Mid Fimbulwinter

Honestly can't remember the last time I loved an MCU thing the way I love Wonder Man

Is that song from the pov of Scott Summers singing to Mr. Sinister? (assuming I'm remembering which song it is correctly)

I am tired of bending into knots to understand the evolution and motivation and pathos of men who hurt people.

There's a line from a Doubleclicks song that I come back to:

"I don’t care if you are happy now
I just hope that you are victimless"

Yeah that's the dang thing that nobody gets.

Even if you convince everyone raw milk is the best thing ever

Even if you get it declared fully legal everywhere

The insurance companies still know ( :

We gotta come up with a better system than “everything rests on whether these twelve billionnaires are nice”

I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.

"I was told you're a monster," the hero said.

"So they say," said the monster.

"But you're beautiful!"

"Thank you."

"Have you always been a monster?"

"Heh. I was a young maiden. But I did something forbidden."

"And became a monster?"

"Got named a monster."

"What did you do?"

"I hit back."

worth noting that the second rich people stopped being afraid of mobs tearing them limb from limb, they stopped building libraries and opera houses and stuff and started ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of society instead

I got one, we made some creme brulee, now I use it to melt the ends of paracord far more often. It has started zero unwanted fires though!

MacKenzie Scott has the chance to do the funniest thing right now.

Peraventure yf "to run somethinge lyke a businesse" doth meane "to strip thinges doun to maximize profit and eventuallye sell it or destroye it when it doth not fit wyth the rest of your portfolio" then we sholde NOT run arts, educacional, and cultural institutions "lyke a businesse"

agentic installs are, really, just malware, full stop. They're great at social engineering and it's extremely difficult to prevent them escalating permissions

it's tinfoil hat of me but i assume that's what the IPOs this year are gonna go on; all the personal secretaries installed on the desktop

I trust you, but your AI agent is a snitch: Why we need a new social contract.

We’re chatting on Signal, enjoying encryption, right? But your DIY productivity agent is piping the whole thing back to Anthropic.

Friend, you just created a permanent subpoena-able record of my private thoughts...1/

It is currently 'packs of coyotes walking across the Charles River' cold outside.

@pervocracy.bsky.social From Stephenson's Baroque Cycle intro:

"Of particular note is Sir Winston Spencer Churchill’s six-volume biography of Marlborough, which people who are really interested in this period of history should read, and people who think that I am too long-winded should weigh."

:-)

King: of all the authors i thought would be accused of sex crimes, i never suspected neil gaiman
Poe: who did you suspect?
King: well if i'm being honest
King: i think i would have suspected
Poe: piers Anthony
King: yeah, piers Anthony
Piers Anthony: [huffing a pair of panties] wut?

King: boy those Epstein emails
King: it's really sobering to see how money and power allowed sex predators to operate
Neil Gaiman: hello everyone
Gaiman: i'm back
Barker: oh boy
Barker: oh boy you sure picked a time

a culture needs infrastructure and that our infrastructure fucking sucks. Because what we have right now essentially shows us that one of the greatest benefit of privilege is the freedom to dehumanize without consequence

the villains in neuromancer being a family of gross inbred rich weirdos who want to live forever in space feels a little too on the nose

Adobe is not really in the creative software business anymore. They are in the digital wealth extraction business. I wish more comics publishers would prioritize moving away from Adobe.

And in their minds, they are either not doing it, or they are doing it for good reason. We don’t have to endorse any of that. Whatever bullshit excuses they’re using. Typically they lie to themselves first, and you’re not going to dislodge that lie.

This is what hurts so much - when the art understands an act is wrong, but the artist is doing it IRL. So they must know it's wrong, thier work says so! They just decided to do it anyway.

Subconscious theory "if terrible people make art, it can only be terrible," that's not how it works. Sometimes in the art there is true catharsis & person is good. Other times, veiled confessions & manipulation. We can only know the difference by truly listening & respecting those around the artist.

Being a fascist is a deeply demoralizing experience. You have to not only radically alter your worldview to make reality fit into your unhinged schema, but that worldview is predicated on the notion that the weakest, most unworthy degenerate worms on the planet are somehow overpowering and humiliating you on a moment-by-moment basis. In mechanical terms too, the lowered morale also reduces your volition score—the more you indulge in your delusions, the less you are able to exercise self-control and self-awareness. The point of fascism being mechanically detrimental—the ludonarrative theme—is that fascism is an unequivocally self-destructive ideology, the practice of which only serves to nurture that self-destructive urge and turn it outward. It's not like Dark Side points in KotOR where you can access cool new abilities and get to enjoy being such a nasty lil rascal; you are not supposed to enjoy being a fascist in Disco Elysium. Fascism is the act of self-deception in service of making your own life more painful, solely for the payoff of making life more painful for people you dislike.

a robot with the words `` number 5 is alive '' written on it . ALT: a robot with the words `` number 5 is alive '' written on it .

Also a positive, I guess: The “5 is Live” message will remind everyone of the hit 1986 sci-fi comedy SHORT CIRCUIT.

A tough one to sit with--but we must--is that some people's ability to make good art in part derived from, or was protected by, the fact that they were enabling or doing terrible things. See also: We Need to Talk about Cosby doc. Even more troubling on this score: Read deep reporting on Alice Munro

Who has the most complicated family tree in comics? I see your Summers Family and raise you a Williams / Vision / Ultron / Pym / Maximoff / Barton (plus a little Summers, and some Rogue) Family.

#WonderMan #XMen

comicsxf.com/2026/02/03/w...

The Prince Andrew interview foreshadowed this. Someone completely unused to being held to account, who crumbled under scrutiny. Plenty more Prince Andrews out there, who will gladly throw each other under the bus.

Before it gets lost in the noise:

Don’t fuck your employees.

Don’t fuck your 20-something employees.

Don’t fuck your 20-something employees who are currently depending on you for a place to live.

Titanium bollards with point defense cannons. It's the only way to be sure.