#Smart Garbage Can Market

[darlingdaisyfarm]

can I have something with Stan in his scamming era? (where he founded Stan Co. Enterprises) 🙏🙏 begging you because damn that man looked so hot here

💸₊˚⊹ kiss me, i’m not buying 𖦹.ᡣ𐭩˚ salesman!Stan Pines x reader

a/n: here it is! ugh, the grip this man has on me. i didn’t know whether to make this smut or sfw (believe me, i debated it for way too long), so i went the sfw route this time, but i’d be more than happy to write something spicier for salesman!Stan if y’all are interested !! 

you're standing in the middle of a sketchy flea market just off the highway and honestly it’s not exactly where you’d pictured spending your saturday afternoon, wandering through the rows of mismatched booths, scanning piles of junk that no sane person could ever need.

it's hot, too sticky, gross. your shirt clings to your back and you're already regretting stopping here.

but just as you’re about to leave, your eyes land on him. a man in a teal shirt with a collar so wide it’s begging for attention, leaving his chest hair on display that he’s clearly proud of, along with a chunky gold chain around his neck. his suitcase has clearly seen better days, but what sets him apart from the crowd is his wide smile, like he’s about to either sell you a miracle or steal your last dime. 

of course, you’d seen him around, not in person, but in loud, greasy ads on TV where he was always shouting, waving some half-broken thing, performing like it was gold, spitting promises about "how much you could make!" with a grin that could sell you your own reflection and make you think you needed to buy it.

and just because you’re lucky, he clocks you immediately. his eyes light up, oh a jackpot, Stan thinks. and before you can even pretend to be invisible, he’s striding over like he’s just found a hundred-dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. the suitcase bounces in his grip with each step and you’re already brainstorming ways to politely eject yourself from this situation.

"hey there, sweetie!" he talks warmly, kindly, so charismatic as if he’s known you forever and isn’t trying to scam you out of your wallet. “lookin’ for the deal of the century? 'cause I got it right here.” 

who even talks like that? your first thought is to walk away, but he doesn’t wait for your reply, flipping open his battered suitcase with a dramatic fwoosh, inside is a chaotic mess of. . . you don’t even know how to call it, whatever the hell this is.  

garbage. actual garbage.

“behold!” Stan announces, plucking out what looks like a glorified spatula, holding it up like it’s excalibur. “the ‘multi-purpose super-scraper deluxe!’ clears snow, scrapes gum, defends yer honor in a bar fight! this baby does it all.”

you blink, thinking, processing. then blink again. there’s no fucking way this man is serious.

“uh,” you squint at him, trying to keep a straight face. “why. . . would I need that?”  

Stan gasps like you just insulted his mother. “why wouldn’t ya? c’mon, sweetheart, yer too smart not to see the potential here! no more sticky messes, no more snowed-in mornings! and if some jerk at the bar gives ya trouble,” he mimics an exaggerated swing with the scraper, accompanied by sound effects. “you clock ‘em with the handle. it’s genius!”

your lips twitch, fighting not to curve into a grin. he’s ridiculous. his whole speech is absurd, but goddamn if it isn’t entertaining. he’s so into it, so unabashedly shameless, that you can’t help but laugh.

noticing your reaction, which he honestly expected, Stan leans closer, lowering his voice like he’s about to tell you some big, mind breaking secret. “tell ya what, baby. normally, this masterpiece’d run ya twenty bucks. but for you,” he winks. "fifteen! and maybe somethin’ else.”  

your brow arches. “somethin’ else? like what?”  

Stan rubs the back of his neck, pretending to be some shy, harmless guy who’s definitely not scamming you. “aw, nothin’ much. just a teensy lil kiss on the cheek, y’know, for good luck. gotta keep the ol’ sales streak alive!”

you freeze for a beat, caught off guard by his audacity and you hesitate. not because you’re scared, he’s too goofy to be threatening, but because you’re trying to figure out his angle. is he serious? does he actually think this will work?  

but the worst part is that it works. you hate yourself for not being able to reject, and him for being so damn smiley, friendly and charismatic. his shamelessness, his outrageous speech, the sheer brazenness, it all works against you in ways you hate to admit.

“fine,” you mutter, crossing your arms. “one kiss. but only if this thing actually scrapes gum off my shoe.”  

“deal!” his grin stretches impossibly wider in triumph, and you already know you’ve lost.  

you lean in cautiously, heart kicking up just a little, despite your best efforts to stay calm. it’s a kiss on the cheek. nothing weird. nothing big. quick, harmless, done. but just as your lips are about to brush his skin he— he what?!

the bastard moves, turns his head at the last possible second, so instead of his cheek, your lips collide with his.

you should stop, you must pull away and slap him hard for pulling that kind of shit, but for some reason you don’t. you let him kiss you and it feels warm, too good, contrary to his nature as a cunning salesman. Stan’s hand grazes your arm, daring you to stay in the moment even as your head spins. but then realisation comes, a little common sense hits you and you jerk back with wide eyes, looking at him in shock, stunned and breathless.

pleased with himself, Stan smiles cheekily at you with smug expression, looking as if he had just committed the greatest robbery of his life.

“well, what do ya know?” he chuckles, running a finger over his lips. “good luck for both of us.”  

what you don’t expect is to run into him again. weeks later, at another flea market, and then again at a diner on the highway.

the third time, Stan grins like it’s fate. “oh, ain’t this somethin’, sweetie? maybe the universe itself wants us to keep bumpin’ into each other.”

[gh0st-t0wn3]

Lmk ss edits + Headcanons, Part 2 (Pigsy, Tang, Sandy, Sun Wukong, Macaque)

- He/Him

- Bisexual

- Huge environmentalist, if you put any garbage or recycling in the wrong bin expect to get at least a three hour lecture, no you can not escape this, yes MK and Mei have tried, no they did not succeed

- ONLY shops from farmers markets/family businesses, you will never catch this man supporting a corporation

- Use to steal Tang's college hoodies

- Took him the longest to get used to having Redson around and a part of the group , but eventually warmed up to him (is still kinda salty about Redson burning MK's room though)

- Grows his own herbs

- Gets incredibly frustrated when he gets the hiccups (writing this as I'm fighting off hiccups)

- Loves watching true crime shows and listening to true crime podcasts while he does household chores or while he's setting up/closing the shop

- Got his ears pierced with Tang

- MK and Mei call him mom when he's being overbearing, Tang calls him mom now too to tease him

- Once caught Mei and MK sneaking food out of the kitchen at 3am and beat them with a broom for a solid minute because he was too drowsy to recognize them and assumed they were intruders (they were fine)

- Is the type of person to call his husband (Tang) "bro", "dude" etc

- Got drunk in college once and talked about nothing but how much he loved Tang, didn't remember any of it the next day but Tang asked him out pretty quickly after that

- Exchanged a few recipes with DBK while they were at the beach, they still do exchange more recipes once in a while but they don't talk much outside of cooking related topics

- Learned how to play dnd in college because Tang liked the game and ended up liking it a lot more than he expected to so they wound up playing together all the time (they still play it once in a while if they have time)

- Him and Sandy get together every other weekend to try and help Pigsy with his anger management issues

