d

@hotlocalwizards.bsky.social

188 Followers 117 Following

mostly entertaining writer | narrative designer | beloved homosexual hope to hear from you soon, — d

pints of ice cream with the word "PROTEIN" prominently displayed in capital letters on the front. each pint boasts 30 grams of "complete protein," whatever that means
three bags of candy hanging from a display in a grocery store. they are all labelled "PROTEIN CANDY."
two boxes of food today I encountered. the left box, titled "ONE Reese's," are a protein bar based on Reese's Peanut Butter cups, containing 18g of protein (14g more than a serving of the standard candy). deceptively, there is a large picture of the original candy on the front of the box, and the picture of the actual protein bar is much smaller, positioned behind the candy. the right box, titled "ONE Hershey's," gives the same treatment to the famous cookies & cream bar.
a screenshot of the headline of a real article from WebMD.com. It says "Are You Making Things Worse?"
a screenshot of our gofundme page. an icon in the top left indicates that we are already 35% funded. the text on this page says “$1,383 raised of 4K. Maxwell Kearney and 11 others have donated.”
in the street between two parked cars, a cylinder of clear resin sits. there is a circular object encased by the resin.
A poster hung in the window of a restaurant. It has clearly been made using generative AI. It has several places where the words have turned into indistinguishable blobs, or words have just been spelled wrong. Notably, the poster says “Lhicken Shicup” is for sale for $6. No such item exists on the menu of this restaurant.
A photo of a page from the introduction to a book. It says: “The proletarians had originally been the poverty stricken masses of ancient Rome, who had no property save their children (proles). The Roman poor had nothing whatsoever to do with factories, but Marx took over the term for modern factory workers because he liked its grand Romantic historical sweep. In spite of his formal economic definitions, Marx usually included all the urban poor in the proletarians, whether they worked in factories or not. He was convinced that with the evolution of industrial society, almost everybody would become proletarian. The peasants would be drawn into the cities by economic necessity, and most of the bourgeoisie would become bankrupt by capitalist com-petition, and would sink into the proletariat. This has never happened; it was one of Marx's most famous wrong predictions. As industry advances the working classes grow, but the middle classes grow more rapidly still. There has never been a country in which the industrial workers were a majority.”
A screenshot of some text I'm writing for a Choose Your Own Adventure game. It reads: So it was all the more stunning to Buck that this fish, a vision of beauty so rare & wet, had appeared to him of all dogs. He fell-- with no recourse, no remedy, & no regard for the logistical challenges of terrestrial-aquatic relationships-- in love.

 IF BUCK TRIES TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE SALMON, GO TO XX 
IF BUCK TRIES TO GO MEET THE SALMON, GO TO YY
A screenshot of one paragraph in the linked article. It reads: Valnet is based in Montreal and operates Screen Rant, Game Rant, Comic Book Resources, and other mass aggregators. The company is run by Hassan Youssef, who got his start in digital media with online porn websites. "The addition of Polygon not only strengthens our editorial muscle but also amplifies our ability to deliver unmatched value to both audiences and advertisers," Youssef said in a press release today.
a screenshot from a newsweek article about the New York mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo. i have not provided the title or URL of the article. the screenshot says the following: Cuomo, the son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo, served as 56th governor of New York from 2011 until he resigned in 2021 following a slew of sexual harassment allegations, although he denies the claims and has avoided criminal charges. He still faces a potential battle on another legal front, however, with House Oversight Chair James Comer requesting that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate and potentially prosecute him for allegedly lying to Congress about New York State's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in nursing homes. Cuomo's spokesperson Rich Azzopardi told Politico the claims were "nonsense," adding: "As the DOJ constantly reminds people, this kind of transparent attempt at election interference and law-fare violates their own policies."
the first paragraph of the wikipedia article for the court case “United States v. Swartz.” It reads as follows: In United States of America v. Aaron Swartz, 945 F. Supp. 2d 216 (D. Mass. 2013), Aaron Swartz, an American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist, was prosecuted for multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), after downloading academic journal articles through the MIT computer network from a source (JSTOR) for which he had an account as a Harvard research fellow. In September 2012, federal prosecutors charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, charges carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines plus 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release. Facing trial and the possibility of imprisonment, Swartz died by suicide in January 2013, and the case was consequently dismissed.
a photo of a large sign hung on a brick wall. The sign says “Welcome! GOD IS LOVE. Cathedral of.” there is clearly a word missing at the end of the sign.
A screenshot of the wikipedia page for “Safety Valve Institutions.” The body of the article reads: Safety-valve organization or safety-valve institution is a term used in sociology to describe social organizations which serve to allow discontented individuals to act out their opposition to elements of society without coming into direct contact with the elements, analogically "letting off steam".
A screenshot of the linked page, which says the following. Let's look again at Toys "R" Us. They have two big glaring problems - one, their Net Margin is negative, they are losing money. This is the effect of competition and the toy-market squeeze mentioned earlier. Second, they have an incredibly high debt load - an equity multiplier of 5.35. This is a consequence of Bain Capital's purchase and sale of them in the early 2000s - private equity often adds a high amount of debt to companies in order to generate returns for its investors. Often, the companies are selected based on their reliable, stable returns - in other words, they can often pay this debt load without trouble, and Toys "R" Us in 2005 likely seemed to be such a company.
A screenshot of a job posting on linkedin. The job title is "Game Designer, CryptoKitties," and the company is called "Dapper Labs."
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.” It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” There will also be an American ag no larger than a child’s hand—glued to a lollipop stick and ying from the cash register. The author of the monograph, a native of Schenectady, New York, was said by some to have had the highest I.Q. of all the war criminals who were made to face a death by hanging. So it goes. Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignied poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.
A screenshot of a digital whiteboard. Seven sticky notes are laid out in a flow chart. Each sticky note has buttons on it, & the buttons have arrows pointing to another sticky note. Upon pressing the button, the viewer's screen will automatically navigate to the indicated sticky note.
a screenshot of an Kobayashi Issa poem, along with the translator's gloss: "masse matsudai demo sakura sakura kana a corrupt world in its latter days... but cherry blossoms! The term masse refers, in Pure Land Buddhism, to these "latter days" of corruption. The beauty of the blossoms (almost?) makes up for the depravity of the world. Issa adds emphasis by repeating: "cherry blossoms! cherry blossoms!" (sakura sakura). This repetition doesn't work as well in English. Shinji Ogawa notes that Issa's repetition, sakura sakura kana, connotes the fact that many people are crazy for cherry blossom viewing. The word, demo ("although," "still" or "despite"), suggests that Issa may be saying, "Although it's a corrupt world in its latter days, people still have the heart to appreciate the beauty of cherry blossoms--or they are merry with the blossom viewing." "
a screenshot from the novel “Frankenstein.” it reads: > If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
an image of a dilapidated tower. above the tower, there is text: “cottagecore & tradwives are no longer sufficient fantasies for escaping capital. it is time to become enclosed.” below the tower, it says: “In Christianity, an anchorite or anchoret (female: anchoress; from Ancient Greek: ἀναχωρέω, romanized: anakhōréō, lit. 'I withdraw, retire') is someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society to be able to lead an intensely prayer-orientated, ascetic, or Eucharist-focused life. Anchorites are frequently considered to be a type of hermit,[2][dead link] but unlike hermits, they were required to take a vow of stability of place, opting for permanent enclosure in cells often attached to churches. Also unlike hermits, anchorites were subject to a religious rite of consecration that closely resembled the funeral rite, following which they would be considered dead to the world and a type of living saint.”