Just gonna leave this here…

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, wove almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as. I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,- literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side; the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

Not so much a vintage van as a vintage semi-trailer truck.

Has Carol ever flat out asked The Others† to sever their connection? That it would make her happy to return the human race to autonomy? I suddenly don’t recall them ever telling her “No” at any point.

† “The Others” is how Vince & co refer to the hive (ref).

I strongly encourage everyone to look up and join their local tool library.

If you don’t have one, start one!

Whoops, wrong community. My apologies. Deleting…

Computer, delete that entire holiday.

😮‍💨 🚁 ☢️ 🫢

🫵

The Guardian claims that there are some redacted documents that can un-redacted by copying the text and pasting it into another window. Also, in other documents, photoshop can be used to enhance features of the redacted portions of text to reveal potential characters being covered.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/23/epstein-unredacted-files-social-media

Some highlights…

I’d really like to see the enhanced version of the sink plaque.

Would you prefer the haunted wax statue maid or menacing animation robot maid?

Accent glamour shots.

Some additional resources, cribbed from metafilter:

Got money? You can donate to the Trans Youth Emergency Project.

Can’t afford to donate? Share their social media posts in their virtual toolkit, or write a quick virtual message of support to trans youth and their families.

In the US, we are already living in a country where roughly 40% of trans youth live in a state where a ban on gender-affirming care has passed. Other state-based organizations to help trans people:

• PROMO Missouri
• Louisiana Trans Advocates
• Kentucky Health Justice Network
• UP South Carolina
• Transgender Education Network of Texas
• Add the Words Idaho
• Trans Program Mississippi
• …plus many more.

The ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, and many other organizations have vowed to challenge this illegal proposed directive in court.

Finally, looking for an article on the benefits of gender-affirming care? Check out this article from the University of Washington’s School of Public Health. Also, JAMA’s study of mental health outcomes in trans youth after (reversible!) puberty blockers and hormones, or this article from Parents magazine about what actual medical experts think.

Greetings and welcome, Jorunn!

But I’ll admit those Bob Barker clips were pretty great.

“But this is an entertainment discord. People come here to chat video games and look at pp and bussy. Why do we need AI for that?”

real talk

Somebody show this to Trudy & Doug of Oglaf.

The entity is absolutely, deliberately manipulating Carol through social isolation. The collective knows what social isolation does to people; there’s a million or so therapists it can draw that info from. There are also many ways to perhaps combat it that they could be offering to Carol, but they aren’t doing that. The entity has its own agenda, likely a set of Asimov-esque rules of robotics, serving a primary goal of propagation (with most of the human race out building satellites and radio antennas powered by solar to blast the signal further).

Traveling logistics. For the entity to be able to deliver items to Carol while she is on the road so quickly, I imagine there’s a fleet of cargo trucks following her around, just a few miles behind her (beyond her view), with delivery drones ready to fetch and deliver whatever she asks for.

You think this show is slow? There is a big difference between a series that is paced with deliberation to cultivate a tone and establish character motivation… and a series that is just insufferably drawn out. I remember Serial Experiments Lain. Pluribus is fine.

As a reminder:

Angel, previously Angel Studios, previously VidAngel, was founded by Latter-Day Saint family (Mormon) members to produce content that was suitable to show their kids. They later made a business out of editing Hollywood films to allow viewers to skip or mute scenes they found objectionable (without the consent of the rights-holders), and got their pants sued off for it.

After a series of mergers, it’s now a publicly traded company worth over $1.5 billion and continues to produce content that aligns heavily with religious and faith-based causes.

As a reminder:

Angel, previously Angel Studios, previously VidAngel, was founded by Latter-Day Saint family (Mormon) members to produce content that was suitable to show their kids. They later made a business out of editing Hollywood films to allow viewers to skip or mute scenes they found objectionable (without the consent of the rights-holders), and got their pants sued off for it.

After a series of mergers, it’s now a publicly traded company worth over $1.5 billion and continues to produce content that aligns heavily with religious and faith-based causes.

deleted by creator

Sweet jesus, that was insufferable.

Spoilers to save everyone 20 minutes: a professor briefly describes a study meant to measure racial bias, then spends the entirety of the video pressuring 4 (nervous?) students to speculate on the study’s outcome.

He never says whether the study is real or not, or what the outcome was if it were real. The students spend most of the video giving hesitant answers because, obviously, they don’t know. Also, they’re probably not stupid and recognize there’s a high likelihood that the professor is setting up a cute “gotcha!” situation where the study’s outcome is not what one might expect, making anyone who defended the straight-forward answer the butt of a joke in front of all their peers.

The video ends with him finger-wagging at the students for being so hesitant to speculate, insisting that media and culture pre-indoctornates them to presume the study would prove racial bias.

Like, WTF bro?