#giant avocados

[magicturtle]

one of the things that came from the pokemon leaks is that originally there were going to be penguins that looked like bowling pins, which is why spheal is a ball. The funny thing is, that's very much how nature works. It's like how avocados evolved to be digested by giant sloths, but they giant sloths are gone, and now here's this random fruit with a pit the size of a golf ball.

[lastoneout]

vegetables need to come smaller. I want some red onion for my food here but red onion big. and I need so very little. why haven't we fixed this. why can't I buy a tiny little red onion that's just enough. hell and suffering on planet earth.

[themortaldraw]

he’s tired

[lavenderrosiefan]

So...these are some characters whose English VA's also voice acted for Skylanders:

Pure Vanilla is voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, who also voiced Fright Rider (an Undead Core introduced in Skylanders: Giants), Trail Blazer (a Fire Core introduced in Skylanders: Trap Team) and the Cool Imaginator.

Dark Cacao is voiced by Patrick Seitz, who also voiced Hot Head (the Fire Giant in Giants), Rip Tide (a Water Core introduced in Skylanders: Swap Force), and Thrillipede (a Life Supercharger introduced in Skylanders: Superchargers).

Chili Pepper is voiced by Kimberly Brooks, who also voiced Echo (a Water Core introduced in Skylanders: Trap Team), and Bad Juju (an Air villain introduced in Trap Team, later became a Swashbuckler Sensei in Imaginators).

Avocado is voiced by Courtenay Taylor, who also voiced Hex (an Undead Core introduced in Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure), and Knight Mare (a Dark Trap Master introduced in Trap Team).

Tarte Tatin is voiced by Kat Cressida, who also voiced Scratch (an Air Core introduced in Swap Force).

Licorice is voiced by Cameron Bowen, who also voiced Flare Wolf (a Fire Bazooker Sensei introduced in Imaginators)

Sparkling is voiced by Xander Mobus, who also voiced the Wacky Imaginator and the Ninja Doomlander.

Prophet is voiced by Gideon Emery, who also voiced Zoo Lou (a Life Core introduced in Swap Force)

Millennial Tree is voiced by Keith Silverstein, who also voiced Dino-Rang (an Earth Core introduced in Spyro's Adventure), Bash (another Earth Core introduced in Spyro's Adventure) and Bop (Bash's Mini counterpart introduced in Trap Team)

Captain Caviar is voiced by Dave Fennoy, who also voiced Slobber Tooth (an Earth Core introduced in Swap Force) and Thunderbolt (an Air Trap Master introduced in Trap Team)

[doublesidedgemini]

been eating but still looking cute :3

[icewindandboringhorror]

more photo diary posts.. various life images...

[cupophrogs]

Hmm

Avocado

[player-1]

Devs I’m begging you right now, please let them be related 🥲

[stravagatefaster]

What the hell does Arianna think Barbara will do with a giant cat???

[scrmnviking]

Damn, swinging hard and hitting the feels

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

[thesansanti]

I wish I liked avocados - not because I want to eat them BUT I was told that big fruits like avocados were a part of a food system for long extinct megafauna and now they just seem lonely.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Marshmallow Longtermism

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this week!

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "Marshmallow Longtermism"; it's a reflection on how conservatives self-mythologize as the standards-bearers for deferred gratification and making hard trade-offs, but are utterly lacking in these traits when it comes to climate change and inequality:

https://locusmag.com/2024/09/cory-doctorow-marshmallow-longtermism/

Conservatives often root our societal ills in a childish impatience, and cast themselves as wise adults who understand that "you can't get something for nothing." Think here of the memes about lazy kids who would rather spend on avocado toast and fancy third-wave coffee rather than paying off their student loans. In this framing, poverty is a consequence of immaturity. To be a functional adult is to be sober in all things: not only does a grownup limit their intoxicant intake to head off hangovers, they also go to the gym to prevent future health problems, they save their discretionary income to cover a down-payment and student loans.

