Beautiful 3D illusion.
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In thirty years I’ll be myself in early 2009.
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Two people in Antarctica looking at an emperor penguin chick. The bird has its beak open. Some wit has captioned the image: “Excuse me… what the fuck are you doing here?”
1.) Open Google. 2.) Search your LAST name, only your last name. 3.) Take the first picture that comes up. 4.)Put this on Tumblr 5.) This is you in 30 years.
Hmm… Apparently I get a sex change, change my name to Margaret and become the first woman doctor in New Zealand.
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nem sirok csak 65ezren belementek a szemembe
A crowd of 65,000 sings ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ perfectly while waiting for a Green Day concert
THIS. IS. PERFECTION.
Amazing!
1. how the fuck did Green Day follow that
2. you know, we have fun here, with the word “meme,” but according to meme theory, which is an actual thing pioneered by reptilian human impersonator Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, most of what we call memes are very unsuccessful memes. A meme, in the scientific sense - if one is generously disposed to consider memetics a science on any particular day - is an idea that acts like a gene. That is, it seeks to replicate itself, as many times as possible, and as faithfully as possible.
That second part is important. A gene which is not faithful in its replication mutates, sometimes rapidly, sometimes wildly. The result might be cancer or a virus or (very very very rarely) a viable evolutionary step forward, but whatever the case, it is no longer the original gene. That gene no longer exists. It could not successfully reproduce itself.
The memes we pass around on the internet are, in general, very short lived and rapidly mutating. It’s rare for any meme to survive for more than a year: in almost all cases, they appear, spread rapidly, spawn a thousand short-lived variations, and then are swiftly forgotten. They’re not funny anymore, or interesting anymore. They no longer serve any function, and so they’re left behind, a mental evolutionary dead end.
This rendition of Freddie Mercury’s immortal opera Bohemian Rhapsody is about the most goddamned amazing demonstration of a successful meme I’ve ever seen. This song is 42 years old, as of 2017. FORTY TWO YEARS OLD. And it has spread SO far, and replicated itself across the minds of millions of people SO faithfully, that a gathering of 65,000 more or less random people, with nothing in common except that they all really like it when Billie Joe Armstrong does the thing with the guitar, can reproduce it perfectly. IN PERFECT TIME. THEY KNOW THE EXACT LENGTH OF EVERY BRIDGE. THEY EVEN GET THE NONSENSE WORDS RIGHT. THEY DIVIDE THEMSELVES UP IN ORDER TO SING THE COUNTER-CHORUS.
“Yeah, Pyrrhic, lots of people know this song.”
Listen, you glassy-eyed ninny: our species’ ability to coherently pass along not just genetic information, but memetic information as well, is the reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Language is a meme. Civilization is a collection of memes. Lots of animals can learn, but we may be the only animal that latches onto ephemera - information that doesn’t reflect any concrete reality, information with little to no immediate practical application - and then joyfully, willfully, unrelentingly repeats it and teaches it to others. Look at how wild this crowd is, because they’re singing the same song! It doesn’t DO anything. It’s not even why they showed up here today! If you sent out a letter to those same 65,000 people that said, “Please show up in this field on this day in order to sing Bohemian Rhapsody,” very few of them would have showed up. But I would be surprised to meet a single person in that crowd who joined in the singing who doesn’t remember this moment as the most amazing part of a concert they paid hundreds of dollars to see.
And they’re just sharing an idea. It’s stunning and ridiculous. Something about how our brains work make us go, “Hey!! Hey everybody!! I found this idea! It’s good! I like it! I’m going to repeat it! Do you know it too?? Repeat it with me! Let’s get EVERYBODY to know it and repeat it and then we can all have it together at the same time! It’s a good idea! I’m so excited to repeat it exactly the way I heard it, as loudly as I can, as often as possible!!”
This is how culture happens! This is how countries happen! Sometimes a persistent, infectious idea - a meme - can be dangerous or dark. But our human delight at clutching up good memes like magpies and flapping back to our flock to yell about them to everyone we know is why we as a species bothered to start doing things like “telling stories” and “writing stuff down.”
“That’s a lot of spilled ink for a Queen song, Pyrrhic.”
Man I just fucking love people.
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. “ - Agatha Christie
Self-love? Self-hate? Both?
After that table-flipping post of mine, I think I need to ask myself why I’m doing this. Imposing this burden on me.
