#I had to go buy a drill because we don't actually have one after all these years

[afniel]

Big Ikea Leaf

Big Ikea Leaf

[fxrheisenn]

Andrus Laansalu talked about making Disco Elysium at EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts)

"Initially, the church wasn't a focal point. There were certain characters that needed to visit this location, and I asked, "Seriously, what do we have in our church?" The others replied, "Nothing at all. Our church is completely bare—just a wheel, really. It's quite basic."

That's when I decided to unleash my creativity in the design. For example, they chose to install a glass structure at the top of the church to create a reflective surface. It was like placing an optical clock up there. Therefore, one of the most crucial aspects of designing the church was ensuring the lighting was just right to create the desired atmosphere."

"Let me show you an example of Baroque architecture, which is rich in detail. We're also designing the interior of the church based on large cathedrals. However, the foundation you use might not yield the expected results, because the church itself doesn't require such intricate details. Sometimes, it's about simplifying the design."

"I used Articy for the initial scriptwriting of Disco Elysium. The image only represents a tiny fraction of the text and choice variables involved. This system was also the reason I eventually abandoned the project after a year of outlining the script and shifted my focus to becoming a sound designer. My mind struggled to keep up with the dynamic graphic rules, but fortunately, a more talented writer took over afterward."

"In terms of sound design, it's essential to develop different layers to bring out the charm of the church as a cohesive space. Although this represents only a small portion of the overall design, each layer actually requires a significant amount of time to compose the whole....... Whenever there's a shift or a change due to the dialogue itself, you need to adjust the background sounds. Each time you modify the details in the dialogue, I have to refine the background audio, ensuring that these elements build upon each other like an intricate layer of work."

"It's funny how many scenes involve characters getting smacked in the face. My job was to recreate those, so I locked myself in the bathroom with a recorder and hit my forehead until it turned red.

As a sound designer, I really dig those unsettling, drill-like sounds. So, I mixed in creepy lectures, metal scraping, moans, and cries of pain—because I just love that stuff! (laughs)

Players will be moving through all kinds of areas, so it's super important to make the sound transitions feel natural, trying to create a more immersive vibe in certain spaces.

With all the scenes featuring big cranes, you can hear them from far away, and I wanted to capture that eerie ringing in your ears. That's going to be a thing throughout most of the game. I've found ways to really mess with players while they're playing!"

"I've come across a lot of old objects (like phones and radios) that I needed to perfectly replicate the sounds. I started to become a bit of a hoarder, buying up different models of old phones whenever I found one to add to my collection. The sound effects I can simulate from them are really impressive."

"Some of the devices don't actually exist in real life—just a mix of architecture and tech. When I need to create sound effects, I first look for something similar that exists in our world, then I try to simulate what the sound and appearance of that thing might have been like a century ago.

Towards the end of the game, there's a character carrying a fuel canister. We needed the sound of the canister, so we dug one up from our garage—it had been sitting there since it was five! I realized this would make the sound perfect. So, it had been there for 50 years, and after 40 years, it finally found its purpose.

In some places, I needed unique sound waves, and recreating them was a real headache until one day I happened to walk by a swimming pool and stumbled upon an old wartime torpedo. You can rotate the torpedo's probe, and it slowly rises up, like a proud zombie head. The sounds it made were exactly what I needed!"

🙋How did you manage to get funding?

"Well, since we're in Estonia, you just need to know a wealthy person. You don't need five people—just two who can network, hang out together, and convince them to keep investing! (laughs) Back then, we constantly ran out of money and would tell them, 'Oops, looks like we spent it all! Can you invest a bit more?' That's how we made it through!"

🙋How did you all come together to make the game?

"Luck. It usually doesn't happen this way, and that's the key difference. It has to be. If not, you couldn't create a game of this scale - well, I mean in terms of budget. But creatively, Estonia definitely has writers and artists who can pull it off. With such a small population, there are a lot of quirky folks who are good friends. We were really lucky, though - lots of fortunate circumstances came together. It brought the right people together, allowing those talented fools to collaborate with us. They had experience but hadn't tackled projects of this magnitude before. So yeah, luck is pretty important!"

Lecture experience shared by 白兔YIYANG SUN on 小红书, reposted & translated by me with her permission.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Women pulling Lever on a Drilling Machine, 1978 Lee, Howl & Company Ltd., Tipton, Staffordshire, England photograph by Nick Hedges image credit: Nick Hedges Photography

* * * *

Tim Boudreau 

About the whole DOGE-will-rewrite Social Security's COBOL code in some new language thing, since this is a subject I have a whole lot of expertise in, a few anecdotes and thoughts.

Some time in the early 2000s I was doing some work with the real-time Java team at Sun, and there was a huge defense contractor with a peculiar query: Could we document how much memory an instance of every object type in the JDK uses? And could we guarantee that that number would never change, and definitely never grow, in any future Java version?

I remember discussing this with a few colleagues in a pub after work, and talking it through, and we all arrived at the conclusion that the only appropriate answer to this question as "Hell no." and that it was actually kind of idiotic.

Say you've written the code, in Java 5 or whatever, that launches nuclear missiles. You've tested it thoroughly, it's been reviewed six ways to Sunday because you do that with code like this (or you really, really, really should). It launches missiles and it works.

A new version of Java comes out. Do you upgrade? No, of course you don't upgrade. It works. Upgrading buys you nothing but risk. Why on earth would you? Because you could blow up the world 10 milliseconds sooner after someone pushes the button?

It launches fucking missiles. Of COURSE you don't do that.

There is zero reason to ever do that, and to anyone managing such a project who's a grownup, that's obvious. You don't fuck with things that work just to be one of the cool kids. Especially not when the thing that works is life-or-death (well, in this case, just death).

Another case: In the mid 2000s I trained some developers at Boeing. They had all this Fortran materials analysis code from the 70s - really fussy stuff, so you could do calculations like, if you have a sheet of composite material that is 2mm of this grade of aluminum bonded to that variety of fiberglass with this type of resin, and you drill a 1/2" hole in it, what is the effect on the strength of that airplane wing part when this amount of torque is applied at this angle. Really fussy, hard-to-do but when-it's-right-it's-right-forever stuff.

They were taking a very sane, smart approach to it: Leave the Fortran code as-is - it works, don't fuck with it - just build a nice, friendly graphical UI in Java on top of it that *calls* the code as-is.

We are used to broken software. The public has been trained to expect low quality as a fact of life - and the industry is rife with "agile" methodologies *designed* to churn out crappy software, because crappy guarantees a permanent ongoing revenue stream. It's an article of faith that everything is buggy (and if it isn't, we've got a process or two to sell you that will make it that way).

It's ironic. Every other form of engineering involves moving parts and things that wear and decay and break. Software has no moving parts. Done well, it should need *vastly* less maintenance than your car or the bridges it drives on. Software can actually be *finished* - it is heresy to say it, but given a well-defined problem, it is possible to actually *solve* it and move on, and not need to babysit or revisit it. In fact, most of our modern technological world is possible because of such solved problems. But we're trained to ignore that.

Yeah, COBOL is really long-in-the-tooth, and few people on earth want to code in it. But they have a working system with decades invested in addressing bugs and corner-cases.

Rewriting stuff - especially things that are life-and-death - in a fit of pique, or because of an emotional reaction to the technology used, or because you want to use the toys all the cool kids use - is idiotic. It's immaturity on display to the world.

