened without breaking down the door?"
Ha. Haha. Ahaha.
First, I'll give you one guess how they did prove it.
Two, these were often scapegoat charges--basically they couldn't actually nail you on anything because you hadn't done anything actually illegal, only things they didn't like, and they relied on public disgust against your "degenerate character" (yeah there's a very big reason we keep saying not to use that word and it's not to be killjoys) to make sure you knew your place.
Which means that in practice:
Went to a socialist meeting? Sodomy.
Male kindergarten teacher? Sodomy.
Mixing races? Sodomy.
Not Christian (or the right kind of Christian)? Sodomy.
Kink is only the beginning. They'll come after the kinksters because they're low-hanging fruit, and you'll gleefully help them dig a hole, laughing all the way and never consider that it's way too big for the number of bodies you need to bury.
I see someone in the tags saying "except pedophiles, they don't count, hang them."
YES THEY FUCKING DO COUNT.
Wanna know why?
Take a look at how many politicians have labeled trans people and their allies as pedophiles.
Take a look at how many politicians used to label gay people as pedophiles.
Take a look at how much suspicion falls on innocent men who just think working with kids is fun and want the chance to help, grow, nurture, and teach.
Take a look at yourself.
What about you could someone twist into "that person is a pedophile" if they wanted rid of you?
I can tell you exactly how they'd do it with me. I'm queer. I have a niece who came out as lesbian in her teens. I supported her.
Clearly I groomed her into that lifestyle, right?
Child sex abusers should be proven in a court of law to be guilty, and penalized to the fullest extent of the law. Pedophiles who have not abused children and seek to avoid doing so should not be hanged for something going wild in their brains.
Yes! That's super uncomfortable to say! I'm a CSA survivor! It's awkward and it means I have to defend people I really wish were not the way they are!
But the rope you use to lynch another will yank you into the tree to die.
No sodomy laws. None.
TW for talk on CSA and child marriage, this topic tends to get me fired up
Its also a fucking useless example for sodomy law especially because of how wildly age of consent can vary even in the united states. Which I hate that people get so weird about when you try to discuss it. No, knowing this stuff isnt a "red flag" you have to know something before you can speak on it or try and change it!
Child marriage is legal in 34 states with 4 of them technically not even having an age minimum outside of common law that could theoretically set it at 12. If we go back a few years the state of it would be even MORE dire as many of these laws putting age minimums only were put into place in the past eight years! So if one defines sodomy as "any sexual act done premarital that isnt missionary" then these wouldn't be covered.
Sodomy laws are USELESS for protecting children, because laws about CSA are better off being their OWN thing with strictly defined terms. Sodomy is so nebulous and hand wavy it does nothing but punish people who have done nothing wrong, strict terms with clear meanings is what creates protections. "You can't just make "if we think its gross" the law and expect that to actually work on deterring people who are doing the actual crimes. Which are ALREADY illegal.
Plus this isn't even getting into the psychology part of it that most people who commit CSA aren't even attracted to minors, they just like power over their victims and its easy to hold power over a child. its about control. Not 100% of the time, but very very often its about dominance rather then attraction. Plus there's the fact of sexual intrusive thoughts being a common form of OCD that causes a lot of distress in those that have those thoughts. This is a whole rabbit hole but just... You dont need to be attracted to a victims to traffic them, you might just want control, or authority, or just money!
I think it is really, really worth focusing on that “already illegal” part, because this is the foot in the door for a million and a half fascist proposed laws, not just sodomy.
“We need a law that makes it illegal to go into a bathroom that doesn’t align with your birth sex! Otherwise, people might go into the wrong bathroom to sexually assault someone!” Huh, interesting, but isn’t it already illegal to sexually assault someone, including in a bathroom??? Because if so, then you can just completely discard that explanation for the entire law. It is already illegal to go into the wrong bathroom and sexually assault a person; ergo, the law is not about sexual assault at all, it’s just about bathrooms.
“We need to arrest undocumented immigrants in order to crack down on gang activity!” Huh, interesting, but isn’t that gang activity already illegal??? So, if you wanted to crack down on gang activity, you could simply arrest people who are associated with gangs, and in fact, we do already do that. Ergo, this rhetoric isn’t actually about gang activity at all; it’s just about undocumented immigrants.