- Never called MK his son while he was growing up because he was scared that MK's real family would show up one day to take him back home, finally realized that no one was gonna show up a short while after MK turned 10 and started acting like an actual parent (MK always saw Pigsy as his dad though)

- Always says "this is the last time" when giving Tang free noodles (it is never gonna be the last time, and Tang knows it)

- Once bumped into a mannequin at the mall and apologized to it, Tang still makes fun of him

- Use to take Mei and MK to conventions all the time until Mei learned how to drive and could take them herself

- Won't care for people getting hurt in movies but will be absolutely crushed if something happens to an animal (sobbed when he watched "A Dog's Purpose")

- Smells like noodles

- Love language is acts of service

- Keeps trying to convince Tang to come with him to family events, has yet to succeed

- Carries around an extra pair of headphones in case Tang or MK needs them

- Almost threw hands with DBK and PiF after hearing about how they treated Redson (seriously guys, I need Redson to have a good parental figure in the next season, please), this man is a father to everyone

- Snores loud as fuck, it's a wonder how Tang gets any sleep

- No fashion sense what's so ever

- Insomnia

- He/Him

- Gay

- Once zoned out and stared at a wall for six hours straight

- Desk is covered in pencil shavings and pen ink

- Constantly bruised from always falling (weak ankles)

- Fluent in Polish, don't ask why, it just feels right

- Doodled all over his books in school (they made him pay for new ones)

- Never up before sunrise

- Got in some random dudes car once thinking it was a taxi and almost got himself kidnapped

- Will make the most annoying, smart-ass remark to anything anyone says

- I'm not actually sure if it's ever mentioned in the show what Tang does for a living but it doesn't matter, he's a college history professor now

- Has grandma floral bedsheets (we've all seen his sleepwear, you cannot tell me that man doesn't have grandma floral bedsheets)

- Somehow always cold

- Constanly napping, he can and will fall asleep if he's left alone for too long (his students once caught him asleep at his desk after lunch break and dipped class)

- Used to have hexagon glasses cause he thought they looked cool but found out Pigsy liked circular ones better so he got new ones

- Still has a septum piercing he got while he was in college but keeps it flipped up, he also has ear gauges

- When he met Pigsy's parents he was super nervous and ended up passing out half way through the night because of anxiety, he has not lived it down and refuses to go to any events with Pigsy if his family is gonna be there (they actually really liked him and are disappointed when he doesn't show up)

- Doesn't own a bookshelf for some reason, everything is just piled on the floor

- Very faint freckles

- Needs a daily 'to do' list, his whole day gets thrown off if he doesn't have some kind of schedule

- Maladaptive daydreamer

- Never showers, only takes baths

- Needs headphones on crowded transportation otherwise he'll get stressed at all the noises and talking overlapping eachother

- Severe rsd (rejection sensitivity dysphoria,  "benched" was an especially bad time for him)

- Number one art appreciator and constantly drags Pigsy to museums

- Smells like a library (please tell me you know what smell I mean)

- Love language is gift giving ( and you KNOW he loves you when he shares his food with you willingly)

- 76% of the clothes he owns are thrifted

- Blind as a fucking bat, if he looses his glasses he's on the floor feeling around for them like Velma,  I swear they could be two feet in front of him but he won't even notice

- Hypersomnia

- He/Him

- Bisexual

- Huge conspiracy theorist, ask him anything and he'll have some in depth explanation on how it relates to cryptids or something (I'm talking Matpat level conspiracy theorist, seriously, someone get him help)

- Slowest typer on the planet (mainly because the screen is too small for his hands), will respond to something 3-5 minutes after they changed topics

- Made seed bombs and threw them everywhere at random around the city and now there's a bunch of flowers and vines growing everywhere

- Was the first one (Aside from Mei and MK) to welcome Redson into the group with open arms, everyone else was still kinda cautious

- Would literally die for any of his friends, no questions asked, no hesitation, just jumps in the line of danger as soon as he sees one of his friends about to get hurt

- Didn't have a lot of friends growing up until he met Pigsy in his last year of high school because everyone was afraid of him

- He and Pigsy were in a band together in college, Sandy discusses it with pride, Pigsy gets embarrassed and denies ever being in a band at all

- Since he also has scales he's the one who teaches and helps Mei look after her scales and keep them from drying or getting damaged

- Yoga master, wakes up super early to do it during sunrise

- Has the best taste in music, he can find the most amazing, tear jerking, heart wrenching, underground music ever effortlessly

- Hasn't met a single person he wasn't able to get along with

- Firmly believes in all the little wishing rituals (11:11, shooting stars, birthday candles, blowing dandelions etc)

- Learned how to whistle so he could sing along with birds

- *gets robbed* "oh, i bet he needed the money, it's ok"  "I really don't think he did." "...maybe he's gonna donate it!"

- Favourite kind of tea is earl grey

- Named one of his cats Maquack after Macaque

- Sometimes cat sits for Bai He when she goes to doctor appointments, family visits out of the city, etc

- Got his piercing while he was still in a band but kept them in because his band mates were some of his first friends and they all got pierced together

- Has a tail to help him swim better (unfortunately I could not add it in the edit above but just I imagine he has the same kind of tail as the water Na'vi in Avatar ig)

- Skin has a faint ombre to it (his hands and feet are lighter and fade around his forearms/knees to a slightly darker blue (i did add this one in my edit but unfortunately I don't think it's as visible as I wanted it to be, my bad)

- Webbed hands and feet to help him swim better

- Has adipose eyelids like a fish to protect his eyes from the water, block exposure of harmful ultraviolet light into his eyes and act as protection against impact to the eye in aquatic environments. Since his eyelids are transparent though, he has to wear a sleeping mask at night

- Smells like a mix of ocean air and tea

- Love language is quality time and physical touch (will pick up and hug his friends all the time no matter the place)

- His hair and beard always have something in them, sand, seaweed etc

- Shoes are actually really uncomfortable for him to wear because his body is evolved for an aquatic environment, but he doesn't want to be rude so he wears them anyway (Mei found out and got him a customized pair of shoes so he could be comfortable without feeling like he's being rude)

- Uses Kaomojis

- If he's not busy, or doesn't have anything planned for the next few hours, he'll spend his free time cleaning up the ocean and beaches from any garbage

- He/Him

- Pansexual

- Everything he has ever done has been an impulse decision

- Is the type of mf to kick the inside of someone knee while they're walking to make them fold (Tang is the primary victim)

- Chews his nails

- Made up his own constellations as a "fuck you" to the universe (somehow managed to convince some mortals they were real constellations too)

- Mk and Co constantly forget how ancient swk is until he says some old person shit

- Naturally has curly and untamable hair, uses glamor to avoid getting called out about not taking care of it

- Horrifically optimistic

- Always has leaves and dirt and sticks etc in his hair

- Will sit out in the rain for hours on end

- Follow up on the last hc, he's been struck by lightning.. twice

- Actually has really heavy eyebags but uses glamor to cover them up

- Gets bored super easily

- Has naturally long lashes, Mei is still convinced he's wearing makeup though

- Cannot cook for the life of him

- His memories are always in shades of gold, no ones sure if it hasn't something to do with his gold vision or not, even himself, he just can't remember things in normal colour

