in movies, when a scientist is held hostage and is forced to make a bomb or virus, like my guy, those villains don’t know shit about science. just make a gumball machine, my dude
eighth grade science fair volcano, but fancylooking
i just want once where the villain is like, you are too late, i detonated the device and instead of doom and gloom it is just confetti sparklers with abba’s waterloo playing and the scientist is like, bitch you thought
every time a scientist gets kidnapped to build a terrible weapon, they think about just bullshitting it, but then a tiny voice in the back of their mind says, but don’t you want to see if you can? don’t you want to laugh madly as you show them all? don’t you want to just go feral?
Honestly when’s the next time you’ll get this kind of grant funding?
Not to get all serious on this delightful post, but it just occurred to me that the US government kept scientists working on the Manhattan Project in the dark about what they were working on because if they knew they were building an actual doomsday device, they ABSOLUTELY would have either sabotaged it or quit. Turns out real life villains are more cunning and real life scientists are more upstanding than in fiction.
I thought the Manhattan project was just a marvel thing????
Nope! I’m not sure how the Manhattan Project is portrayed in the Marvel movies (although now I’m curious to see how they might have spun it), but the Manhattan Project was the development of the first atomic bomb in the 1940s. And the vast majority of people working on it had no clue what they were building.
I think part of it really was that if people knew what they were building, they would have quit, but the secrecy also had a lot to do with keeping American military secrets from reaching The Enemy. You know, this kind of stuff:
According to Wikipedia, "probably no more than a few dozen men in the entire country knew the full meaning of the Manhattan Project, and perhaps only a thousand others even were aware that work on atoms was involved.“ When scientists started to figure out what they were building, they were told they’re making a “gadget”. *insert eyeroll*
When the scientists and workers who built the bombs turned on the radio and heard about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they instantly knew what they had been working on. Imagine, the sudden realization that you played a hand in the deaths of 200,000 people. You’re a scientist; you’re supposed to make the world a better, more enlightened place, not dole out death and devastation.
But scientists, being humanists, continued to try to mitigate the damage of the bomb after finding out what it really was:
Some who had realized how dangerous it could be before the bombs were launched tried to persuade the president or the military that it was unnecessary to have to actually launch the bombs.
After the bombings, The Pugwash Conferences were established to try to outlaw the use of atomic weapons globally.
Oppenheimer, the physicist who was the lab director at Los Alamos and literal “father of the atomic bomb”, went on to lobby for international arms control (and was later accused of being a Communist and stripped of his security clearance).
TL;DR Basically, in real life, scientists will not want to work on your villainous death device unless they literally don’t know what they’re working on, and when they figure it out, they will try to convince the villain not to use the death device, and when the villain inevitably uses the death device, they will continue to try to do damage control. And this, kids, is why you never accept a job working for the US Military.
1. “more aid to ireland during the famine than britain” okay let’s clear this up, again– there was no famine, it was a genocide, commited specifically by the british. ireland was literally packed with food. the only crop that failed was the potato crop. the british had no problem with ships FULL OF FOOD leaving british ports on british ships from ireland to other places to make money. IT. WAS. NOT. A. FAMINE. IT. WAS. A. GENOCIDE. and that probably explains why britain didn’t “send aid”. britain was literally using the “famine” they manufactured to clear the land of indigenous irish people.
2. which lends poignancy and power to the attempt by the choctaw nation to send food to starving irish people.
3. there was much fanfair about this in the british press at the time, because of course the british government was lying to its own people about what they were doing. it’s convenient to blame natural disasters like “famine” when in fact it is mass murder– kinda like what’s going on in yemen right now. but to conclude, what didn’t receive a lot of fanfair in the british press is the fact that much of the corn and other food the choctaw nation attempted to send did not go to starving irish people, it was essentially hijacked and went to feed british pigs and livestock.
4. which is why every saint patrick’s day we remember the genocide (one of many the british attempted in ireland) of black ‘47. and we always remember the native americans who responded in such good will and with such generosity to starving people an ocean away from them.
And - all through primary school (until age 12) it was taught as a famine; only in secondary school did we learn that the British caused it deliberately. There’s a fair amount of Irish YA novels about the Famine (can’t remember titles off the top of my head), and they’re all pretty brutal with the facts of what happened. Not to mention most people’s great-grandparents probably lived through it - it’s not that far back.
Also there’s a monument to the Choctaw nation somewhere up the country for the help.
It’s by Alex Pentek, it’s in Bailick Park, Midleton, Co. Cork, and it’s called “Kindred Spirits”.
“The English never remember and the Irish never forget.”
(Chesterton)
Not forgetting is why there are so many Irish names here.
(The link above is to donate to
the Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund - definitely contribute if you can! I could not find a website to donate to a Choctaw relief fund.)
Victor Frankenstein: I’ve created life but I refuse to put any effort into helping that life develop. I won’t teach him, love him, or defend him even though I forced him into existence with a fully operational adult brain lol. Peace, bitch.
The Monster: Am Eloquent Baby
Boomers: He’S NOt thE ViCtIM, HE’s tHe MOnsTEr
An ironic parallel considering the idea of “tough love” parenting that plenty of boomers like to use. If they buy into the idea that their kids just have to toughen up and face the real world without guidance or emotional support, I’m sure it does scare them to read a story where someone who wasn’t given any support began to resent their creator and turn on them.
it’s like that post that’s like ‘knowledge is knowing that frankenstein is the doctor; wisdom is knowing that frankenstein is the monster’. like the whole point of the post is that frankenstein’s monster is a victim of viktor frankenstein’s own monstrosity.
mary shelley did not lose her virginity on her mother’s grave just for people to misunderstand her best known work over a century later.
Never have I ever wanted to eat something with quite as much yearning
oh god, this one has AUDIO!!! the other one i’ve seen a dozen times doesn’t and i have always been so resentful because i desperately needed to hear it.
i started hand flapping so hard i hurt my wrist because this sounded so good, oh my god
Hours spent looking at Indeed job search, flicking between tabs,
checking your mate’s Facebook (“Just checked in at the hotel with the
squad, loving Menorca! Tits and lines all round LMFAO!” – fuck off Tim
you sad wanker) and getting lost in the latest #moralpanic on Twitter.
Hours wasted trying to look for the delicate balance of what you’re
vaguely qualified or experienced for and what you are willing to bother
spending your waking life and energy performing. Though you know it
won’t last, don’t you. If you actually cared about what it is you’re
going to be doing, and not just the hourly rate then you wouldn’t be on
fucking Indeed in the first place, would you?
You know you don’t really care, and for some reason that makes you
feel bad. Is it guilt? Not quite guilt - anger. But with no line-manager
to take it out on, you just end up angry at yourself.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