Doing it with AI that's going to read COBOL code and churn something out in another language - so now you have code no human has read, written and understands - is simply insane. And the best software translators plus AI out there, is going to get things wrong - grievously wrong. And the odds of anyone figuring out what or where before it leads to disaster are low, never mind tracing that back to the original code and figuring out what that was supposed to do.

They probably should find their way off COBOL simply because people who know it and want to endure using it are hard to find and expensive. But you do that gradually, walling off parts of the system that work already and calling them from your language-du-jour, not building any new parts of the system in COBOL, and when you do need to make a change in one of those walled off sections, you migrate just that part.

We're basically talking about something like replacing the engine of a plane while it's flying. Now, do you do that a part-at-a-time with the ability to put back any piece where the new version fails? Or does it sound like a fine idea to vaporize the existing engine and beam in an object which a next-word-prediction software *says* is a contraption that does all the things the old engine did, and hope you don't crash?

The people involved in this have ZERO technical judgement.

[doodlegirl1998]

I'm honestly appalled at the ending of this manga.

It's so mean-spirited of Horikoshi to drill it into the narrative that Izuku can't be a hero without a Quirk, and when he does have a Quirk, he's only a liability with it so he should just give up. Then for him to take that Quirk away from him when that's all he ever wanted is just a slap in the face to Izuku and what little character development he had.

Not only that, but for how much 1A is supposedly close to one another, they sure were quick to forget about Aoyama when discount Goob replaced him. He's been nothing but an asshole to them, so why are they so excited to see him?

Why can't the adults get off of their asses and be the primary ones helping with rebuilding? Why rope the second years into it? Furthermore, why the fuck are they having school so soon after a near apocalyptic war?

Also, I love how Bakugou is supposedly praised for his "effort" when all he did was nearly get himself killed because AS USUAL, he charged ahead without a plan, and just waited for AFO to rewind out of existence. Meanwhile, Izuku's just left by himself with All Might, because God fucking forbid anybody actually give Izuku the time of day for the right reasons.

Bakugou can go fuck himself for making Izuku's Quirklessness about himself and their "rIvAlRy", and Horikoshi can go fuck himself for making Izuku's attitude towards losing the thing he dreamed of having for 12 years: ����.

PS: So much for Aizawa's "apology" towards Izuku meaning anything. All he said was sorry, used Izuku's first name without earning the privilege, and then onto the next scene.

Hi @nutzgunray-lvt 👋

You and me both.

Hori hates Izuku. It is as plain a fact as the sky being blue at this point. It is intensely mean to have Izuku suffer for being quirkless (especially at the hands of Bkg*), gain OFA and work so hard with it only to lose it by the end of the story and then Hori doesn't allow Izu to have any form of upset about this. Instead, he is forced to comfort BAKUGOU about this*- the same Bakugou who calls him Deku (useless) for being quirkless! The same Bakugou who abused him for a decade largely for this!?! What the fuck is this Hori? Get boo-hoo'ing Bak-U-Go out the damn door! Focus on Izuku for once! This is traumatising! Let Izuku actually feel it instead of being puppeteered to make Bkg look good!

This is one of the reasons Izuku feels kind of flat now (I hate to say it as an Izuku fan but he doesn't react in a way that makes sense and we haven't seen in his head in so long...)

I don't buy "Class 1A is a Family," not after they chased down Izuku in the Dark Deku arc and certainly not now. Look at how easily they let Aoyama go! No crying or anything? Like wow...

And for Shinsou? Who has canonically only been an asshole to all of 1A this whole time? And no one has a problem with him or is gutted about Aoyama leaving? Nah... that's some B.S. right there.

To add Ochaco, making fun of Izuku's new hair and saying not to talk to her with that hair was in very poor taste. They were all in a WAR, Izuku didn't just have poor luck with barbers. She comes off like a bitch here not gonna lie...

Having school so soon after a whole WAR and floating UA occurring is so unrealistic... 😑 The fact that students are helping proves the school shouldn't be open yet. But Nedzu gives no shit - who is one of Japan's smartest beings, apparently...

Bakugou being praised for his "effort" over Izuku is simply laughable but sadly nothing new.

Aizawa's "apology" was hollow, simply an item on the checklist for Hori, and it shows. Also, using Izuku's first name was OOC for him and rude for him to use without asking.

In addition, we have seen the Bakugou's, but where is Inko? Hori gives no shit to her, clearly. At least she isn't there for Izuku to be forced to comfort alongside Bakugou - about a traumatic thing that happened to HIM! What is this mess Hori?!

[fuck-customers]

a guy came in last night acting WEIRD, like weird weird. we have candy bars on the counter for people to impulse buy and he was drilling me about the brownie snickers. I told him I don't really like snickers, so I don't have any opinion on the brownie ones. since obviously, I never even tried them before. tell me why he was here for like TWENTY MINUTES trying to make me convince him to buy it and saying that he had "better be able to return it" and demanded his receipt in case. this might not sound creepy on paper but the way he was staring at me the whole time, dead-eyed and emotionless, was freaky. at first I chalked it up to neurodivergency or something since I'm autistic and I look like that sometimes.

when he finally left I was SO relieved, like as if a tiger that was about to eat me left kind of relieved. and then he came back in tonight, this time with a friend.

first off, he was telling me all about how he bought cigarettes earlier. two packs, he asked for the deal that requires us to scan our card for. His friend and him kept bickering about that and not shutting up so that's when I knew I was about to be there for a long time, again. then he saw the snickers again and now they're bickering about it, and asking me if it's any good. I'm like? You bought one yesterday, did you not try it? Also you should have known from yesterday, that I've never tried it before. His friend starts going on about how I'm lying and it's actually bad because the company is making me lie about it. Totally ignored that I kept saying I just literally never had one before. I was about to go insane trying to deal with two of the same freak and then a young woman walks in.

They pounced on her immediately! randomly assaulting her about the snickers and then going in about what she wants to do with her life and where she wants to travel, and then asking her if they could take her to other countries. Said "you wanna hang out with us? So we could do a little one night stand? There's no cameras outside the store" Alarms start going off. These guys are CREEPS for sure, and not just a little awkward. The snickers thing was just a front to be able to bother me longer.

she's like, immune to this though and is acting like they're all friends. They go outside to stand by the car and as she's buying her stuff I'm like, "stay here until they leave". She waves me off and is like "nah they're cool, we're friends now" and as soon as she leaves they're bothering her again. Right after another young woman shows up and says to me that she is going to hang out until they leave because she saw them gawking at her like a piece of meat, and she had no idea why the first woman was crazy enough to hang out with them out there. We waited forever waiting for them to leave, and for some reason the first woman drove off first, letting them have ample time to follow her out. they were driving really really slow around the parking lot and left super slowly.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[lakesbian]

do you think when Alec got a new base he had his minions don laundry only to realize it was similar to Heartbreaker making his girls do laundry or do you neither alec nor heartbreaker did laundry

hooray another alec question. my night is somewhat tragic due to tasks but now i have alec question :) <- ignoring a massive backlog of alec questions because i'm bad at not writing an essay to every one and that would be a lot of essays. i'll get there eventually