- Stress induced migraines from the circlet

- Not a fan of big cities but loves how the lights look at night

- Stacks of notebooks and loose paper, cannot keep anything organized

- Takes a nap everyday at exactly 2:38 without fail

- Freezes in the winter, man's house has no insulation whatsoever

- Doesn't like big crowds but also can't stand not being the center of attention

- Once picked fleas out of both MK's and his own hair and ate them, MK was and still is disgusted, he will never look at Monkey King the same way again

- Smells like Peaches (it's like the only fucking thing he eats)

- Love language is physical touch

- Kinda chubby (mostly around his stomach and thighs) but still has muscles

- Always teasing Redson about the fact that he's technically his uncle since he and DBK are sworn brothers, he finds Redson's overreactions to it funny but is secretly kinda hurt that Redson doesn't think of him as family anymore (He use to when he was a little kid but stopped seeing Wukong as family after he sealed DBK away. They've started to try and mend their relationship after the events of season 4, it's slow but it's progress)

- Sometimes the monkey's on FFM will come into his house through the windows at night to sleep with him for comfort

- Really bad with technology but pretends he's just too good for the internet so he can avoid using it without looking old

- He/Him

- Bisexual

- Says his "S"'s really sharply

- If you ask him anything about himself he'll give you a different answer to the exact same question everytime (he thinks it makes him mysterious,  it does not)

- Lower lid eyeliner >>>

- If you say something stupid or weird he'll just stare judgingly until you take it back

- Actually lost his mind when he found out what blowing bubbles were

- Drinks tea with an ungodly amount of sugar

- Chronic eye pain + headaches. It's gotten significantly better over the years but.. yk, eye gouged out

- Has a deeply relaxing voice, strangely enough

- Has tried to compliment people before but it always ends up coming off as an insult

- Classical music or heavy rock, no in-between

- It is literally impossible to take a bad picture of him

- Puts his hair up in a bun whe he doesn't wanna deal with it

- Has patches of freeze burns from LBD, along his right side (mostly just his arm).

- Theater kid

- Rose tea enjoyer

- Likes to bake sometimes and frequently exchanges recipes with Pigsy and DBK

- Like to watch the sunrise and sunset

- Hates being out in the sun too long, not having a shaded area nearby for an easy escape stresses him

- Will stare out the window while it rains, Mei once said he looked like he was pretending to be in a cringey early 2010 music video

- Hard of hearing, his six ears are very sensitive and all the fighting and screaming has definitely done some damage to them by now

- Follow up on the last HC, despite being hard of hearing he will either absolutely refuse to wear hearing aids, or will wear them (albeit begrudgingly) but cover them with glamor

- Septum and snake bite piercings he got during his emo phase

- Smells like grapes, don't ask

- Love language is quality time, he doesn't care to actually have a conversation, though, he's fine just sitting in comfortable silence

- Will use his shadow transport for the dumbest things when he's lazy, like teleporting the TV remote to him if it's on the other side of the couch, teleport a bag of chips from the pantry to him in his bedroom,  etc

- Room is covered in scented candles

- Sandy has invited him over to work out some of his problems multiple times, he doesn't really care to open up though, he just goes for the cats (Sandy let's him)

- His hair is always soft and he refuses to tell anyone what he washes with, MK has asked multiple times and he gets a different, vague answer everytime

[upthewitchypunx]

I don't think I have told this whole story before.

stuff about my house, an old abusive relationship, early witchling behavior, and growth...

So, my ex-husband and I bought this house in January of 2001. As soon as I walked into the house I knew it was *my* house, this was way before I started studying witchcraft.

The relationship was emotionally abusive from the beginning but I had no skills or understanding of how to deal with conflict and thought if I just did what he asked it would be alright, but it was never enough. I was always fucking up by doing something I wanted to do that my ex did not want me to do. He's say things like "you are so smart that you can talk yourself into anything and that's why you keep getting confused. So if you just do what I want you won't have problems." or something like that. Like, that just gives you a base level of how twisted my brain was. (there's a digital version of the zine I wrote about it here)

The house had strange spots in it that felt weird and our incongruity seemed to feed it. One of our housemates reported chairs sliding across the floor and things going missing. At one point I moved out then moved back in while we were trying to go to counseling and work things through. We thought a change would be good and we moved into that room the housemate had issues with, stayed 3 nights and revealed to each other that we felt weird and could not sleep, so we moved to a different room.

Counseling didn't work and I eventually found to courage to leave the winter of 05-06, but we still owned a business together and a lot of my things were still in the house. The person he dated after me (we became friends after she experiences some of the same abuse) saw visions of me in the house and I was very angry.

In 2005, before I left and i was sleeping on a mat on the floor of the basement, I started studying witchcraft. Got myself some Cunningham books and felt really silly trying to do rituals and hiding it. In the divorce I lost the business but got the house with idea that I would sell it. I cleaned the whole thing, painted everything, put in new fixtures. Took a punk house and made it into something more friendly. By the time I was done it was the spring of 2007. The house went on the market just as the markets were crashing. Someone was on the hook to buy it and kept it off the market for the full 30 days and by that time the house had lost a lot of value.

Anyway! We decided to move into it it with some friends in October 0f 2007. One of the friends was Wiccan and I was sort of interested in it and went to a few open rituals with her. She was taking a year and a day class and asked her teachers to help cleanse the house before we moved in. I had already stashed a bunch of witchy stuff i bought in the closet that would be my room. We opened all the windows, doors, drawers, and what not. We started at our fireplace and lit incense, flicked consecrated salt water with springs of rosemary and sage from the garden, and chanted. One of the teachers gestured towards the closet I had my newly acquired witchy shit in and asked what was in there. I said nothing and that room wasn't the problem, the room next to it where the chairs had moved was, so the focused on that. I'm still not sure why I didn't explain.

Anyway, at that point our house became the Spiral House and we have not had any of the old garbage that I'm sure was being fed by a shitting relationship. After that I built my own magical system and my own wards that work with the land and the house. I've made a secure home and I do love my house and my neighborhood.

Both houses next to us have been broken in to, but ours has not. I still think it is funny when some people stop at the threshold and I have to invite them in like vampires. lol.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

i recently made a friend who's just so incredibly smart. she can deliver an in-depth lecture on history, philosophy and media without stumbling over her words even once as well as she can argue about it. but an interesting thing, she's a communist. but unlike the classic "everything should he free!", so believes that communism as it was on paper is supposed to the next step of human consciousness that we will most likely won't achieve in the near future. this i can get behind.

