The Linguistic Physicist

i am the very model of a modern gay millennial i have a tumblr blog and a prescription for estradiol i've problems economic, psychological, and medical and sympathies political which border on heretical

We said this before but it bears repeating every day: calling for a ceasefire is futile when you don't call for states to stop arming Israel.

How do you expect Israel to cease its violence (which is currently taking place across at least 4 countries in the region) while its supply of weapons continues to flow in?

About twenty years back, there was this weird transitional period after companies had figured out that harvesting their users' demographic information was a potential gold mine but before we lived in a hellish panopticon where any website operator could look up your IP address and know what you had for breakfast where some sites would try to get you to fill out, like, detailed demographic surveys before they'd let you access their stuff. Not just age, gender and geographic location, either – some of them would fish for employment status, marital status, brand preferences, even religious affiliation. A lot of folks I knew would just pick the first option in every dropdown, but my move was always to fill in the demographic information of the current Pope, at least as far as I was able to determine it (brand preference was always a tricky one). I like to think that, thanks to my efforts, their data sets are haunted to this day by a phantom pontiff.

it’s genuinely wild how hawaii’s independence isn’t like, a huge and widely recognized issue. that’s one of the US’s biggest and most glaringly memorable crimes and it just continues on and on instead of being righted in any way. like holy shit how is hawaii still a state. it’s downright fucked that people just casually live there and visit there to this day in 2024 knowing full well that, at the very least, it was a sovereign nation that the US conquered by force in the late 1950’s. there are people alive now who are older than hawaii’s statehood. idk it’s one of those things that just baffles me. stop going to hawaii, leave them alone

OP, the Kingdom of Hawai'i was conquered in 1893 (and formerly annexed in 1898), not the late 1950s, that's just when the US government made it a state

That's still shockingly recent, but there are no people alive today who were born before Hawai'i was conquered or annexed

on the subject of english spelling I should do a new version of this concept

my hottest english spelling reform take is that I think it would be a good idea to replace wh with qh. it would be really elegant to have ph th ch qh as a set analogous to p t c q(u)

the pronunciation difference between quail and qhale is analogous to the pronunciation difference between tree and three. do you see my vision

surely it should be either qhu (or more accurately, and also more cursedly, quh) in that case?

coworker asks if i like harry potter and i have to make a disco elysium skill check to come up with a response

CIS COWORKER — Hey you seem really into wizards and stuff, I bet you love Harry Potter :)

EMPATHY — He’s just trying to be polite and make conversation. He doesn’t know about JK Rowling’s opinions on trans people. Let’s politely change the subject.

COMPOSURE [Trivial: Failure] — “Kill yourself.”

How long each country has been a democracy?

by geoglobal_

Passed by a sign that said “bong recreation area” and immediately googled it and it became ten times better

just ripping fat doinks at Dick Bong State Park in Kansasville USA which is totally a Real City and not a completely fictional place from a Marvel comic

People who try to copy historical writing styles don't say enough weird stuff in them. I'm listening to a 1909 story about a ghost car right now, and the narrator just said he honked the car horn a bunch of times, but the way he phrased it was "I wrought a wild concerto on the hooter".

Reblog to wreak a wild concerto on a hooter

name a more iconic duo

once i was in the TSA line for a flight and it was SO LONG that TSA decided to just drop all the security protocols. leave everything in the suitcase including electronics. keep your shoes on. don't go through the fancy 360 scanner, just the metal detector. get out of here. and i was like ohhhh so you admit this is all just your stupid community theatre production that you've made me be a part of for all this time and it doesn't actually mean anything real. okayyyyy

I fly often enough and with a service dog that I got TSA precheck so I skip the general TSA line and in precheck we don’t have to take off our shoes or empty our bags and usually we just use the regular metal detector, all based on a clean background check and the assumption that someone planning an enormous crime wouldn’t be able to recruit people without prior charges. so not only what you said but also u can buy your way out of it which totally makes sense if the real concern is national security, yeah

So this might be a very Polish experience (since you can't go ten minutes here without stumbling upon a church) but I wonder...

It would also be cool if you shared where you live in the tags!

[x]

It struck me just now that Seven never really saw red again after she was assimilated.

We know that her ocular implant tints everything green, which would make anything red just look black.

A little heartbreaking that of all the myriad things the Borg stole from the six-year-old girl they assimilated, they stole her favorite color too, and surrounded her with its opposite.

Years ago I saw a Lord of the Rings display at Barnes and Noble that included a Hallmark-style greeting card with Frodo on the front and inside text that read: “We set out to save the Shire, Sam. And it has been saved. But not for me.”

And I have been thinking about that card ever since, desperately wishing I had bought it, and wondering what the fuck kind of occasion would warrant a card featuring that sentiment.

weirdly enough, i have actually been the recipient of that exact card. it was a birthday card from someone who knew i loved lotr but didn’t really know much about the actual movie, but i feel like she should’ve been clued into the ‘wtf’ vibe from the incredibly agonized face frodo is making on the front of the card. 

If you still have that card… I would do anything to see a photo of it. You can cover up the personalized message, but I really, really, really want to see proof that this card existed and was not the product of my overactive imagination.

@glumshoe I FOUND IT!!

I’d forgotten just how close to death Frodo looks on the front, not to mention Sam’s agonized face and the very odd stylistic choice of including the Ring instruction and the Eye of Sauron in the background. who the hell is the target audience for this?

Fuck!!!! It’s so much better than I remembered!

What sentiment is this supposed to CONVEY

#depression announcement

via @bluestockingbaby

Here's a portrait of Dame Aylin from Baldur's Gate 3, started it a long time ago and finally got back to it last night. I miss playing BG3, wish I had more free time now to at least finally complete the third act. This one is just a little treat for myself while I try to finish all my commissions and charity projects. Send help.

my mythology pet peeve is when someone describes a scenario in which they keep nearly getting something and then having it snatched away, and everyone's like "one must imagine sisyphus" no!!! one must imagine TANTALUS!!! sisyphus = being made to perform a pointless, aggravating task over and over without ever making any progress. tantalus = being offered a glorious reward only for it to vanish as soon as you reach for it. they are NOT the same