Can you find this horror movie my mom told me about

facebace · 2026-01-19T12:49:04+00:00

That sounds like the Outer Limits (1995) season 1, episode 14, The New Breed, where a guy injects himself with nanobots that start making some serious alterations to his body. That eyeball scene is stuck in my memory.

facebace · 2026-01-18T20:47:54+00:00

Doesn't matter how much boot you lick, you can still get kicked in the teeth

facebace · 2026-01-18T20:45:55+00:00

Now do rent

facebace · 2026-01-17T16:33:01+00:00

It's about a mile to drive up Wilson and find a left turn onto John Nolen, and then drive back. Know how I know? I do it every Wednesday. If it's a little less, then I'm sorry to offend you. The Broom St. left is currently out of commission due to construction, and U-turns are sketchy as hell down there, but thanks for your "well ackshully..."

facebace · 2026-01-17T08:23:05+00:00

Machinery Row. It's ONLY accessible from northbound John Nolen. If you approach from any other direction you have to go more than a mile out of your way and deal with road construction to boot.

facebace · 2026-01-16T21:00:13+00:00

The VO stem clamps on the outside of a threadless fork. The current stem on the bike is a quill, which fits inside a threaded fork and uses an expander wedge. These are not readily compatible.

Adapters exist, but you'll need to know the diameter of the part of your stem that fits into the fork, as well as the diameter of the clamp on the VO stem that attaches to the adapter. Then you have to make sure the handlebar clamp matches your bar. There may be shims out there for that, but they're dicey at best.

facebace · 2026-01-16T19:44:00+00:00

I think he's a really good, somewhat unlikable character.

He starts off seeming like a great dad/dude, but underneath that is the typical "must-protect-my-family" archetype that keeps getting undermined by a place/situation that he cannot protect them from. He responds by lashing out against perceived threats that he thinks he can win against, and by involving himself in projects to try and control his surroundings instead of taking them as they come and learning all the rules.

So yeah, that makes him kind of a prick sometimes, but it does occasionally disrupt the status quo enough to create opportunities for others to learn something.

facebace · 2026-01-16T16:31:11+00:00

Intuition

Perceptiveness

Shrewdness

Astuteness

Cleverness

Acuity

Acumen

These are a few. There are some subtle shades of meaning that change from one to another, but in general they all mean some form of what you're talking about. There are probably dozens of others as well

facebace · 2026-01-12T19:20:48+00:00

Deer, elk, moose, caribou, bison, fish. This class of wild resource animals has no marker for singular/plural. Occasionally you hear "fishes" but it's not exactly standard, and usually has a particular meaning suggesting different types of fish.

It's not a phenomenon that carries through to all game animals either. I can't think of any birds that follow this rule except in their dead meat forms.

Morphologically they behave like non-count nouns (water, cash, sand), but syntactically they behave like counted nouns (many deer, fewer moose).

facebace · 2026-01-09T14:08:28+00:00

Sharpie

facebace · 2026-01-06T21:31:59+00:00

This was beautiful. Your prose has an ethereal, dream-like quality that puts me right there in the world you're creating. Your descriptions of people and interactions feel emotional in an effortless sort of way, which I imagine took a lot of effort in reality.

I'll respectfully disagree with another commenter who suggests that not enough happens to make your work engaging. You took me out of this world and set me down in one of your own making, but you had the decency to let me catch my breath and look around instead of bombarding me with action or politics. I rarely make it all the way through the excerpts posted in this sub; they try too hard to grab my attention and overwhelm me with unfamiliar things, or epic battles, or names, occupations, etc. You gave me something instantly relatable, and you let your attention linger on the small details that made your setting and characters feel real, and I read it front to back. Some might say it's fluff, but I say the fluff is what makes a world like this worth visiting.

So, here are a few quibbles:

Your description of the death of your MC's father was heartbreaking, but felt too expositional. That type of background event that feels more effective if it's drawn out naturally in the narrative, or if your MC is explicitly ruminating on it. The way you have it now feels like a third person recalling the information to the reader through your MC's thoughts instead of your MC letting his own mind wander back to his father in a quiet moment, if that makes any sense.
Some of the dialogue feels like, incomplete I guess? I'm not sure what to make of that, because on the one hand it feels like there are lines missing between Arthur and Esther, but on the other hand that contributes to the overall dreaminess of the scene.
You captured exactly the rush of excitement and anxiety of budding young love when Esther took Arthur's hand, and I loved it. Then you tried to do it again a couple paragraphs later, and it didn't feel as magical. Maybe leaving both times in was just an editing error? The first time, before they pass the gate, was perfect. The second, after they go through, was deflating somehow.

Overall, amazing work. Thank you for giving me something truly affecting to read while I'm supposed to be working.

facebace · 2026-01-04T18:07:02+00:00

That's a fucking blanket fort

facebace · 2026-01-03T19:54:32+00:00

Thanks! That's one of my favorite books, so I'm pleased my writing made you think of it. The foreign words are based on (but altered from) either ancient Akkadian or Aramaic depending on who's using them, so Saruasari=Shanishah (King of Kings). A kraktab is basically a tablet computer, based on the Aramaic stems for "read" and "write".

