yes, I know I'm all over your front page.

No, I don't know why tumblr is doing that.

[homunculus-argument]

Day 160/365 of listing something good I saw today:

Met up with this guy I've worked with for a collab as he was visiting finland. He's a foodie and wanted to try a restaurant with genuine traditional finnish foods. It was weird seeing someone be at a fancy restaurant and order fish soup that looked exactly the same as the fish soup we had at school lunch on a regular basis for 10 years of school. It's good soup, though. Never seen squeaky cheese be served with cinnamon sauce, either. He was a fun guy too, and I know that reading this he'd leap at the opportunity to make a mushroom pun.

[homunculus-argument]

Just as the starter dishes came he discreetly dug up two pills and put them on the table, asking me if I've ever done real drugs, like LSD. I was trying to figure out how to explain that I'd be down to try, in some other kind of circumstances, but stumbling home high on unidentified substances unexpected would stress the shit out of my boyfriend, and I don't want to do something like that to him.

I had just explained that I've never gotten the opportunity to try them, when his pokerface maxed out and he lost his shit laughing. He was fucking with me. Those were his motherfucking diabetes pills.

[homunculus-argument]

Day 160/365 of listing something good I saw today:

Met up with this guy I've worked with for a collab as he was visiting finland. He's a foodie and wanted to try a restaurant with genuine traditional finnish foods. It was weird seeing someone be at a fancy restaurant and order fish soup that looked exactly the same as the fish soup we had at school lunch on a regular basis for 10 years of school. It's good soup, though. Never seen squeaky cheese be served with cinnamon sauce, either. He was a fun guy too, and I know that reading this he'd leap at the opportunity to make a mushroom pun.

[homunculus-argument]

I like that the library can send me automated text message reminders that my stuff is due, but I wish they also had an option to personalise the messages. I would like to make them more personal. Specifically passive-aggressive, with progressively less on the "passive" as the date approaches. Like three days before they're due it's like "hey I just wanted to remind you that you still have my stuff, in case you've forgotten that you were supposed to return them. No pressure though! You have three days :)"

Then a day before the date there's another text like "hey you still have my stuff, right? Yeah you have them, I'd know if you'd have returned them, I keep tabs on everything. Return them tomorrow. :)"

And on the day they're due it's just this picture

[surroundedbybooks]

This would be hilarious but most library patrons would hate it

The public librarian is amused

[homunculus-argument]

That's the neat part: being able to personalise them would let everyone choose exactly how they want it to be. I also don't think that most people would want the library to pester them with "yo give us our shit back" at any level.

[homunculus-argument]

Day 159/365 of listing something good I saw today:

There was a jackdaw in the library's park that was chilling on the ground, turned to us as we approached, and tilted its head while making occasional odd vocalisations - something between a bike bell and a dog's squeaky toy. It turned its head to look at us (from a slight angle to the side, birds like jackdaws don't have forward-facing eyes like people and birds of prey), made the odd sounds, looked at us, tilted its head from one side to the other, pecked pointedly at a stick on the ground in front of it, and squeaked again.

As the jackdaw occasionally also made more normal jackdaw sounds in the middle, I don't think it was a matter of injured vocal chords or anything. I don't know how skilled they are as vocal mimics, but making that weird sound was clearly a voluntary thing it was choosing to do. The way it looked at us, standing there with its head cocked, gave the impression that it was making the sound at us, personally. We stood there watching this until the jackdaw got bored and flew away.

I don't know whether there's perhaps people who frequent the park and like to feed the one specific jackdaw who makes squeaky toy noises, but whatever the bird wanted from us, it evidently left sorely disappointed.

[homunculus-argument]

More testing of the lighting-shading thing I've been trying out. I think I'm starting to figure out how to make it work. The green secondary light is a bit too loud and clumsy here, but I couldn't be arsed to start again from scratch to make it better before I figured out whether the thing I wanted to try would work at all in the first place. And lo and behold: It does work!

[homunculus-argument]

Has any anime yet done a gag where - in a moment just before shit starts going down - a character starts doing the classic internal monologue narration, going like oh shit he is simply too powerful, I cannot defeat him with my Usual Super Tactic, etc etc while the camera view pans over the characters on both sides standing on guard, prepared to strike, going through several minutes of narration in what should only be a matter of seconds

But then once it's done, an opponent just goes "uh, you literally just said all of that out loud." And it wasn't obvious to the audience at any point, because the camera angles were also employing every single one of the classic anime budget "we don't want to animate the character's lips moving" camera angle tricks to avoid showing the character's face when they talk.

