raisehelia:

theinturnetexplorer:

Sand in the Sahara

oh mannnn

kontextmaschine:

I just learned that you can buy your message’s way into a full okcupid mailbox for $1

and the friendly-seedy tone - the offer is a popup saying “with a little bribery we’ll let it slide”

OKCupid is SO GOOD at correctly humanizing life-by-profitseeking-algorithm

has anyone else here read John Varley?

You know I would TOTALLY trust Valve to craft people’s social experience and Facebook to sell them microtransaction games and it’s a shame how that worked out.

There was something on maybe Reddit? the other day asking what the biggest most overhyped disappointment ever was and I was like the Segway? but maybe that’s just because (being the kind of person who reads Reddit today) I was the kind of person who read Slashdot back in the day.

“The Apocalypse”? That’s an evergreen. (You know the Seventh-Day Adventists started out as an 1844 apocalypse cult? American religions are bonkers.)

Then I thought “space exploration”, because I’ve been looking at some ‘70s pop culture lately and it’s just heartbreaking how much they expected everything to be about that by now.

And that’s kind of the last thing that the postwar optimism was invested in, where we went bankrupt, nothing like that since.

I know, I know, I carry a connection to the universal akasha in my pocket now and I should be more in awe of that but it just doesn’t feel grandiose. Maybe it’s cause it came on gradually, maybe because it’s so entwined with the preexisting world. Like, the universal akasha runs on 5V power and credit cards, that’s kind of bullshit.

And then I stopped and thought that if these developments had been scripted as a story, I would have appreciated that detail as gritty realism.

And then I realized OH MY GOD we live in the capitalpunk AU.

Look at those smug faces, those are exactly the people you’d expect to give you a lecture about pedantic points of grammar.

Which actually makes it kind of weird they were chosen to give lectures about pedantic points of grammar?

What if the Merriam-Webster site is secretly making bank off of grammar humiliation fetishists

owls-n-elderberries:

// return // by Tyler Forest-Hauser

eschergirls:

From Twitter User @ElizSimins

These are pages from “How to Draw Manga: Illustrating Battles” by Hikaru Hiyashi

Another wonderful addition to the “dramatic fight to the death or porn shoot” category of Escher Girl image. xD

kontextmaschine:

willlaren:

I don’t understand. You can go to championships for frisbee? Won’t the dog team win just like they do every year?

There is nothing in the rulebook that says a dog can’t play frisbee.

Still cracking up over this.

clickholeofficial:

Heartwarming: The Curvy Road From The Car Commercials Visited A Sick Fan In The Hospital

digg:

TURN THE SOUND ON OMG

swampgallows

okay that’s kinda cute

tayllorswifts:

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone's singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That's the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.



raggedjackscarlet:

sizvideos:

Homemade helicopter with drones

Video

Bless the Mad Tinkerers.

scavengedluxury:

Andover Estate. London, August 2015.

1:40am last night and I got stoned and thought about the Holy Trinity, as one does.

Specifically how weird the Holy Ghost/Spirit is in there. Like, you’ve got the classic demiurge-patriarch who’s been a character from the start. You’ve got the human incarnation/avatar/savior hero figure, and both of them are like human-analog figures - they have dialogue and thoughts and the story is organized around a series of conflicts involving them as parties. And then you’ve got, like, the transcendent concept of competent, inspiring leadership.

♫ One of these things is not like the other… ♫

(I’ve said before that on reflection most of my sense of Christian mythology comes from Vertigo comics, and at this point I realize I’m kind of conceiving the Holy Spirit as Genesis in Preacher. And at THIS point I realize no, Garth Ennis conceived Genesis as the Holy Spirit.)

I mean now that I think about that I dig that, that they put it on that level. I’m a big believer in the power of charisma (I kind of do wonder what translators would make of my use of “charisma”, or “enchant” and “idiom”. Probably get it wrong.) after all. Now that I think of it, that kind of means that anyone with a spark of charisma  - compelling speakers and leaders of men like say the early missionaries and church fathers for example - would have been understood to some extent as inherently divine or divine vectors.

Like, I snicker at Mormonism for the whole prophethood (/no, godhood!) of all believers thing (and for the convenient hack that people are only given authentic prophecies as pertains their designated rank in the hierarchy) but how far off is that, really.

Buuuut the question comes back, if/when I do that biblical paraphrase, what am I going to do about the Trinity? It’s too central to dispense with, but the Holy Spirit just isn’t a character, he’s like… a buff, or maybe mana. I get that there’s some fascinating kind of spiritual angle there, Christian mystery and all, but that doesn’t really do much for me and I don’t picture it doing much for the nonbelieving heritage audience I’m aiming at.

One idea would be to make it a thesis/antithesis/synthesis trilogy of the Father/Rebel/Son with the Miltonian Lucifer taking over for the Holy Spirit - those would all be *characters* at least, and each pair has an interesting resonance (in opposition to the third) AND a good conflict.

But that just gets back to the question I had before, where the hell in the order of things do I stuff the War in Heaven and the Fall?

nihilsupernum:

kontextmaschine i dont know as much about christianity as i should but should i start a strain of christianity which focuses on the holy ghost y/y

Pentecostalism. You’re thinking of Pentecostalism. (Which was also an American development that drew on Spiritualist trends in the zeitgeist.)

responsible-reanimation:

kontextmaschine:

1:40am last night and I got stoned and thought about the Holy Trinity, as one does.

