Just a Stranger in a Stranger Land @far-too-many-words - Tumblr Blog

thinking about the time I made a post saying I was watching American Psycho and some overactive good citizen came sprinting from the woodwork to go "make sure you remember that the book was written by a gay man and the movie is directed by a woman and it's not glorifying Patrick Bateman!!!" yeah cheers man I was def going to go start killing people with an ax if you hadn't said that

batmanisagatewaydrug

mostly thinking about this because I'm currently reading Fight Club. can't wait to base my entire worldview off of this, the narrator seems like he really has it together

batmanisagatewaydrug

hold up. this book is actually really funny.

batmanisagatewaydrug

I was going to say something about how I didn't expect there to be so much soapmaking in this book but got distracted by the lye kiss. this goes crazy.

batmanisagatewaydrug

girl help this guy's alter started an anarcho primitivist cult in their basement to bolster his etsy soap empire

batmanisagatewaydrug

in the Fight Club universe I bet Molly Conger makes a craaaaaaazy episode of Weird Little Guys about this

cheerfullycatholic

When medicine is holding the migraine back but you can still kinda feel it in the distance waiting to return

xylophonetangerine

witemglitch-deactivated20260709

It exists and it's called Portland, Oregon

sanrio-stud

sandmandaddy69

hypotheticalpeople

guy who plays albums on mute, it was never really about sound for him as much as feeling a sense of progression through a series of named durations

headspace-hotel

the-scandyfactory

ilovewhenugethurt-deactivated20

me blogging

the-quasar-hero

I could NOT be in feudal Japan. Here are some reasons why

I wasn’t born then.

dreamyslothbunny

WRONG! Time travel beam

クソ、これはダメだ。

さて、私は何をすべきでしょうか？

[tumblr]人は、人形のようにｊｐｅｇで遊ぶことが大好きだね。。。

yesterdaysprint

becausebirds

Yawning pelican. [imgur]

alsedes

that’s so unnecessary for a bird that is already 400% ridiculous

openlysinning

What the fuck is this

tributary

Yawning pelican. [imgur]

hungwy

letting family members sit in for dead senators is just monarchy logic im appalled that this has even happened before

sugoiney-weaver

Each state gets to decide how their state is represented in Congress

This has been a common method for a long time in some states

The idea is that a Senator's sibling/spouse/parent/child knows their intentions and policies better than a political rival or a random person would. It's a pretty good way to prevent political assassinations tbh

prizedpesto

An unelected individual getting grandfathered into a real political position due to their blood or legal relationship with a deceased elected official is not pretty good actually

anicastes

It's wrong to hit people with cars.

spencerthespacer-deactivated202

fox-in-the-wheat-deactivated202

THIS IS THE HARDEST I HAVE LAUGHED IN SO LONG YOU HAVE CURED MY DEPRESSION

ywg

This is one of the greatest posts I’ve ever witnessed. The payoff was amazing.

randomslasher

My roommate heard it going and went “OH MY GOD is it EVER going to resolve?” then the payoff hit and she busted up laughing

parasitoidism

Line read that keeps me up at night

pinejay

i want lists and solutions by the time i finish this jiyuiceh box. warning ⚠️ I. AM. TIRSTY! and it is ᶠʳᵘᶦᵗ punch! and it is delicious

apricops

that post about “you get bandits when you cut soldiers loose without pay” reminds me of the Thirty Years War, because one could say that beneath all the religious schisms and diplomatic jockeying, the heart of the thirty years war was “what happens when you have a state with just enough capacity to raise massive armies but without enough financial capacity to actually pay those armies” and the answer is that the line between professional armies and roving gangs of bandits disappears and every time you try to raise an army it just becomes another independently acting wildfire devouring the countryside. No matter how bad things get, every day I wake up and thank my lucky stars that I do not live in 17th century Europe. Or 17th century China. Or the 17th century Americas. Or basically anywhere in the 17th century.

probabilitydirigible

One of my favorite little anecdotes about ancient mercenaries is that it was tradition for most of history to give your mercenaries two wages- "Bread" and "Gravy." Both were set at a daily value, but where "Bread" was intended to cover regular maintenance and life stuff and therefore paid out frequently (Here's your week's meal and gear repair budget!) the "Gravy" wage was paid out exclusively at the end of the contract as one lump sum. So like, your gravy wage and bread wage might be one silver coin per day each, so you're getting a handful of coins every week to cover food, and then at the end of an 800 day campaign, you get a wheelbarrow with 800 coins.

Employers liked offering this structure because then they didn't have to like, try to guess how long the invasion of spain will take and then carry 800 coins per soldier around the battlefield where it could be captured. It also gives them the chance to budget around the assumption that they take an enemy city and *find* vast sums of treasure even if they don't have the full value at the beginning of the war.

The main flaw of this system is that it's very easy to end up in a scenario where if you have, say, 50,000 guys that have been fighting for 800 days, you now owe 40 million silver to your army, and if the budget has not worked out to a 40 million surplus, you literally can't afford to end the war, but you can probably afford to pay them for a couple more weeks. So then you have to start thinking creatively.

Anyway across all time and history a lot of generals were ultimately beaten to death by men chanting gravy.