Before I saw the joints I thought the image was supposed to be a big crab that wears the likeness of Jesus to appear divine, like something from Another Crab’s Treasure. It would almost be clever that way

He called my sad song about a little church REACTIONARY okay? Not cool

We love to sow don’t we folks, we love the sowing (not so much the reaping)

There’s a type of ant parasite (a type of fluke I think?) that is classified as a “social parasite” because it takes advantage of ant eusociality. It infects a host ant and makes it smell and look more like a queen, and the other ants start to tend to it like they would a queen, meaning that they get overworked and sometimes even choose to care for the infected individual at the expense of their actual queen.

Edit: and the species’ name? Capitalensis inheritorae just kidding

There’s something deeply ironic about this understanding he and people like this have of some kind of dichotomy between the brain and the heart. The only reason their fucking imbecilic brains even have the plasticity to try and “reason” their way out of feeling empathy is because they have been kept healthy by the altruistic efforts of their fellow humans, which is likely downstream of the very empathy they treat like a liability.

It’s not thought at all. It’s the experience of vicarious pain. It might even be the basis for our social tendencies. Best example I know of are neurological studies that suggest that witnessing footage of someone getting stabbed forces you to experience at least a tiny, compartmentalized version of the stabbing, even feeling it in the same spot. It’s probably one of the most fundamental parts of the human experience but I personally don’t understand it as something I do rationally, but in a good way, if that makes sense?

It really frustrates me too since imo empathy isn’t the end-all be-all of virtue. Hyperactive empathy can create a constantly open wound in a world full of systemic cruelty, and it can be visceral enough to be the grounds for manipulating people. But for these ghouls to extrapolate from that the lesson of “we’d be FREE if I didn’t get weighed down by these PARASITES with their NEEDS and TRAUMAS” is so god damn evil that I usually keep my trap shut wrt empathy in most circles.

How tragic that nations are not people and cannot learn lessons or feel guilt. Shit hasn’t changed enough since WW2 for them to act differently. You can’t finger-wag at the country that did the bad thing and then keep all the same incentives while neglecting all the same contradictions that drove the adoption of fascism in the first place if you want something different

Perfectly executed character, the ultimate personification of one of the game’s central themes: “correctness”

He pretty much spits facts when you ask about his motivations, he correctly identifies the true drivers of the problems you navigate through the game, his actions were, broadly, “correct.” But in a vacuum, what is his correctness worth? DE as a whole is pretty stiffly critical towards the need to be Right, especially if it comes at the expense of friendships and human relationships. After all, internalizing communism in the game makes you into a “very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth” who is still miserable.

I could go for ten more paragraphs about this, like the irony of his title of “deserter” despite him being one of the only people left who still holds on to the cause of Scientific Communism (he has deserted society instead), or how he’s part of the game’s indictment of the romantic idea of the “eternal vigil.” But I’ll restrain myself so that Kim won’t have to clear his throat at me.

Everyone I know does it now too, it’s a valuable outlet for the racism needs of white people

Last time I trusted a doctor they told me I had something called Nattering Willows and that it made me allergic to money so I got rid of it but I got sick again???

Unfortunately I heard this on a museum tour, so I can’t actually confirm it from something I read. I know there’s a pretty famous book by Bruce Chatwin about the topic but it’s old enough that I’m sure research on the topic has progressed past it.

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Great photo honestly, the gentle absurdity of it makes it feel extra real somehow

Can your precious science explain why I was in a terrible mood yesterday and yet I am in a good mood today even though nothing has changed? Didn’t think so, as even a child knows that this is the result of my having freed myself of demonic influence

Reminder that the mythical rainbow serpent might have been essentially the result of a media campaign constructed by a bunch of collaborating tribes to make a shared symbol that would encourage villages to take in refugees after a major flooding disaster

“Humans are a social species, and so we are not only ourselves. We are something together, a thing that is neither a creature with person-shaped organs, nor a pile of persons that accumulates where the wind blows us. This is a good thing, probably; when people die, the creature’s organs are not failing, and when the wind blows hard enough to scatter the pile, we can grab hold of each other to resist. But when I see the bombs dropping, I feel differently. A creature could not bleed itself this way and continue to live. A pile does not feel the pain of its missing pieces.”

(I tricked you, I put quotes around it to make you think someone old said it instead of me)

You dislike samurai game for going woke, I dislike samurai game for mythologizing away the inherent cruelty of its warrior caste, we are not the same

There’s a great Shogun-esque novel waiting to be written about Yasuke, with the same appeal of imagining the political intrigue surrounding a person who literally has nowhere else to go in the world (since he would return to being a slave)

Credit where credit is due, the goofy Nioh series of games had Yasuke