deviroars

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this was holden the entire time they were trying to solve the atlanta case, where nobody believed a single word he said

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gender-affirming surgery is a months-long dark comedy. what the fuck do you mean you're charging me double for everything. what do you mean they itemize the bill by left and right ball. what the fuck.

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i don’t know why but i’m really amused by the winner of some ‘new kanji’ contest:

compare with the real kanji

座 (seat/gathering), but the two 人 (person) radicals have been moved from next to each other within the 土 (earth) radical to diagonally from each other, making this “social distance(d seating/gathering)”

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hey man i think it's dead

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I have a folder called Time is a Flat Circle in which I collect evidence of humanity. Here is most of them.

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i find it so interesting how people act like "critically examining a piece of media" is the opposite of "enjoying that piece of media." rip to you but i actually find it really enjoyable and compelling to dissect and think through the art i engage with

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The best thing I've ever seen while driving was when I was racing across Idaho on my roadtrip to get home when suddenly my gps out of nowhere tells me that I can save an hour and a half by taking a detour. I had no idea why. I was in the middle of a pretty rural part of the state and twilight was setting in and the road looked clear, but holy shit, 90 minutes? I had no idea how or why this detour would do that but I took it anyways and got off the main interstate onto a frontage road.

About 2 minutes of driving later revealed VERY abrupt traffic backed up for miles. I had gotten off the interstate at the exact right and last moment. Everyone was pissed off and angry, so it seemed new. And here me and like three other cars were, racing past and completely skipping the traffic they were suddenly stuck in. There was no movement. Only traffic. I could feel their envy as I drove by wondering what the fuck was going on.

I fully expected there to have been a huge accident. Something like a head on collision. But then about four miles down the road, I see it. A tipped over truck, and thousands upon thousands of tiny brown potatoes still rolling across the road.

The driver was outside, his head in his hands, looking very much alright but appropriately stressed out, and behind him was miles of angry traffic caused by truck tipping over and dumping thousands of potatoes onto the asphalt. A potato spill. In Idaho. The state only known for potatoes. It still makes me laugh thinking about it.

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scientists are in labs right now creating the thinnest and worst material known to mankind so they can make women’s clothing

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Seeing posts saying that insurance companies are inherently bad and adversarial, and I need to point out that insurance companies telling organizations and companies that they’re doing something stupid and at risk of hurting people or the environment and they need to stop or the insurance company will either charge them a lot of money or even stop covering them at all is often the only reason why any precautions are taken.

Torts are where the steel is legally on these types of things, but the insurance companies are how the implications of tort law is communicated.

Like, the church I grew up in only took any precautions against children being molested on site after the insurance company insisted. It’s a bit hard for me to see insurance collectively as all bad all the time after seeing that, when I can point on the doll to where I wasn’t harmed because of insurance.

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I've said it before but I love this post bc I like to look back at what I've previously said. Right now I think I'd choose Russian, Czech, Arabic, Georgian, and Mandarin

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Me, my grandma and Oreo, my Hampshire pig. Circa. 2005.

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The Aquarium's first animal 🐈💙

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New issue of my art blog newsletter is out tomorrow, all about flasks in retro sci-fi art! Sign up! It's a good time!

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I genuinely think there was no greater insight into the modern Christian mindset than when the Pope said he very much hoped Hell was empty and he was absolutely hounded by both Catholics and Protestants outraged at the idea of a man who wanted a place of infinite suffering to have nobody in it.

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Piracy is preservation, and authors would rather have their books in front of people who can't access many books for free instead of looking those people in the eye and saying "fork over your month's earnings"

Shut up

To be clear, I'm not against Piracy in general. In fact I'm not only an advocate, I'm a prolific pirate myself.

I'm sure you can find a handful of authors who feel that way, but those I know personally (one indie author and one traditionally published) as well as those I've seen comment on the issue are adamant that piracy has caused them significant personal harm.

They'd far rather people who can't afford their books use libraries to access them or, if the libraries they have access too don't carry the book(d), they'd rather people reach out to them personally to arrange for a copy within their budget (sometimes including for free).

Pirating books is not the same as pirating movies. It's the difference between attacking a Spanish galleon and a fishing sloop.

Bigger names like Brandon Sanderson, Steven King, Diana Gabaldon, etc have a entire fleet of sloops and are unlikely to miss a couple going missing, but the less famous (and thus less highly paid) authors can have their entire career ruined by their book being pirated. It can even prevent them from getting offered another book deal, meaning there won't be any more books by that author for you to read.

We aren't entitled to the intellectual property of others. Full stop.

If the author wanted their book to be free, they'd have made it freely available (as some do!). Maybe if everyone had a universal basic income that covered the cost of living we'd see more art available at no cost, but as it stands artists need to make a living too and that means they need to earn a profit to survive. If they can't do that with their art they have to find another way to do it which means less time and energy to make art.

Not to mention the advance an author gets is usual peanuts, and unlike actors who get paid by the time the movie is out, an advance isn't a wage and if the author doesn't sell enough books they have to give back whatever amount of the advance the sale of their books didn't cover. If they get a $5000 advance and only sell $3000 worth of books they owe the publisher $2000.

Again, I'm not against piracy. I am against harming individual artists to the point where it significantly impacts their career. I want more art in this world.

I'm also not telling people they can't, or shouldn't pirate books. I'm against it but I'm not trying to for e others to believe the same as me. I'm providing information so people can make a more informed decision and better understand the consequences of their choices.

So do what you will with the info I've provided. Just be willing to acknowledge the harm you cause with those choices. Even the piracy I take part in causes harm on a smaller scale.

I have no argument against "I don't care, I'm doing it anyway" and I won't bother trying to argue it.