Messages

1

Apple Talk / Re: I'm not here.

« on: October 02, 2021, 06:45:11 am »

Yeah. I don’t have much to add except that one day I hope to be able to say I’m not here either.

I can already see you moving.

If it's any encouragement, my life and my career didn't actually start for real until I was in my late 30s.  Things change.  You change.

Hey, remember this?

I made it. I’m not here.

Thanks for writing this. It’s given me, during some especially dark and awful times, a goal to aspire to. When everything else seems unrealistic or foolish, I have a fallback, a reason to keep moving. Not to go some place in particular, but to go anywhere but where I have been sitting all this time.

And I did it.

And you were right about the anger, too. I do in fact still have it, but it’s ... remembering things that used to wreck my week, and giggling to myself about how mad those fuckers would be to see me now. If they could. It’s not spite or hate or a grudge anymore. It’s not seething or brooding. It’s knowing I won. I don’t need to show them what anymore, I already showed myself.

It’s a good place to be, not here.

2

Apple Talk / Re: Last one to post in thread wins

« on: September 25, 2021, 05:45:00 pm »

Wait, you aren't real and this is a solipsistic hellhole? But that would mean...

Oh goddamn it. I'm the demiurge of the universe AGAIN??? This shit is getting OLD. Let me out of my own head, you pieces of shit!

3

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

« on: August 26, 2021, 05:36:01 pm »

Yesterdya the doctor had to do a blood draw to get my levels because HRT needs that shit so you don't drown in your own hormones. Then i started listing a litany of incresingly terrible symptoms I had been having that seemed related to the anxiety meds i'm on, and she was like "hmmmmm.... anemia maybe? we'll just get you tested for everything under the damn sun!"

5 vials of blood later, im sent home

It's been16 hours and Im still woblly as fuck. I double-fuck half the attempts ti fix my typos i make so Ive given up. i nearly threw my laptop into a rian puddle and nearly fell down the long flight of stairs between first and 2nd floors already just this morning.  I ate a whole pizza, a salad, a sandwihc, a plate of pancakes and two bags of chips between blood draw and now, alog with a shitload of 711 generic sports drink gatorade substitute they got cucumcber mnit flavor shits excellent you should try it, here I am weak and limpy and all half leaned on one side anyway despie it all. Drunk without the alcohol

and now I'm like hmmmmmmmmmmmm...... anemia maybe??? MAYYYYYBE????

4

Apple Talk / Re: Last one to post in thread wins

« on: July 24, 2021, 09:41:32 pm »

I’m just waiting for the shit I’m struggling under to level off so I can bitch about not finding work and talk smack about the straight white guy thinking the disabled queers can’t run a fucking co-op their lives depend on.

5

Apple Talk / Re: Last one to post in thread wins

« on: July 23, 2021, 06:13:48 pm »

to keep content fresh, I recommend we pick a theme and each post our answer. How about social security numbers to start!

Oh that sounds fun, I’ll start:
170-00-000-0000-00000-000000-0000000-00000000…

6

Apple Talk / Re: Last one to post in thread wins

« on: July 22, 2021, 01:04:44 am »

One day I'll post about The Mgt in here. Then you'll all be sorry. So will I, but it'll be for the greater good.

7

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

« on: July 01, 2021, 11:33:34 pm »

It’s me. Sorry, I just ooze the scent of money despite not having any.

I don’t know why it’s like this, I’m walking to CVS to spend my last five dollars on some sleep meds and some freak in an ugly tweed suit comes up and starts spouting off about viagra pills. Some guy joins almost every Discord server I’m active in and pings me to ask about if I might be interested mayhaps in some Cryptographic Monetary Stuff. Strangers ringing our doorbell to ask if We, Poor People, would be interested in Expensive Giant Vases. It goes on.

If you feed them to the Nessies, I won’t be too sad. But make sure to keep the marketing material out of there; we don’t want them getting ideas.