This isn't asceticism, though: it's a mature decision to delay gratification. Avocado toast is a reward for a life well-lived: once you've paid off your mortgage and put your kid through college, then you can have that oat-milk latte. This is just "sound reasoning": every day you fail to pay off your student loan represents another day of compounding interest. Pay off the loan first, and you'll save many avo toasts' worth of interest and your net toast consumption can go way, way up.

Cleaving the world into the patient (the mature, the adult, the wise) and the impatient (the childish, the foolish, the feckless) does important political work. It transforms every societal ill into a personal failing: the prisoner in the dock who stole to survive can be recast as a deficient whose partying on study-nights led to their failure to achieve the grades needed for a merit scholarship, a first-class degree, and a high-paying job.

Dividing the human race into "the wise" and "the foolish" forms an ethical basis for hierarchy. If some of us are born (or raised) for wisdom, then naturally those people should be in charge. Moreover, putting the innately foolish in charge is a recipe for disaster. The political scientist Corey Robin identifies this as the unifying belief common to every kind of conservativism: that some are born to rule, others are born to be ruled over:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/01/set-healthy-boundaries/#healthy-populism

This is why conservatives are so affronted by affirmative action, whose premise is that the absence of minorities in the halls of power stems from systemic bias. For conservatives, the fact that people like themselves are running things is evidence of their own virtue and suitability for rule. In conservative canon, the act of shunting aside members of dominant groups to make space for members of disfavored minorities isn't justice, it's dangerous "virtue signaling" that puts the childish and unfit in positions of authority.

Again, this does important political work. If you are ideologically committed to deregulation, and then a giant, deregulated sea-freighter crashes into a bridge, you can avoid any discussion of re-regulating the industry by insisting that we are living in a corrupted age where the unfit are unjustly elevated to positions of authority. That bridge wasn't killed by deregulation – it's demise is the fault of the DEI hire who captained the ship:

https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/03/26/baltimore-bridge-dei-utah-lawmaker-phil-lyman-misinformation

The idea of a society made up of the patient and wise and the impatient and foolish is as old as Aesop's "The Ant and the Grasshopper," but it acquired a sheen of scientific legitimacy in 1970, with Walter Mischel's legendary "Stanford Marshmallow Experiment":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment

In this experiment, kids were left alone in a locked room with a single marshmallow, after being told that they would get two marshmallows in 15 minutes, but only if they waited until them to eat the marshmallow before them. Mischel followed these kids for decades, finding that the kids who delayed gratification and got that second marshmallow did better on every axis – educational attainment, employment, and income. Adult brain-scans of these subjects revealed structural differences between the patient and the impatient.

For many years, the Stanford Marshmallow experiment has been used to validate the cleavage of humanity in the patient and wise and impatient and foolish. Those brain scans were said to reveal the biological basis for thinking of humanity's innate rulers as a superior subspecies, hidden in plain sight, destined to rule.

Then came the "replication crisis," in which numerous bedrock psychological studies from the mid 20th century were re-run by scientists whose fresh vigor disproved and/or complicated the career-defining findings of the giants of behavioral "science." When researchers re-ran Mischel's tests, they discovered an important gloss to his findings. By questioning the kids who ate the marshmallows right away, rather than waiting to get two marshmallows, they discovered that these kids weren't impatient, they were rational.

The kids who ate the marshmallows were more likely to come from poorer households. These kids had repeatedly been disappointed by the adults in their lives, who routinely broke their promises to the kids. Sometimes, this was well-intentioned, as when an economically precarious parent promised a treat, only to come up short because of an unexpected bill. Sometimes, this was just callousness, as when teachers, social workers or other authority figures fobbed these kids off with promises they knew they couldn't keep.

The marshmallow-eating kids had rationally analyzed their previous experiences and were making a sound bet that a marshmallow on the plate now was worth more than a strange adult's promise of two marshmallows. The "patient" kids who waited for the second marshmallow weren't so much patient as they were trusting: they had grown up with parents who had the kind of financial cushion that let them follow through on their promises, and who had the kind of social power that convinced other adults – teachers, etc – to follow through on their promises to their kids.