“We need to diminish free speech and freedom of movement rights for suspected terrorists, because otherwise they could commit mass murder!” Well, interestingly, mass murder is already illegal, and if you have probable cause that indicates that someone is planning to commit mass murder, you can simply arrest them for that. Since the law is already fully equipped to go after people who are genuinely suspected of gearing up to commit a violent terroristic act, this clearly isn’t really about terrorism at all; it’s just about diminishing free speech and freedom of movement rights.
“We need tort reform that caps the monetary damages that large corporations can be forced to pay, in order to keep people from bringing frivolous and fraudulent lawsuits!” Hmm, but see the thing with that is fraud is already a crime, and frivolous lawsuits can already be thrown out. If a law caps the amount of damages corporations need to pay in lawsuits which were not found to be frivolous or fraudulent, then almost by definition, it has nothing to do with frivolous lawsuits or fraud – it’s just about limiting corporate liability.
I could go on.
Always ask yourself what the actual function of a proposed law is – not just the stated goal, but what it actually does that is not already covered by an equally restrictive law.
And remember, a good general rule is:
If something is already illegal, then the people who are trying to pass a new law to ban it are probably trying to ban something else.
"lock in" is probably one of the most important phrases to enter the public lexicon in the 2020s
[Image Description: tag that reads, "thank you black people" . End ID]
[Gif Description: flaming text in all caps that reads, "thank you black people" . End Description]
today's reason I fucking love the open source community: Ageless Linux, a brand new Debian-based operating system specifically designed to break the law by giving children access to computers that explicitly refuse to track their age.
reblog this post to help a child break the law
oh goddamn this whole page goes so hard actually, please go read it. what an impressive, visceral takedown of this dumb law
why can rockstar games institutionalise you for life like nikita kruschev for being autistic
He didn't steal 10 million dollars. They made that number up as a loss, they never fucking had it. Rockstar has spent more than a billion fucking dollars on GTA VI and will likely make billions more when it gets released.
Uber is a fucking shell game of a company designed to leech investor capital and output bootleg cabs.
Nvidia posted a profit in 2023 of $4.37 billion. This is like someone stealing less than a penny from me.
And they lock this kid in a prison hospital for LIFE?
Capitalism is disgusting.
Nobody should buy GTA til they free Arion Kurtaj
What with GTA VI going up for pre-order i'd just like to remind everyone that rockstar conspired with the UK government to lock an 18-year-old away for life for hacking them.
Tons more at the source!
To my 25 - 35 year olds, you've reached the age where people around you are starting to give up on themselves because they think it's too late. Don't let that energy rub off on you. It's not too late.
I became a tattoo artist at 49.
Married the love of my life at 50.
Got my Class A CDL at 59.
You've got time.
As long as you're breathing, you've got time.
me as a teenager: man it sucks to have no privacy or autonomy but i guess its for a good reason. when i turn 18 i will realise how young i was and understand why they did all that.
me as an adult: teenagers are an oppressed class, their abuse is normalised and systemic and they need to start killing people
the best way i can think to describe the experience of reading moby dick is you’re in line at the dmv and this guy behind you very loudly says “well who HASN’T had a gay experience” and then proceeds to tell you every detail about his life in between anecdotes about how great sperm is and how ropes work and sometimes he’ll say the most poetic shit you’ve ever heard in your life and them jump RIGHT back into explaining how a whale is a fish because 1) it swims in water and you’re still only like halfway through the dmv line
[Image ID: Tweet from Eemar (@/ catchaSpark_) on 12/17/19 reading: i love ishmael “merman hellville” fakename. love a narrator who opens his book like “hi. i hate working. do you ever get depressed? i’m in a great mood right now and it is Not a manic state. anyway, i’ve googled 10,000 whale facts. fact one: the whale is a horse and he loves me” /End ID]
You are a bug in bug hell but your spider torturer so fucking bad at their job that the devil himself has to grab you with his gay pitchfork and help them
Hostile
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