Nah, your "smart" friend is wrong. Communism, either theoretical perfect communism that only exists on paper or actual communism as it's always practiced in real life, is nothing to aspire to. The idea that the "next stage of human evolution" is some kind of higher consciousness where we shun the physical and embrace only the intellectual, or a gestalt consciousness, is faux intellectual garbage. They're ideas that were popularized by acid dropping left wing sci fi writers from the 60s and 70s who can't lift their groceries let alone some weights, and they've been dragged into every decade since because intellectual nerds really like the idea that their intelligence is going to be the future of humanity, and the meathead jocks that bullied them are going to be the less evolved Neanderthals they get to lord over. But the fact is humanity became the dominant species because of both our physical evolution and our intelligence. In fact, the only reason we're so intelligent is because of the way our physical brains are structured. So the argument can be made that greater physicality is our future evolution, not greater or "higher" intelligence. And as long as we inhabit a physical world, labor will always be necessary to survive. And as long as labor is necessary to survive, commerce will exist. And as long as commerce exists, the free market will always be the best, most ethical, most moral, most efficient, way to engage in commerce. Perfect textbook communism cannot work in the physical world. We've seen that time and time again as its tried over and over with the exact same results. Human rights abuses, genocide, slavery, oppression; they all go hand in hand with communism.

[cantgetworsethanthistbh]

Can you give us some Ford x Pacifica headcanons?

God anon im so sorry this took forever and i hope youre still lurking on my blog because YES I CAN HOLY SHIT THANK YOU FOR LETRING ME INDULGE

pacifica is into ford because shes into smart badass nerds the way dipper was when they worked together and ford is basically all that BUT MORE. more experience, more skills, more physical prowess and like she said. is super hot lmfao

ford and pacifica meet that day when they got into the whole face stealer thing— ford appreciates that she covered herself in garbage knowing it was an effective disguise among the creatures in the black market. AND that she actually pulled off fooling them before dipper blew it. pacifica is like, instantly flustered and a blushing mess

both of them expected she would be super disgusted when she shakes his hand and sees the six fingers— ford never got over the way cathy crenshaw freaked out over his hands and well, pacificas a judgmental bitch— but honestly seeing how tiny her dainty princess hand was in his gigantic and calloused palm was sort of an awakening for pacifica for size differences. ford is already a creep via dipfording and is also mega into it, but actually manages to be normal about it in the moment

when pacifica works at the diner and the stan twins make their way there, pacifica ALWAYS wants to get ford order and has a pretty obvious hopeless crush and throws in some WAY too nice compliments about his dumb research, but ford has waitress trauma so he doesnt realize it lmfao stan does tho and just rolls his eyes all the time and is

adding my d*pcifica bias here but also cuz its the most realistic way the main two are gonna get it on: i LOVE the idea of pacifica knowing dipper has a weird intense crusb on his uncle while theyre dating and is like okay but can i get in on that. dipper is like ?????? and pacifica is like oh come on in not STUPID dipper, if you want to fuck your uncle at least let me join (because she wont admit she wants to be in on that too) its not like i care your family is already super fucking weird and im still here. also hes super hot so

ford would more or less agree for dippers sake more than not but like, he would get to live out SO much of his pent up frustration about girls from his adoloscence on pacifica that, he def had gotten rough with her in the middle. dipper thought it was super fucking hot and wishes ford didnt see himself in dipper so much so hed treat him like that too sometimes fr fr

honestly the northwest family is not a good family, so pacifica adjusts to this dynamic way too well. which is concerning. yet fascinating for ford. he wants to psychoanalyze pacifica like hes some kind of psychologist ignoring the fact hes not at all qualified for it because he has 12 phds so he can do that anyway

ALSO abbigail northwest being a former inventor would mean ford would def be interested in more of her family history— its just FAR too fascinating to not touch

[perseephoneee]

𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐟𝐨𝐫 @brunettemarionette

↳ masterlist  ↳ ship exchange information ↳ taglist

-͟͟͞☆ I ship you with Spike! He's our resident bad boy/wet rat vampire who can pretty much only yearn and smoke cigarettes (hot). For starters, you two would just look good together, ya know? But also, he's the type to stay loyal to you and only ever you. When he loves, he does it in a very consuming way. He enjoys the way you banter with him, and is the only one to see how much you truly care about everything around you.

-͟͟͞☆ Headcanons:

Spike is very good at finding all the hiding spots in Sunnydale (he's used to being on the sidelines). When things just get to be too much, he'll always take you to someplace far away. The roof of the theater, the gravestone that lets you view the sunset, etc. It's your corner of the world.

You like to take pictures of Spike around his crypt. He pretends not to notice but 100% poses which you caught on to because you aren't stupid.

Spike won't give you flowers, those wither and die. But he will find a silver rose necklace that he stole bought from a market and gifted to you.

-͟͟͞☆ Tropes:

black cat (you) x black lab (him) "i burn for you" (him) x "ew...knock that off" (you)

-͟͟͞☆ Playlist:

take me away lash

only happy when it rains garbage

criminal fiona apple

-͟͟͞☆ I ship you with Dean Winchester! A ladies man with a heart of gold (and enough trauma to last a lifetime), he would think you're the hottest thing he'd ever seen. You both are not great at opening up, witty, but intelligent. Which sounds like a horrible combo, but in this case, I think it'll actually force you both to become accountable for the things you aren't as good at. There will likely be many moments when you want to pull your hair out at his dumbassery, but there'll be just as many (& more!) of times when he shows you time and time again that he loves you.

-͟͟͞☆ Headcanons:

You happened to be in one of the bars that the Winchesters strolled into after a hunt. Dean immediately thought you were the sexist thing on this side of the Mississippi. You agreed, but also thought he looked like the kind of guy to normally get the girl. Which is why you proceeded to hit on Sam instead.

When Dean finally got your number, it was only after almost being attacked. To his shock, you weren't that surprised ("Do you know how many dumbshit things happen in this town? This is not surprising in the slightest.")

You took your camera with you on every hunt, and took many photos of the boys in the process. You compiled it together into an album for Christmas, and you can't remember the last time you ever saw either of them cry.

-͟͟͞☆ Tropes:

bonnie & clyde types looks like he could kill you, actually a cinnamon roll (him) x looks like she could kill you, could kill you (you)

-͟͟͞☆ Playlist:

kill me pretty reckless

flagpole sitta harvey danger

black friday tom odell

-͟͟͞☆ I ship you with Erik Kilmonger! There are plenty of sassy men in the MCU, sure, but you needed someone who found a cause and stuck to it (also someone confident). Look, Erik isn't a bad guy per say, he just had interesting ideas for how to go about his purpose. But he's loyal, he recognizes injustice when he sees it, and he's damn smart. Trust me, he's not going to let anything happen to you, not ever.

-͟͟͞☆ Headcanons:

You worked at the museum that he robbed, and you actually caught him during his escape. You saw the artifact he had been taking, and instead of killing you, he just waited to see what you'd do. You decided to step aside and let him go, hoping praying that whatever he was doing with it was better than sitting in a museum.

Later on, you had a photography show, and your pieces were all bought by the same person– Erik. He became your friend after the fact.

The moment you realized you were in love with him was the moment he actually broke down in front of you. Gone was the man who acted as if he always knew everything, and there was the boy who felt totally lost in a world built against him. You both knew that you were each others person in that moment.

-͟͟͞☆ Tropes:

friends-to-lovers would destroy the world for you (him)

-͟͟͞☆ Playlist:

the night we met lord huron

the glory the branberries

take a bite beabadoobee

[explodingchantry]

After a few hours into my Dao replay I think I'm starting to really warm up to the gameplay trailer for dav, and indeed its more action oriented combat.

