… was that we all got to learn about “concept unification”:
A fantastic corporate euphemism that yielded the following corporate training videos, which are simply astounding found-footage horror flicks waiting to happen. If this isn’t the origin of the Five Nights at Freddy’s video game series, then nothing makes sense anymore.
(whoever added the Erik Satie score to this second video is a goddamned genius, by-the-by)I knew about some of this (like the JUUL school presentations—which, as a former teacher and admin, struck me as a stunning professional dereliction that somehow managed to dwarf the enormous amoral grossness of JUUL’s marketing department; well done, fellow educators!), but other bits (like the nicotine salts) were news to me.
An elucidating 3mins. Watch.
This is a real product that actually costs $25 and it’s awful.
BONUS: According to many reviews, many cats seem to hate this pricey, perverse thing. Heck, the cat featured on the sales page looks like s/he hates it:
It’s that time of year again. If you’re the kinda person that nominates stories for the Hugo, Nebula, etc. Awards, I’ve got exactly one qualifying story for you to consider this year:
“All Hail the Pizza King and Bless His Reign Eternal” (F&SF, July/Aug 2020)
If you are a person who might nominate stuff and need a copy, I can send you a PDF. Contact me.
Incidentally, I loved that art so much that I contact the artist (Alan M Clark) and bought the original charcoal-on-paper drawing that was the source. It’s amaaaaaazing! The original is 16″x20″. A 5″x8″ magazine cover cannot do it justice. Such a treat to have on my wall.
… but for those looking for insights into why the Defeated PotUS is obsessed with an absolutely anti-factual narrative of a rigged election, this is worthy reading, especially the “Royal Intervention” sub-section:
The difficulty remains as to why King Henry and his servant John of Lexington would have believed the accusations in the first place. … While the decision to act belonged to the King, Langmuir believes that he was weak and easily manipulated by Lexington. Langmuir says Henry III has been described as; “a suspicious person who flung charges of treason recklessly, [who] was credulous and poor in judgment, and often appeared like a petulant child. When to these qualities we add his addiction to touring the shrines of England, it becomes easier to understand why he acted as he did…” Langmuir therefore concludes that Lexington “incited the weakly credulous Henry III to give the ritual murder fantasy the blessing of royal authority”. Jacobs on the other hand sees the financial benefits that Henry received as a major factor, conscious or unconscious, in his decision to mass arrest and execute Jews. As noted above, he had mortgaged his income from the Jews to Richard of Cornwall, but was still entitled to the property of any Jew executed, adding that Henry, “like most weak princes, was cruel to the Jews”.
Note the profit motive, the crushing debt, the love of touring from big public event to big public event, the absolute credulity to believe what is convenient, the tendency to flit and flip-flop from outrage to outrage, and a reflex to accuse sinister cabals composed of largely powerless minorities of master-minding vast schemes against a blameless populace.
If all of this seems long ago and far away, then please note that QAnon, Pizzagate, and a goodly portion of current Trumpery-driven White Violence is just this same story repeated over and over and over again.
Nice prayer at the bottom of that link, though.
Anyway, Happy Nittlenacht everyone!!!
Actually, Die Hard — a story about a desperate insurgency against a vastly superior invading force, requiring the near-miraculous marshalling of limited resources —is a Hanukkah movie
— Jacob Brogan (@Jacob_Brogan) December 14, 2020
My thoughts on Die Hard and Xmas, from ~2013: “DIE HARD (its Origins), Violence, Redemption, and Xmas (Plus a Bonus Writing Tip!)“
… is a Swastika. #justsayin’
I’m a Jew—born and raised—but I come from a “mixed” family (they say “interfaith” now). My dad is a Jew, but my mom was raised Christian. Both my maternal grandparents—with whom my sisters and I spent a lot of time—were practicing Christians. Interfaith families are really common now (my wife and I are mixed), but were much less so when I was young.
As you’re likely aware, back when I was a kid there weren’t a lot of Xanukah songs for us Jewish kids. But there were absolutely zero songs for mixed half-a-Jews with an Xmas tree and a Xanukiah and a cat that managed to catch fire in the Xanukah candles every year and Xtian grandparents who came to town on Xmas Eve specifically to partake in the Jewish tradition of Xmas Chinese food.
There weren’t many mixed kids like us—and there weren’t any songs or holiday specials or children’s books that reflected what we saw and felt and loved about wintertime.
So these are my songs, for all the little intersectional mixed kids out there, who don’t have any holiday songs to sing.
This whole article is sorta astounding. I mean, nothing is really surprising, but it’s sorta shocking to have all of your assumptions confirmed:
“20 days of fantasy and failure: Inside Trump’s quest to overturn the election”
I can’t help but imagine all of what’s happened over the past month from the PotUS’s perspective:
He’s never had a real job—not one that he could actually lose. And now a bunch of losers—people with no wealth, no audience, no “pull,” folks with meager incomes and dumb names, with little (if any) power, many of them women and people of color—they took away his toy.
And they didn’t do it by force: They didn’t pull a gun on him, they didn’t have to “see him in court!!!” They didn’t have to look at him or talk to him or even acknowledge him. They just ticked a box and mailed a stupid scrap of paper.
And all of those “they”s in the previous graff: those are “you” and “me”; we did this. We, who are weak-ass little pussies and cry babies and retarded faggot snowflakes, we hurt him, deeply. And we did it while hiding in our little shithole houses in shithole towns and bullshit states.
I imagine that, in his heart of hearts, he simply never believed such a thing was possible, so insulated from reality was his 70+ years on this earth.
“The most petulant 46 minutes in American history”
It is all so astoundingly pathetic. If he hadn’t done so much to hurt so many, you’d weep for his loss of innocence.
Just to be clear: Although no shots have been fired (yet), this is not a “peaceful transfer of power.” At best, it’s a tremendous waste of the most precious resource in a time of crisis (like this one): Attention.
At worst, it’s an incitement to violence.
His blood is boiling, and we are the frogs.