Specifically how weird the Holy Ghost/Spirit is in there. Like, you’ve got the classic demiurge-patriarch who’s been a character from the start. You’ve got the human incarnation/avatar/savior hero figure, and both of them are like human-analog figures - they have dialogue and thoughts and the story is organized around a series of conflicts involving them as parties. And then you’ve got, like, the transcendent concept of competent, inspiring leadership.

♫ One of these things is not like the other… ♫

(I’ve said before that on reflection most of my sense of Christian mythology comes from Vertigo comics, and at this point I realize I’m kind of conceiving the Holy Spirit as Genesis in Preacher. And at THIS point I realize no, Garth Ennis conceived Genesis as the Holy Spirit.)

I mean now that I think about that I dig that, that they put it on that level. I’m a big believer in the power of charisma (I kind of do wonder what translators would make of my use of “charisma”, or “enchant” and “idiom”. Probably get it wrong.) after all. Now that I think of it, that kind of means that anyone with a spark of charisma  - compelling speakers and leaders of men like say the early missionaries and church fathers for example - would have been understood to some extent as inherently divine or divine vectors.

Like, I snicker at Mormonism for the whole prophethood (/no, godhood!) of all believers thing (and for the convenient hack that people are only given authentic prophecies as pertains their designated rank in the hierarchy) but how far off is that, really.

Buuuut the question comes back, if/when I do that biblical paraphrase, what am I going to do about the Trinity? It’s too central to dispense with, but the Holy Spirit just isn’t a character, he’s like… a buff, or maybe mana. I get that there’s some fascinating kind of spiritual angle there, Christian mystery and all, but that doesn’t really do much for me and I don’t picture it doing much for the nonbelieving heritage audience I’m aiming at.

One idea would be to make it a thesis/antithesis/synthesis trilogy of the Father/Rebel/Son with the Miltonian Lucifer taking over for the Holy Spirit - those would all be *characters* at least, and each pair has an interesting resonance (in opposition to the third) AND a good conflict.

But that just gets back to the question I had before, where the hell in the order of things do I stuff the War in Heaven and the Fall?

This could be fixed by making the Holy Spirit into a psychopomp figure, filling a gap in Christianity and giving us some really cool stained-glass fodder.

Well Gaiman’s Lucifer was kinda a psychopomp, and like I said the Vertigo books were a big influence on me. Just taking the Spirit as ferryman alone, well okay that actually gives him a role and a form but I think that might still be a step down in terms of being central enough to hold his own with the other members of the trinity. Like, what would be his conflicts/connections with the Father or Son be based on?

I mean just spitballing I can think of a few plot beats involving Purgatory where a psychopomp’s ability to withhold or misdirect souls from the other afterlives might work as an independent power base for some True Neutral force, but True Neutral doesn’t really make sense as a mediator or balance to Father/Son. I still think all the plots would work better redone for a Lucifer, the Father/Rebel/Son trilogy has better thematics of (Divine Order as its own end) v. (Human Liberation as its own end) v. (Human Liberation thru. Divine Order).

Honestly I think if you wanted to whip together a psychopomp you’ve got better material with Mary, though you could take Simon of Cyrene in a pinch.

Actually wait, Saint Peter at the gates with the book and keys. There’s your psychopomp.

That or the Grim Reaper which… well, that’s mythology, and it’s particular to Christendom (or if adapted from the near east no more so than the rest of it) so I guess that’s Christian mythology. Figuring out how he fits in might be kinda fun, actually.

I will say one thing about contemplating rewriting the Bible as mythological tales, it really makes you appreciate how much the Bible wasn’t originally written as mythological tales. Like not in the sense of “they really believed it” so much as in the sense of “this predates the idea of dividing writing into genres, at all”.

Like, there’s mythological tales mixed with national history and geneaology but that’s kind of normal for a tribal religious corpus. There’s tediously detailed economic and shipbuilding records for what would have been pretty ancient history even to its original audience, but that’s not really unprecedented either.

But then it wanders off into like, a bunch of praise songs, and then self-help, and then a bunch of sexy slow jams, and a few biography/collection of speeches, and then a bunch of collected correspondence, and then the whole thing ends with a fucking trip report.

soupsane:

Pixiv

fat-birds:

darecrow:

Five people have tagged me in this today and it literally is me

why fly when you can take a ride on a windshield wiper?

himeshirayuki:

reblog this post for your chance to be KIDNAPPED by the BIRD KING!

rules:

1. only reblogs count
2. no giveaway blogs
3. you dont have to be following me
   
4. the BIRD KING has not given me the full details on what he plans to do with the person he kidnaps
5. from what i know, i believe he plans to make you his BIRD QUEEN
6. or possibly BIRD KING-CONSORT or if you prefer gender-neutral terms then just BIRD CONSORT. it does not matter. the BIRD KING is PANSEXUAL
7. the giveaway will end WHEN THE BIRD KING DEMANDS IT
8. leave your inbox open, ill contact the winner on where and when they will be KIDNAPPED by the BIRD KING

good luck!