anyway alec's character page for the loft era alec says that he preferred tossing old clothes and buying new ones over washing what he currently has. which checks out, because he's 1. depressed and has no one to do his chores for him and 2. is really into shoveling expensive versions of all the things teenage boys think are cool into the eternal void in his heart in hopes that it will make him feel special and like his life is good and nice and worth living. coping with being fundamentally unwanted and treated like subhuman for his entire life by trying to be a special fancy richboy prince etc etc you know the drill. i do think he still has to do Some laundry, especially after leviathan, because it's simply not feasible to buy new clothes every time he changes out of an outfit. like that would be almost cartoonish amounts of underwear and socks to purchase every week. (i can hear someone saying 'are we sure he's changing his clothes every day what if he's being a gross teenage boy' now. to which i refute in advance: his Psychological Issues make this highly unlikely.) so we have now established that he does, probably, need to do at least some laundry

which is actually going to be the bulk of this answer because to be real with you although life is not all sunshine and rainbows for the minions of this violent criminal 15yo whose primary workplace condition is "you have to let me fuck with your nervous system in case i ever need to bodyjack you during an emergency" there is a vast difference between the notion of alec having people he pays to do his laundry and his father having the women he has kidnapped and abused and ruined the lives of wait on him hand and foot. vast, vast difference. alec's Turning Into His Father moments are like...when he gets a bit too upset and revenge-tortures someone largely unrelated to make himself feel better, not when he's a depressed busy teenager paying some people to toss his shit in the wash for him. (which i do think he presumably does yeah.) there's just no comparison there, he is by large Avoiding turning into his father, w/ exceptions that are far more thematically rich on the very rare occasion he backslides. we don't need to try digging something out of the hypothetical notion that it's sort of abusercore for him to not do his own laundry

[lyramundana]

lyra I finally had a thought I think you might appreciate 😈 this is not a request or anything, and if it doesn't vibe, leave it in your inbox BUT

I was building ikea furniture the other day and got thinking about how weird idol's lives are and how many basic life skills they probably lack. like we know most kpop idols at least finish school, but we've also all heard about hollywood actors being dumb as bricks.

so what basic shit do we think our skz boys, and especially our minsung boys, are just absolutely incapable of doing? we know minho can cook, but you can't tell me they didn't all have trouble figuring out laundry in their mojo dojo casa house of a dorm.

also can you imagine reader or your OC literally shaking their head at them hahahah

or would they get turned on by the weirdest shit because reader or your OC is competent and confident in small moments? like she makes really good coffee because she used to be a barista, or whatevs

just thoughts being thunk, do what you will 💓

-May, @skzms

omfg, this is actually one of my favourite scenarios💀 you read my mind or smh??

I totally know what you mean. While I think Stray Kids have learnt more than most after living by themselves in that dirty hole, I feel that after a while they grow used to the chaos and they barely got time to improve, considering their careers. Now they're more famous and probably richer, I feel they have other people doing these stuff for them. Also, most idols have shown in variety shows that they can barely fry eggs without guidance, so yeah

This got long, so beware

It's funny you mention my OC because this scenario fits her perfectly and her story. Vivi comes from a big family and due to her upbringing, she has grown up learning a lot of skills to be completely self-sufficient at a young age. And because pursuing a dance career isn't exactly cheap unless you're a kpop trainee, of course she has worked in some jobs to earn extra money. Shop assistant, waitress, babysitter, and even a bartender at some point, although this one was more like a hobby rather than a job, since she loves anything related to alcohol. It's very important for her to be independent and not rely on people.

Part of being a competitive dancer implies moving around a lot for tournaments, so she's used to live without external support and having no option but do things herself. Assemble furniture, cook food, house chores, handling the bills, you name it. After all, the more she can do by herself, the less money she has to spend.

I believe that most of the boys can do basic stuff, as long as they have the instructions in front of their eyes and can ask for help. Otherwise, they're lost. They know how to cook because they need to feed themselves and do some cleaning for hygiene, but that's it. They're clueless about anything else.

So it'll be like this. Imagine that, for some reason, Vivi and MinSung have to live together for a while, maybe for a show or a dare, or because they have out of necessity, I don't know. The apartment is big and cozy, but there's a tiny problem: There's no furniture, functional electricity or food. This isn't new for Vivi, so she simply accepts it and gets to work, while MinSung stand there like "wait, aren't they supposed to provide these stuff for us?"

So you have this girl acting as a babysitter and provider for two grown ass man, older than her, that can't even start the washing machine.

"So, how do we do this?"

"By pressing the big button with Start written on top..😑"

Going to buy the furniture is a mess, because while Vivi is carefully picking up the options based on what they need and knows where to look, the boys treat it as a fun trip. They're basically her children she has to look after, trying the beds and almost getting lost for going after something that caught their eyes.

"Hey Vivi, what is that? Can we take it? It looks so cool!"

"...that's a drill, Jisung"

They get confused when she leads them to the warehouse underneath and buys some boxes.

"Wait, weren't we going to buy the furniture?"

"Yes, duh, I have it all right here. We'll arrange them later at home"

"Wait, what? do you mean arrange them?!"

Vivi soon realizes she's going to have an extra load of work she didn't anticipate. Lots of face palming and taking deep breaths because seriously, how are they still alive??

She's casually arranging her wardrove like it's second nature to her, quickly and precise, knowing exactly where everything goes. She throws a glance at the boys and finds, well, complete disaster. They're nowhere half done, the instructions a mess of papers around them and none are holding the right tools for it. She's exasperated and shoos them away, taking care of everything as they watch.

And you're absolutely right, they find all of this sexy as fuck.

They stare at her in awe and admiration as she leads them through the different shops, keeping mental lists of everything they need and knowing stuff unknown to their ears. Their eyes sparkle as she speaks with terms they never heard before and takes all the stuff she claims they need. They follow her like lost puppies, eagerly waiting for her next orders. They specially stick to her hips in crowded zones, since she gives zero fucks about pushing people out of her way and telling them to move (their introvert asses could never)

They might have needed some cold showers after witnessing her arranging everything in the house. The furniture, the electricity cables, the pipes, acting like it's all stuff she does everyday. She needs to watch some tutorials for some of those chores, but she quickly gets the hang of it. Her figure all sweaty and red and her light clothing already clinging to her body from all the effort. Her strong arms on display with her tank top, her hair in a messy bun with some wet strands near her cheeks, some dirt on her face and holding a tool that looks like a murder weapon, and...ops, they're hard, time for another shower..

Jisung feels he might nut his pants when she lifts a fucking couch to check something underneath, holding it still with one hand while relying some of the weight on her shoulder. Minho once sat on it to annoy her, thinking she wouldn't be able to lift it with him there...turns out she did it anyway. And now there's two people wanting to nut in their pants.

She gives some easy chores to keep them busy. Minho is in charge of cooking and Jisung bring the ingredients. So after exhausting hours of working around, Vivi comes back to a full cooked meal as a "reward".

She's a professional hunter of discounts, bargains and anything that implies saving as much money as possible. She doesn't have the budget of an entire company supporting her, so she's used to tracking down the best offers and making sellers sweat to give her the price she wants. It's a battle of rhetoric and sheer determination, and the boys are once more in awe.

She discusses with the landlord about the apartment's issues and is ready to argue with anyone about her rights. She handles the bills and most of the financial matters.

Bonus: She once used a whole drill to fix the bed and closets instead of a screwdriver ("this is better, guys, my mother taught me"), headphones on to mute out the noise and the veins in her arms pecking out with the force of holding it, mindlessly doing the task.

