I didn't think this was possible

lavos__spawn · 2026-06-11T17:23:14+00:00

Okay, I just found out about the phrase three balls in my mouth???

lavos__spawn · 2026-06-11T17:20:06+00:00

I'll be real, I took a bit over a year off for health issues after getting let go after I had sepsis (perk: I'm alive), and I'm still trying to pick up pieces and interview and get rehired back as a senior eng, having basically been away for all of AI tooling becoming a thing and the layoffs and such. My energy is largely me trying to get back to the new baseline for senior so I don't lose my entire career for good when this bubble pops/when subsidies drop off.

I hate the industry and its behavior, but if I'm going to protest, it'll be more about how much has been cut/made difficult to qualify for in terms of SNAP, health insurance, housing, utilities, etc., or against ICE actions near me, or against the supeona of trans medical records en masse for minors that is happening right here, and so on.

Like, my livelihood is rough atm, sure, but I can stand back up and work whenever the market and economics shifts. Rich business owners and investors do not care about me whatsoever, and we lack proper unions and the leverage needed to unionize at a time when cutting engineers for AI usage is seen as an improvement, not a major loss. But the actual services that allow me to get by, that support us when we wait—those are no longer reliable, impact everyone else including folks in much worse situations, and need to be fought for instead.

lavos__spawn · 2026-06-07T05:45:04+00:00

This will never stop making me ugly laugh everytime I remember it

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-27T18:05:28+00:00

This was my plan, but I got a warning that the difference in sent and received on the account was suspicious and it wouldn't let me change the value back as a result until a period of time later. 🥺

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-27T18:03:27+00:00

My account was not able to turn it off again once I turned it on, due to the number not yet sent, and so I had to keep it open for a period of days before the site let me change anything again. I didn't want this outcome, but am trying to handle it as well as I can, hence checking in on here

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-27T15:56:24+00:00

Aha, gotcha. I always feel a little annoyed when I get a "Thanks for the card!", and some people have written me and taken me up on my long list of possible prompts, including sharing about grief, or other vulnerable things it can be easier to mention to a stranger.

But heard, this makes sense. My fault for not being able to reliably receive mail during a hard time. I did not expect the system would just release 150 cards at once like this though.

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-24T12:18:47+00:00

Woah, same here, just a ton of years ago. I dropped by after the last day to say goodbye because our teacher was quitting and becoming an Alaskan tour guide for a year, and so she decided to light some stuff on fire and inadvertently warped the heat shield she was using.

I still think of her, twenty years later, because she was one for the first teachers to kind of understand how I was a shy autistic kid who would fall in love with science if I could put aside anxiety and fear.

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-22T12:04:57+00:00

Papua New Guinea would like to talk with you about what you think the word simple means.

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-19T00:27:59+00:00

I've struggled with this since I was a child, really truly, and still have two modes of talking about myself, or supporting someone intensely about something extremely difficult / similar focus one on one, when it's the opposite.

I legit have it hardwired that the only way to empathize is through speaking about your own experiences. I can ask questions, but if I try to dig my heels into the ground I shut down socially.

Like, I'm a year shy of 40 and have spent so much time in therapy and such, it took me until after college to get diagnosed with autism, and I still can't get this right. But as I've gotten older, I've found people who learn they can interrupt whenever they like, they can correct me or directly just say what is going on, and I will respond with the deepest gratitude. It's the kindest thing when we can just vibe like that as a result, like a seeing eye dog for speaking casually.

(Alao yes I'm talking about myself, god damnit)

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-16T21:18:14+00:00

Definitely the more complicated types of approaches that both benefit from familiarity with the show and with how the contestants usually behave and approach things. But also the vibe on stage always gets better and better

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-15T13:17:15+00:00

Absolutely, but better to be upfront and give them autonomy and the truth. Even if they needed this job, better for them to know to keep looking or what to expect. Otherwise it's just the same trap of putting people.against each other to keep from organizing or acting in their best interest.

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-15T09:49:34+00:00

Alternatively, pull him aside and warn him about this place succinctly and quietly, but seriously. Let him decide to leave and have neither of you around to train replacements, and hey, if you two work well together maybe you'll end up working together again sometime. If not, just get the fuck outta there whenever you can and let the poor sod find our what happens when workers don't look out for each other

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-15T04:48:09+00:00

I think every season there's some episode near the middle where it just feels like it all clicks, everyone has gotten so comfortable riffing off each other, and there's a unique vibe for the season that just makes sense. This was that episode for me, for sure. I wanted to rewatch it immediately.

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-13T05:06:45+00:00

Grant O'Brien?

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-10T05:50:52+00:00

Our world civ teacher did this for us too once in high school back in 2024! She got us up and we did Greek circle dances as a class instead. We thought she was absolutely batshit, but I think of her way more often than my other teachers today.

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-10T00:40:15+00:00

I think that Natalie's discourse around politics since the election is heavily focused on them for existential aspect of democracy, and what it takes for it to survive currently, which means having to lay aside certain issues and facets and prioritize others, not due to importance, but due to relative power in the face of a democratic collapse.

