Today We Find Out If The Spirits Of Adam Smith And John Galt Have Accepted The Offerings Of Consumer

Been awhile hasn't it

@strange-aeons

The Croaker's Revenge

The Croaker will be present at Dashcon 2, and will guard the ballpit, after a fashion… but nobody will notice or recognize them. Many cosplayers will attend as the Croaker, but none will be @the-muppet-joker, not even the one in full purple-leisure-suit Joker cosplay, with a Kermit puppet fastened to his fly like a codpiece.

@strange-aeons will be there, in full Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven-Way cosplay, guarding the ballpit and posing for mock battle photos with Brotherhood cosplayers, but nobody will claim to be the actual Muppet Joker. Things will be whispered into Master Strange's ear, but they will mostly be along the line of what a lovely couple she and her wife make. Perhaps Master Strange will lean down to hear one person whisper, "I think he's here," and she will turn around, but she will not be able to tell who she was leaning down to listen to.

The ballpit will be a hit. Not as big as the raccoon talk given by @raccoonmilf, but the organizers, @dashcon-two, knew that if they were going to have a ballpit, they'd have to go big and make it as nice as possible, and the party supply company will deliver the perfect thing. Among other activities, getting selfies with Homestuck cosplayers reenacting their time in the original Dashcon ballpit will be popular.

Nobody will urinate in the ballpit.

Nobody will think very hard about how the laconic, sullen young person in a polo shirt and work slacks, who set up the ballpit alone and unassisted, had bright green hair.

Nobody will think very hard about how this green-haired young person spent every day of the convention posted up against a wall in view of the ballpit, scrolling on their phone, not interacting with anyone.

Nobody will realize until after the con, that the party supply company did not contract to set the ballpit up for the organizers, or to provide a maintenance person for it.

Nobody at the party supply company will care, when the Dashcon 2 organizers tell them that whoever initially signed for the ballpit wasn't event staff. Nor will they have any idea who actually did sign for it.

After the con, everyone will assume that the young green-haired nonbinary person, who set up the ballpit and spent the entire con leaning on the wall in view of it, scrolling on their phone, will pack up the ballpit and load it into the party supply company's truck, but in fact, the ballpit will still be standing, quite abandoned, and the green-haired one will have vanished without a trace. Eventually, the organizers will find badge details matching the green-haired one in their records: a standard visitor pass with no special privileges, under the name of "John Smith."

After the con, over the next few weeks, the repercussions will start to become apparent. Bit by bit, the Croaker's devious, twisted, insane, magnificent, hilarious plan will come to fruition before the eyes of an astonished and terrified Tumblr community, and the Croaker will have revenge upon all of us.

Oh, they know exactly what they're doing.

It's often not even the same crab. Can you recognize individual members of a species you've never seen before?

Why is the crab in danger? So you will keep watching. Creating mortal peril for your subjects is SOP for wildlife videography.

There's more awareness now, and you can't be certain that's what you're looking at nowadays, thank goodness, but there's still a lot of that. Because the networks pay for it.

Mainstream television has this weird superstition that everything has to follow one of a few specific plotlines very closely, or nobody will watch it.

That said, I miss the old school nature documentaries sometimes, because either they prioritized information over their narrative (Nature With George Page), or they went full send with an actually good narrative (Wild America).

@comicaurora

I imagined a dyscalculic child, who isn't getting any help or support in learning math, nobody understands that they just don't get it...

Nobody understands that the child tries to solve math problems by making up stories about the numbers and operational symbols, fascinating, beautiful mythical or fairy-tale stories, and "drawing" the ending of the stories where the solutions should go.

Every math problem is a hypothetical situation involving stock characters, and the child believes they have to parse exactly what the situation is supposed to be, given the limited "shorthand" consisting of numbers and operational symbols and the arithmetical frameworks, and work out what the result would be.

And nobody, or almost nobody, ever gets to hear the stories.

I'll say it again, it's the way she treated Loona at the party that makes her so hot.

Queen bee

Oh, crap, I can't get away from this prescriptivist asshole, there's nothing beyond the wall but water

Gad, this is so true in everyday life, too, isn't it?

Tips on how to fight the "if I overly explain, everything will be hunky doory" instinct?

Being genuine, as someone who does struggle with it from time to time. <- Like this!

No matter how good you explain, you are not immune to

person reading fast skipping words or sentences

person reading casually who is not interested in unpacking your statement to any degree of depth

person who decided what you meant three words in and is not internalizing anything beyond that point

person focusing on a part of the statement you literally never considered important and making that the sole focus of their analysis

person primed by an external conflict who is scanning your statement for dogwhistles that indicate whether you're on Their Side or the Enemy Side

When it comes to explaining, there's a baseline level of Good Enough you can strive for, to the point where someone who's paying attention, trying to understand your nuances, and not actively setting out to misinterpret you will most likely get most of what you're talking about. Beyond that, it doesn't matter how many words you use if they aren't being read or interpreted. All you can control is what you say. You cannot control how you're perceived or interpreted.

OSP Red, over on her Tumblr blog Comicaurora, posted a brilliant and refreshingly frank analysis of "Fable of the Dragon Tyrant."

I can't believe I didn't figure out it was an allegory about death, but we all miss something sometimes, I guess.

Go read the whole post.