Yeah, lots of the money is going down the cold water

@skzms here. I'll love to hear your input

[erik-even-wordier]

About the whole DOGE-will-rewrite Social Security's COBOL code

Posted to Facebook by Tim Boudreau on March 30, 2025.

About the whole DOGE-will-rewrite Social Security's COBOL code in some new language thing, since this is a subject I have a whole lot of expertise in, a few anecdotes and thoughts.

Some time in the early 2000s I was doing some work with the real-time Java team at Sun, and there was a huge defense contractor with a peculiar query: Could we document how much memory an instance of every object type in the JDK uses? And could we guarantee that that number would never change, and definitely never grow, in any future Java version?

I remember discussing this with a few colleagues in a pub after work, and talking it through, and we all arrived at the conclusion that the only appropriate answer to this question as "Hell no." and that it was actually kind of idiotic.

Say you've written the code, in Java 5 or whatever, that launches nuclear missiles. You've tested it thoroughly, it's been reviewed six ways to Sunday because you do that with code like this (or you really, really, really should). It launches missiles and it works.

A new version of Java comes out. Do you upgrade? No, of course you don't upgrade. It works. Upgrading buys you nothing but risk. Why on earth would you? Because you could blow up the world 10 milliseconds sooner after someone pushes the button?

It launches fucking missiles. Of COURSE you don't do that.

There is zero reason to ever do that, and to anyone managing such a project who's a grownup, that's obvious. You don't fuck with things that work just to be one of the cool kids. Especially not when the thing that works is life-or-death (well, in this case, just death).

Another case: In the mid 2000s I trained some developers at Boeing. They had all this Fortran materials analysis code from the 70s - really fussy stuff, so you could do calculations like, if you have a sheet of composite material that is 2mm of this grade of aluminum bonded to that variety of fiberglass with this type of resin, and you drill a 1/2" hole in it, what is the effect on the strength of that airplane wing part when this amount of torque is applied at this angle. Really fussy, hard-to-do but when-it's-right-it's-right-forever stuff.

They were taking a very sane, smart approach to it: Leave the Fortran code as-is - it works, don't fuck with it - just build a nice, friendly graphical UI in Java on top of it that *calls* the code as-is.

We are used to broken software. The public has been trained to expect low quality as a fact of life - and the industry is rife with "agile" methodologies *designed* to churn out crappy software, because crappy guarantees a permanent ongoing revenue stream. It's an article of faith that everything is buggy (and if it isn't, we've got a process or two to sell you that will make it that way).

It's ironic. Every other form of engineering involves moving parts and things that wear and decay and break. Software has no moving parts. Done well, it should need *vastly* less maintenance than your car or the bridges it drives on. Software can actually be *finished* - it is heresy to say it, but given a well-defined problem, it is possible to actually *solve* it and move on, and not need to babysit or revisit it. In fact, most of our modern technological world is possible because of such solved problems. But we're trained to ignore that.

Yeah, COBOL is really long-in-the-tooth, and few people on earth want to code in it. But they have a working system with decades invested in addressing bugs and corner-cases.

Rewriting stuff - especially things that are life-and-death - in a fit of pique, or because of an emotional reaction to the technology used, or because you want to use the toys all the cool kids use - is idiotic. It's immaturity on display to the world.

Doing it with AI that's going to read COBOL code and churn something out in another language - so now you have code no human has read, written and understands - is simply insane. And the best software translators plus AI out there, is going to get things wrong - grievously wrong. And the odds of anyone figuring out what or where before it leads to disaster are low, never mind tracing that back to the original code and figuring out what that was supposed to do.

They probably should find their way off COBOL simply because people who know it and want to endure using it are hard to find and expensive. But you do that gradually, walling off parts of the system that work already and calling them from your language-du-jour, not building any new parts of the system in COBOL, and when you do need to make a change in one of those walled off sections, you migrate just that part.

We're basically talking about something like replacing the engine of a plane while it's flying. Now, do you do that a part-at-a-time with the ability to put back any piece where the new version fails? Or does it sound like a fine idea to vaporize the existing engine and beam in an object which a next-word-prediction software *says* is a contraption that does all the things the old engine did, and hope you don't crash?

The people involved in this have ZERO technical judgement.

[nancypullen]

Creeping Toward September

Shhhh. The last three days we've woken up to temperatures hovering between 58-60 and I don't want to scare it away. I know it's still August, summer is still spreading her fiery breath around, and we're a solid month away from really pleasant weather, but this sneak peek is wonderful. Our daytime highs still soar to the 80's, but I'll take that cool morning kiss and dream about fall. I haven't posted in a week! We had the sweet grandgirl for three days and had a ball. We returned her Monday afternoon and then I took Tuesday off. I didn't lift a finger. Since then I've been cranking out earrings like my life depends on it. I still need to make cards and if I have time, do some of my altered art watches. I'm working on earrings first because they require more time. First I condition and blend the clay and decide what sort of pattern or look I want, then I roll and cut, and into the oven they go. Once they're baked I do a little sanding to smooth the edges, then they get an acrylic glaze and go into my little UV machine. When they're all pretty and glossy, I drill holes and put them together with jump rings and posts. None of it is hard, but it is a bit time consuming. I am building an inventory though, and that's the goal. My plan for Artisans on the Choptank is to have one display of autumn and Halloween earrings, one display of the local high school colors, and one display of just really FUN earrings - all colors and designs. I've made several pairs in the high school colors, and right now I'm in the thick of the autumn batch.

I'm really digging the gray, gold, and white. I was actually just using up scraps when I made those, but I may make more.

I won't be charging much because I know how imperfect these are. I'm not using high end findings, I'm still a bit clumsy with the whole process, and I'm simply not a perfectionist. If anything has to be exact, I'm not your gal. But for a few bucks, surely the ladies of Caroline County would like some fun earrings. I guess I'll find out. I'm planning to post this sign at my booth.

I may also have a little sign with a "days until Christmas" countdown. It's closer than you think.

So, that's what's keeping me busy. I'm happiest when I'm creating, so it's been a good week. I can't wait to complete the earring plan and get started on the cards. I've roughed out a couple of ideas.

Come on over to my booth and buy a gift for the fancy gal in your life and a card to go with it. One stop shopping! I have the Square thing for my phone so I can swipe a card, I have appropriate displays for my wares, and I'll have this banner on the front of my table.

That's me! I think that since my first foray into the craft fair world is in September, I'll use an orange table cloth and maybe some mini pumpkins with that banner. Keep it simple, but noticeable.

I'm trying not to over invest because this may be a flop. Or I might decide that I hate sitting at a booth all day. That banner was $7, my time is free (seriously, what else am I going to do?), and my supplies are mostly inexpensive. Clay is cheap. I don't want this to become a money pit of a hobby. Hopefully I can sell enough to pay for my spot at the event. Booth space for the day is $50 and it's only four hours! I think that's steep. Maybe I'm naïve.

Aright, enough about that. You've probably fallen asleep while I yammered on about clay earrings. B-O-R-I-N-G. Sorry. Honestly, I can't share a zillion photos of the grandgirl (which is what I want to do) and there's not much else happening around here. The mister is still running far and wide doing his photo stuff. The last two evenings he was at Summerfest. That's Denton's BIG send-off to summer, celebrating harvest as well as sending the kids back to school. They don't start school until after Labor Day here (throwback to my childhood!). Anyway, at Summerfest there's a lot of good music, dancing, food, fireworks, a play area for kids with giant sides and bouncy houses, and so on. I probably should have gone, but I end up attending those sorts of things alone. That's no fun. I figured I'd stay home and use those hours to produce inventory (I was trying to avoid saying earrings again). Last year I tried to enjoy it, but I had horrible sciatica pain and I was still feeling puny from a double bout of covid. I did enjoy the music though!