Something I think a lot of us, especially those of us who are a bit apprehensive, are struggling with is that we haven't replayed dragon age in... A while. We have this idea of what it was like but personally my last playthrough was soon after trespasser released. I think we ourselves, unless you're one of the people whose replayed all three games very recently, aren't the best place to decide what dragon age should 'feel' like

Dao is absolutely brilliant and it's combat system is so in depth, the fact that me and a lot of people always complain about how difficult it is just means that it was a system directed towards more strategy oriented people. The little strategy options for the companions, you know the menu not a lot of us use in Dao and da2, where you can tell a companion "if this happens, do that" is a fucking marvel, it's so smart, it's so efficient, it offers so much control it genuinely is amazing. But the thing is that I don't think the core player base of dragon age ended up being the players who used that a ton.

Something you feel a lot especially replaying Dao with modern sensibilities, is sluggishness. You have to remember that it IS a real time action rpg - this means that reactivity is pretty important and even though the other Dao systems make you feel like you're wholly in control, the animations themselves as well as hit boxes and general... Feel of combat doesn't bring that across. It feels like playing an old mmo. It's absolutely fine and expected for its time, but expecting something similar in our modern era is foolish.

If bioware was going to keep the real time fighting, which, I would've been shocked and disappointed if they didn't, they had to make it more snappy and reactive. Furthermore as a bunch of people have pointed out the trailer specifically shows rogue which is THE most snappy bouncy class there is, at least with the double dagger. But we still have our pause. We still get to tell our companions what to do. And with so much work put everywhere else to "get back to their roots" it would be strange of bioware to completely abandon it just for the combat system

Something that did bother me in the trailer is how few abilities seemed available at one time and also the fact you couldn't see your companions' health bar: it seems they confirmed you can see the health bars on discord, and as for the abilities and the hud... I think it might just be a product of them showing console gameplay, because I saw some Dao console gameplay earlier today and was like. Oh. That looks similar. And there isn't necessarily any worries to have about them choosing to show console gameplay - statistically speaking I'm positive the majority of gamers these days are console gamers, and with how beautiful the game seems I imagine it'll put most computers to their fucking knees, and the amount of people who have access to up to date gaming computers is lower than you think. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint to use console gameplay. Keep hold of your knickers

I've personally no problem with a more stylised approach to the graphics either because I've always been of the opinion that inquisition looks like garbage and it aged even worse than I expected. It's so fucking ugly bro I hate how frostbite engine looked back then it's disgusting LMFAO.

I've even seen people critiquing the look of minrathous even though it's fairly consistent with what we'd seen of tevinter so far... I think people forget that in Dao, dragon age really didn't have as much of an artistic identity as it has now - really Dao in many ways looks like usual your dark fantasy game. So many elements that would become emblematic of dragon age only came in later games. Do I really need to bring up flemeth or the qunari lol, or the many looks elves and their vallaslins have had over the years.

Like dragon age's visual and artistic identity has always shifted with every game. There's literally nothing wrong with that. It's just par for the course course. You can't have a long running series of fantasy games with lore as complex as dragon age without stumbling here and there over such a large amt of year, mediums and teams.

As for the fucking idiots complaining about the game not being dark enough idk replay any of the games for like 5 minutes and then come back. Well maybe not dai that game is boring as hell most of the time but either way dragon age was always silly as hell y'all are so fucking stupid. Go watch game of thrones or something instead

I think I'm saying all that because I've seen a lot of negativity for the sake of being negative. A lot of people went into this expecting to be upset, so obviously they ended up upset. And I know it's so fucking hard: inquisition was already a mess in many ways, most of the original dragon age staff left, there were major layoffs which we should not forget about, the game was restarted I think twice or something, and in general it's had a bit of a messy development. That and the horrors that were me:a and anthem, and of course people wouldn't have faith in bioware. But it's not the first time a game studio went a dangerous path only to have a moment of clarity and come back. I've personally seen it when a few years back devil may cry 5 came out and was the best game in the franchise, going back to its roots and bettering what was already there with bold steps towards modernizing its gameplay, when all fans thought the franchise dead and buried. I want to believe bioware is able to have such a comeback as well.

What is transpiring from many of the articles, from the little tidbits of the staff on twitter, from interviews - it's that there's heart in this. It's that they're trying. They've listened. And maybe I'm just falling for the marketing machine, but I'd rather believe and be disappointed than live with no hope in my heart man. Dragon age is a series that means so much to me. We've waited so long for this. I want this to be something I can love.

[ineedtherapist]

Dayum, It's been AGES and tbh I never thought I will ever came back but here I am alive and well (sadly).

Haven't write in ages tho so I'm starting off with my fav and slowly gonna work back up, gaining momentum and shi.

Hope y'all enjoy my two cents hhshsha

-al <3

Post Phantom Blood Robert

Robert general HCS Prt 1

Generally speaking, he's amazing. Like real type of amazing that people seldom realise since he's the side character and got outshine;

used by the plot to hype the main character.

The only different is that instead of Jonathan, bro got subscribed to a thick ass plot armor (unlike certain blonde 💀🙏🏻)

Robert who literally lived in Ogre Street.

Who make a living there, survived his childhood there which if anyone say it was an easy feat then ig we all are a certain high tech CEO thay bought a social media platform and banned artist compared to this young lad.

Ain't no way that's a small feat.

But then how did Robert did it?

That place was littered with scumbags and people doing cracks,it was criminals R&R with black market operating 24/7 like a damn 7-11.

And you're telling me, this hunk of a man managed to grow up somewhat save until he reached his adulthood?

"He's build a tank!"

My homies. To be able to even grow that damn big at that time where the police is as loose as the law whilst plague and poverty come hand-in-hand; and people's corpse piled up at the side of the street like a garbage heap is a work miracle itself.

Robert is smart. He's lucky and he got the looks and the charms needed to survive in that hellhole.

He didn't even come close to those who rule the Ogre Street but he's a convenient dog for those who did.

Know that place like the back of his hand. The people, the layout. Things that died and things that stay alive. Keep an eye out all the time and vigilant.

When, what, where, how. Those are the questions he always kept himself updated on. He know it and act upon it, waiting for the right time.

Robert act like a dog on a leash when in reality he's a stray one, pretending for the sake of survival.

An instinct one adapt in the harsh world where the strong devour the weak. Survival of the fittest.

Maybe he's a fallen noble, maybe he was already there the moment he opened his eyes but one thing remain the same for this man : he's alone. always is.

Has no one to rely on, to asked or question what was happening around him.

An orphan most definitely.

" Survive. Survive. Survive."

Like a broken tape, those words are repeated, buried deep inside his soul, become a part of him as he grew older.

Robert who's a smooth talker. A lady killer. An amazing conman yet never lied outside of necessities.

Robert whose mouth are as foul as it can be, even Dio seem like a saint compared to him.

And what makes the man so charming? The reason why one such as myself is deeply infatuated with him?

Robert was kind.

Despite living and growing up in a literal satan's den, he had always been kind.

Naturally, in order to survive, the line of his moralities start to blurred as the days passed and yet he didn't forget who he was.