[homunculus-argument]

Smokers: Do you check whether an apartment building is "no smoking" or not when looking for a new place?

Yes, I don't want to move to a no-smoking place.

No, I don't care whether or not I'm "allowed" to smoke in my own damn home

No, I wasn't aware of "smoking/non-smoking" apartments, but I will from now on

Yes, I go out of my way to smoke in them because fuck you.

This doesn't apply to me (I don't smoke/those aren't a thing in my country/etc)

Remaining time: 5 days 6 hours

[homunculus-argument]

Somehow it had not occurred to me to clarify that "no smoking" means "no smoking in the yard, the balconies, or anywhere on the property", because I forgot that there are places in the world where people will just smoke inside their own home like some kind of an animal.

[homunculus-argument]

Smokers: Do you check whether an apartment building is "no smoking" or not when looking for a new place?

Yes, I don't want to move to a no-smoking place.

No, I don't care whether or not I'm "allowed" to smoke in my own damn home

No, I wasn't aware of "smoking/non-smoking" apartments, but I will from now on

Yes, I go out of my way to smoke in them because fuck you.

This doesn't apply to me (I don't smoke/those aren't a thing in my country/etc)

Remaining time: 5 days 6 hours

[ihtstff]

Missing option [ yes, because i only smoke outside and don't want nicotine stains from my neighbors smoking inside]

[homunculus-argument]

Around here, the "no smoking" thing covers the entire area of the apartment building, including the lawn, playground, and parking lot. One may take an educated guess about where the smokers choose to smoke.

[homunculus-argument]

Smokers: Do you check whether an apartment building is "no smoking" or not when looking for a new place?

Yes, I don't want to move to a no-smoking place.

No, I don't care whether or not I'm "allowed" to smoke in my own damn home

No, I wasn't aware of "smoking/non-smoking" apartments, but I will from now on

Yes, I go out of my way to smoke in them because fuck you.

This doesn't apply to me (I don't smoke/those aren't a thing in my country/etc)

Remaining time: 5 days 6 hours

[homunculus-argument]

Randomly remembering how it's actually kind of funny how as far as my family was concerned, it was "nobody cares about how you look" when I was the one who didn't like the way I looked, but "you can't go outside looking like that, people will judge us all" when my family were the ones who didn't like the way I looked.

[homunculus-argument]

Me, watching you go balls deep into William The Free-Use Slut because your long-distance open relationship girlfriend just walked in and you don't want her finding out that you already got that dick piercing that she specifically told you not to get: Hmm. Interesting use of Free Will.

[homunculus-argument]

I like that the library can send me automated text message reminders that my stuff is due, but I wish they also had an option to personalise the messages. I would like to make them more personal. Specifically passive-aggressive, with progressively less on the "passive" as the date approaches. Like three days before they're due it's like "hey I just wanted to remind you that you still have my stuff, in case you've forgotten that you were supposed to return them. No pressure though! You have three days :)"

Then a day before the date there's another text like "hey you still have my stuff, right? Yeah you have them, I'd know if you'd have returned them, I keep tabs on everything. Return them tomorrow. :)"

And on the day they're due it's just this picture

[homunculus-argument]

Local white boy shocks everyone by effortlessly breaking the world record for "the most incorrect attempt to use a taser."

[homunculus-argument]

I started with an idea I wasn't sure I could pull off, and ultimately ended up overthinking it. Will continue to experiment.

[homunculus-argument]

The fun thing about finnish is that the way you ask for things in a polite way has been in-baked into the suffixes you use, so you don't have to use many words when few do trick. Like asking someone "could you give me [-]" is "voisitko antaa" in written and some variation of "voisiksä antaa" in spoken dialects*, but instead of asking "could you", the polite polite way to ask is "haluaisitko", not as can you, but would you want to. The tone distinction is so clear that asking someone "could you [do thing]" instead of "would you want to [do thing]" is less of a polite request and more of instruction - someone's gotta do it, and the task is being assigned to you.

On the other hand, dropping out the conditional out of the question turns the tone into a passive-aggressive threat. If someone tells you "stop that" as an imperative, "lopeta", that's a command. Asking in conditional, could you stop that, "voisitko lopettaa" is a polite request. "Haluaisitko lopettaa", would you like to stop that, is so polite that depending on the tone it might be sarcastic politeness that indicates hostility.