Heyyyyy, speaking of pain...guess who is living practically pain-free these days? Ol' Grancy has found the perfect recipe for feeling whole again! First, movement. Walking for just 30 minutes every morning and being diligent about my stretches and some core work has made a huge difference. I'd like to get a treadmill and increase my waking time. I used to do 3.5 miles every morning and it set the tone for the rest of my day. That was before my ankle surgery. After the ankle surgery I tried so hard to maintain activity, water aerobics, Jazzercise,etc. I even had a routine before Jazzercise - ibuprofen one hour before class, after class I'd drive home with an ice wrap on my ankle and then elevate it. Stupid, huh? THEN WE MOVED. That move was when I hurt my back and the sciatica stuff started. If you want to know how much true sciatica issues hurt, brawny boxer Mike Tyson uses a wheel chair when his flairs up. So PT, stretches, and walking had reduced my pain by about half. I'm not bragging when I say that I endure pain well. That's just how I'm made. An ER nurse once called me "stoic". But that doesn't mean it's not exhausting. It takes a toll, it robs you of joy. It's no bueno. That's when someone I love and trust told me all about gummies. Let me start by saying I've never smoked pot in my life. I've never had a negative view of it, it just wasn't my thing. I've never been a drinker either, I don't care what anyone else drinks or smokes, it just wasn't for me. Do you, enjoy your life, none of my business. Maryland recently legalized marijuana, like so many other states, and people are becoming more educated about the plant, the products, and the benefits. What I knew could have fit in a teacup. I learned that medical marijuana is often used for chronic pain with great success and no side effects. I cringe at the thought of using prescription meds with a long list of possible and horrifying side effects. I was already living on a steady diet of Tylenol (not good) that only half worked. So when that dear person explained to me what she uses and how, I was intrigued. Fast forward to visiting a dispensary and telling the very helpful person at the counter, "I don't want to get high, but I'm old and I hurt." She said, "Gotcha." Because I am a lightweight with everything from alcohol to cold medicine, I tried one quarter of a gummie to start. One fourth of a CBD/THC gummie and I am a perfectly normal, not high, PAIN-FREE person! I am astounded. I knew that THC is used for people who are suffering with conditions from cancer to Lyme Disease, but I assumed that those patients were trading lucidity for relief. Maybe at higher doses they are, I don't know. Still, better than so many of the alternatives. So this plant, possibly put on Earth just for this purpose, criminalized and stigmatized (with the help of big pharma who wants your money), is the simplest solution of all. Of course, just like alcohol, there are people who abuse it. Alcohol, oxycontin, all sorts of legal things are abused. People are people. I'm just saying that 1/4 of a little gummie candy allows me to move through my day without pain and feel like myself again. No expensive, addictive drug with scary side effects - just a plant. Hallelujah. I may regret sharing that, because plenty of people will judge without researching. I'm okay with it. I know what I know. I'm not a drinker, a smoker, a pill taker, or a whiner. I'll just say that if your state has been smart enough to legalize it, and you have any sort of chronic pain, I'm happy to answer any of your questions about my experience. I'm still learning, but I can tell you that it's been a miracle for me. I'm dancing again! No foggy brain, just relief.

If anyone had told young me that old me would be chewing up pot candy, I'd have called you a damn liar. Old me is wiser, thank goodness. Alright, it's past time for me to get some chores done. I've already cleaned the bathrooms but I definitely need to water a few things outside. A couple of days ago I tidied up the gardens and hacked down about half of the spent sunflowers (because I'm pain free!). I stuck the heads into a staked planter so the yellow finches can keep enjoying them.

Once I finish outside I can get busy painting eyes on these ghosties and giving them some glitter.

Can you tell I don't use my good baking sheets for making earrings? Some eyes, some glitter, and some posts and they'll be ready to go! I'm not going to do very many cutesy earrings - just these ghosts and some pumpkins. I don't want to get too stuck on holidays, I'd rather do seasons. Anywho, wishing you a wonderful Sunday. I hope that yours is as busy or as quiet as you like. Do something that delights you, whether that's a lazy afternoon in a hammock with a book or a deep clean of your space. Take care of yourself, body and soul. It's important. Sending out loads of love. Stay safe, stay well. XOXO, Nancy

[cielsosinfel]

i had to watch the film version of "the girl with all the gifts" for my zombie cinema class, and i'm still turning it over in my head. it was really good- as someone who really enjoyed the book, i also really enjoyed the movie. it made a lot of changes to the story that i found interesting! outside the obvious changes regarding justineau and melanie's respective races.

one of the most immediately notable changes is the absence of the "junkers"- the antagonistic human faction which work to fill the role of "villains" in the novel. they don't exist in the film, and are never even referenced.

this is a pretty interesting change to make, because a point of the novel is that humans will never be able to recreate society, or build a better society, because they'll always be drawn into violence against one another for resources. (this is not a conclusion I buy at all, and is something I've started to hate about zombie/post-apocalyptic fiction; actually, this episode of Jewish Currents that talks about the conservative & zionist politics of TLOU series goes into this as well: https://jewishcurrents.org/the-politics-of-the-last-of-us )

so when Melanie sets fire to the fungal spores that will spread on the wind and essentially infect the entire globe with the zombification fungus, and makes her speech to Parks about how the second-generation child zombies who retain complex cognitive thought won't be able to rebuild a better society without the loss of humans, the conclusion is essentially "the world cannot heal and move on unless humans are gone and can no longer ruin things with endless cycles of violence against one another and the environment."

the junkers are absent in the film, but it still concludes with the spores being set on fire to infect the remaining human population. (interestingly, in the novel Melanie asks a Parks to use his flamethrower to set the spores alight; in the movie it's by her own hand.) I really like the line Melanie says to him when he's grieving the loss of humanity: "It's not over. It's just not yours anymore." the absence of the junkers changes this a lot imo. but the message of "sometimes we need to let go and allow significant change so things can move on and get better"... i'm not eloquent enough to write about this topic lol

another interesting change: in the novel, Melanie finds the group of second-gen child zombies playing in an abandoned theater, and the scene has this somber, lonely tone. she never actually interacts with any of the children, though. in the movie, she comes across them in a play area in a business tower, with light streaming softly through the windows (one of the few soft and bright scenes; in our class someone actually pointed out most of the movie has that grimy dark "Middle Eastern War Movie" filter lol). eventually after the children zombies eat Gallagher and are about to eat Justinea and parks, Melanie jumps in, snarls and communicates to them as a zombie would, and beats the leader child to full-death- which is interesting because it shows her utilizing everything that makes her a "monster," everything that has led to her being dehumanized and objectified, everything that has the human researchers have been trying to drill out of her, to save the day. it isn't just her displays of normative humanity that are important, are essential to making her the person she is, it's just as much the fungal-zombie side of her that others would kill her for.

