Musings of Ade

[sextronautt]

we live in a world where the pizza arrives faster than the police

[asgardreid-deactivated20180407]

Well the pizza driver faces consequences when their job isn’t done right.

[shadysnarcotics-deactivated2020]

!!!!!!!!!!

[thinksquad-deactivated20190405]

Government is force, and politics is the process of deciding who gets to use it on whom. This is not the best way to solve problems.

Richard Grant (via thinksquad)

[maza-dohta]

Be kind to your pain, be patient; it is trying to understand why you hurt. 

— © 2013 Maza-Dohta

[kylielikesfood]

I’m definitely pro-selfie, I think that anybody who’s anti-selfie is really just a hater. Because, truthfully, why shouldn’t people take pictures of themselves? When I’m on Instagram and I see that somebody took a picture of themselves, I’m like, ’Thank you.’ I don’t need to see a picture of the sky, the trees, plants. There’s only one you.

Ezra Koenig, self-proclaimed Lord Selfie (via damefox)

[statusquotable]

I don’t see what’s so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin’ upset ‘cos they act like people. Anyway, if you stopped tellin’ people it’s all sorted out after they’re dead, they might try sorting it all out while they’re alive.

Adam, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Words of wisdom from the Antichrist.

(via statusquotable)

[thinksquad-deactivated20190405]

There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested — and commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.

Sun Tzu, Art of War, 5th century (via thesacredchaogoesmu)

[theremina]

[harkaway]

AAAARG!!!!

I love the sentiment and the poetry of this. I do. I get that it’s important.

But (with apologies to Theremina, who is awesome) it drives me CRAZY. Why?

Because NO, NO, NO, you are not a ghost driving a machine. You are not a tiny green homunculus sitting at the controls of a steampunk automaton. You are not Spock trapped in a body that wants to be Kirk. You are not dual, you are not refined intellect riding gross matter like an unruly mustang. You are not Ariel carried by Caliban.

You are you. Your body is you. Your cognition exists in the flesh. It is not separate, not spun glass in the hands of a chimp. Your body creates your mind. Your gut, the ropy intestinal tract that digests your food, has 100,000,000 neurons in it. There are quite a lot of animals with fewer than that. Your whole physical shape, your food and drink, exercise, amount of sunshine, of sex, of affection, sitting position and amount of sleep, affects not only your mood but your supposedly pure cognitive choices. Look down and to the left and name a string of random number between zero and ten million. Now do the same looking up and to the right. The second batch will be higher. And your body’s genes play a role in your thinking, too - identical twins separated at birth and raised separately are often seen to develop, if not similar politics, similar moods of political opinion.

The need to separate the body from the mind comes from an old slander that physical matter is dross, simply too crude to support the fineness that is thought. Physical matter, forever dancing around energy, shifting from one configuration to another, even now withholding secrets from our most sophisticated inquisitors, is not crude. It is brilliant, and yes, you are made of stardust and stars are made of you, so why - oh, why - would you try to distance yourself from the beauty of it and reach for comfort in the form of some old Cartesian slur derived from a tacit heteropatriarchal fear of physical desire?

Consider what you are: the most recent iteration of your genetic code, itself the product of strange chemistry in bubbling primordial pools, in turn resting upon vast releases of energy into stunning cold according to a template almost bizarrely suited to the emergence of conscious life - which may, in turn, be a vital component of its function. Caught midway between the appalling vastness of the Newton-Einstein universe and the implausible mechanics of the tiny, you exist in both; composed largely of water, whose relationship with the quantum world is only just beginning to reveal itself, you are gorgeously liminal, fragile, biological and complex.

And, that, that is why you’re incredible.

[adelened-blog]

........

Y'know, having read about how EDS affects other tissues, not just joints, and how it overlaps with autism a lot...

leads me to wonder if things feeling too scratchy or similarly painful on the skin - particularly thinking of clothing tags, here - might be less 'sensory sensitivity' and more 'my body is correctly reporting that its unusually fragile skin is in fact being damaged by this, albeit in a subtle way'.

I mean, complete shot in the dark, but it seems plausible and I'd bet a surprisingly large sum of money that nobody has ever actually checked in a way that would be meaningful to that.