Once you understand this, the lesson of the Marshmallow Experiment is inverted. The reason two marshmallow kids thrived is that they came from privileged backgrounds: their high grades were down to private tutors, not the choice to study rather than partying. Their plum jobs and high salaries came from university and family connections, not merit. Their brain differences were the result of a life free from the chronic, extreme stress that comes with poverty.

Post-replication crisis, the moral of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is that everyone experiences a mix of patience and impatience, but for the people born to privilege, the consequences of impatience are blunted and the rewards of patience are maximized.

Which explains a lot about how rich people actually behave. Take Charles Koch, who grew his father's coal empire a thousandfold by making long-term investments in automation. Koch is a vocal proponent of patience and long-term thinking, and is openly contemptuous of publicly traded companies because of the pressure from shareholders to give preference to short-term extraction over long-term planning. He's got a point.

Koch isn't just a fossil fuel baron, he's also a wildly successful ideologue. Koch is one of a handful of oligarchs who have transformed American politics by patiently investing in a kraken's worth of think tanks, universities, PACs, astroturf organizations, Star chambers and other world-girding tentacles. After decades of gerrymandering, voter suppression, court-packing and propagandizing, the American billionaire class has seized control of the US and its institutions. Patience pays!

But Koch's longtermism is highly selective. Arguably, Charles Koch bears more personal responsibility for delaying action on the climate emergency than any other person, alive or dead. Addressing greenhouse gasses is the most grasshopper-and-the-ant-ass crisis of all. Every day we delayed doing something about this foreseeable, well-understood climate debt added sky-high compounding interest. In failing to act, we saved billions – but we stuck our future selves with trillions in debt for which no bankruptcy procedure exists.

By convincing us not to invest in retooling for renewables in order to make his billions, Koch was committing the sin of premature avocado toast, times a billion. His inability to defer gratification – which he imposed on the rest of us – means that we are likely to lose much of world's coastal cities (including the state of Florida), and will have to find trillions to cope with wildfires, zoonotic plagues, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

Koch isn't a serene Buddha whose ability to surf over his impetuous attachments qualifies him to make decisions for the rest of us. Rather, he – like everyone else – is a flawed vessel whose blind spots are just as stubborn as ours. But unlike a person whose lack of foresight leads to drug addiction and petty crimes to support their habit, Koch's flaws don't just hurt a few people, they hurt our entire species and the only planet that can support it.

The selective marshmallow patience of the rich creates problems beyond climate debt. Koch and his fellow oligarchs are, first and foremost, supporters of oligarchy, an intrinsically destabilizing political arrangement that actually threatens their fortunes. Policies that favor the wealthy are always seeking an equilibrium between instability and inequality: a rich person can either submit to having their money taxed away to build hospitals, roads and schools, or they can invest in building high walls and paying guards to keep the rest of us from building guillotines on their lawns.

Rich people gobble that marshmallow like there's no tomorrow (literally). They always overestimate how much bang they'll get for their guard-labor buck, and underestimate how determined the poors will get after watching their children die of starvation and preventable diseases.

All of us benefit from some kind of cushion from our bad judgment, but not too much. The problem isn't that wealthy people get to make a few poor choices without suffering brutal consequences – it's that they hoard this benefit. Most of us are one missed student debt payment away from penalties and interest that add twenty years to our loan, while Charles Koch can set the planet on fire and continue to act as though he was born with the special judgment that means he knows what's best for us.

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/04/deferred-gratification/#selective-foresight

Image: Mark S (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/markoz46/4864682934/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[just-a-smol-chickadee]

Sertraline huh? I used to have the "Have amazingly long and weirdly complex dreams that I can remember vividly upon waking" superpower, but after starting Venlafaxine it just. Disappeared. And I was like, okay is this the price to pay to be happy????

Now I'm omw to the psychiatrist to ask for a change in medication :v

I'm at the point where I'm considering weaning off my SSRI because of (insert list of mostly positive personal reasons which have psychiatrist oversight), but also it'll be hard to give up the new superpower I've gotten from sertraline, which is Remember My Dream Every Night power.

