BG Burton

#ThrillerThursday continues Last week Vesper patched a leak in Lethe. This week the call comes at noon… and the Elysian Fields are drifting. Part 1 👉x.com/QuantumMagick/… 1/ The call comes at noon on a Tuesday, which is unusual. Vesper is elbow-deep in a municipal water authority codebase when her mother's number appears. "Elysian Fields," her mother says. "Calibration drift, probably. Grief index running slightly elevated across the general population. Nothing acute." Vesper saves her work. "What does slightly elevated mean?" "Souls who should be content aren't quite." A careful pause. "Almost within normal parameters." She notes the almost. She notes the careful pause. The Fields are the upper tier of the underworld's reward architecture — souls who earned something better than the common afterlife, held in a sustained state of peace. Not obliteration like Lethe. Maintenance. The system has to actively support the condition. "I'll look at it," Vesper says. "Probably nothing," her mother says again. Vesper is already pulling her kit.

@dts0012 @Devon_Eriksen_ @StephenFleming I don’t think adulthood has to mean no new friends. I think cities suck.

@CuriousInkCo @Devon_Eriksen_ @StephenFleming Welcome to adultery*. * A joke based on a game show contestant remark. "In our household, we have 3 children, one adult, and one adulteress." Cracked me up & it stuck. Use it on my kid when she complains about having to do grown up stuff.

@Devon_Eriksen_ @StephenFleming I haven’t made a new IRL friend in 21 years. My interests are too niche & I’m an outlier in so many areas. Thousands of acquaintances through volunteerism etc. No new friends of my own, just my husband’s — all of whom he met professionally. I hate cities.

@ReallyRadley @CoughsOnWombats I wouldn’t resin those up! 😂 We have enough to do a random floor, but not enough patina variation for a pattern. I wanted to do a compass rose this time. Guess I’ll be doing coins of the world.

@CuriousInkCo @CoughsOnWombats I probably have enough to make a wheat penny floor.

If I ever went spelunking, it would just be to look for robotic dinosaurs and giant pennies. Also, with the Treasury Department discontinuing pennies, will Batman soon have a giant dime or Sacagawea dollar? @CoughsOnWombats

@ReallyRadley You didn’t know about urethra play before? Pretty common kink, with a new hipster name tossed around this century. There’s so much worse & grosser if you look. I’m kinda blasé about most of it now. Crushing is pretty ick.

The internet has made me aware of many bizarre practices, but now I can’t help but wonder: Was Mark Twain into “sounding”?

@ReallyRadley Nah, sounding is just the now-popular term. Kind of a boring kink. 😂

@CuriousInkCo You’ll change your mind when you see my Twain post! 🤪❤️🫂

So, apparently, my switching to “following”, & giving likes to mutuals’ posts in an effort to say “I see you!” without talking the politics involved is an epic fail. My carefully curated feed is now nothing but politics & the same posts ad nauseum. Grok says I have to refuse to engage in any way with any political content, mutual or not. Love you guys, but I can’t take the constant assault on my nervous system. Know I am still reading you!

@ajwink They’re nommy for pollinators! (I personally like dandelion salad & wine. Good thing I don’t live in suburbia or my neighbors would put out a hit on me. 😎)

@CuriousInkCo Oh! Here I thought he was wasting his time.

I watched a “bee” hit my porch light this afternoon like a tiny drunk helicopter. Not a honeybee. Not a wasp. Diadasia rinconis, the cactus bee. A solitary. She’s the kind that does ALL the work herself, then vanishes with zero credit. What local bees are you seeing lately?

Sure, Podiatrist & foot ortho docs, this is a totally normal foot…if you’re an elephant. (Both feet look like this.) You bet. Ima go swing dancing tonight, fer schizzles. Two fing years of this. Why won’t someone order the bleeping MRI? Expecting positivity from me rn is Too Much. @JohnMann72166 Can you believe he wants me to WAIT 2 more weeks & see if the wide toe box & icing make a difference? Because after 114 weeks, that’ll change things. Starting to really hate doctors.

@ReallyRadley Twain would be good. Anything other than the continuous outrage cycle! 😂

@CuriousInkCo I’ve got Mark Twain posts! 🤪

@ajwink Dandelions produce both nectar and pollen! Bee was grooving! 😂

@CuriousInkCo The other day I saw a bumblebee landing on a dandelion. I wanted to ask if he was drunk.

@FloreFlos I’m sure! 😀That’s why I said it’s me. 👍🏻 I don’t have a sense of humor in this area. For someone as laid back as I am, I’m very stern and tyrannical about some things. Ah, internal consistency; my impossible dream.