Robert tried his best to survive and didn't yield to the others and then;

He met Jonathan

and that kind soul finally meet a reason to leave that place.

Before, he had nobody, no one to give his heart to. His loyalty. No reason to leave that place. A stray dog without an owner.

and then he met him.

Jonathan Joestar.

His saviour, his owner. The one whom he swore to be by his side no matter what happened.

Everything start to makes sense. Everything start to feel right. And his soul had never been more at peace more than anytime other than being by his side.

part 2...?

[tomb-bloom-noctem]

Not am I only feeling very critical towards Taylor Swift due to her choice in Guy She's Dating right now and the implications about where her morals REALLY lie and questioning now how much of her activism has been for publicity but also what the fuck is she doing with all this marketing nonsense happening.

The exclusive CD just for "You're Losing Me" when her show tickets are so hard to come by for many folks, the Karma feat. Ice Spice collab is weirdly put together. Rap isn't my favorite music but even I am aware that Ice Spice is VERY talented yet the song kinda??? Fails to play into her strengths??? Also since Taylor recently released Karma as a single you'd think she'd actually wait until the Ice Spice version was ready and release THAT version as a single. Then of course there's the mess of He Who I Am Not Gonna Name and his garbage plus his beef with Ice Spice then the timing of this release...doesn't look good. Now I'm still feeling inclined to think this collab has probably been in the works for a little while at least since I can only imagine the legal side of things takes some time. But at the same time the poorer quality (in my opinion) of Ice Spice's parts does contribute to it feeling a little rushed. Seriously I don't hate the idea of this collab at all but it really feels like they just tried to shove Ice Spice in there instead of naturally making room for her.

And furthermore, I just kinda personally despise "Feat. MORE Lana Del Rey" The song sounds great. If rumor is to be believed this was how the song was supposed to turn out but Lana didn't know what part she was supposed to sing?? So it was submitted as the original version??? And Taylor just left it??? Instead of reaching out and saying hey actually let's rework this??? Like girl you have sooo much money you can easily get back in that recording studio wtf. I do actually like how the original Snow on the Beach but at the same time I'm so confused as to why it was allowed to just go forward if this newer version was supposed to be the original version. It feels like either the original SOTB was never supposed to be a duet only a feature and it was overly marketed as a duet or...Taylor and/or her label really not paying attention. Don't like either of those. So, to rerecord what should have already existed in the first place to sell a whole priced album again for one new song (which wasn't a new song since apparently it was on physical additions of Midnights), one collab that needed more time in the oven, and now the "real" version of an existing song stupidly called "feat. MORE Lana del Rey"...Seriously you guys couldn't have extended the music a bit and called it "extended edition" or something. For some reason just the way it's titled and knowing the supposed background of the song has me scratching my head and feeling a little rubbed the wrong way.

I don't know if I'm explaining this coherently at all but the whole situation feels a lot like a mess, a bit of a scam, and a lot like a PR move. Feels to me like Taylor's got a lot of yes men in her corner at the moment. And I'm sure she's plenty powerful enough to go "actually I'm still gonna do what I want" even if there are people telling her no. But really feels like she's flying in so many chaotic and messy directions at once with no one telling her she should slow it down, reign it in and think about this a little more. She's very smart and very talented yes, I am still a fan of hers! I've been a fan since 2006! But not gonna lie! I feel deceived and betrayed by her thanks to her being with MH and a lot of her business decisions lately are very confusing. Don't even get me started on how CHEAP the VIP boxes and a lot of this tour merch is turning out to be despite how expensive it all is.

Taylor, can I ask YOU a question. What the fuck.

[brooklynistrying]

𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓒𝓻𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓒𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓬𝓮𝓷𝓽

Chapter 1 Sneak Peak

𝓟𝓪𝓲𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰: BTS OT7 x Yoon Chaewon OC

𝓣𝔂𝓹𝓮: Series

𝓢𝓾𝓶𝓶𝓪𝓻𝔂: When a strange girl arrives in Euphoria, there are so many questions, yet so few answers. What will happen to her as she uncovers Euphoria’s dark past and forms several relationships on the way?

𝓦𝓪𝓻𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼: Mentions of near death expiriences, cussing, and violence.

𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓬𝓵𝓪𝓲𝓶𝓮𝓻: Reader discrestion is advised, this story isn’t for the faint-hearted, for all my friends who might feel uncomfortable or sick while reading this, have a great day and I’ll see you on the next story.

𝓐/𝓝: My first series, I hope you guys like it! 🎀

𝓢𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓻𝓮𝓬: Soldier, Poet, King by The Oh Hellos

🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮🝮

“3 Trites please?“ she whines “No, 5 trites and that’s final.” She slams the coins down on the table, an archery quiver belt is thrown at her, and the woman at the counter scowls. She runs out of the tent, the glaring eyes watching every move and the stench of Mead becoming unbearable.

She moves through the bustling crowd, pulling her cloak tighter around her head, moving through the bustling crowd, the sea of grey and brown feeling like it goes on for eternity. She walks into an alley, rummaging through the garbage, searching for any amount of food to satisfy her hunger, 𝘉𝘰𝘯𝘬. An Apple core hit her on the head, “What the hell?” she turned around and saw a brunette girl with sun-kissed skin and wearing a yellow sundress behind her.

“Haeun” “Chaewon” “I see you’ve made yourself useful at the farmers market,” Chaewon says sarcastically. Haeun looked down at her in disgust, “Dumpster diving? Really? What are you? An animal?”

Chaewon rolls her eyes, “Well what am I supposed to do? Even buying stuff from the lowlanders, I’m putting myself at risk” She takes a look around and pulls Haeun in by her shoulders, “If they find out, they’ll kill us” she whispers. Haeun looks at her incredulously, she slowly grabs her cloak and pulls it over her head, yanking it down over her eyes. Chaewon shoves her and Haeun starts walking away, she runs to catch back up with her.

“Where did they set up camp?” “Just past the Southeastern border,” “I thought Jihye was supposed to be the smart one” “It was a strategic spot, nobody can see it form the wall.” “They speak Russian, we don’t speak Russian, how the fuck are we supposed to communicate with people if we can’t speak the language?” “We shouldn't be speaking to people anyway! Keep your head low and don't speak.”

“We’re low on supplies, we’ll starve if we don't get another load soon.” we’re walking into the woods, dense, I can see maybe 10 feet in front of us. “Damn it” Haeun mutters as she catches her foot on a rock, she extends her arm out, trying to catch something to stop her fall, I catch her arm, pulling her back up. She gets up, rolls her eyes, and pulls her arm away.

The sun is going down, the orange and yellow rays beating down on us, I’m sweating to death in my cloak, trying to keep hidden, just in case any guards are on patrol. Lake Khasan is cold, the current is strong.

✍︎༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛༛

Should I finish the story? This is a sneak peak and if enough people like it I’ll finish it.

-Brooklyn 🎀

[sweetfirebird]

Purity culture post making me think of a lot of youtubers and how they all do the same topics and reaction videos, and police each other for 'correct' behavior, but also how another youtuber somewhere said that the policing is mutually beneficial to them all. It's engagement. It's clicks. And they can issue carefully written apologies before they all continue on as they are, still all friends with each other, and still all marketing themselves as okay for consumption because they are "pure." But even the "pure" is calculated. They can read their comments. They've got analytics. At some point, it becomes less about trying to make a safe space and more about building an audience and getting those clicks, because that's where the money is.