WOW THIS POST GOT LONG

things also of note:

-Justineau in the book is spurred to help the zombie children learn to be humans because she has guilt over killing a child; this never comes up in the film, all we see is a woman who sees the humanity in these children kept as little more than lab specimens

-The complete absence of the romantic/sex scenes lmao thank you

-At the end of the book, we see Justineau donning a hazmat suit so she can walk among Melanie and the city-dwelling zombie children, teaching them the alphabet; in the film, the ending is about the same but Justineau is stuck inside the mobile lab, unable to expose herself to the spores. It's a completely different tone! I really prefer Justineau finding a way to continue to living among the kids, even despite the risk of exposure.

-Caldwell dies trying to kill Melanie to make a vaccine in the movie; in the book Caldwell experiments on another "intelligent zombie" and acknowledges there is no hope of a vaccine, it's impossible to kill the fungus. very different vibes regarding her death and the progression of the story's ending from there.

[trooper1023]

Tim Boudreau on FB:

About the whole DOGE-will-rewrite Social Security's COBOL code in some new language thing, since this is a subject I have a whole lot of expertise in, a few anecdotes and thoughts.

Some time in the early 2000s I was doing some work with the real-time Java team at Sun, and there was a huge defense contractor with a peculiar query: Could we document how much memory an instance of every object type in the JDK uses? And could we guarantee that that number would never change, and definitely never grow, in any future Java version?

I remember discussing this with a few colleagues in a pub after work, and talking it through, and we all arrived at the conclusion that the only appropriate answer to this question as "Hell no." and that it was actually kind of idiotic.

Say you've written the code, in Java 5 or whatever, that launches nuclear missiles. You've tested it thoroughly, it's been reviewed six ways to Sunday because you do that with code like this (or you really, really, really should). It launches missiles and it works.

A new version of Java comes out. Do you upgrade? No, of course you don't upgrade. It works. Upgrading buys you nothing but risk. Why on earth would you? Because you could blow up the world 10 milliseconds sooner after someone pushes the button?

It launches fucking missiles. Of COURSE you don't do that.

There is zero reason to ever do that, and to anyone managing such a project who's a grownup, that's obvious. You don't fuck with things that work just to be one of the cool kids. Especially not when the thing that works is life-or-death (well, in this case, just death).

Another case: In the mid 2000s I trained some developers at Boeing. They had all this Fortran materials analysis code from the 70s - really fussy stuff, so you could do calculations like, if you have a sheet of composite material that is 2mm of this grade of aluminum bonded to that variety of fiberglass with this type of resin, and you drill a 1/2" hole in it, what is the effect on the strength of that airplane wing part when this amount of torque is applied at this angle. Really fussy, hard-to-do but when-it's-right-it's-right-forever stuff.

They were taking a very sane, smart approach to it: Leave the Fortran code as-is - it works, don't fuck with it - just build a nice, friendly graphical UI in Java on top of it that *calls* the code as-is.

We are used to broken software. The public has been trained to expect low quality as a fact of life - and the industry is rife with "agile" methodologies *designed* to churn out crappy software, because crappy guarantees a permanent ongoing revenue stream. It's an article of faith that everything is buggy (and if it isn't, we've got a process or two to sell you that will make it that way).

It's ironic. Every other form of engineering involves moving parts and things that wear and decay and break. Software has no moving parts. Done well, it should need *vastly* less maintenance than your car or the bridges it drives on. Software can actually be *finished* - it is heresy to say it, but given a well-defined problem, it is possible to actually *solve* it and move on, and not need to babysit or revisit it. In fact, most of our modern technological world is possible because of such solved problems. But we're trained to ignore that.

Yeah, COBOL is really long-in-the-tooth, and few people on earth want to code in it. But they have a working system with decades invested in addressing bugs and corner-cases.

Rewriting stuff - especially things that are life-and-death - in a fit of pique, or because of an emotional reaction to the technology used, or because you want to use the toys all the cool kids use - is idiotic. It's immaturity on display to the world.

Doing it with AI that's going to read COBOL code and churn something out in another language - so now you have code no human has read, written and understands - is simply insane. And the best software translators plus AI out there, is going to get things wrong - grievously wrong. And the odds of anyone figuring out what or where before it leads to disaster are low, never mind tracing that back to the original code and figuring out what that was supposed to do.

They probably should find their way off COBOL simply because people who know it and want to endure using it are hard to find and expensive. But you do that gradually, walling off parts of the system that work already and calling them from your language-du-jour, not building any new parts of the system in COBOL, and when you do need to make a change in one of those walled off sections, you migrate just that part.

We're basically talking about something like replacing the engine of a plane while it's flying. Now, do you do that a part-at-a-time with the ability to put back any piece where the new version fails? Or does it sound like a fine idea to vaporize the existing engine and beam in an object which a next-word-prediction software *says* is a contraption that does all the things the old engine did, and hope you don't crash?

The people involved in this have ZERO technical judgement.

[whereporygon]

Hey, I wanna do the 'I met with my younger self' thing too. Wall of text beyond the cut.

I met with my younger self today. She was five, ten minutes early while I was ten minutes late. She tries to hide it behind a polite smile and a chirpy greeting but I know that she is slightly disappointed. She knows she is not that good at hiding her reactions, but whatever makes this moment pass works. I don't mention it. I don't mention either that I also know she panicked because what if I had forgotten about our outing.

She orders a bottle of water and nothing else, I order a warm beverage. I don't know how this will go, but I am not risking it going wrong due to my own discomfort.

There's a beat of silence after the pleasantries ('so, how are you doing?' 'good! and you?') before I break the ice. I show her my tattoos, or rather the ideas I have for future tattoos saved on my phone. She's thrilled by the designs, the concepts, but mostly by the fact I'm actually going to do it. I'm researching and saving money, I'm looking for artists, this is not a drill. It's not something that needs to be stashed away anymore.

I have her attention now. I tell her that we have pets now! Sort of, but that's enough to make her nearly jump out of her seat. Four cats and a bunch of chickens. I show her photos and I tell her some funny stories, although I have a feeling that she is not listening to me half of the time, as her eyes are glued to a picture of a Siamese kitten on a barn bucket. It's alright though.

I try to buy time. I don't have the heart to tell her that the relationship with our childhood best friend is complicated at best and that we never finished that fancy double degree our mother wanted us to do we wanted to do so badly- hell, not even one of the degrees. She won't listen to reason.

So I go on about how we learn how to get along with people (as expected, it wasn't a just us issue), how we are planning on building a PC and that we dabble on character design and development, even if it's on the side. And that we actually landed a date with someone! She tries to play it cool, but she's obviously happy about it and maybe even relieved. I don't tell her the guy was a bit of a weirdo though, I can't take what will make for a funny experience away from her.

But there's only so much I can do before I have to face the inevitable. She asks about college. She asks about what I do for work. She's so certain that at least I must be on the way to become I still don't know what exactly, that she breezes over it but I have to stop her. I can't hide it any longer. Maybe this way she'll actually do things right.

And it goes just how I thought it would. She shouts so loud that people turn to look at us, and by sheer miracle I manage to rein her in before I lose her completely, but the look of pure shock and embarrasment in her face is something that I won't be able to forget for a long while. It's mortifying.

I tell her that we were miserable and that it was a dead end for us, and that she knew it. We did not see ourselves working in that field at all, and I couldn't figure it out like she would have wanted me to. That it was either continuing doing what others wanted of us first, always at our expense, or our life. I chose our life, ourselves.