@CuriousInkCo It’s ok. We are always joking. None of us mean it

I made a mistake. My daughter called me dumb, my bad, and I said I’m the smartest person you know. She says, “I don’t know anyone but Gabe (her brother) and he’s smart,” to which I said children get their intelligence from their mother. She then said Gabe is definitely adopted. 😂😅

@FloreFlos Yeah, no, I meant it. 😂 My kid would be grounded & be denied privileges for 2 weeks for that. Your kid wouldn’t enjoy being my kid. My behavioral standards for children are 19th century. It’s not you, it’s me. 😀

@CuriousInkCo I just paid her back and told the cashier at t bar that she’s hangry , she’s a teen so that’s embarrassing 😂

@micki_barker @SpockTheVulcan3 @walterkirn Greece is right.

@SpockTheVulcan3 @walterkirn Greece has an opinion.🙄

Figuring out how to explain to a young person that Germany declared war on us over 80 years ago, we fought back and won, and we have owed them ever since.

That’s certainly part of it. (Was in 1st grade at 3 & college at 10.) I’m also in a liberal desert city, when I should be in a rural area. Before my marriage, I lived in Tombstone & there was always someone to have coffee with. Only about 3k people within 20 miles, but I’ve found small towns pretty much accept you as you are. Hoping when we move rural at retirement, it’ll get better for me.

@CuriousInkCo @Devon_Eriksen_ @StephenFleming Probably outlier intelligence which is the number 1 most important factor for social sorting. At some point it just become statistically rare that you'll match with anyone.

People romanticize college because for four years of their lives they: 1. Had all the rights of adults but none of the responsibilities. 2. Lived in a closed community with sealed borders that kept out low IQs and anti-socials. 3. Were young, energetic, healthy, and attractive. 4. Were thrown together with a bunch of similar people who had no predefined power- or need-based relationship with them, which is how friendships form. This last is the important one, especially as fertility rates decline. People with children transition to making friends with other parents of children in the same age group, because events and networks centered around those children throw them together with other parents in the same way. But childless people have few or no opportunities to make friends after college. So they are left with a slow dwindling circle of college based relationships, remembering the days when it was all easy, and they weren't so isolated, and they didn't have to work so hard. Couple that with having to complete with infinity immigrants in the job market, so they can pay taxes to support infinity boomers and government bureaucrats, while being passed over for the best jobs and careers in favor of infinity DEI incompetents, who they also have to support... Well, for a lot of people born into what was once the American middle class, college was their first and last experience of an adult life wherein they weren't being systematically and deliberately routed into the formation of a new underclass. A special form of underclass who are still expected to be productive enough to materially support all the non-producing people who were positioned as their social superiors despite being their intellectual inferiors. So, yeah, they wish they could go back to college. Is anyone surprised by this?

@SamanthaPfaff @FreebornMaryAnn Free Iran, bitch. You’re no woman.

Update?

@koshercockney @BoyGeorge Dude went to jail for CHAINING A MAN TO A RADIATOR. Find a better hero.

Wow. Thank you to @BoyGeorge for standing with the Jewish Community. It gave me goosebumps. So powerful.

@koshercockney @BoyGeorge Fuck him. He’s a misogynist who thinks men can be women & threatens to attack women who want their own spaces. Don’t give him a pass because of this. He’s still a horrible person.

Wow, your ignorance and arrogance is astonishing. We supported my husband’s parents. Two mortgages. Insurance. Health care. We didn’t spend a DIME we didn’t have to because we simultaneously were putting our niece thru school & saving for retirement. Fuck you, you arrogant little prick. You have ZERO ability to think outside your bubble. You’re a total asshole, & dumber than a rock.

@CuriousInkCo Here is the thing. If you can't afford to pay for it [a soda once in a while] yourself, you're likely not making enough money to pay enough taxes to even participate in paying for those programs.

I know on the right I'm in the minority on this issue, but this is stupid as shit. Why are we spending time policing which "food" items can and can't be purchased? Ultimately the program is designed to help those unfortunate, not police what they eat. How about we focus on actual fraud first, then if we still have available time, we can talk about policing users. FFS. Just fix the fraud.

@jackunheard Sigh. He sucks Musk cock. To get that out of him, it was prompt manipulation. Look, Jack, pro tip: if you do not see the ENTIRE previous conversation & the AI response is whack, 99.9% of the time you’re seeing prompt manipulation. Unbunch, and don’t be so damn naive.

Grok, what are you doing?