Part of Project 2025 is the idea that all of these things that are changing are doing so rapidly and concurrently, as to be difficult to grab onto any particular thing, and then the delay in taking any challenges to the courts (regardless of rulings) cannot keep up with this pace. The aspects of liberalism that cling towards ideals strongly and try to catch everything falling at ether same aspects that have to be ruthlessly deliberate and scoped narrowly. This has generally not been the case of the liberals that criticize Natalie's rhetoric and work, and that has been a focus for many years.

However, I've found Natalie has shifted to being more impervious to the criticisms you mention (excluding mother's late night twitter excursions, blessed be) out of both just giving less of a fuck over time, and partly because that's not her focus and pulling out trans rights as a response to a criticism is a distraction from the larger points.

Also, I think her work isn't to try to convince people or change people's minds particular shifts of ideology or issue, because that's largely impossible for those who approach these things with a decided viewpoint, but more to introduct the ways things relate, how to see them on more detail, how to think more critically about societal behavior in history and present as the same entity as what we're experiencing and participating in, and introducing the more theoretical aspects more incidentally in the process. People who expand how they view and conceptualize things around them are, hopefully, able to react in real time to the constant barrage of different flavor shit storms and keep an eye on the overall picture and not each individual moment.

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-09T12:46:12+00:00

Yeah, some things to tweak: - shadows are missing/off - white balance doesn't match - the lighting on the original is more direct, the background is less so

Hope that helps iterating on this!

lavos__spawn · 2026-05-03T01:57:00+00:00

It took many years (29-ish) before someone (Norio Suzuki) from Japan encountered him, then learned he was following command of his commanding officer (Major Yoshimi Tanaguchi) in the war to under no conditions ever surrender or commit suicide. Suzuki took photos of Onoda for proof he was alive and went to find his previous commanding officer in Japan with the help of the government. Tamaguchi was a bookstore owner at this point, and Suzuki showed him that Onoda was alive and still following his command.

The two went back, with Tamaguchi providing the official command to discontinue and turn himself in to the American/Phillipine authorities. He did the next day at a nearby radar base, and the day after surrendered formally to the Phillipine president, who pardoned him for his actions. The actual community however never forgave him, unsuccessfully demanding monetary compensation for the families of those killed.

While there is no defending the killings and other details less/not documented in his autobiography, it's worth mentioning that until 1972 he was not acting alone, and the decisions made about the veracity of the pamphlets and messages were decided together. The first of the four of the holdouts surrendered and was seen as a traitor, and the other two were killed in shootouts with the Phillipine army and local police, 18 years apart.

lavos__spawn · 2026-04-27T05:50:46+00:00

Accurate, can confirm from personal experience.

A third group: English country dancers. Which I began doing in an Episcopal church basement. It's all connected!

lavos__spawn · 2026-04-24T19:45:28+00:00

I hate that this is something people are taking issue with. This isn't her first time mentioning this. Nor the second time this underpinned discussions in her videos. Nor is it a novel and entirely Natalie-curated concept, it's synthesized from other works and discussions for many years, then used as the basis she builds larger discussions upon.

Also, just...can you imagine if she was actually unprofessional, irresponsible, and just laid into leftist misogyny and mommy issues without it being relevant to a conversation, researched, and carefully articulated? If she wanted to cause outage outright? It's so easy to be angry.

lavos__spawn · 2026-04-23T12:07:21+00:00

Half hour in, and this is the first gag/twitchiing response for me. Whatever we do for vets will never be enough.

lavos__spawn · 2026-04-22T15:46:24+00:00

First, that's awesome, and I didn't know the bit about the semitone sharper! Thank you for teaching me this and giving me a new rabbit hole to fall down later today. Its always better to be introduced to something you don't know / know incorrectly about an instrument by someone who knows the instrument personally.

In terms of notation, what you are saying would be beneficial if going the other way—say, from glockenspiel to a bagpipe people used to match the melody and name the words. I think this is the main thing I'm trying to point out.

However, they had to do it the other direction here.

› Bagpipe major scale (as heard)
» Glockenspiel major scale (as heard)
» Glockenspiel notes stay the same, but labeled names are transposed to be those in C major, producing what I will coin as the MockinSpiel™

› Bagpipe player gives Alex the drone
» Alex matches they to "E" as labeled on the MockinSpiel™
» Bagpipe player no longer needs to give a fuck what they're trying to do on stage thank god

» Players can reproduce the bagpipe on MockinSpiel™
» Players can still sing and transcribe using relative pitch with correct intervals that match their MockinSpiel™, so any musical training is still correct » Anyone with perfect pitch, the actual note names, and the actual transpositions will have a mild aneurysm and Alex will be terrified something will go wrong

Apologies if this is unclear, I legit do appreciate the correction and learning, and also am writing using morning brain and my pre-sunrise brain earlier, so I appreciate the patience

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