[slepaulica]

i see a lot of posts saying that it’s unfair that stores are open on holidays in the US.

where i live, everything closes down for holidays like Christmas. There are no restaurants open for the few days surrounding it, no grocery stores. There were times in my life when I couldn’t cook due to chronic pain and I was pretty much reliant on cheap restaurants and caffeterias, and that meant that when Christmas rolled around there were a couple days where there was nothing to eat. I’m cooking now, but I don’t have much capacity for food storage, and there were also a lot of years when the weather warmed up right around Christmas and I couldn’t buy more than a day’s worth of food at a time because it would spoil, or I couldn’t physically carry enough food home from the store to stock up.

I think I’ll actually be okay this year, for the first time in about a decade, I think maybe I’ll manage to stock up enough food for those few days when nothing will be open. It depends on the weather, but I think I’ll be able to do it.

But I think people who have families should be able to spend time with them. That’s important too.

But there are a lot of religions out there. Why can’t they get non Christian employees to work on Christian holidays and get Christians to work on Jewish/Muslim/Hindu/etc. holidays? I would be happy to work on Christmas because I don’t celebrate it. (I’d also be happy to work on my own holidays because I don’t have anyone to celebrate them with. Like many people, I don’t have a family.)

[adelened-blog]

The bit about having non-Christian people work those holidays doesn't actually work as well as you'd think it would, at least around here - Christmas in particular is as much a secular holiday as a religious one, and also it's fairly common for people who aren't Christian to have family or friends that are and want them to spend the holiday with them. Not to say that that doesn't work at all, but, yeah. (Also they might not have non-Christian employees in the first place in positions that only have a few people in them - if a store only has three managers and they're all Christian, staying open on Christmas means one of them has to work it, even if everybody else on the schedule doesn't celebrate the holiday.)

[roymustache-deactivated20150728]

remember when aang was on trial for a murder kyoshi was accused of and he was like OMG NONE OF MY PAST LIVES WOULD EVER KILL ANYONE WAH WAH WAH and then kyoshi appeared and was like YEAH I KILLED HIM W/E HE WAS A DOUCHE

[xhaztol-fr]

Hey there, everyone -

I wanted to make a statement about some of the discussions that have been happening this morning, as I understand that it is causing considerable frustrations with some of you. I am making this reply on my tumblr, as that’s where much of this originated, and it is coming from a more personal place, so I felt it would be appropriate on my personal blog.

Last night, we sent an e-mail response to an extremely talented script writer asking that the script not be used or distributed. I wanted to clarify the intention behind the e-mail, now that it is out there, so that everyone can understand why we sent it, and why we expanded the Terms of Use.

First and foremost, a lot of discussion has been swirling around a sentence of the message that dealt with ad revenue. We made this statement to the author in attempt to be transparent about the fact that the script negates some page refreshing that does provide our site with revenue that is necessary to sustain it.

This was worded very poorly, and I will personally own up to that, considering that I mostly penned the reply.

I want to emphasize, however, that this was not the focal point or motivator behind the decision we made. Not in the least. It was a comment of disclosure that supplemented the main body of the message. In retrospect, it probably should not have been mentioned at all, as it is the least of the concerns we had with the script (scripts in general) and only served to overshadow the rest of the statement.

That being: The security, integrity, and performance of the site are of primary concern. It is not a secret that Flight Rising has been under attack in the past by persons or parties that have aimed to harm it, expose information, or drive it into the ground via DDOS-like activity. We want to prevent this whenever, and wherever, possible.

While I agree that it sounds like it might be a good idea to allow some scripts that seem benign, while disallow those that seem harmful, that can still become very diluted, and there is nothing stopping someone from taking something that seems harmless and modifying it in a way that could compromise site performance, user safety/privacy, etc.

To ensure that these things are staved off as much as possible (we know we can’t stop or convince everyone, and we accept that), we made the decision to change the Terms of Use to incorporate a broader terminology when describing scripts in general.

But I also want to be clear that we did not make this change or reply because we just didn’t want to deal with scripts at all, or plug our ears to the fact that it exposes some places where Flight Rising could use improvement. Flight Rising is currently still in its infancy, and in keeping with the tenants of web design, we plan to heavily iterate on the Player Experience, workflows, and the page design as a whole. This means that we are by no means done (and probably never will be done) with improving and streamlining the site. We recognize there are many areas that contain inefficiencies and extraneous steps, and we are absolutely intent on evaluating where we can eliminate those.

