Wu Wei

As of tonight, licenses of trans people across Kansas are being invalidated en masse, enabling the overnight criminalization of an entire group of people for going about our lives. It’s often said you never know when you’re living through history, so let me assure you: that’s what’s happening now.

(That said, I think that we might be better off firmly ostracizing certain people who are just shit-stirrers rather than trying to engage in discourse with them year after year.)

So these "discourse" flare-ups aren't necessarily a bad thing. They are just a thing that has to happen (on a regular basis, forever) so long as furries are a subculture within societies that have some very different views. It may suck sometimes, but it's not futile.

So I think this isn't a matter of trying to change the minds of a fixed population. It's more like a continual process of updating and reinforcing norms in a living community. There's a new "freshman class" every year, and you have to give those people enough information to be part of the community.

If we're talking about discourse in the furry community specifically, I think it is useful to remember that a ton of people are joining every year, or every month even. And every one of those people needs to be socialized into the norms of the fandom, and a lot of those newbies are young adults.

And yet, looking around, I don't see anything like the supposed prevalence rates described by these kinds of posts. Like, obviously there is some chance of COVID causing serious disability, but if this was how it worked, I should know dozens of people with severe problems, not just a handful.

The interesting thing to me is that I have known people who plausibly had extended COVID symptoms (my academic advisor had long COVID for 6-9 mo, I once had severe headache/fatigue for 6 weeks). My mom has a *very* rare autoimmune disorder that suspiciously started after a severe COVID infection.

This is evidence that the administration thinks (I hope wrongly) that they will never be democratically accountable ever again. They picked a Midwestern state and just decided to destroy the entire reputation of the GOP there for a generation.

As someone who also hates wellness, it is so cathartic listening to @vicmsong.bsky.social scream exactly as loud as I want to every time someone wants to talk to me about whatever fad supplement is doing a marketing blitz this month.

it's all just art. "porn" is just art that makes you horny, in precisely the way that "horror" is art that makes you scared and "metroidvania" is art that makes you write video essays

I choose to interpret this as "Who's the best at being in the middle of a train?"

Tourette syndrome activist John Davidson says Bafta told him ‘any swearing would be edited out of the broadcast’ Davidson said he ‘can’t begin to explain how upset and distraught I have been’ over slurs he shouted during the award ceremony

So the BBC promised Davidson and StudioCanal (who made I Swear) that any swearing tics would be edited out from broadcast, and instead they left them in despite a two hour delay, and even put a fucking microphone right in front of him to ensure they picked it up - he was sat at the back of room.

“Authors should ease up on the wish fulfillment in their stories!”

Dante Alighieri literally made a list of people he didn’t like and where in literal hell they would end up.

As someone who frequently gets annoyed that papers have methodology and analysis sections that aren't detailed *enough* (e.g. forgetting to mention the value of some modeling parameter I'm interested in), this is exactly the opposite direction from where I'd like to see things go...

In the same interview, Newsom says he "fell prey" to being too into identity politics by being "way out ahead on marriage equality". Which honestly comes off like saying he regrets having been on board with same-sex marriage as early as he was...

These fictions degrade us both, computer.

Why do I have to pretend that I'm going to print something in order to save it as a PDF. Why do I have to engage in a little ruse.

This case feels like it matches that principle to me. Most expressions of racism look very unlike this, and most dilemmas faced by people with Tourette's also look unlike this, and these facts both make the case more interesting, and also less likely to be relevant to society at large.

There's this legal idea that "hard cases make bad law". The idea being that a complicated, unusual case that feels interesting to discuss is likely to also be kind of a weird outlier that's a bad guide for making general rules.

A similar idea skeleton-ship-in-desert theme later shows up *again* in a 3D Zelda (Skyward Sword), so it must be a popular idea at Nintendo...

Today in building the Torment Nexus. Don't you love the parts of cyberpunk stories where stimulants are everywhere in part because the need to be performing at 100% for days on end turns everyone into addicts?

And virtually all of these can be presented either as shallow "fluff" that focuses on just one aspect of life, or as part of a more nuanced picture. But somehow we treat sex, much more than anything else, as a "bad" drive that is always shallow.

I think that basically all effective art is built around drives and desires that are common to much of the human race, whether that's the desire for friendship, for revenge, for moral certainty, for practice unraveling moral complexity, to perceive beauty, to perceive horror.

question: is the editor who signed off on this digital art a homophobic middle schooler

Yup that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

Magical!

NJ lawmakers introduce the FUCK ICE Act.

The bill "permits civil action for violations of US Constitution related to immigration enforcement."

A comic in four panels: Panel 1. A gothic sorceress enters a small magic shop, approaching the counter. The gothic sorceress explains her problem to the old seller. She shows her wand with a stone broken on it. > Old Seller: Welcome! How can I help you? > Gothic Sorceress: My magic stone is defective, I need a new one. Panel 2. The old seller put a gem stone on the counter, the gothic sorceress is in shock. > Old Seller: Alright, that'll be 600 gold coins. > Gothic Sorceress: What?! It used to be 40! Panel 3. The gothic sorceress thinks, the old man explains the price increase and a wider view angle show the shop full of Avian Intelligence Parrot. > Old Seller: That's because of Avian Intelligence: we need these stones to make them. Panel 4. The gothic sorceress tries to understand. The old man gives up; the angle is even wider showing more of AI Parrots, a huge pile of them. > Gothic Sorceress: And you're going to sell all of these? > Old Seller: What do you think...

Overproduction

#webcomic #krita #miniFantasyTheater

A photo of an ice cream machine with a sign reading, "Anything is possible with ice cream." Beneath that is a hand lettered sign reading, "No ice cream".

2026 basically

2 weeks ago, I put together this thread about the current state of Dem Senate primaries.

If you want to replace Chuck Schumer as Sen Dem Leader, several of these candidates have to overperform.
(and we probably need 1 to win)

The thread was missing something important though: timing.