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every year, my boss buys a few cat calendars for our workplace. Due to some sort of mix-up, we accidentally got a few naked women calendars this year.

Normally, that's where the story would end. It would just be a mildly amusing mistake.

But it becomes absolutely fucking hilarious because I opened up the calendar package in front of clients today. One moment, we're just discussing the cats up for adoption and if their current cat might be willing to accept a new baby brother/sister and bam. Suddenly it went all tits up the second I picked up one of the calendars and actually looked at the damn thing.

Unfortunately, the clients ALSO looked at it.

None of us wanted this to happen. None of us knew how to respond to it. There's nothing in any social protocol that could have prepared us for this.

There was just like thirty solid seconds of absolutely dead silence as we all tried to think of the most polite thing to say.

"Wow," i said, because I'm entirely braindead at this point. "Not the kind of pussy I expected to encounter today."

Thankfully, they thought it was hilarious. It probably wasn't the most politic thing to say, but it was very funny to at least three people.

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Mario: it was great hanging out with my lil bro, Luigi, in the Mushroom Kingdom on Dec 4th from 6am to 6pm 2024

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they are trying to make scott pilgrim transgender when envy adams is literally already a transgender woman <- I'm right

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So I know there's been plenty of discussion over the decision to turn Tuvix back into Neelix and Tuvok, but has anyone ever considered the ethics of Jadzia demanding back the Curzon memories from Curzon Odo?

Exactly how much of a "person" former Trill host memories are isn't clear—the other former hosts don't seem to care about having their existence be a chain of several hours every few decades—but Curzon Odo was a person, with desires and wants. I kind of think the same principles that make the Tuvix decision hard should apply here as well!

There's an argument, I suppose, that Curzon (implicitly) agreed as part of being a joined Trill to pass on memories to a new person who would not have personal responsibilities to him, and thus he doesn't get to take back the memories*. And Odo was only being lent the memories so he could temporarily host, so he didn't have a right to them either.

Unlike under Janeway, there is neither the argument of practical need for Tuvok and Neelix separately; DS9 is not trapped in the Delta Quadrant, and there is not a pressing need for specific officers. Nor is there the argument that the lives of two people require the sacrifice of one; Jadzia is impoverished by the lack of Curzon's memories but still exists.

But to what extent was Odo-with-Curzon an individual entity with his own rights, separate from the constituent parts? Did he have right of his own? Is he bound by agreements made by the originals? He didn't seem to think of himself as a separate person, the way Tuvix did, but "this person think they're not a person and so doesn't think they deserve human rights" would itself be a Star Trek episode. I think there are questions that at least should be brought up.

'* Given that he drops some surprises to Jadzia in that episode, there is presumably some method by which hosts can keep some memories from being accessed by future hosts. This would allow keeping some secrets that you'd want to take to the grave, or just privacy for some special moments. But "You must pass on the general gestalt of memories to the next host, and give up rights to them" is presumably the general agreement for being a host.

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It’s been six months – how is nobody talking about YouTube’s explicit policy of suppressing information that disagrees with the WHO?

YouTube doesn’t allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities’ or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19.

[source] [at time of writing]

(To be fair, the policy is limited to “content… on treatment, prevention, diagnostics, or transmission,” i.e. everything important.)

Applying zero levels of self-reflection: fine, yes, I tentatively believe that the information that Google is stamping out is biased towards wrong stuff, so the direct effects of this policy are positive.

Applying one level of self-reflection: put on your COVID Skeptic Hat. COVID might be a big deal, or maybe it’s overblown, an excuse for a government power grab, you’re not sure. When you read that Google, the single entity with the most complete control over how the world’s information propagates, is explicitly suppressing one side of the discussion… which way does that make you update?

Applying two levels of self-reflection: put your Normal Reasonable Person hat back on. COVID is a big deal! We all know that. When you read that for more than half the course of the pandemic, the medium through which all information reaches you – the courier that brings you every letter, the air through which words travel to reach your ears – has been deliberately promoting material that supports the beliefs that you just happen, coincidentally, to have come to hold, and suppressing arguments that might have moderated your opinion… does that make you… more confident?

