so this fuckin samurai cut me in half a while ago but its like a really long delay so im still just going around doin my thing knowing that i might explode in a shower of blood at any moment
this is so nostalgic. tumblr rolls out something terrible. everyone complains. it breaks several people’s dashboards. for some reason it only rolls out to a few people at a time with seemingly no warning. the community collectively and immediately searches for a browser extension that undoes the change. i know we’ve all gotten burnt out on all social media sucking but this is genuinely The tumblr experience. everyone who hasn’t gotten it already gets an achievement. welcome to the club
actually, im glad this post got notes
everybody in the notes going “but THIS TIME it’s an objectively terrible choice/a bigger deal/a cash grab!!”: first time in the clown car huh
peeling those sour rainbow gummy strips into long thin strings and putting them into cheap energy drink to create something im calling battery acid spaghetti will update once ive finished it
dont do this
I really hope its not too bad bc i actually love both components.
it forms a dry skin at the top made of the sour pellets. not a great start.
tastes really good actually. i also feel like i am about to explode.
do not do this.
Unanimous consensus: Do not do this
Other people: Hold on I’m about to do this
I keep seeing this post going around so, for folks who want to know why not, here’s a chemist’s hypothesis:
-Rainbow sour belts contain malic acid (a common food additive as a potent acidifier and sour-flavor agent), citric acid (another common sour flavoring in pretty much everything) as well as ascorbic acid (aka vitamin C, used here mainly as a preservative). (https://candypros.com/products/sour-belts-bulk-rainbow)
-All of these acids when added to water would normally release their protons (H+ ions), thereby making the water solution more acidic. However, a chemical constant of these acids called the acid dissociation constant (pKa for short) indicates the pH of a solution at which acids are most likely to keep or release their protons. The pKa’s* of these acids are higher (3.4, 3.1, and 4.2 for malic, citric, and ascorbic acids respectively) than the pH of the solution (2.7), which essentially means that the acids can’t release their protons and all that acidic potential is trapped in the solid formulation of the candy.
-There’s also some evidence that sugar decreases the solubility of acids in water solutions (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3411471/ only sorbic acid is discussed here but it’s relatively structurally similar to the acids in discussion). The undoubtedly high sugar content of both the Monster and the candy therefore may contribute to the accounts of the sour crystals bubbling/floating on top of the solution instead of dissolving.
-Malic acid in particular is notorious for causing mouth irritation when eaten in high quantities.
-Thus, I can imagine that upon consuming the battery acid spaghetti, not only is the mix itself quite potently sweet/sour, but also the solid malic acid coming into direct contact with your mouth quickly becomes painful, and as the solution mixes with your (pH neutral) saliva the trapped acidity of the malic/citric/ascorbic acids is dumped into your mouth and esophagus, creating a sensation that I can only imagine is similar to consuming actual battery acid (pH = 0.8).
(*Each of these acids actually has multiple pKa’s corresponding to number of protons they’re able to donate, but really only the lowest pKa is useful here since once that one dissociates then all of the other ones are already dissociated too.)
I think I just accidentally became someone’s loan shark??
Okay it sounds bad but bear with me:
Someone owes me a significant amount of money, and has made it clear that they do not intend to pay me back.
I sent them one text to follow up about it around two months ago, letting them know that I wasn’t stressed about it and I could wait or do installments if they needed time or things were rough, and they promptly blocked my number and deleted me on social media.
I was kinda bummed, but then, you know. I figured, it’s a lot of money, but at least they’ve removed themselves from my life, right? If I were to choose between thinking someone like that was a reliable friend or paying a lump sum for the trash to take itself out, I could make peace with it. Whatever. Live and learn.
So, I haven’t seen them in a few months. Cool. But then I was walking downtown and I see someone out of the corner of my eye just sitting around, having a drink. Don’t know who, don’t know what. Not paying attention, yeah? I’m living my life.
But as I get closer to walk past them, I see them get up and start booking it. And as I turn to figure out what’s up, why is someone running, I recognize the back of their head, and as they look over their shoulder, we make eye contact, and then they’re gone.
And I realize
I just got off work. I’m power-walking in what could ostensibly be interpreted as their direction. They look up and see someone they ghosted, who they have screwed monumentally, coming at them with a hundred-yard-stare and what they may not know is a regular resting bitch face. I don’t even care about the money anymore, I’ve accepted it as a loss, but they blocked me on everything so they don’t know that. And they went, “fuck this shit, not today” and dipped.
And that would be funny on it’s own, but we do not live in a large, heavily-populated area. It’s definitely going to happen again. So my question is this:
How long are they going to let themselves live in fear of my stumpy 5'3" ass hunting them down like John Wick or the devil himself before they snap
So there are some perks to living in a tourist destination. There are a lot of detractors mostly that you cannot shoot the tourists because you rely on them for your income but you have a semi captive audience with no context for any of the bullshit you spew. You can tell these people anything and they will believe you, the trusted friendly local. Now this is a very much Spider-Man situation where Great Power begets Great Audacity and even worse Responsibility.
My buddy goes on a run and when hes done there is a bar near a creek. So he wades into the creek because the day is hot and the water is cold.
Tourists ask what hes up to, with his running stuff he didn’t want wet piled on the shore and him very obviously cooling off in the water. He says he’s fishing.
But now here is why I am telling you this story. The universe occasionally aligns in such a way that we get to really really fuck with people and their perception of said universe. The opportunities do not come often and when they come you must seize the day. This is what my buddy did.