8

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Random News Stories

« on: June 30, 2021, 09:08:20 pm »

I hope someone is maintaining a publicly accessible list.

9

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

« on: June 30, 2021, 03:47:24 pm »

Creative geniuses are fungible.

The internet has brought in a golden age of access to, and ability to discover, new media. There is no shortage of talented people producing high-quality entertainment.  Sure, you won't find writers like Ellis hanging out in every coffeeshop, but he doesn't have a monopoly, or anything.  You don't feel like supporting one writer, for whatever reason, you can find another.


...I've been toying the above theory for a while, now, but I don't know if I actually believe it.  Could you replace a Gen Urobuchi, or a Yoko Kanno?  My gut says no.

And I knew Ellis was an asshole, but I watched season 4 of Castlevania anyway.

I've found that the only truly irreplaceable artists are ones I don't have any problem with.

I wouldn't call artistic talent or vision fungible, but it's certainly less than irreplaceable. Enough people will rip off the shit anyone worth a good goddamn is doing that over a decade or so, you'll be able to find your own hyper-specific flavor of whatever it is. It will never quite be the same, but you can tailor your media consumption so specifically to you that it's somehow better this way. Usually, if they're worth ripping off, they can be improved upon, and eventually will be improved upon. So you give up familiarity for basically a higher quality remix of the same style that happens to hit every satsifying note involved.

I should note this only works if you're willing to give up TV and big budget Hollywood films. Those have quite short lists of all people involved and alive at any given point in time, so if one bad person is on TV or in a big name film, it will likely fuck up a half dozen other things too. However, like videogame development, TV and film are collaborative mediums, so you can just tell yourself they didn't do anything important. (I avoid auteurs, they're freaks and weirdos and kind of gross. The two exceptions to my rule of avoidance are kind of weird and gross, even, and not even in ways I like.)

10

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

« on: June 30, 2021, 06:35:24 am »

Speaking for myself, some kinds of hurt cut too close to the bone for me to deal with. Being near some kinds of people is as dangerous to me as if they were actually doing shit to me. I can acknowledge and understand cancelling creators. I do it myself. I don’t think anyone here listens to Lostprophets or Ted Nugent, reads the really racist Lovecraft stuff (I mean yeah it’s all racist as fuck but some of it is waaaay worse than others), or so on and so forth.

I won’t read anything new from Warren Ellis, but I certainly won’t condemn people who do. I do also think that if Faust is right about the context, framing it as Ellis being super important and of course he’d be back (which would be legitimately horrible) is fucked. And it’s a recurring theme.

A content creator I like did a video about the polarization of viewpoints in online entertainment discourse as regards The Last Of Us 2, which I think applies here. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are... if your online presence demands engagement, you will state the most extreme possible version of your beliefs.

Video here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v7wcvMIrK2w

Genuinely recommend watching it even if you don’t care about video game bullshit, Sophie does more than video game content (usually extremely communist deep dives about other kinds of media!) and is one of the most insightful creators I know. For what it’s worth, I also avoid almost all YouTube content as a rule, so... take this as you will. It broke through my resistance to its very existence.

11

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

« on: June 28, 2021, 12:32:48 pm »

No luck, friend.

My “diet” is frozen meals and box meals and, if I’m real lucky and I saved up and Eris loves me extra that day, maybe Taco Bell. I’m poorer than “diet” can accommodate; I eat what I get.

My health in every other respect is abysmal: I’m a smoker, I’ve been homeless a decade off and on, I haven’t seen a doctor who took me seriously once my entire life, and I can’t exercise meaningfully due to chronic fatigue, depression, and a host of undiagnosed digestive fun that combines with my non-diet to leave me alternating perpetually between food coma and hypoglycemia. If I caught a mild case of COVID, I’d probably die instantly.

But your unlucky day doesn’t end there: I have managed to momentarily unclog my sinuses multiple times throughout this ordeal and my taste and smell are unchanged entirely so long as there isn’t a solid wall of ooze sludging my head up like a fatberg in London.