But asking someone "do you want to stop that", "haluatko lopettaa tuon" is a matter of "do you want to stop doing that voluntarily, or do you want me to stop you." By physical force, if necessary.

* the different form varies depending on what first and second person pronouns are used in the specific dialect. This is a whole another rabbit hole so for shortcut I'm doing the examples in the southern finnish dialect that I have grown up speaking

[kuivamustekala]

Since I use it a bunch in my speech, I also want to shout out "viitsisitkö antaa". I don't think there's a proper english word to translate it with, but the closest approximation of the meaning is "could you be bothered to give me" - however while the tone of the translation could easily be read as passive aggressive, if you're just saying it politely, it moreso has this tone of, like... "if you would be so inclined I'd appreciate it".

Which sounds like pretty dramatic appeasement behaviour when I write it out like that but it's also just a nice, polite request, pretty much on par with the "haluaisitko".

[kevytmaitohorsma]

One more option is to state "you wouldn't have x" (ei sulla ois x:ää) and that's somehow interpreted as a polite request

But the one thing we don't have is "please". The word doesn't exist here.

[homunculus-argument]

You can certainly say "you wouldn't happen to have a [thing] that I could borrow?" in english, too, but I do like how in finnish, the latter half of the sentence is not stated out loud, just implied. You don't word that question like that unless you're asking whether you could borrow it. Which also gives the other person the opportunity to soft launch a "no" by pretending to not notice the implied part. So a conversation can go two ways, it's either:

"Hey wou wouldn't happen to have a hammer?" [Can I borrow your hammer?] "Yeah, what do you need it for?" [You can. What are you working on?]

Or it can go like this:

"Hey wou wouldn't happen to have a hammer?" [Can I borrow your hammer?] "I do own one, yes." [I am ignoring your implied request. Whatever you want to borrow it for, I don't want to let you.] "Can I borrow it?" [I am ignoring your implied rejection. I need to borrow it.] "What do you need it for?" [I will not let you have it unless I know what you want to do and approve of it.]

I don't know how much of this kind of thing is just finnish culture, though, and how much of it is just how neurotypical people universally talk. But the implication waltz is definitely a big part of finnish conversation style.

[homunculus-argument]

Finnish folk poetry is fun in the way where making alliterations is more important than making things rhyme, or keeping details consistent. As a matter of fact, describing the same thing in two different or even contradicting details is occasionally just a way of stating that the exact detail of how and what it was doesn't matter, the mutual overlap between the two statements is the main point. Like if a poem describes the same event twice

A swan of golden feathers rose from a lake A silver-backed wigeon waded from the river Ate trees, ate stone, ate beasts of the woods Drank dry the wells and swamps, drank the sap from trees

It's not specifically about a swan or wigeon, nor one of each, and neither is the colour of the feathers specifically important. It doesn't matter whether it burst out of the water like a jumping fish, or waded out like a person - nor whether it was a lake or a river. And the list of things that it ate or would drink isn't specific or exclusive. All that this segment is saying is

"A waterfowl (of some kind) with splendid, supernaturally brilliant plumage, emerged from a natural body of water (of some kind), and devoured the entire goddamn physical world. The whole thing."

[homunculus-argument]

The fun thing about finnish is that the way you ask for things in a polite way has been in-baked into the suffixes you use, so you don't have to use many words when few do trick. Like asking someone "could you give me [-]" is "voisitko antaa" in written and some variation of "voisiksä antaa" in spoken dialects*, but instead of asking "could you", the polite polite way to ask is "haluaisitko", not as can you, but would you want to. The tone distinction is so clear that asking someone "could you [do thing]" instead of "would you want to [do thing]" is less of a polite request and more of instruction - someone's gotta do it, and the task is being assigned to you.

On the other hand, dropping out the conditional out of the question turns the tone into a passive-aggressive threat. If someone tells you "stop that" as an imperative, "lopeta", that's a command. Asking in conditional, could you stop that, "voisitko lopettaa" is a polite request. "Haluaisitko lopettaa", would you like to stop that, is so polite that depending on the tone it might be sarcastic politeness that indicates hostility.

But asking someone "do you want to stop that", "haluatko lopettaa tuon" is a matter of "do you want to stop doing that voluntarily, or do you want me to stop you." By physical force, if necessary.

* the different form varies depending on what first and second person pronouns are used in the specific dialect. This is a whole another rabbit hole so for shortcut I'm doing the examples in the southern finnish dialect that I have grown up speaking