Applying three levels of self-reflection: this isn’t even about COVID. This is about everything. When you learn that somebody has been manipulating you – especially on an important issue, especially if they’ve been doing it for a long time, especially if you only just barely happen to learn about it, like I did and like you probably just did too – you don’t just update away from their position on that issue, but also (to a lesser extent) on all the other issues where it’s likely that they’ve had a finger on the scale. So, here, to name a few, that would be… climate change, Black Lives Matter, genetic differences between various races and sexes, transgender stuff, the value of diversity – you know, anything that the passionate young techy urbanites at Google care deeply about. Google having a policy of taking down videos claiming that masks are ineffective -> everybody gets a tiny bit more racist, sexist, and transphobic. I haven’t Fermi-estimated whether that’s worth it, but it freaks me out that so few people seem to think it’s even an important question.

Why is nobody talking about this!? And not just in my bubble – “medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities“ gets ~100 Google hits! Shouldn’t this be an ~~outrage~~?

A couple counter- and counter-counter-arguments:

Keep reading

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You’re a regular office worker born with the ability to “see” how dangerous a person is with a number scale of 1-10 above their heads. A toddler would be a 1, while a skilled soldier with a firearm may score a 7. Today, you notice the reserved new guy at the office measures a 10.

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The moment FNV's Caesar fully clicked for me was when I heard him pronounce "et cetera" as "et ketera".

Think about it for a second. This is a post-apocalyptic future where most knowledge of ancient civilizations has faded into obscurity. It's not gone, thanks to the efforts of the Followers and other factions, but even if you're a Follower you have to really go and look for it.

Now, our boy Edward here didn't just learn the broad strokes of Roman history - he's familiar with niche and intricate aspects of its political and military structure as well as its cultural practices. He knows the original meaning of "decimation". He knows the difference between a legate and a centurion. He knows the general appearance of a Roman legionary. And he knows Classical Latin, in its Classical pronunciation. Think how deep into the weeds you would have to look to find out that "Caesar" was actually pronounced "kye-sar" and not "seezer" like any English speaker would instinctively say it. And then how invested you would have to be that your whole army adopt this incredibly archaic pronunciation.

But the "et ketera" bit really takes this to the next level. "Et cetera" has been a common set phrase in the English language for centuries. It's not a fancy word from a long-dead language that Caesar exhumed from the depths of the Followers' archives. It's a regular part of casual speech that Caesar bothered to learn the etymology of and decided to retroactively apply the original pronunciation to. For no reason other than commitment to the bit.

This is not the approach of a scholar interested in learning the deep lessons of history. This is the borderline unhealthy obsession of a fanboy. He's the caricature of the teenage boy whose gateway into fascism is thinking a bit too much about the Roman Empire. An archetype that barely existed when FNV came out but has gotten awfully common since then. This game was really ahead of its time.

(Also in further support to this read, it's quite telling which things Edward Sallow did NOT bother to learn about Rome. Like very salient and well-researched points of historical analysis that help explain its rise and decline. For example the fact that Rome did not in fact typically stamp out local cultures, but actually often borrowed from them, allowing people to generally live in peace as long as they paid their taxes. Or their heavy emphasis on infrastructure building which meant people could see their lives materially improve as a result of Roman presence. Or conversely, how concentrating power in one man drawing his legitimacy from the military led to recurring civil wars which critically weakened the empire. All factors that directly run counter to Caesar's governing philosophy. Because his understanding of Rome is fundamentally aesthetic rather than political or historical.)

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everyone says their fav little blood-covered blorbo commits war crimes but they just mean the character kills some dude in a universe where the geneva convention doesnt exist. however elizabeth weir says out loud "well if i do this itll violate the geneva convention and also be a war crime" and then does it anyway. thats feminism in outer space

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no genre has been done as dirty as stealth games. Like. if thousands of people thought they hated sokoban games because hundreds of game developers created dogshit mandatory sokoban segments in every game for no reaso- okay bad example

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The way "transemasculation" has been seemingly re-coined as the sole replacement for transandrophobia, anti-transmasculinity, etc. is gross enough by itself, but as far as I can tell, the term had ALREADY been coined in 2022 ALONG WITH talking about antimasculism (both described here). And I just. I knew it wasn't in good faith in the first place, but to not even do 5 minutes of research before trying to coin a term about experiences you don't have...? Hello?

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"someone who allows you to rest" is the relationship dynamic of all time

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why does the US have a theme park ride thats just presidential speeches. who would want to visit that. that sounds like something yeonmi park would make up about north korea

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It has been ZERO DAYS since I watched a video clip thinking "okay so what's the joke here..." and then someone got more naked and I'm like "oh, the joke was sex. I forgot about that one"

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This is how the golden age of piracy ended.

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David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman Superman (2025)