hitching a ride

las vegas is a special kind of horrifying compared to the rest of the southwest because you get three different flavors of horror all together. there’s the strip, obviously, the hypnosis of the casinos. you know they intentionally don’t put clocks in casinos? and they put mirrors wherever they can? they’re trying to disorient you so you stay inside. they’re trying to trap you. and the casinos are different but they’re all the same underneath, slots and shows and roulette wheels, the same bones in different bodies. but then you get outside the strip and you’re in the suburbs. it’s flat. barely anything outside the strip is more than two, maybe three storeys. everything is in a strip mall. the houses are identical wherever you go. even the schools - there are two major architectural blueprints for high schools in las vegas. if you’ve been inside one school you can navigate them all. it’s all the same and it’s all normal, in defiance of the neon of the strip. (you can see the beacon from the luxor from anywhere in the city, you can always find your way to the strip, but- is that better, than being somewhere that you know? somewhere that’s the same wherever you go?) and then of course if you step too far outside you’re in the desert. much further and you’re in the mountains. the suburbs are creeping out further and further, taking over, but there will always be desert. summer will always be 120 degrees. there will always be heat and scorpions on the edges and no matter how far you push out you will not be able to build on the mountains. no matter how hard you try the desert will find you. and none of these things are mutually exclusive, not as much as you think. there are slot machines in grocery stores. there are houses behind casinos. there is undeveloped desert in the center of everything, reminding you that the desert was not built to hold you, the desert was not built for this, you should not be here. you shouldn’t be here.

"if i was orpheus i would simply not turn around" yes you would. if you were orpheus and you loved eurydice, you would. to love someone is to turn around. to love someone is to look at them. whichever version of the myth — he hears her stumble, he can't hear her at all, he thinks he's been tricked — he turns around because he loves her. that's why it's a tragedy. because he loves her enough to save her. because he loves her so much he can't save her. because he will always, always turn around. "if i was orpheus i would simply —" you wouldn't be orpheus. you wouldn't be brave enough to walk into the underworld and save the person you love. be serious

why the gritty aesthetic? don't know, just having fun

I wanna push you around

I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

How can we help 😔

Gaza Funds

Donate if you can. Spread this if you can't. Direct support to these families is the best thing we can do right now.

there have been 774664 studies on basic income and the results of every single one have been “wow! we gave people money and literally everything improved! crime rates are down! the actual sky is bluer! my (the researcher’s) wife decided not to leave me after all!” but these have all been short studies, just a couple years. i think what’s really missing from the field is a proper long form study, with a broader, bolder demographic, to really get us those numbers we need. a truly diverse study pool like, say, everyone. forever

If you're on Windows 11 like I am for my "main" computer (in my case for school purposes and because I can't get Baldur's Gate 3 to play on Linux), then you might've seen this annoying piece of AI shit show up on your taskbar:

This is Windows Copilot, and it's fulled by the same shit ChatGPT is fuelled by. There is currently no way to uninstall it, but there is a way to deactivate it completely, which I've linked below. It's very easy, and it took me like, 2 minutes to do.

No guarantees because writing is weird like that, but help me choose!

but being genuine & not jokey for a second you Need to make yourself a safe person for transfems. every time you support the witch-hunt of a trans girl you are signaling to every other trans girl you know that you will ruin their life if they say something you don't like. you have to put aside kneejerk disgust reactions and simply block people if they post something that upsets you. this is not worth risking their safety

Men like to believe theyd be great in apocalypse scenarios but they dont even know how to sew

A little piece of advice for Americans navigating what will be an increasing number of posts about US politics in the coming year:

If a post makes you feel angry, upset, and hopeless, while offering no actionable information, scroll on and don't reblog it. I know that is going to feel harsh in some cases. But it's important to spend your political energy on what you can actually do and not be sunk into helpless rage and despair that benefits no one.

my father said to me once that one of the things he deeply regretted was not putting music on for his father while he was fading away. he told me that grandpa would just sit in his old armchair in the quiet, and not until after he’d passed did my dad think of how he could have played of his favorite classical music tapes for him so grandpa could listen to something while he still could. i was very young when this happened and not much older when my dad told me this, but it always stuck with me as something important.

my mother died at home in a hospice cot, slowly shutting down over the course of about a week. when she had stopped responding, i remembered what dad told me about wishing he’d played music for grandpa, and i put the radio on her favorite country music station and kept it on for her until she died.

daddy died in hospital. no cassette players, no decent radios. the day after he was brought in, i thought again of what he told me, and i bought a little portable bluetooth speaker. even though he never woke up, was never aware, i played music for him too.

there’s no real significance to sharing this, not really. my motivation is selfish, again: i just want to hope that someone might think of this when their loved one is stuck in silence somehow, and maybe they’ll play music for them, and they won’t have to regret not doing so. i want to hope it helps someone. and i want to hope that someone will remember my dad with me, even in just a “story i read on the internet” way.