sparrohawc

[sparrohawc]

Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”. 

[sparrohawc]

Considering that Google's search results have been getting actively worse for years now - including actually *dropping the capability of setting search criteria such as exclusions and verbatim searches* - DuckDuckGo has entirely replaced it for me. All considered, StartPage might be the next one I try.

[sparrohawc]

A year or so ago I went to wood carving club with a bruised eye from my dog slamming his nose into my eyesocket and like every old lady there pulled me aside at some point to ask if my partner hit me here are some of the solutions they had in case he did.

-Replacing his vitimens with poision

- getting her brother to invite him out onto his boat and then killing him and dumping him in the ocean and saying he got drunk and fell off.

- get tboned with him in the passenger seat and then once he was in the hospital theres all kinds of easy ways to kill him like not washing my hands after a poop and then touching his wound casually.

-replacing his drink of choice with moonshine!?

- take him on a hike thats locally notorious for a rapid otter attacking hikers and once he had rabies I could just kill him any ol way and say self defense.

-One lady just cheerfully informed me she had a gun and only a few years left anyway

[sparrohawc]

Even then, the age of consent shouldn't be dependent on your brain ossifying. It should be the general point at which most humans are capable of making rational decisions about important things, even if their mental faculties are still growing (yes, I know, it's BS, but even taking their own argument as fact doesn't work).

Freedom is a right, and it should be restricted as little as possible for people who are capable of using it responsibly - and that includes 18-year-olds.

---

What I really think the issue is, is that we are taught that an adult is capable of standing alone. They don't need a support network, they can make a living, they can run their own house.

But everyone needs a support network. When that goes away, almost everyone will fail. It doesn't matter how old you are; we are, by and large, not built to be hermits. But for some reason, we're made to believe that in order to be an adult, you gotta be able to be a hermit.

I think mostly what young fandom types (and I guess younger people in general) who are very very invested in the idea that “20 is still basically a minor” need to understand is that the feeling of “I’m just a child pretending to be an adult, and everyone else around me is a REAL adult” is DEEPLY universal (and won’t stop, ever, by the way, sorry!) and also is not, like, praxis.

Believe me, I get it, but the self-infantilization needs to stop, especially when you’re trying to engage in conversations about actual children and the harms they can face. Yes, it is scary to wake up and realize you’re 22 and you still feel like you’re 15, but it happens to all of us. You’re an adult. You have to deal with it.

[sparrohawc]

Reading the new checks that might come in due to the Online Safety Act in the UK and this is actually bullshit

[Image Transcript:

And how will I prove my age?

There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:

Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age. 

Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.

Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.

Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.

Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.  

Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18. 

Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.

End Transcript.]

Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.

I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.

I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.

[sparrohawc]

i’ve mixed cranberry mikes harder and cucumber lime gatorade into a drink i like to call “the flavor” because like. you drink this shit and your tongue is like “there’s a taste here. you are experiencing a flavor” but when you go to open the door there’s no flavor there. it comes back with an undefined error in the flavor column. it’s the missingno of flavors. it so absolutely and definitely tastes like something and that thing is nothing.

[sparrohawc]

On the other hand, I do not miss the unskippable previews at the beginning of DVDs.

truly never getting over the greatest loss streaming services caused: the disappearance of DVD special features. behind the scenes, bloopers, deleted scenes, commentaries, I will never forget you, I will never stop missing you.

[sparrohawc]

[sparrohawc]

This is 100% an AI video. Watch how the sprite merges with the street light, and then somehow emerges from the reflection on the car.

Ball lightning while visiting a parking lot… Ball lightning is a rare phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter....

[sparrohawc]

What is dat *aggressively scuttles* 

(via)

[sparrohawc]

AO3 built their entire site around a searchability nightmare. I would wager there are TERABYTES of JUST TEXT. And anyone who goes there is expecting the search functionality to work as part and parcel of the site's existence. It's an integral part of the experience. The same cannot be said for Steam, or nearly any other online marketplace.

That said, AO3 should just sell their black magic search tech to everyone else.

The problem with AO3 is that every online store's search function is bullshit by comparison

[sparrohawc]

I'd say the answer to that is both yes, and no.

According to Greek/Roman mythological sensibilities, yes, Jesus was a demigod.

However, Christianity doesn't truck with the idea of anyone being half-deity. Possibly in the same way that a drop of holy water makes a body of water into holy water, any amount of divinity would make someone a god - or, more accurately, any amount of God would make someone God if you believe in the Trinity as a three-in-one thing. In that sense, Jesus absolutely was not a demigod, as a demigod is by definition lesser than a god.

Hey, so we all agree that in mythology, a character that is the offspring of a deity and a mortal is called a “demigod,” right?

I mean, that’s like the most common kind of demigod. One immortal parent and one mortal parent.

So from a strictly mythological perspective, can we agree that Jesus Christ should be categorized as a demigod? I mean I know that the stories about him usually stress the whole “son of god” thing, but he is also the son of Mary, who was mortal.

[sparrohawc]

self-diagnosis

there are a lot of older autistic buckaroos, like myself, who were diagnosed decades ago, and while i see some folks in the community roll their eyes or gatekeep about idea of autism self-diagnosis becoming so common in young buds, i love this movement. it takes nothing away from me or my identity

what it DOES do is create a way of personal understanding for young buds who might need this help. it creates a sense of solidarity. AND FOR US OLDER BUCKAROOS it does something unexpected: when i say ‘i am autistic’ i get almost no pushback and complete understanding now. people say 'oh okay'

back in my day, someone skilled at neurotypical masking could NEVER just say ‘i am autistic’ without pushback. there was either confusion, or anger, or dismissal, because folks simply did not even UNDERSTAND what autism was. you think ‘you dont look autistic’ is common now? shoulda seen back then.

so if you are also one of these older autistic buds and you are tempted to gatekeep, just remember: this is a SPECTRUM, and the more examples of the width of that spectrum we have, the better for all of us. we are out here proving love TOGETHER. heck yeah buckaroos love is real

[sparrohawc]

[sparrohawc]

This 'impossible' crane shot from Mikhail Kalatozov's SOY CUBA (1964) ...

IS the greatest and quite remarkable one shot scene of them all.

[sparrohawc]

hmmm