I actually wanted to again call out the fact that this script was extremely impressive to our team. The sheer dedication to a project that, in its entirety, is Flight Rising-centric, actually humbles us very much. The author of this script showed great dedication in creating a tool that has a lot of awesome features in it, and many that we are actually working on incorporating into the site proper. To give you an idea:

We are working on improvements to further streamline use of the Auction House, ranging from more search options, to easier retrieval of items.

The ability to purchase an auctioned dragon directly from its profile page is something we have always been considering. It will be coming in an update.

The lair, right now, is one of the heavier parts of Flight Rising, but there are several optimizations that are currently being coded and tested for release. This should hopefully speed up feeding response time, as well as allow us the potential to display more dragons per lair page. We’re also trying to figure out why new hatchlings think it is within their right to sit at the top of your lair and shove/rearrange everyone else down (#kidsthesedays…).

The thing I really want to press is that we did not intend, at all, for this to stifle the author, or any of you, from helping us improve the site. On the contrary, we are VERY interested, excited, and intent on keeping a channel and dialogue open. We encourage the feedback, we welcome it. We will be continuing to learn from players and scripters, and have no problems with talking about process/site improvements. There are lots of you, and it takes us a lot of time to get through all the discussions, but we’re not about to turn a blind eye.

There is still a lot of work to be done, and there are wish lists of things we’d like to overhaul or streamline. We’re not done yet. I want to thank every one of you who have made your voices heard, and have called out places and ways that we can improve not only the site, but how we interact with you. You make the site better, and help shape us into better adminstrators and developers in the process.

For those that are celebrating, I hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving! -Xhaz

[jokes-19403]

I can probably take it that you’ve seen my Suggestions thread, then.

I have two points to make here, but before I get into that I have something to say about the conversation itself. While I am, as the tag implies, still mad about this, and I believe I’m justified in that, I also appreciate that you took the time to make this response and clarify your plans, intentions, and reasoning. The difference between an angry rant and a ragequit often does come down to a sense of being heard, and I sense that you’re hearing us even if I don’t agree with how you’re responding.

And now the hard stuff.

First - I’m glad to hear that the page loads weren’t a major factor in this decision, but they still came up, and I want to be absolutely clear about something because I think it’s one of the most important points I made in that thread:

If you fall into the trap of prioritizing more page loads over a streamlined user experience, you are engaging in hostile site design. Do not be tempted to do this. A good site profits by giving its users nice things that they want and enjoy, and receiving their support in return; a site that profits by maximizing unnecessary pageviews at the expense of convenience is bad.

I don’t necessarily think you have already fallen into that trap, but given the evidence I’m definitely not going to rule it out. And if you are doing it, you should stop.I do have a second point to make, but it’s getting late and I want to get at least that first one out before I go to sleep, so I’m going to stop here for now.

[adelened-blog]

I'm actually not buying it that page loads weren't a major consideration. I went back and double checked the original response, and:

Unfortunately, we will need to ask that, for the time being, this script not be used or distributed. While it (as you noted) doesn’t automate any gameplay, it is still a script, and performing functions in places where they were not intended by site design, as well as causing a fairly large reduction in page refreshes, which are a contributing part to keeping Flight Rising operating (our ad revenue/impressions are very important).

Yeah. The FR team has a bit of a habit of saying things that are a bit misleading, in that by the letter of the thing it's true but it's easy to misread it as implying something else (see: Thrage's stepping down as admin being worded in such a way that people thought he was off the dev team altogether), but that's pretty clearly not what happened here; they themselves said that ad revenue is "very important". Also, the fact that that's the first specific objection they come up with suggests that it's the first thing they thought of or the most important thing on their minds or both.

Hopefully they've heard what you're saying and are reevaluating that, and maybe the other considerations, while secondary, were what actually tipped the balance here to make it worth changing the TOS for. But this claim that the ad revenue wasn't actually important to them in the first place, and it was just poor wording that made it look like it was? No. Bad FR admins, stop gaslighting your userbase.