And, finally, today, I seem to be starting to recover. In particular, I have had my sense of smell and taste in full since late last night and I still have it this morning, because my sinuses, while still flowing like the blood of my enemies, are no longer stuffed wall-to-wall with malevolent slime monsters.

I don’t have a breakthrough case of COVID, I have a really vile head cold. Worst one I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some doozies, but it’s not in line with COVID — the phlegm and sinus clogging are by far the largest symptoms.

In fact, they’re the largest symptoms to the point where if it weren’t for the fever and the fact I caught it from others, I’d be forced to assume it was a brand new magical allergy, presumably to the infinite mold that endless late June rain brings to Chicagoland. The concrete is growing fuzz, I shit you not. The fire pit has turned green, and there’s no copper in its construction. It’s a Resident Evil 7 nightmare.

12

Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only

« on: June 27, 2021, 10:08:43 am »

Birds cannot be trusted.  They are not on our side.

I warned everyone.

In my own world, gearing up to rebuild a co-op that was poised to collapse 3 DAMN MONTHS after I joined it is tiring, and I have a horrible disease of some sort at a key moment.

I’m waiting to lose my smell beyond the sinus fuckery, because although I am fully vaccinated, it’s extremely on brand for me to catch COVID, which I had a pretty hefty fear of, only as a breakthrough case... without leaving my house.

(In seriousness, I feel it’s unlikely — or else there’s a new variant in this co-op that is totally unaffected by vaccines. Cluster of 4 fully vaccinated people who all had different vaccines caught this horrible mess all at once with identical severity.)

13

Apple Talk / Re: How to eliminate yourself as a force for good.

« on: June 20, 2021, 09:01:40 pm »

Pardon my ignorance, I tried googling IFF and I'm not sure I've got the right term. Does IFF stand for Identification Friend or Foe?

Yes.

14

Apple Talk / Re: How to eliminate yourself as a force for good.

« on: June 19, 2021, 09:21:04 am »

Yeah.

As I recently said elsewhere, real allies don’t need IFF. If someone needs to inform you whose side they’re on, they sure as fuck aren’t on yours, whatever words spill out of their shit-smeared face.

This is just a bunch of fuckheads loudly proclaiming “we are going to fuck you and you are going to be surprised”.

15

Apple Talk / Re: How to eliminate yourself as a force for good.

« on: June 18, 2021, 09:20:11 pm »

So basically, fighting climate change is now a racist activity.

I don't think that it's implied that it's a racist activity... Unless you meant something like "race is now an important factor in fighting climate change".

Which makes me wonder,
a) Why BIPOC were seemingly excluded in the first place (structural issue? or was it just not diverse enough at the start?)
b) Why the diversity of the group was relevant at all
c) What sort of internal politics led to this decision
d) How this helps BIPOC... Or how they will include them going forward

Of course, I don't think anybody outside the group can really know what's going on internally. I feel like this news may be somewhat sensationalized---maybe the previous administration could be working towards restructuring the group, or another group could take its place. Can't really tell either way.

Very odd phenomenon nonetheless.

Cannot speak to this specific circumstance, but most white people would rather posture and act like they’re considering POC in their politics by referencing them in every reason they’re doing fucking nothing than to actually take the step of including them in actual decisionmaking OR just accepting that they’ve got an unbalanced racially homogenous core group and trying to do right by the outgroup with that ingroup. You’re never gonna get a “diverse” climate action committee in fucking Montana for instance, and Australia is worse — so you have to just try to do what you can.

It isn’t like it’s fucking magic, after all. Like... you ask people what they need and take that into consideration. But they’re more worried about toothless representation than actual action, because one lets them pat themselves on the back for doing nothing, and the other opens them to criticism from other well-to-do white cishet leftists (far scarier to them than criticism from actual marginalized people).