Of course, support of a system with arbitrary purity standards and a habit of routinely turning on each other has its other problems. Like how eventually the "pure" goalposts are going to move to exclude these youtubers for real, and they will likely get dogpiled or abandoned, but most of them will have made their money by then. Gotten their book deal or whatever. And this isn't to excuse actual trash behavior like not paying your employees or being "jokingly" a racist, or things like that, and yeah, dogpiling on people is not great, (though also take a moment to consider *who* gets dogpiled and who doesn't and why that is) but watch enough youtube and you can see how calculated a lot of the moral outrage is. They fucking love it when one of the other youtubers gets involved in a scandal. Or sometimes, a "scandal." That's more content for them. Reaction videos! Easy. They get clicks AND they get to seem more moral and good.

Some of these people might start out doing their vids for fun or because it's their field and they like talking about that subject, and probably a lot of start out genuinely wanting to do good and be seen as good people, but once they start having to produce content consistently to make money... Once they all become friends with each other and learn how to game/use the system.... Once they realize that videos condemning certain "sins" get more hits... idk how strong those morals stay.

They talk smart or funny and they look straight ahead into your eyes the camera for a while every week, and they talk about the things they know you want to hear because their analytics tells them what you want to hear, and the prolonged eye contact can feel like connection! They are on your phone/laptop/tv, talking about what you like, regularly! Like friends! You're friends!

Except you're not friends, they are, no matter how nice some of them seem, selling you something.

Anyway.

Sorry. Been watching too much youtube while doing my embroidery and my suggested videos are the most telling pile of garbage about how youtube and many youtubers operate.

This is really like several thoughts that need to get teased out into a proper essay but I'm not doing it. I was avoiding work and now I am getting back to it.

[tinkertoysdamn]

Fic writer meme

21-25 hehe

Okay.

::crackles knuckles::

21. Favorite piece of dialogue, it might be a tie between:

In the flattest voice possible, Peter asked, “Did you start a cult?”

and

“Fine,” he repeated, “I’ll blow a god so we can kill your dad.”

22. Excerpt from favorite scene (I have so many, it's hard to pick one but--) from "The Tragedy of Uncle Taserface":

Still, the boy had listened, he had to have sought this out in the second-hand markets when they went on leave. Quill had listened and he had cared.

He had cared enough to get little things for everyone here on the floor, everyone except Yondu. Taserface doubted the boy was stupid enough or suicidal enough to forget the Captain. Now Taserface wasn’t an imaginative nor a smart man, but even this was a mystery he could solve.

Yondu had taken the gift meant for himself and thrown the rest away, leaving someone else to clean up the mess. Taserface was a man who held a grudge and seeing this bit of ruin, understanding what it meant, fouled his mood.

Yondu was the Captain, but he was also a selfish prick. Taserface scowled, his hands tightened on the gift.

Forgiveness wasn’t in his blood, not tonight.

23. Final version of a sentence or paragraph I struggled with. I might have to come back to this one because my brain does that "move on to the next thing" pretty quickly and I forget. But it's probably from Poisonville. That whole story was filled with "does this look/read right?"

24. Something that surprised me while working on a fic and did it change the story?

Okay, so while I was plotting out We Built This City, I wrote this silly little side story that was a Loki crossover with the genderswap universe concept. Writing that short changed the whole trajectory of We Built This City. Suddenly, there was a new wrinkle with Gamori and Brandy's relationship with the addition of Thora, there were originally going to be two children but I changed Tetrina to an only child, Brandy was going to be a more buffoonish character but she developed more teeth and legitimate anger, Gamori became more sympathetic and complicated. I think the diversion with Escape genuinely made WBTC a better concept and a better universe.

25. What did I use to write? I used to use Word but I switched to Google Docs this year and started keeping fics on my Drive. I do occasionally write bits and pieces out longhand in a notebook I have for the purpose. My handwriting is absolute garbage but I do what needs to be done.

The last thing I wrote in that notebook was some of the dialogue about Tetrina and school from Texarkana. Also a few lines from a Five Times fic about Ego I haven't really worked on at all. Like, literally just have two lines.

[sun-in-retrograde]

Saturn in Pisces Season : My Top 20 Saturn Returns to watch out for

Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo!, The dot com Bubble, AOL - The Internet, as a profitable, mass market thing. Basically.

Ariana Grande

The Anglican Church Ordaining Women Priests - A group of conservative arch-bishops split off a few weeks ago over gay marriage. The Church has been struggling to hold together and this'll be a test

The IBM Simon (The first smart phone) - I feel like smartphones have been the standard tool people have for so long. A lot of this tech, like QR codes etc are having their saturn return. All these technologies were stress tested in the pandemic and we seem to be seeing a new generation of technology emerge.

Dua Lipa - She can be off the wall sometimes and often fun. I'm rooting for her to come out of this strong.

New Labour - Tony Blair's whole scheme of a non-left wing Labour Party is back again with Starmer. Blair was doing it in a world where people were talking seriously about how history and ideological politics may well be over. Starmer is doing it in a world where people are talking seriously about groups they'd like to genocide and whether we need a revolution.

Pokemon - I just think this is a neat franchise.

The Spice Girls - I loved them as a kid, I grew to see them as boring and mainstream and now we appreciate them again as a culture I think.

Jerry Heil - My favourite Ukrainian singer! Before the war she started to want to be seen as more serious and less "singing songs about Ukraine's version of deliveroo while dressed as a hot dog". While a refugee she's been doing her best and most musically interesting work. She failed to win a place in Eurovision for this year, and *now* after all that, she's starting her Saturn return.

Friends - It's a shit TV show. It's been re-evaluated a lot but it's still had a place as just something people watch. I feel this might be set to change.

If you think about it, a Saturn return is basically the time from birth to having to get serious about things. For business and innovation, its about the length of time it takes to go from being a hot new thing to being very very much part of the establishment. For media, it's about the time things take to go from retro to vintage.

Actually, that's the key to this whole thing, isn't it? If you have a piece of media coming up to its Jupiter return its retro, nostalgic, quirkily outdated. See all the YouTube videos about the history of Tumblr. about 12 years ago is a fun gap.

At 29 years, it's not a fun gap. If you learn about things from back then, you have to learn about cultural and historical context. It become academic. It gets serious. Jupiter is fun, Saturn is more serious.

The other day I walked past some kids playing music from the early 90s really loud. They must have been proud of it because they were blaring it out so loud for the whole world to hear and trying to look cool. I accidentally laughed in their faces because the music was... just the most shit boy band garbage of the time. But now, it's vintage and serious, I guess.

I wonder what terrible elements of 2023 culture people will be treating with reverence by 2052

21 May 1993, to 30 June 1993

28 January 1994 - 7 April 1996

[dertaglichedan]

How Green Energy Helps Fund Taliban Islamic Terrorists

We have been reporting on how green energy is being used to fund the Communist Chinese.

There is one primary reason and its named is — lithium.