She gives me an empty stare. I can't believe you did this to me. What now?

Well, not everything was that bad. We met a lot of people who we would end up cherishing during that time. We put ourselves first, something unheard of. We are just beginning to figure out who we are. We have a little bit of self-esteem.

There are many more things that I think she needs to know, but even though I want to share, badly, to prevent the grief she will go through, she has had enough for today.

We pay for our drinks and depart with curt goodbies. She doesn't look back. It's strange to become a stranger to yourself.

[zonerobotnik]

Stanley is my favorite among the older Pines.

Stanford is unsympathetic and unlikable. And their dad, I hope he died a lonely and painful death before going to hell.

Okay, got three of these to answer, so let's do this all in one here. I think he'd be really upset if he went to Hell, considering the Jewish people don't believe it exists. That's a Christian thing. [Stanford is self-righteous, arrogant and a hypocrite.

Yes, he was abused by Filbrick and bullied for his appearance, but that doesn't excuse that he doesn't even notice when he hurts people around him.]

Stanford was made to believe all that mattered about him was his brains, and he was otherwise a mistake. Also think about the fact that he had some extra time with their abusive father, who no doubt drilled it into him that his brother was the worst thing ever, that he'd be succeeding in life if he wasn't for him. He doesn't realize he's hurting people because he doesn't know how to connect or empathize properly. Stanley has this problem, too. He also hurts people and either doesn't care or doesn't realize it, or just laughs it off if someone points it out to him. Let's not brush off how Stan had an obvious favorite nibling and treated Dipper like crap in an effort to "toughen him up" while Mabel was treated with the utmost care and warmth. Both of them learn to do better, and they start traveling together at the end of the series, after facing the apocalypse together and healing from their past. [It really hurts that there was no kind of closure with Filbrick.

He was an abusive asshole who couldn't even bother going to his son's funeral. If a pedophile creep came to him and offered him 300$ for sleeping with Stanley he would have most likely just shrugged.] This is actually cutting into the middle of this one, but I'm going to cut in here. I know people are latching onto the "he made Stanley stand outside with a price tag on him" secret from the Bill site, but I honestly don't believe that he would've gone that far. I think that if someone actually did try buying him, he'd have shot them behind the pawn shop, stole their stuff and sold their belongings. Because while he was abusive and he was willing to throw Stanley out once he was older, I doubt that he would've done the equivalent of selling his young son on the dark market. We saw hints of him actually sort of caring about Stanley in the graphic novel about Stan and Ford's childhood, after all. He's terrible, but he's not "ringing a bell to force someone to obey" terrible. He's not "likely to marry off his kid to an old rich guy to get more clout and power" terrible or "extort his child for money from birth" terrible. Filbrick was terrible, but he cannot be compared to Pacifica's bell-ringing dad, or even Gideon's memory-wiping dad. And at least they had Caryn to balance out Filbrick's strict nature. It's sad that he didn't go to the funeral, but his grudge against Stan for ruining something that he saw as their ticket to a better life is not the same as him putting Stan out with a sign for a few hours after Stan broke something in the shop. He wouldn't have stayed out there, the fact that he was willing to take the money from Ford to pay for him is evidence of that. If he really wanted him gone, he would've refused Ford's payment.

[He most likely just died and that's it.

And that's what hurts, it's real, it's how the majority of abusive relationship go down.

Just something to show that he got what he deserved. All the other villains got something. Some sort of punishment, something humbling, something that make's them experience how their victims felt.

Children shouldn't be afraid of their parents. It just hurts to watch.

It should have been dealt with.] It should've, but you gotta think of the era. A lot of bad stuff got glossed over back in the 50s and 60s, people didn't care about that kind of stuff as much. There's so much shock and horror about all the stories cropping up now that people just accepted as normal back then. Quite frankly, the fact they aren't scarred up, that they didn't run away from home despite clearly being able to if they really wanted to, is a sign that things weren't as bad as a lot of people assume. Filbrick was cold, but he didn't beat his children black and blue. He didn't cut off Ford's sixth finger, even though it would've "fixed" his deformity. Stan's feelings got hurt, but he wasn't hiding bruises. Even when he threw him out, he didn't punch him, just threw him out. The packed bag could've just been one of many panic-bags that the family had for emergencies. We got only a snapshot of their life and we don't actually know the man at all, only little stories here and there. We know even less about Sherman and whether he's an older or younger brother, and while we're at it let's talk about how Dipper and Mabel's parents were on the verge of a divorce when they sent the kids away to live with a relative they barely knew for an entire summer and we don't know what Dipper and Mabel went home to. And how about Stan's and Ford's mother that supposedly saw all the abuse people think happened and did nothing to stop it? Filbrick may have been cruel and very strict and hard to please, but he wasn't a monster. Stan never froze up at the sound of his keys or something. He may not have been a good dad, but he wasn't a terrible person. But then, maybe I'm projecting a little. He kind of reminds me of my own dad. I was the Stan of the family growing up. But I will always maintain that Preston Northwest is the WORST dad in Gravity Falls, followed by Bud Gleeful.

[seansilv25]

So finally, after a 3-year run, Marvel What If has come to a close. And even though a lot of people didn't like it, I enjoyed it for what it was (Because apparently me and the majority can never agree on anything JESUS CHRIST-)

But if you've been around my page long enough, you know the drill: here's my brief thoughts on every episode of the season.

8: What If... The Watcher Disappeared? [This one just felt a bit slow, to be honest. They were definitely trying to set up for their big finale (Obviously) but just took probably a bit too much time in it. Though I did like how Infinity Ultron got a pseudo-character arc though. As well as more material for a potential Death Battle with Heaven Ascension DIO

7: What If... Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers? [Y'know, I thought a mecha and Kaiju episode would be more entertaining, but I don't seem to remember the mechs doing all that much. Sam and Bruce's new friendship was nice, but I don't know... if you show Kaiju's and giant robots, we want to see them fight! Did that one line of Godzilla 2014 tell you nothing?

6: What If... What If? [The idea of ending the series on the Watcher facing his actions of intervening felt surprisingly fitting since he's the one character who's been in every single episode. I also liked the ending bit with the Eminence learning about seeing and not observing. Though aside from that... not much else.

5: What If... the Emergence Destroyed Earth? [Holy shit, Cy Yu's in this?! This episode was somewhat similar to the Zombie episode in some regards, what with the world being in ruin and only a few surviving heroes remaining. But what this one does in comparison to the other is leaning even harder into the loss of comrades and the dwindling hope of salvaging a better tomorrow, something that I'm sure characters like Trunks and Silver have to deal with on the reg. And seeing the Watcher coming to grips with this world's futility and intervening to help save it did feel a bit gripping. But seriously, Cy Yu in a Marvel show? For real?

4: What If... 1872? [If any of you couldn't tell, some of my favorites often wound up being the ones heavily based off other comics with different themes. First Marvel Zombies, then 1602, and now 1872 ain't too far off from the top. I just like the different atmosphere's the episodes produce, and this one is dripping in wild western flair. Even if having martial arts be a big focus in a cowboy setting is a bit odd.

3: What If... Howard the Duck Got Hitched [Look... I know a lot of people hate the goofy episodes, bit I kind of liked this one just for how bananas everyone went in order to get that egg, not even mentioning the bizarre suddenness of their Raiders-style deaths at the egg's hand. And even as weird as Darcy and Howard's ship relationship is, with the way they talk to each other, I can actually buy them as a decent couple.

