I think the "pre" and "post" parts in "preposterous" should cancel each other out but everyone else seems to find my idea completely erous
Cosmic Funnies
RMH
Xuebing Du
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shark vs the universe
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Love Begins
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almost home
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if i look back, i am lost
KIROKAZE
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
TVSTRANGERTHINGS

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occasionally subtle
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@shinyblackbird
I think the "pre" and "post" parts in "preposterous" should cancel each other out but everyone else seems to find my idea completely erous
it takes 10 layers of the water filter to completely drown a tumblr screenshot if anyone was wondering
Majestic beast
Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus moluccanus) - photo by Nick Fox
"Scrooge learns the true meaning of Bisexual Awareness Week" Make Some Noise Season 3 Episode 11
Looks like Toto makes an excellent pillow
so many people don't understand how abelist it is to kill your brother with a rock
I guess a more general version of the point is that in the last 50-ish years, everyday language has borrowed more and more of both the terminology and structural features of technical language. This happens for a lot of reasons. But I think it's mostly not a good thing. For one, being abstract and technical is not actually very useful in the messy real world, where concepts are fuzzy and vague and most things of importance are not quantifiable. For another, if natural language borrows too much of the authority of science and the law, it might find that there's not enough left afterwards for science and the law to do what we need them to do.
Why are you saying 'minor' when you mean 'child'?
Why are you saying 'they're a narcissist' when you mean 'they're being mean to me'?
Why are you saying 'hyperfixation' when you mean 'interest'?
Why are you saying 'gaslighting' when you mean 'lying'?
Why are you saying 'plagiarism' when you mean 'rip-off'?
Why are you saying 'war crime' when you mean 'immoral act'?
Are you so afraid of your own judgement that you need to borrow authority from a more objective domain? Does using a word from a technical language actually make what you're saying more objective? Or is it just a way of hiding behind the ever-diminishing authority of academia? Why are you too afraid to speak in your own voice?
unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!
(warning: loud chirping throughout)
source: hellgate osprey cam
I wish people were as scared of getting into a car accident as they are of being true crime'd. Maybe then they wouldn't be on their phones while driving.
explosion at health potion factory 0 dead 0 injured
I have a suspicion that Ann Leckie is to worldbuilding what JRR Tolkein is to languages. I think she loves building a world so goddamned much that she simply has to tell the stories within it.
Listen, if our beloved Ann Leckie is gonna do ONE THING she's gonna construct a world that is so thought-out on a political and material level. Ann Leckie is running up to your constructed world, pounding on the fourth wall, yelling "WHAT DO THEY EAT? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? DOES IT MAKE SENSE FOR THAT FOOD TO BE PRODUCED IN SUFFICIENT QUANTITIES TO SUPPORT THE POPULATION? WHAT ARE THE WORKERS CONDITIONS LIKE? HOW DO THEY PRAY? WHAT MATERIALS ARE INVOLVED IN THEIR PRAYER? WHERE DO THE PRAYER MATERIALS COME FROM? HOW DOES THAT DIFFER FROM OTHER SOCIOECONOMIC CLASSES IN THIS PLACE?" And then she fucken skateboards away to play seven-dimensional chess with gender.
And we all agree we love Ann Leckie for this.
Visiting family for the weekend, including my seven year old niece, who is obviously the most special and incredible child on the planet
Anyway, she really, really loves it when I tell her stories. She loves stories anyway, and at first this manifested as "stories about Tad-Cu Bryn", aka my father (her grandfather) who died before she was born. This has been a lovely way to keep his memory alive, and she adores every story - she has her favourites, which she will request.
Then it became apparent that she specifically loves me telling her stories. She'll happily ask others for them too, but from me she just wants any anecdote at all; which of course is wonderful and demonstrates that she is a child of impeccable taste and wisdom and brilliance, but also she has ADHD and the energy reserves of a seven year old and so this gets Tiring very quickly
Yesterday, in the car on the way back from the wildlife centre, she asked for one of my longer stories, and I was like hey, how about we try something different?
And she was like, no, tell me a story about Tad-Cu Bryn
And I was like, this will be a brand new story and you get to play it and help me tell it
And she was like, explain
So I gave her three characters to choose from. The first was a warrior with a sword she could name, who was nonetheless dyspraxic. The second was a gymnastic elf who could commune with trees but was afraid of heights. The third was a dyslexic witch whose spells sometimes go wrong when she spells the words wrong.
She picked the witch. I pulled up an online d20 on my phone. I went to start, and she insisted my mother had to play as the elf.
So I told them that the new queen of the kingdom had called for them, because their palace treasury had been robbed - specifically, a single enchanted coin that brings luck and wealth to a ruler's reign had been stolen. And tales of enchanted coins were suddenly emanating from across the land, so each one needed investigating until the right coin was found.
It turns out kids who like stories will absolutely lap this shit up. She was enthralled. It was the simplest story - they had to get into a bank, revive some unconscious gnomes, then enter the vault, find the coin that had been deposited into it, then get back to the queen. Enough to fill a half hour car ride, basically, but she managed to fill it with all the wacky hijinks you get from a ttrpg, particularly when she tried to smash a door down with a hammer but rolled a 1.
We finished with the queen saying it wasn't the right coin, and then my niece demanded we go again, this time with her playing as a sapient reticulated python. That time we made it all the way to the final boss fight, which was a sorcerer who created a big coin monster out of loads of coins; I asked my niece what she wanted to do, and she described graphically how she wanted to constrict and eat the sorcerer and immediately rolled a 19. So, sure! Okay. The sorcerer is now very dead. The coin monster, though, was still there, and as my niece tried to say she would do the same thing, I was like, no, you're a snake and you just ate. You're now immobile.
At this point, my sister advised her to regurgitate the sorcerer.
Great! said my niece. I'm going to do it at the coin monster.
And rolled a 20.
So she projectile vomited a dead sorcerer into the coin monster, and won the day.
Anyway, today she immediately demanded we play "the game with the story where we choose", and my brother in law is now asking me how he can do this with her ("Are you making it all up as you go along??"). But yeah, turns out, this is a fantastic way to entertain a seven year old. Vague ongoing quest, then three steps: get into (place), resolve (minor puzzle), boss fight to finish. Boom. Easy.
So far I've done a bank, a tavern, and an art gallery (it featured an exhibit that was just a room full of slippery banana skins). I'm going to do a pirate ship next
why don't you calm down and look up the little auk
why don't you calm down. and look at the little auk.
Bubble bath