[everybidenjusthavegoodtime]

*throws life away* *misses trashcan by like 20 feet*

[zen-like-deactivated20160905]

[jesuisuneetoile]

THIS IS MARRIAGE!!

Thats right!

Permission to be a bad ass. Nod.

He looks back at the guy like, “SEE THAT? SHE SAID YES. YOU’RE SO FUCKED.”

Like, guys. Sparta was so kick ASS sometimes when it came to women. Spartan women were given these small knives so that if their husbands came home and tried to hit them or assault them, they had a weapon within reach. That weapon was for CUTTING THEIR HUSBANDS’ FUCKING FACES so that when he went out in public everyone would know he was an asshole, abusing jerkface and they would publicly shame him.

[fuuuuuuuckthis-deactivated20140]

I DID NOT KNOW THAT THAT IS GREAT

[wtfhistory]

LET’S JUST TALK ABOUT SPARTAN WOMEN FOR A SECOND.

In Sparta, women could own land and were considered citizens. THAT IS A HUGE BIG FUCKING DEAL. Why? Because that was RARE AS FUCK and there are lots of places TODAY where women don’t even get that much.

Divorce was totally fine, and a woman could expect to keep her own wealth and get custody of the kids because paternal lineage wasn’t very important. And it didn’t make her a pariah! She could totally remarry, no big deal at all.

Spartan women participated in some fuckin’ badass sporting events, too. And because they were expected to be as physically fit as the Spartan menfolk (who all had to serve compulsory military duties, btw, and couldn’t marry until they finished them at thirty) they didn’t have time for lots of swishy dresses. So they wore notoriously short skirts. According to some accounts, their thighs were visible at all times. HOLY SHIT. 

Also, In Sparta men only got their names on their graves if they died in battle. And women? Women only got their names on their graves if they died in childbirth. THE SPARTANS COMPARED CHILDBIRTH TO FUCKING BATTLE AND IT WAS VIEWED AS A GODDAMN BADASS AND HONORABLE WAY TO GO OUT.

FUCKING SPARTAN WOMEN. THIS DUDE HAD FUCKIN’ BETTER MAKE SURE SHE’S COOL WITH WHATEVER HE’S DOING, IF HE KNOWS WHAT’S FUCKIN’ GOOD FOR HIM.

[justin-john-deactivated20181027]

^^ I throughly enjoyed the history lesson dashed with the colorful adjectives.

[incisiveredneck]

Before we get TOO excited about Sparta let’s just remember that this only applied to Spartan citizens. Spartan society was entirely carried by an underclass of slaves called the Helots. The Helots enjoyed no legal rights and in fact had to pay taxes via crops that they cultivated.

There were many more Helots than Spartans, but they seldom revolted, probably because they had no real power. And given Spartan military might, they would have been slaughtered. And the few times they did revolt, yep, slaughtered.

It was legal to steal from them. Annually, during Crypteia (a Spartan manly man ritual of becoming a man), you could legally kill them, which many Spartan boys did to survive as they were cast from society during Crypteia. It was only illegal to be caught in the act of stealing or murder, and not because it was a crime to kill or steal, but because it was considered degrading to the Spartan man.

So while Sparta was great to some women, it was borne on the backs of countless others who had no rights.

In sum, this is exactly what intersectional feminists complain about as the whitewashing of history, and what Marxists complain about as ignoring historical class conflict.

[thankyoucorndog-deactivated2015]

"boy i’m in a great mood!"

"oh, please. you can’t REALLY be in a great mood. there are people out there who just got raises. people just got married. people are being reunited with their families right now. how dare you say you’re happy."

[gingerrobotskeleton]

[fndungeonmom]

EVERYONE CAN GO HOME NOW. THIS ONE WINS. 

[cutiewill-deactivated20150428]

we’re already home

[existentialcrisisfactory]

In a capitalist society, the motive behind the production of food is not to feed people, housing is not made to give them shelter, clothing is not made to keep them warm, and health care is not offered primarily to keep people healthy. All of these things, which are and should be viewed as basic rights, are nothing other than commodities—to be bought and sold—from which to make a profit. If a profit cannot be made, usually due to overproduction in relation to the market, the commodity is considered useless by the capitalist and destroyed.

