Riot Kings, page 147

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(would he have gone through with it? Yes.)

If true we HAVE to make this the biggest flop in gaming history, as in 'destroys the company' levels of gaming flop as in a 'lesson must be taught' gaming flop, as in 'E.T. destroyed atari' gaming flop

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."

Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.

These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!

Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!

Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.

So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.

very late to the meme, it's been done before but. here. turn on the sound pls

sometimes while i think about that while a lot of adults did not treat me very well as a kid i also get a lot of 'in hindsight this person was so good to me and i didnt even realize it until now' as an adult. today i was thinking about how the first anime convention i ever went to was when i was 10 and i asked the man working the manga cafe what manga was/what a good place to start was (because the con was very overstimulating for me and i had gotten lost) and he asked how old i was before recommending yotsuba and asking if i wanted any water or something to eat. its really simple but theres a lot of bad things that couldve happened or he could've been careless in his recommendation, but instead yotsuba has remained one of my favorite manga for years, and probably a large portion of why i continue to read manga as an adult... i think adults who try to involve kids in the world safely/kindly even in little ways make so much more of a difference than they ever really know.

mario has to be informed on who chris pratt is, and is disappointed

Do you guys notice how when Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union, started planning a general strike, he did it by a) targeting his messaging towards unions with the ability to safely and effectively strike in large numbers, b) laid out a clear, actionable plan for those unions to follow (setting contracts to all expire at the same time, since many unions cannot strike while under contract), c) is using union contracts to set clear, actionable demands that can be met in order to gauge success and provide an end goal, and d) started organizing FOUR YEARS before the proposed strike date to give people the chance to plan accordingly, because it takes a really freaking long time to get tens of millions of people organized?

You notice how he didn't do it by slapping a message on Twitter saying 'hey nobody go to work on Monday, that'll really show 'em'?

People seem to think this is fake because it's written in English. Apart from the racism in believing that Arab doctors and nurses aren't fluent in English (a second or official language for half of Asia), Palestinians have deliberately been addressing their audience in English on every social media, from journalists to children, because they know speaking English to Westerners immediately makes people more human in their eyes. Because language is one of the ways the imperial cultural hegemony conditions us (yes, everyone in the world) to see who qualifies as "people" and who are simply a mass of bodies who were always made to suffer and die. Gazans know this deeply, which is why they have been using English to beg and plead through social media, "We're not numbers! We're not numbers! We're people like you, we speak your language, we deserve to live!" all the while they're systematically slaughtered.

Israeli forces also encircled Al Shifa Hospital yesterday and bombed it for several hours while shooting dead anyone trying to flee including medical staff moving between buildings. Not sure whether it's still continuing because WHO lost all communications with its staff there a few hours after. The last new report said that thirty-nine babies had been removed from the incubators before the power went out. It's extremely unlikely they will survive.

Please understand that these atrocities depend on the war of attrition between governments and public attention. The momentum of public outcry is difficult to sustain through repeated stonewalling and bureaucratic intractability. When we're flooded with these reports and a sense of futility and despair replaces the anger, it allows compassion fatigue to set in and the violence to become normalized. Massacring hospitals, killing sick children and openly targeting humanitarian aid workers (Netanyahu just declared the UNRWA is in league with Hamas) will become simply more news articles that fade into the background, and open genocides will soon become part of the "lesser evil".

Take care of yourselves how you can, take distance where needed, but please never tune out and give up on the two million people for whom we are the only witness and hope. Never stop boosting and sharing the news and posts you find, never stop getting out there and joining every protest you can, however small. Anger burns out, which is why activism must depend on an immovable sense of justice and uncompromising value for human life. It's not just about Gaza, it's about the kind of evil our generation will be coerced into accepting as unchangeable and inevitable hereafter.

Danny needs a few...odd things. A few dietary and emotional requirements unique to his physiology. Meat is one of them.

But like, raw meat. He doesn't have to eat it often, maybe twice a month, but it does need to be completely raw.

He also needs to eat non-sentient blob ghosts, which are very different from sentient ones. Same amount, maybe twice a month.

He's weak to hot temperatures, where most humans require some sort of positive contact he needs to fight, if he gets too much sunlight his dopamine levels drop, and oddly enough as he got older milk or products with a lot of milk started to affect him like alcohol affects humans.

Now that he's made it to college, hiding most of these things is easy enough.

He chose Gotham, because of minimal sunny days and naturally cold weather. He regularly goes for walks at night, to fill his need for fighting. He says he has a milk allergy, and avoids milk products.

The blobs and the raw meat are a little uh. Those are a little hard.