When I wrote it, I was writing from an obvious sense of frustration with myself - self-hatred - I was shocked by my unthinking actions on Friday night. I’d betrayed my Dad and myself. In a sense, my semi-temperance is a sort of punishment.
At the same time, I felt and still feel that I can do better in my life and savings regime. It’s going to be a challenge, and it has a set goal time, which I may have to adjust depending on externals. Doctor’s bills, counsellor’s bills, SL rents, that sort of thing.
The first big ask of the week will be on Wednesday. Weeks ago, I thought that it would be clever to slope off for a late afternoon pizza and beer at Tuatara’s cellar door (they have a special on Wednesdays and nice pizzas.) Then there’s Friday evening, and then Sunday, I think. It depends on the weather.
Let me explain the reasoning. Tuatara’s special is a fixed price. I also know how much I can drink on a Friday. Any other drinkies, I know I’m getting rorted at the bar and think twice. Think twice, spend less, find other things to do.
I suppose you could call it self-tough-love?
Bored, games
I’m trying to work out a model for a two- or four-handed sort of board game I’m provisionally calling Kitty-Corner. People love games and gadgets in Second Life, and trying to figure out how to make such a device work is a nice mental exercise.
Also, I’m working on getting my SL shirt range up on Marketplace, probably just regular layers at this time. It’s a long, slow, annoying process. (Subsequently I finish the layers for the first design. All jacket, shirt and underwear layers. I suppose I need to make promotional shots now…)
Frankly put. I am a FAKE GEEK GUY. I admit it. I like geek stuff, but I don’t love geek stuff. Not the way most geeks do. I’m an interloper on the geek scene. I’ve seen the movies, but I don’t know the canon. I am not a true fan.
All those things about not really loving the source material and “just watching the movies” or only reading the one book that everyone has read. That—all of that—applies to me.
But here are some things that have never happened to me. I have never been quizzed about who Data’s evil brother is to prove I like Star Trek. I have never had to justify my place in a midnight line to see Spider-man II by knowing who took up the mantle of Spider-man after Peter Parker’s death. (Peter Parker dies? Really? That’s so sad!) I have never had to explain who Nightwing is in order to participate in a conversation about Batman. (Nightwing is like….Robin on steroids, right?) I have never been asked how battle meditation works in order to voice my opinion that Enterprise shields would probably make a fight with Star Wars technology one sided. (Battle meditation is something that was in that Jedi role playing game, wasn’t it?) I have never had to beat everybody in the room (twice) at Mario Kart to prove I liked video games. I have never had my gender “honorarily” changed by having enough geek interests to be accepted (“you’re one of the guys now”). No one has ever insisted I tell them the difference between a tank and DPS in an MMORPG before allowing me to discuss raiding Molten Core. I have never been dismissed as a faker at a prequel screening because I didn’t know which admiral came out of light speed too close to the planet’s surface in The Empire Strikes Back. I have never been quizzed about Armor Class in order to get past someone who was blocking my path to the back of a game store where my friends were waiting at the tables. I have never been told I’m not a real fan. I have never been shamed for coming to a convention despite my lack of esoteric knowledge. And I have never, ever, EVER been invited to leave a fandom because I didn’t like [whatever it was] enough.
Every one of the things I have listed, I have personally witnessed happen. To women.
That’s not elitism. That’s sexism.
The “Fake Geek” is Not The Problem When It Comes to “Fake Geek Girls” (via albinwonderland)
The fake geek is easy to spot. He’s usually bagging loudly on those he considers fake.
Les Apocalypse des Animaux en Caledon Group Chat
In which we learn that if you love your pets, obey all signs.
[00:36] Magdalena Kamenev has a story!
[00:37] Alastair Whybrow sits back and waits for “Once upon a time”
[00:37] Christina Gilderoy: Oh Goodie! \
[00:37] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): So, someone I know has a thing for exotic animals, but she channels it by fostering wildlife rescue animals …
[00:37] Scripted Haiku: Another story!
[00:39] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): And one of the animals she had in her care was a large ball python, that she would bathe by pulling on her swimsuit and taking the snake into the shower with her.
[00:39] Christina Gilderoy: Yikes!
[00:39] Scripted Haiku: Oooo… hot!
[00:40] Alastair Whybrow: she wore a swimsuit in the shower?
[00:40] Christina Gilderoy refers back to Forest Gumps Mama!