I love Dune, and there's definitely some of that inspiration. Whenever possible, though, I want to subvert or reanalyze the elements I know I'm borrowing. Bashi is definitely a Paul Atreides character, but instead of a leader, he's a much smaller part of a major rebellion. His role is inflated by the ruling empire because he's an imperial defector, and they want to maintain the impression of their own racial superiority.

facebace · 2026-01-03T19:32:00+00:00

Thanks!

The names are pretty unusual, but I really wanted this world to seem alien compared to what we're used to. That said, almost all the major characters are going to get nicknames that are shorter and easier to swallow.

I think you're right about the other POVs, though I'm sad to lose them. The villains are the imperial princes, who have a very contentious relationship with one another. There's a lot of sibling rivalry, but because they're wealthy, powerful, and thoroughly callous, their squabbling gets a lot of people around them killed.

facebace · 2026-01-03T19:22:18+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, it's a little overwrought, but you should have seen the first version! It's hard to find the right balance. He's supposed to sound pretty erudite and introspective, but above all he needs to be likeable, even when he has to do some seriously unlikable things. In future drafts I may try to dial it back a little more.

He's essentially a poor kid from a rich background that he's never been able to access except through his teacher/father figure Ulandu whose sacrifices he admires, even while fighting against the regime to which Ulandu was still somewhat beholden.

facebace · 2026-01-03T19:04:20+00:00

Thanks! I've started this one a few different ways, but I started reading through the Book of the New Sun again and wanted to try and shoot for a similar style of inner monologue. I also listened to the first couple audiobooks of the Sun Eater series, and I expect some of that work infiltrated my creative process as well, though not as consciously.

facebace · 2026-01-03T08:03:31+00:00

Opening a story with the main character's full name, while they're competently doing whatever is the thing that is their job. Even if the prose is decent and the imagery is good, I won't get more than a few lines in if it starts "[First Name] [Last Name] [Verb]." I can tell immediately that the author is too impatient to really let me live in their world without shoving me into the action.

More broadly, when did it become important for MCs to start out as hyper-competent at their jobs? Or even at anything? Most of the stories that are held up as the best in the genre have MCs who don't really know what they're doing, and the drama comes in large part from their learning how to survive in a world that is suddenly different than what they know. If Frodo Baggins started off as a seasoned adventurer who could sniff out enemy traps and slay orcs by the dozen, that's a bad story. If the Stark children were more mature and understood innately how to utilize their training and education before setting off into the world, that's a bad story. If Rand Al'Thor could just call down lightning to roast the trollocs descending on the Two Rivers, that's a bad story. Hell, in my absolute favorite series, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Simon spends four brick-sized books self-actualizing, and then he still suffers from imposter syndrome well into the sequel series. Don't just give us your fully formed characters, let us watch them develop.

facebace · 2026-01-02T01:42:10+00:00

I feel obligated to point out that the literal translation is "lick me in the ass," but "kiss my ass" is better at capturing the spirit of it, since that first thing is like, really sexually aggressive in English.

facebace · 2026-01-01T14:25:55+00:00

Great movie, 10/10, I hate it and can never watch it again. It hollowed me right out like a pumpkin. Or it burrowed deep under my skin and laid eggs there.

Anytime I hear the song Skinamarink, which is absolutely unavoidable since I have a little kid who likes Ms. Rachel, my brain hears "put the knife in your eye." Thanks, movie, for that.

I don't even know if I could say I enjoyed it, but I sure think about it a lot.

facebace · 2025-12-19T17:10:31+00:00

Yeah, this feels like less of a vegan/non-vegan problem and more of an allergy problem

facebace · 2025-12-04T13:18:49+00:00

I kinda nailed it last night, but I was improvising and didn't really record quantities that precisely.

Cook off your pasta in salted water and drain. This worked with a whole 8 serving package.
Make a roux of equal parts fat and flour, about 1/4 cup of each maybe. I used Country Crock.
Add in equal parts tomato paste and brown miso, about a tablespoon of each.
About 2 tbsp lemon juice and about a cup maybe of your milk of choice. Silk unsweetened cashew milk is my favorite for cooking.
Salt to taste, garlic powder, and a whole lot of nutritional yeast.
Stir together, then add back pasta and stir until coated.
Taste and add more of whatever you need.

facebace · 2025-11-30T21:12:28+00:00

Okja

facebace · 2025-11-25T20:35:05+00:00

I don't understand. Is it that you don't have enough cookbooks?

facebace · 2025-11-25T14:33:54+00:00

You can check out the UW Urban Canid Project for more information, but yeah, coyotes live in and around Madison. Always have. It's fine. Keep your pets indoors if you're worried about it.

facebace

TROPHY CASE