He's taken to ducking into a bathroom stall to just swallow the blobs whole. But the meat...

He decides to sear the outside and leave the inside entirely raw. Does this detract from the nutrients by cooking them off? Yes. Does it mean he needs to eat raw meat four times a month instead of twice? Yes. Does it mostly hide that he's doing this in front of humans? Kind of.

Until he got a vegan roommate.

Said roommate is far too sharp-eyed for his own good, and now the guy is being weird.

Or: Damian's roommate is a meta who clearly has dietary restrictions outside the norm. It's fine; Damian understands that like animals in the wild, people have different diets. But the cuts of meat Fenton is eating are...subpar. Damian isn't sure how to be...civil, or appear polite, or not be a "snob" if he suggests Fenton allow him to procure farm fresh cuts of steak from cows raised in an open pasture and were well taken care of.

people seriously pretending EEAAO is overrated suddenly bc it swept awards? it swept awards largely because it is very very very good. I cried like someone who's just had a religious revelation BOTH times I watched it bc it touched something raw and real and beautiful but it was also just very, very funny. everyone's performance kills and the concept is creative and interesting and doesn't distract from the emotional core. you guys are just contrarian.

Ghost Kitchen (brought to you by criminal entrepreneur, Red Hood)

Danny’s got the easiest job in Gotham.

He works as a fry cook at a shoddily-run, independent burger joint. Hardly anyone comes in, despite prices being criminally low, and portions insanely large, and while the manager looks like the average tough-as-nails ex-con, he lets Danny mess around in the kitchen whenever the place is empty. (Which is often. This place has to be the city’s hidden gem or something!)

Mr. Manager’s the only one ever there with Danny, except for sometimes when his buddies come over to smoke and play cards. Danny would find it shady, except part of his job is not to ask questions. Literally, he was told during the interview.

(It was a weird interview. Why would they need to hire someone who’s been in a gunfight before? Like, he has, but Gotham’s idea of “hirable qualities” is so bizarre.)

So instead he whips up some killer burgers with the frozen ingredients, and basks in the praise as the guys tell him he shouldn’t have, he does too much for this joint, ain’t that friendly!

Now, Danny’s a chef on the newer side. As a teen he’d preferred the look of Nasty Burger over anything with Michelin stars, and he only really took up cooking after Jazz moved out for college. But just like ecto-exposure used to turn the groceries sentient, Danny’s low-level ecto signature imbues all his food with something historically haunted Gothamites just love! And Danny’s never been one to half-ass a job when it makes people happy.

With fresher produce, real meat, Danny’s sure he can take his dishes to the next level. It takes a couple months of badgering, but his manager finally agrees to contact the mysterious store owner, who keeps the place going, despite profits Danny knows have to be in the red.

Danny spends the morning prepping. He pours his heart into his food, eager to impress. The big boss will be here soon, and he wants to prove that despite the dangerous location, this place has real potential!

It isn’t until the Red Hood shows up that Danny realizes he’s been working for a money laundering scheme.

Alastor may dislike new age tech but that doesn't mean he doesn't have his sources lol

The difference between a strike and a boycott is the focus of what is being withheald

In a strike the supply is being withheald because the workers aren’t producing whatever it is.  It works by having the masses demand what the companies cannot produce and therefore, if the company wants to continue providing whatever it is in order to continue making money, they have to listen to worker demands

In a boycott the demand is being withheald because the masses aren’t buying or engaging with whatever it is.  It works because companies, obviously, need to actually sell things in order to function.  The point is to make the company change something about a product in order to appeal to the masses again

That’s why you shouldn’t boycott when a strike is on (unless the union says so) because it kind of cancels out the strike.  If there is no demand then witholding supply is meaningless - again, unless the union says so, since that means they factored it into their industrial action plan and believe it would be beneficial

I know people want to help but the reaction to call for a boycott whenever there’s a strike just kind of...... doesn’t

To me, the best embodiment of modern capitalism is in the phrase "please hold, we are experiencing higher than usual call volume". I know it's a lie. You know it's a lie. But you still hear that line every time you call, regardless of the day or time, because it shifts the blame. It tries to prompt you to blame the other callers instead of asking, "Hey, why are they deliberately understaffing their call centers and making it so difficult to get help?" It takes a failing caused by a deliberate, profit-focused management choice, and turns it into a problem with the people using the system, rather than one with the system itself. And that pattern, to me, is the epitome of the modern corporate system.

Transcript:

LET'S SETTLE THI- Oh hang on. Hang on, Machine, um.

It's 8 PM I need to take my testosterone.

Sorry I'll just be a second. Uh wait here, alright?

Audio Source