[00:40] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): One day, she was bathing the snake when her doorbell rang. She got out of the shower and opened the front door to find a woman who lived a couple of blocks over from her.
[00:41] ‘Cip’ (precipitate.flood): I take it her visitor could be heard several blocks away?
[00:41] Scripted Haiku: “Watch her take the pleasure from the serpent that once corrupted man.”
[00:42] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): The woman was at her door with a petition complaining about the lesbian couple who just moved in on my friend’s block, and gave this whole spiel about decent family values and decadent lesbian interlopers.
[00:42] Sha'uri Cheshire-Angel (lianndraa.gothly) giggles.
[00:42] Christina Gilderoy: Uh-oh!
[00:42] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): The petitioner not realizing that my friend is a bisexual who leans towards dating women …
[00:42] Wrath Constantine: This will only end in tears….. of hilarious laughter!
[00:42] Christina Gilderoy: Did she have a petition against her the next day?
[00:43] Scripted Haiku: We had lesbians and now we have a bear. She’s right to worry.
[00:43] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): And one more thing … the woman was holding in her arms, along with the clipboard for the petition, one of those little toy dogs.
[00:45] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): The snake saw its post-bath snack and before either woman could react - SNAP! CRUNCH! - and half the dog was in the snake’s mouth.
[00:45] Alastair Whybrow: BWAhahahaha
[00:46] Sha'uri Cheshire-Angel (lianndraa.gothly): That’s hilarious. :)
[00:46] Christina Gilderoy: It was a real dog?
[00:46] Scripted Haiku: lmao!
[00:46] Eclectric Breitman: The punchline here is that the little dog and the snake were lesbian-married the next day.
[00:47] Christina Gilderoy: The toy?
[00:47] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): No, it was a real, tiny dog.
[00:47] Alastair Whybrow: I think Magda meant “toy" as in very small real dog, rather than fluffy plaything
[00:47] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): I don’t know what breed.
[00:47] Sha'uri Cheshire-Angel (lianndraa.gothly): Tasty. :)
[00:48] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): As far as I know, my friend was never sued. :>
[00:48] Scripted Haiku: See? Lesbians are a gateway to other predators!
[00:48] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): As it happens, my friend had a sign up in her front yeard, saying that her house was a wildlife rescue and that animals should not be brought on the premises without permission …
[00:50] Alastair Whybrow: Ah, well, she didn’t have a leg to stand on. Like the snake…………..
[00:50] Alastair Whybrow: Did they get the dog back?
[00:50] Scripted Haiku: Half of it.
[00:51] Eclectric Breitman: If you thought that dog was terrified of the shop vac before…
[00:51] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): If I remember correctly, there was an attempt to extract the dog, but it was too late.
[00:52] Scripted Haiku: Extracting one creature from another rarely goes well.
[00:52] Alastair Whybrow pictures the two ladies jamming a car jack into the python’s mouth
[00:52] Magda Haiku (magdalena.kamenev): The end!
[00:54] Christina Gilderoy: Poor dog though! I have a little pup and it would make me really sad to see it go like that!
[00:55] Scripted Haiku: Don’t mess with python toting bisexual women who shower with snakes and you should be fine
[00:55] Artemiss Luminos: i eould have no need of a car jack, i would tear anything ot bits with my bare handsthat swallowed my dog!
[00:56] Artemiss Luminos: i loves me my doggyy, i does!
[00:56] Alastair Whybrow: A friend of mine entered their huge St Bernard in a local pet show. The dog was the only one in its class, and first prize was a guinea-pig. They put the guinea-pig down in front of the dog for the obligatory local press photo, and GLOMP! The St Bernard swallowed the guinea-pig in one.
[00:57] Artemiss Luminos: oh dear
[00:57] Alastair Whybrow: Unfortunately, the kid who’d donated the guinea-pig was there.
[00:57] Artemiss Luminos: awwwww :-(
[00:58] Christina Gilderoy: These are sad stories tonight!
[00:59] Artemiss Luminos: yes, couldn’t we talk of pleasanter things?
[01:00] Artemiss Luminos: shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings?
[01:00] Artemiss Luminos: *grins*
(September 15 2012)
People love to talk about whether or not disabled people can work
but if you can work just fine and your disability is destroying your ability to have a life outside of work (because work takes all your energy and more)
Dead silence. Nobody cares.