Like there's a whole cinematic universe to this, which has been added to nightly for months now. I joined an improv group. I've ridden the secret subway that does not exist. My grandmother was evil. I was part of cracking some kind of cannibal-murder-suicide case. Bakugo went with me to Iceland.

[shatteredsnail]

i personally think i should subscribe to my fathers gift giving mentality of “no no i swear it’s for you. but i might use it sometimes”

[bookofthegear]

“THAT” room is way too interesting a description for a bold adventurer like yourself to pass up. You stride confidently down the ramp. Jimmy’s claws tighten on your shoulder.

There’s some kind of mural on the passage wall, but you can’t make it out, and anyway it looks to have more to do with giant flaming avocados than with, say, wealth and glory. (And a spirit of scientific inquiry, naturally. It’s just that if, in plumbing the depths of the concrete maze, you happen to find some wealth that no one is using…well. Y’know.)

You’re honestly more concerned with what looks like high water marks in the room upstairs. Granted, it had dried out, but it is a basic rule of Dungeoneering not to get trapped by unexpected rising water, and the best way to do that is to know exactly when and how the water rises, and to arrange to be elsewhere. Jimmy, sadly, doesn’t have an answer.

“I’ve never seen it flooded…not personally…but I spend most of my time outside. Between, um, adventurers, I mean. Sometimes that takes weeks. It could flood then, and I’d never know.”

You’d rather like to know how many adventurers he’s worked with, but then you arrive at THAT room. It’s a largely featureless concrete box of a room, with two large pipes, one on top of the other, in the east wall. The pipes dribble rust and the occasional drop of water down the cement, and a metal grill of clear antiquity covers the bottom one.

The hobo sign for “danger,” three stacked diagonal lines, has been chalked beside the upper pipe.

There is also a thing on the floor. It is about four feet long, damp looking, and of a color one might generously call brownish. It has a certain…organic…lumpiness to it. The sort that usually involves time spent in a digestive tract.

You are not a biologist, but you’ve been in enough ruins to recognize an owl pellet when you see one.

You poke it a few times with the point of your walking stick. Bits of fabric and strands of hair fall away, revealing a gleam of bone. You poke again. Oh hey, they wore a retainer. Neat.

“He stuck his head in the pipe,” says Jimmy, sounding deeply discouraged. “That might have been ok, but then he said he saw something and crawled in, and…well. I couldn’t see what happened, but there was a lot of thrashing and screaming and what looked like bone hooks. It’s safe now, though!” he hastens to add. “It hasn’t ever come out of the pipe while I’ve been here. Err. I mean, I probably wouldn’t want to sleep here, though.”

“Fascinating,” you murmur. “What does it live on, I wonder? When it can’t get idiot?”

“Frogs, I think,” Jimmy says. “Big red ones. They’re all over.” He adds reluctantly, “Err…you’re not gonna try to fight it, are you?”

[sarathrwizard]

I wrote a 9 part story that tells you exactly how my camping trip went!

I don't normally write novels, but I thought I'd give it a try!

For context, I went camping for a week and I wrote how my day went from beginning to the end. Every. Single. Day!

And of course I used tmnt characters. The story focuses on Donnies perspective, (aka me) and all the good and bad things that happened.

Oh how I wish I could have made some of this stuff up, but it is actually the PAINFUL truth.

So under the cut, you can read the first part titled, 'Arrival'

I don't know, I guess I'll call the series '7 Day Camp Stay' (it's the first thing I came up with.)

Hope you enjoy!

7 Day Camp Stay

Arrival:

'You spend too much time on technology!' They said.'

'You should go camping!' They said.'

'It'll be fun!' They said!'

'Well, here we are! Pitching tents at 10-o-clock at night at 41 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 5 degrees Celsius!'

Donnie internally screamed. knocked his knees together and folded in his fingers under his arms.

'I'm cold, I forgot to eat lunch, so I'm hungry as well!'

Donnie's stomach growled as a shiver ran up his spine. Leo saw Donnie hug his stomach.

"Uhh, guys? I think we should get those sandwiches made!"