2: What If... the Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier? [Wasn't really expecting this one to be one I really liked, but I was thoroughly surprised. It had kind of a Planes, Trains, & Automobiles vibe to it (Or I guess you could go with a Deadpool & Wolverine vibe), and I really liked how the relationship with Bucky and the Red Guardian played out. Even in the end when they went down, they went down together. It's just neat, I tell ya.

1: What If... Agatha Went to Hollywood? [Remember what I said about the different tones of episodes like 1872? This kind of applies here. I like how much they leaned into the 40's/50's Hollywood style, with that dance-off number in the middle being pretty sick. (Take THAT, dance-off to save the universe!) And even though I haven't watched The Eternals, the way Arishem was portrayed (and bitched out by Agatha) was kinda neat as well.

But with that, What if is done. I said this at the top but I still enjoyed this series, even if it wasn't what most others wanted out of it. It even got me into thinking about what ifs for other series, like Dragon Ball and Sonic (I've got some good ones cooking up for the latter, lemme tell ya). But even if the series is over right now, maybe it'll get picked back up to tell more stories later. After all... time, space, reality... it's more than a linear path.

And to all those who bitch about the goofy-toned episodes, in the words of many Foghorn Leghorn cartoons...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH SHADDAP!!!

[rodolfoparras]

Gotta keep you on your toes 🕺😈

And I am NOT gonna stay away from your husband! Both of you are fun to harass

Anyways, fun fact did you know bees have a burrowing instinct? Lots of DIY bee homes are just drilled homes into chunks of wood and stuff

So! J, my father 😒 (I hate him so he gets first initial), J put cameras up a few weeks ago and instead of buying extension cords, he drilled holes through the outer walls to run cables into rooms with a plugin.

My room is one of them! First day, there is a WASP in my room. I don't mind much, I like bees, and it was just chilling, didn't bother me, he was just freaked out. J promised to Caulk the holes. Guess what?? He doesn't.

Today, I woke up to my cat jumping off me and a loud buzzing. Thought it was the wasp and didn't want her to get stung. It was actually a HUGE fucking bumble bee! I love bumble bees

But my cat fucked him up and he was struggling to fly. So I had to scoop him up and let him crawl all over my arm (which really freaked me out after the spider incident, was also scared he'd crawl up my sleeve) so I could release him out the backdoor, where he kept bumping his head against the glass before flying away

Probably gonna just calk up the hole myself because I don't want more flying bugs in here 😕 J obviously isn't going to, and I won't be asking him again (we got into a fight and are ignoring each other)

But anyways I guess 🕺🕺🕺

Started watching DOOM Patrol, I love you Larry Trainor, you tragic little gay man

-🐧

I did not know that they had a burrowing instinct! However now that you mention bumble bees they have a set path they follow when polluting followers they also follow this set path when flying home or wherever they stay so when they hit their head they get disoriented and lose the track of the path 😭 or if you think a bumble bee is following you it isn’t you’re just in their way 😭

Also no offense but j sounds ridiculous for drilling holes into walls instead of buying extension cords isn’t that double the work you have to 1. Drill 2. At some point patch that up 💀

Also I’m glad your kitty didn’t get bit by any of them but what a legend for chasing the bumble bee down😭

This is my first time hearing about doom patrol! What is it about 🫶🏻

[starlostastronaut]

━ SPORT DATES WITH SKZ

PAIRING: ot8 x reader

GENRE: fluff, headcanons

CW: f-word in minho's

what sports i think bf!skz would enjoy with you. (also this is me projecting a bit cuz chan's and innie's would be my ideal dates lmao) @stayconnecteed provided ideas for hyunlix so thank you sm! <3

masterlist here

BANG CHAN ↬ swimming

this is a surprise to literally no one

pool/beach dates where you just hang out and relax are a regular thing

but once he learns you love water as much as him, it's on

you always want to race him, boasting about how you're going to beat him

spoiler alert, you don't

sometimes he secretly lets you win (though you know he held back)

your first kiss happened while swimming in the ocean

you were holding onto chris for support, when he just leaned in and kissed you

also, underwater kisses !!

LEE MINHO ↬ archery

you complimented him on his skills on isac

you also expressed the desire to learn on multiple ocassions

one day he just said fuck it and took you to an archery range

at first he just paid you a few lessons, but then started going with you because "i need to practice for the next isac"

actually he just wanted to spend time with you but would never admit it

you no longer need a coach but he still likes to give you tips now and then

SEO CHANGBIN ↬ air hockey

while waiting for a game to be available on your arcade date, you noticed an empty air hockey table

"can we try that, bin? please?"

he can't say no to you, so that's how you found yourself on one side of the table with a mallet in your hand

neither of you knows how to play but it can't be that hard, right?

you both are terrible at it

but it's fun and there's always room for improvement

the real surprise comes when you visit the dorm one day only to find an air hockey table in the middle of the living room

"look yn, now we can play without going to the other side of seoul"

HWANG HYUNJIN ↬ badminton

mentioning you used to play badminton in front of hyunjin was a mistake

he immediately booked a court

and bought you both new matching rackets and skirts

he challenged you to a match

and lost

he began secretly practising with felix so he's ready for a rematch

you play regularly now

hyunjin even tried to convince his members to play with you once (they did under the promise of free dinner)

after that it has become stricly your and hyunjin's private activity

HAN JISUNG ↬ basketball

it started as a joke because you're both short

but you took a liking to basketball surprisingly quickly

you have an ongoing competition of who can score the most shots in a row

or sometimes you just play one on one

jisung has a whiteboard with your scores in his room

whoever is the loser at the end of the month has to pay for date night the winner chooses

you try to meet up and play at least once in two weeks

LEE FELIX ↬volleyball

he decided to play when you were visiting his family in australia

can't believe you never played beach volleyball

has made it his personal mission to teach you at least the basics

which meant an intense volleyball drill for the first five days of your vacation ("what happened to my sunshine?" "volleyball is a serious matter, yn. we can cuddle after you get the overhand serve right")

felix somehow roped chan and his girlfriend into it

so now you had a double date/death match (as the aussie boys called it) scheduled for next week

you and felix lost

at least he bought you ice cream afterwards as a consolation price

a rematch was definitely planned for the next time you were all free

KIM SEUNGMIN ↬ baseball

this one is pretty self-explanatory

for your first date he took you to Lotte game since you're both fans

it has become a tradition to go to games together

you love stealing seungmin's baseball caps

but god forbid he sees you with another team's cap

"i don't care the Yankees one is popular, you are not wearing that while i'm the room with you"

will totally make a scene out of it

also will buy you more Lotte merch because "you can't just go around looking like a traitor"

you and jeongin lowkey make fun of him for it but secretly you love it

YANG JEONGIN ↬ motorcycle racing

say thank you to superboard mv for putting jeongin and racing in my mind

one day he randomly joined you when you were watching MotoGP and got quickly invested

during the season he tries to watch with you every race

when he doesn't have time you record the broadcast and watch it with him later

it has become a date without you both knowing it really (seungmin had to point it out)

jeongin promised to take you for a "real" date to a circuit to watch irl one day

for his birthday you got him his favourite racer's merch

you constantly bicker about your faves and passionately discuss the lineup for every season

© starlostastronaut 2023 | do not repost/translate my work without permission