“American Dream”: Food loaded into Dumpsters while Hundreds of Hungry Americans Restrained by Police | World Truth.TV (via existentialcrisisfactory)

[harrypotterconfessions]

[thackerybinx01]

What you don’t seem to realized is that there are many different levels of intelligence. Wasn’t Luna the one that found a way to get to the ministry? Wasn’t Luna the one to always comfort Harry- the one who understood him in ways that no one else could? You don’t have to have Book smarts to be considered smart. It’s clear that Luna has very high levels of interpersonal intelligence. To be honest I don’t even know where this is coming from- we never see her in a classroom, we don’t see her grades- wtf are you talking about? Because she believes in things other people don’t?  Do we have proof that those things don’t exist!? This was one of the most important themes in the book- Voldemort, the chamber of secrets, the room of requirement, horcruxes, Ravenclaw’s diadem, THE DEATHLY HALLOWS….. people didn’t believe they existed but eventually they were proven wrong. So why should Luna be considered stupid just because she chooses to believe!? And I can’t… because she doesn’t try to make friends!? Really? Fucking REALLY!? WHY would you try to be friends with people who treat you like crap? Who bully you and call you names just because you’re different? No one needs friends like that. And Luna didn’t need people like that in her life and she knew that. Didn’t she eventually find the friends that she deserved? The ones that accepted her quirks and differences and didn’t try and make her change? Frankly, I’m ashamed of you. You’re showing levels of narrow-minded ignorance a Ravenclaw shouldn’t possess.

[cuteness-and-manslaughter-blog]

Fuck, being a Ravenclaw does NOT mean being academically brilliant and overly logical and having a stick up your ass. It means being open to new ideas and alternatives and being willing to think outside of the box; it means accepting that you do not know everything but nonetheless choosing to follow your own path and learn for the sake of learning. It means not judging others for their eccentricities because there are so many different types of intelligence. While it makes logical sense that Ravenclaws would be good at academics and smart, being smart has multiple facets. Two brilliant people could disagree with one another on everything just because their modes of thought and the way they process information is completely different. Luna was different, and the way she processed reality may seem funny, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that she passionately searched for information about things she was interested in, even if that thing is a crumple horned snorkack. Being a Ravenclaw means accepting the world for being a strange and marvelous as it is, and seizing it to learn all of its intricacies. Luna is more a Ravenclaw than you will ever be.

[huachengapologist]

Can we also bring up the fact that one of the magical creatures she “made up” was found to be true, but only certain people could see it so they thought she was insane?

If the thestral was real, who’s to say the other things weren’t?

[mermensch]

I knew when the answer opened with those gifs that someone was going to get schooled.

[nosuchthingasfiction-blog]

Are we never going to talk about how the “password” to the Ravenclaw tower is a RIDDLE?

A Ravenclaw who is strictly logical will LITERALLY BE UNABLE TO GET TO THEIR DORM. A Ravenclaw who has book-smarts and cannot think outside the box and take the weird answer WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BE A RAVENCLAW. “Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?” “Where do Vanished objects go?”

TO BE A RAVENCLAW YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO TAKE THE ANSWER THAT ISN’T GIVEN, TO TAKE THE WEIRD OPTION AND FLIGHT OF FANCY AND MAKE SENSE OF IT. BECAUSE THAT’S THE KIND OF RIDDLE RAVENCLAWS LIVE ON. THE KIND OF RIDDLE THAT ACTS AS A KEY TO GET INTO THEIR DAMN DORM.

AND WHAT’S MORE, YOU KNOW WHO WAS THE SHITTIEST TO LUNA, AS FAR AS WE CAN TELL FROM THE BOOKS? OTHER. RAVENCLAWS. RAVENCLAWS ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO COULD HAVE GOTTEN INTO HER DORM AND TAKE THINGS. RAVENCLAWS HAD TO HAVE A BIG FUCKING HAND IN TORMENTING LUNA. WHY THE FUCK SHOULD SHE MAKE FRIENDS WITH THOSE PEOPLE?

[roachpatrol]

this post is so great because it demonstrates exactly how luna got bullied for being different and also how she got a badass posse of friends to save the goddamn world with