The First Circle is a novel by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn...

The novel depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka (a research and development bureau made of Gulag inmates) located in the Moscow suburbs...

The title is an allusion to Dante's first circle, or limbo of Hell in The Divine Comedy, wherein the philosophers of Greece, and other virtuous pagans, live in a walled green garden. They are unable to enter Heaven, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell...

The novel addresses numerous philosophical themes, and through multiple narratives is a powerful argument both for a stoic integrity and humanism. Like other Solzhenitsyn works, the book illustrates the difficulty of maintaining dignity within a system designed to strip its inhabitants of it.

#gamechanger

fun fact: when i was a kid, i read this book called The Mysterious Benedict Society which involved the main character taking a test where the answers to the questions in the first part are hidden in the questions in the last part, and vice-verse

so with only the title of the episode to go on, when Deja Vu started with difficult trivia questions, i assumed the twist was going to be similar and later in the episode, they'd start getting questions like "What is the atomic number of Francium?" and "What is Ouagadougou the capital of?" and "What year did Alexander Solzhenitsyn win a Nobel Prize, and what category was it in?"

and then the video game and the ducks and the podium inspection happened and i had to completely re-evaluate

In another universe, Sam Reich is part of Batman's rogues' gallery.

daily self-affirmations 💕

my podium is clean and not covered in spaghetti

i know that the 87th element on the periodic table is Francium

i am not trapped in the time loop

i know how to fix the ElectroBobbleWobble QZ

i am not trapped in the time loop

i have a sufficient number of boxes to reach the shelf of ducks

the wenis is a dance

i am not trapped in the time loop

the wenis is a dance

i am not trapped in the time loop

RANDOM DASHBOARD INSPECTION!

my favourite part of a time loop-- and this is so integral to the trope and it must be done and it fills me with joy every single time-- is when the character stuck in a time loop tries to explain it and nobody believes them and they point to some ridiculous arbitrary happening in the background and is like "wanna bet? those guys carrying that clear glass sheet are going to have a dog run into the pane in 3...2..."

I think we're starting to dilute the meaning of "terminally online". Like, no, it's not terminally online to have eccentric opinions about a popular TV show – people like that existed before "online" was a thing. Unless we're talking at least an "it's homophobic for gay furries to have rat fursonas because they're depicting gay people as vermin", the onlineness falls well short of terminal.

Using the bathroom in general is a human right and should be enshrined as such and I'm not joking. Too many groups of people are denied bathroom breaks or the use of bathrooms entirely--disabled people, blue-collar workers, children, homeless people, prisoners, students, the elderly. I'm surely missing other groups. Not using the bathroom when needed can cause serious, long-term damage, not to mention death. Free, clean, accessible bathrooms should be available everywhere. It's fucking cruel to deny someone the use of the bathroom, regardless of the reasoning. I'd rather every student in the world goof off and every homeless person make a mess and every worker "steal company time" than let one person suffer because they're denied the right to fucking pee in peace.

One of these days some enterprising con artist is going to make up a fake quirky little sci-fi movie, claim that it's been fully produced but Warner Bros. permanently shelved it for a tax writeoff, raise a couple million dollars in crowdfunding to "buy back the rights", then disappear off the face of the planet and take the money with them, and they'll 100% get away with it because really, who are we going to believe?

fandom tumblr was another casualty of streaming services. we used to be on here posting about the episodes that were coming out weekly and posting gifs and writing insane shit about the tv shows we liked. now a new season of a show will drop and we’ll talk about it for a week. two weeks tops. and then that show will leave collectively conscious for 1+ year till the next season drops. there’s a reason succession sundays was a blast on here

we used to have real television

oh you're in a horror film/book and your phone died/has no bars? how boring. I think phones in horror SHOULD work. they should ding only to have the protagonist check and find nothing. they should get calls from somebody you don't know but is still somehow in your contacts. google maps should lead you to one place, no matter what address you type in.

phones are such a big part of our daily lives, removing them from horror removes the horror from our experience. what if the horror felt like it could happen to you, right here, right now? what if it felt like it was already happening?

It IS true that being on here gives you a tumblr accent. This morning my mother asked me something and i replied "i don't know i've never heard these words in that order" and she nearly choked laughing. It wasn't even that funny

There are currently ~2300 works in AO3 tagged with "Created Using Generative AI"

I'll be upfront with my opinion, which mirrors my opinion in regards to my field: using AI will only hasten your own obsolescence. The point of fanfiction is not to crank out fics, but rather to enjoy the hobby and communities of writing and fandom.

i’m going to kdxjdhdjhddjjdhs