So this Creek runs through town and as a result of the highway and neighborhoods and culverts and roads it does not have a great salmon run. It’s a short Creek the headwaters are only a few miles from the ocean it never had a great salmon run to begin with. But there are salmon.
One such fish brushes past my buddy’s leg. Immediately he knees the fish like he is juggling a soccer ball and pops it out of the water, then slaps it out of the air on to the shore.
This is dumb luck. He could not do this again if he spent years training. Noodling (catching fish with your hands) is a thing that is legal to do with salmon but it is so much harder than literally every other way to catch salmon, including grabbing them with a garbage can. What he just managed is the kind of thing that should make you want to grab the fish and swing it around your head like a stripper with her panties off.
But,
He has an audience.
This is the opportunity offered by the universe.
He plays it cool.
He puts on dead pan straight face on and wades up to shore to grab his fish and nod to the tourists. Someone asks something and he assures them this is the standard way to get a quick dinner here. The tour guide has caught up with his group. He looks at my buddy and his fish and the general lack of fishing accoutrement. Without missing a beat, the guide backs up every ounce of bullshit out of my buddys mouth because if there is one true fraternity it is locals bullshitting stupid tourists.
Last week I accidentally took an edible at 10x my usual dose. I say “accidentally” but it was really more of a “my friend held it out to my face and I impulsively swallowed it like a python”, which was technically on purpose but still an accident in that my squamate instincts acted faster than my ability to assess the situation and ask myself if I really wanted to get Atreides high or not.
Anyway. I was painting the wall when it hit. My friend heard me make a noise and asked what was wrong—I explained that I had just fallen through several portals. I realized that painting the wall fulfilled my entire hierarchy of needs, and was absolutely sure that I was on track to escaping the cycle of samsara if I just kept at it a little longer. I was thwarted on my journey towards nirvana only by the fact that I ran out of paint.
Seeking a surrogate act of humble service through which I might be redeemed and made human, I turned to unwashed dishes in the sink and took up the holy weapon of the sponge. I was partway through cleaning the blender when it REALLY hit.
You ever clean a blender? It’s a shockingly intimate act. They are complex tools. One of the most complicated denizens of the kitchen. Glass and steel and rubber and plastic. Fuck! They’ve got gaskets. You can’t just scrub ‘em and rinse them down like any other piece of shit dish. You’ve got to dissemble them piece by piece, groove by sensitive groove, taking care to lavish the spinning blades with cautious attention. There’s something sensual about it. Something strangely vulnerable.
As I stood there, turning the pieces over in my hands, I thought about all the things we ask of blenders. They don’t have an easy job. They are hard laborers taking on a thankless task. I have used them so roughly in my haste for high-density smoothies, pushing them to their limits and occasionally breaking them. I remembered the smell of acrid smoke and decaying rubber that filled the kitchen in the break room the last time I tried to make a smoothie at work—the motor overtaxed and melted, the gasket cracked and brittle. Strawberry slurry leaked out of it like the blood of a slain animal.
Was this blender built to last? Or was it doomed to an early grave in some distant landfill by the genetic disorder of planned obsolescence? I didn’t know, and was far too high to make an educated guess. But I knew that whatever care and tenderness and empathy I put into it, the more respect for the partnership of man and machine, the better it would perform for me.
This thought filled me with a surge of affection. However long its lifespan, I wanted it to be filled with dignity and love and understanding. I thought: I bet no one has hugged this blender before. And so I lifted it from its base.
A blender is roughly the size and shape of a human baby. Cradling one in your arms satisfies a primal need. A month ago I was permitted to hold an infant for the first time in my life, an experience which was physically and psychologically healing. I felt an echo of that satisfaction holding my friend the blender, and the thought of parting with it felt even more ridiculous than bringing it with me to hang out on my friend’s bed.
my dnd party has run into an npc who may or may not be evil and may or may not decide to betray us and the dm was in chat today like “just so everyone knows…not addressing this comment at anyone in particular…his favorite colors are red and black…wink” so now i’m desperately trying to get a real physical friendship bracelet done before session tomorrow in the vain hope that i can somehow stop this npc from trying to do a murder on my party
UPDATE: the npc was in fact a shapechanged adult black dragon with violence and conquest in his heart. however he did let merry put a friendship bracelet on him and then when she was like “hm okay how big is your wrist in dragon form” he was like “you wanna see?” and then turned into a dragon and let merry measure him for a second, dragon-sized friendship bracelet. the dm described him afterwards as being deeply confused as to why he did this or let any of this happen to him. call that the merry effect
this guy is now a recurring npc because merry was SO determined to make him her friend that it actually somehow worked. he cast dream to talk to one of my party members like “hey…how’s it going…how are the tieflings in the party…not that i care…also i’m not lonely. bye” and the player was like “is he still wearing merry’s friendship bracelet in this dream” and the dm was like “yeah…”
fsdfjhskdf the dm just sent us all this image
so merry taught naeric (the dragon) the power of love, obviously, and because his heart was open and beautiful he started dating…a SECOND evil dragon. and then that gf betrayed him and cast ninth level imprisonment on him so now naeric is our damsel in distress and we have to save him from his girlfriend, the actual villain. how the turntables…
and. in the most horrible plot twist of all. the gf stole his friendship bracelet.
ALT
ALT
ALT