Mikey raised an arm and saluted. He ran past Donnie and handed him a mallet. Mikey and Raphs tent was up. Now all they had to do was set up Leo and Donnie's tent. Donnie sighed and started putting up the tent. It wasn't too hard... except for the fact he drove the steaks through the wrong holes. Donnie groaned and drew the steaks out to be pounded through the correct loop.

Next step was feeding the fiberglass poll through the sleeve. He raised it up till both ends of the poll were set in place. Then the second poll... oh. you have to put both polls in while it's flat... of course.

Now Donnie was grumbling, like his stomach which did NOT have to remind him yet again how hungry he was.

Finally, he finished putting the tent up. He crawled inside and laid down. Looking up, he could see all the stars glittering the night sky. He felt so very tired. Donnie honestly just wanted to go to sleep in his nice, warm bed. But no. He was out in the cold in a thin fabric tent, and a stomach that was still screaming for food. Donnie groaned.

"Donnie! The sandwiches are done!"

Mikey called out. Donnie sat up and crawled out of the tent. Making sure to zip it up tight. The last thing he would want is a giant garden spider in his sleeping bag.

Donnie slowly walked over to the picnic table. The only light illuminating the area was from a small led lantern over head, hung on a pretty precarious nail. Donnie took his plate and sat away from under the swinging lantern.

Donnie looked at the food with a raised eyebrow. Between those two slices of bread was a funny little sandwich with turkey and avocado. It was... okay. To say the least. Donnie looked around to see everyone else smiling. But why wasn't he happy? Why did he not find joy from being in the outdoors? Why wasn't he excited to sleep In a tent like everyone else? Why couldn't he be happy? The thoughts and emotions were making it hard to swallow down his food. He quickly finished it though before anyone could notice.

"I-I'm heading to the restrooms."

"Okay, do you know where they are? do you need help finding them?"

"No! No... Raph. I know where they are. Thank you."

He grabbing the blue bar of soap in it's blue plastic travel container and rushed off to the nearest restroom. They weren't that far away. But in the dark, and with the wild dogs barking in the distance, it suddenly felt much farther than it actually was.

He rushed over to the men's side of the restrooms and opened the door, quickly slipping inside. The lights automatically turned on due to movements. It was clean, to say the least. The door slammed behind him, making him jump slightly. He rubbed his hands together, either from the cold, or his anxiety picking up a bit, he wasn't sure. He went into a stall and locked it shut. He crawled into a corner of the stall and curled into a ball, wrapping his arms around himself.

"I don't want to be here!"

Donnie whispered to himself. A small whimper escaped his throat.

"I don't want to be here!"

The whimpers soon turned into quite sobs. Tears started falling down his cheeks. He normally didn't cry, but everything felt wrong at that moment. Suddenly the restroom door opened with a loud creek. Donnie's breath hitched. He covered his mouth with his hands, hoping to stop any sound from escaping.

"Donnie? You in here?"

Raph called out in a calm tone. Donnie quietly took a breath in, in hopes it would steady his voice.

"Yeah, just... using the bathroom!"

Donnie's nose started to drip. Out of habit, he sniffled. This raised Raphs big brother tingles.

"You doing okay?"

"Yeah, yeah! I'm doing fine! Just... just give me a minute."

"Okay."

Raph slowly closed the door, gently latching it shut. Donnie took a deep breath in and rubbed his knees with his cold hands. He wiped the tears away with his coat sleeves and washed his hands.

Slowly he exited the restroom. Raph was there waiting for him. Donnie shifted his eyes to the ground.

"I'm fine."

Donnie confirmed. Raph lifted one of his arms out from his hoodie pocket and reached out towards him. Donnie slowly walked into his offered hug and excepted the brief touch. Raph wrapped his arm around Donnie and gave him a gentle shoulder rub. Raph wasn't going to ask questions if Donnie wasn't willing to talk about it. They walked back to the campsite. No words were exchanged.

Okay! Phew! That was a bit! But I hope you enjoyed it!

Stay tooned for the first actual full day at camp!

Lord bless you, and have a wonderful day!

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