Lithium is a key mineral used to creating green energy and powers all electric vehicles.

The BBC’s Catherine Early who in a November 24th, 2020 article titled The new ‘gold rush’ for green lithium wrote,

Lithium is crucial for the transition to renewables, but mining it has been environmentally costly. Now a more sustainable source of lithium has been found deep beneath our feet. [ … ] The commercial use for lithium in the 21st Century could not be clearer. It is found not only inside smart phones and laptops, but is now vital to the clean energy transition, for the batteries that power electric vehicles and store energy so renewable power can be released steadily and reliably. Demand has soared in recent years as carmakers move toward electric vehicles, as many countries including the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Norway and Canada announce a phase-out of combustion-engine cars. In fact, five times more lithium than is mined currently is going to be necessary to meet global climate targets by 2050, according to the World Bank. Read more.

Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins did a series of infographics on lithium and predicted that by 2025 the battery market alone will be almost 2x bigger than the entire lithium market today.

The largest producers of lithium products in 2015 were Chile 37.0%, Australia 33.0%, Argentina 11.0%, China 10.0%, Zimbabwe 3.1%, other 3.3% and the USA 2.6%.

According to the World Economic Forum in January 2023 the largest producers of lithium are: #1 Australia 52%, #2 Chile 25%, #3 China 13%, #4 Argentina 6%, #5 Brazil 1%, #6 Zimbabwe 1%, #7 Portugal 1%, #8 The United States 1% and lastly the rest of the world with 0.1%

Lithium Funding Islamic Terrorists

In a July 21, 2023 FrontPage article titled “‘Green Energy’ Will Be Powered by Taliban Lithium” Daniel Greenfield reports,

One of the sales pitches for electric cars and assorted green energy projects was that we’d at least be able to unplug from Middle Eastern oil. But instead, we’ve become dependent on the Saudis anyway (the Saudis own 5% of Tesla) and, more crucially on China which sells us the junk solar panels and the rare earth metals (obtained through incredibly dirty mining processes that have devastated lakes and poisoned entire villages) to power the ‘clean’ revolution of ‘green energy’. Now, topping all that, since the United States failed to develop the lithium mines in Afghanistan and since Biden refuses to mine any at home, the Taliban and Communist China will profit from every garbage electric car that the lefties force down our throats in the name of their hoax environmental crisis. Save the planet, fund Islamic terrorism.

CONTINUED

[threewaysdivided]

G.R.R. Martin once planned to have a time skip in between each chapter of the books, but discarded it because it would require large amounts of flashbacks and expositions to get the audience up to speed. Boy, it sure is great that YJ only had one season so we didn't have to worry about each sequential season having to allocate precious episode time to explain what happen in the gaps while also developing new characters and plot lines /s

Sadly I cannot speak to or for Mister George Raymond Richard Martin's storytelling as I managed to miss the boat on both ASOIAF as a book series and Game of Thrones as a TV phenomenon. However, it certainly seems like he made the right decision there. Smart man.

As for the Young Justice Animated series... I can only agree. While I would have loved to see a continuation of the mystery, and think there was a lot of potential in the original cast of heroes and interesting things they could have done with The Light, I'm glad that DC made the call to cancel the show and move on to new projects when it became clear that the tone and themes didn't fit with their brand-pivot to New 52 edginess, rather than trying to forcibly crush the series into an incompatible mold for use as a marketing vessel.

Plus, the more complaints I've heard from other franchises about what happens when you leave Greg Weisman creatively unsupervised, the more likely it is that we would have just been in for a bad-fanfic barrage of random new characters, arbitrary time-skips, jumbled perspective-hopping, attempted twitter-retcons and general throwing-ideas-at-a-wall that he seems to use in place of actually learning basic narrative techniques like developing a story arc, maintaining character consistency or creating proper causal links between concepts, all seasoned with a heaping helping of Joss-Whedon-inspired performative virtue-signalling, creepy rape-y garbage and fetishistic sexism. Bullet dodged, methinks. Our city now.

There are fine things that are more brilliant when they are unfinished than when finished too much. - François de La Rochefoucauld

Here's to a rare and pleasant display of creative honesty.

[Goof-posting because there's really not a lot about YJ's problems that I haven't already dissected at length. If you want a serious technical look at the scope and structure problems the timeskips cause then I've gone into it here. You can also try here for a deeper dive into how the timeskips are actually just a symptom of a bigger problem of narratively directionless story-contradictions being hastily papered over by a largely-untalented privilege-poisoned embodiment of George Lucas Syndrome and a largely-inexperienced adaptation producer who didn't have the original-storytelling chops to compensate for his co-runner's bullshit once the actually talented original production/ directorial team left the picture. C'est la capitalisme, I guess.]

[iamnathannah]

The main reason for Chromebooks coming in was because Windows is laughably hackable, and kids are smart enough to explore and get rid of any restrictions to do whatever they want on school laptops; us 90s kids knew well how to get Ti-82s to play Tetris and Doom and do whatever we could to have them be anything but calculators.

Google sold schools one thing; unhackable and absolutely boring cloud laptops, which had bombed so many times before as regular Internet appliances for adults that nobody liked (look up the 3Com Audrey and Oracle's Network Computer) because they were restrictive experiences 'for babies'. The market handily rejected the network computer model because people love to customize their computers and have them do what they want at any time. Including nine year-olds. And they don't need a 24/7 Internet connection.

So Google and schools just decided 'we don't want that' and forced Chromebooks on all the kids so that this goddamned dumb computing model would work somewhere, with no file managers, no need to double-click, and very limited customization. So it's that garbage 'network computer' rebranded as a 'cloud OS' basically became the most used platform in schools by default because Macs are now a premium product and a commodity Dell, even in its most bare-bones implementation (terrible processor, anemic storage and graphics which can barely run Candy Crush) can be hacked easily by a smart kid.

Telling them to learn Linux; come on. It's been 25 years. We're not learning Linux unless we want to. You can install Linux on a Chromebook but it's a joke there and as already mentioned, it's locked down on most school systems.

I have a Chromebook tablet I bought during the pandemic just so my tech skills are polished on every platform. It's the most dog-slow platform ever and trying to watch YouTube brings the thing to the brink of death. I only use it if I need to follow multiple games at the same time and need something to show a gametracker or to assist a customer (usually a senior babied to death by their inheritance-wanting helicopter child who doesn't want them to go anywhere but Facebook and can't stand tech support calls) with troubleshooting their own trash Chromebook.

And please don't mention Android tablets unless you hate yourself. I tried to use one from Dell for a year (they only made it because Intel paid them to for a bit) and the moment I could, I raced to get an iPad because Google is NOT good at computers, ever.

We need to lay more blame for "Kids don't know how computers work" at the feet of the people responsible: Google.

Google set out about a decade ago to push their (relatively unpopular) chromebooks by supplying them below-cost to schools for students, explicitly marketing them as being easy to restrict to certain activities, and in the offing, kids have now grown up in walled gardens, on glorified tablets that are designed to monetize and restrict every movement to maximize profit for one of the biggest companies in the world.

Tech literacy didn't mysteriously vanish, it was fucking murdered for profit.