Dragons & Dreams I Guess

[goomyloid]

happy birthday chapter 3 (and 4)!!

[alicentsgf]

no you do not need to hold fictional characters "accountable". they are not real.

[alicentsgf]

[starling125]

Yes but I can WANT to. I can WANT to see justice served, and characters who take responsibility for their actions, and have healthy relationships.

I can also fully pardon them from their war crimes because they are my little blorbo.

[virgoos]

thinking about how obi-wan probably always thought, always hoped, that eventually the war would end and if, force-willing, they survived, he and anakin could just be regular jedi together in a time of peace.

that the tension and grief and anger of anakin’s padawan years would settle (anakin had grown into a jedi obi-wan was incredibly, terribly proud of, after all) and when they no longer had to be generals, they would go on missions together, normal missions where they would negotiate treaties and investigate minor problems off-world and weren’t locked into endless, bloody battle.

that his grand-padawan would be knighted, the padawan he and anakin had trained together, that she would maybe take a padawan on her own someday and his lineage would continue, healing over the broken branches of dooku and qui-gon.

and this, growing old with anakin, leading a normal jedi life with him by obi-wan’s side, living at the temple and eating in the refectory and teaching the initiates, would be obi-wan’s reward for all his grief, all his pain, all he had sacrificed for the order. a humble reward, he would never ask for more, just a simple life with the only family he had ever imagined himself having, the life anakin and ahsoka deserved but hadn’t seen since the start of the war.

and then none of those things happened because of terrible machinations that had been in place, unseen, for decades inside which they were all just pawns on a playing board to be moved and sacrificed in meaningless cruelty

[stealingpotatoes]

im glad that we've established that day one of inquisitor training is How To Look Really Cool

(commission info // tip jar!)

[robertreich]

Your regular reminder that trickle-down economics is a cruel joke designed by the wealthy.

[theunicorncomic-blog]

[randomushroom]

HE FOUND TUMBLR??????

[robertreich]

I’ve been here the whole time.

[spinningthehamsterwheel]

Dear god, he's not kidding...

[starling125]

So at the end of Network Effect there's this moment:

"ART watched [Sanctuary Moon] with me for some of the episodes but the idea of Dr. Mensa coming aboard made it weirdly excited and it had its drones clean its whole interior again and was doing things like yelling at Turi to put their laundry in the recycler."

And I loved this moment but I always thought ART was acting like this just because Dr. Mensa is impressive, and cool, and Murderbot's talked a lot about her (I mean she is the best) so ART's excited to meet her in person. But Murderbot says 'weirdly,' and today I realized.

Dr. Mensa is the closest thing Murderbot has to a parent. ART was basically getting to meet Murderbot's PARENT. ART was dolling itself up to meet Murderbot's PARENT.

This was the 'getting to meet the parents' point in their relationship.

[fission-mailure]

A thing making the rounds on Twitter right now is someone going 'Nobody really knows why World War I happened,' with some people agreeing with them and some people trying very badly to put forward their ideas of how it started in a one-sentence summary.

But like, we totally do know why WW1 happened. We know in excruciating detail, it's just that it can't be neatly summarised in a few sentences.

But an extremely over-simplified version of it is:

-- The aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and the collapse of mercantilism as an economic doctrine ushered in an era of free trade between European nations.

-- This exacerbated rivalries between the major powers of Europe (along with the US and Japan), as they now competed to each establish themselves as the main economic powerhouse by pursuing policies of efficiently mass manufacturing products which could then be sold cheaply to undercut local markets. Britain was initially a clear frontrunner in this, but over time Germany and the US began to erode British hegemony.

-- This economic race required previously incomprehensible amounts of resources and manpower, prompting a new wave of imperialism in which multiple countries (chief among them Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, the US, and Japan) embarked on massive and brutal imperialist projects in Africa and Asia, ramping up tensions as each nation tried to carve out more land for itself.

-- This necessitated to some extent alliances between European powers to form blocs. This web of alliances was fairly complex, but the key points are that Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy were in a three-way alliance; Russia, France, and Britain in a three-way alliance; Germany in an alliance with the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman Empire in an alliance with Serbia and Bulgaria, and Serbia and Bulgaria in an alliance with Russia.

-- Overlapping with this, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and rise of the German Empire would destabilise political relations in Europe. In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire motivated in part by Russia's desire to reclaim territories lost in the Crimean War, Bosnia and Herzegovina would be placed under the administration of Austria-Hungary, while remaining nominally an Ottoman territory.

-- As the Ottoman Empire declined further, however, and began to fracture, Austria-Hungary would officially annex Bosnia and Herzegovina, see earlier point about imperialism and the desire for more resources, manpower, and markets. This would end up, for obvious reasons, causing considerable tensions within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

-- Overlapping with this was the rising popularity of Yugoslavism, the idea of a South Slavic Federation, a union of South Slavic countries, or a singular state of Yugoslavia, which would ostensibly counter the expansionist agendas of Germany and Austria-Hungry. The Serbian government was an active supporter of this political ideology, as a common feature of it was the idea that Serbia would act as the 'leader' of this new country.

-- The joint pressures of Yugoslavism and tensions arising from Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina would eventually culminate in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a group of Bosnian Serbs who were members of a student revolutionary group. They were backed in this by the Black Hand, a secret society formed by Serbian army officers, and by Serbian military intelligence.

-- Austria-Hungary sought to respond to this with a military strike against Serbia to both demonstrate its strength and to try and dampen support for Yugoslavism. Except Russia was allied with Serbia, so Austria-Hungary sought support from Germany, who agreed on the condition that Austria-Hungary moved quickly before Russia could pull any of its allies in.

-- Austria-Hungary did not move quickly, being unwilling to attack without full mobilisation of its armies. In the intervening time, France and Russia reaffirmed their alliance and pledged to support Serbia.

-- Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

-- Russia responds, in part because it views this as German pretext for increasing its military capability and reach. Germany is worried over a potential war, but military leaders within Germany urged it to attack Russia and France under the pretext of coming to the aid of its ally, but actually as part of a 'preventative war' plan meant to reduce Russia's military capabilities before the Russian Great Military Program -- oh yeah that's a thing that was happening too -- made it so that Germany could never risk mobilising its military without Russian reprisal.

-- Germany declares war on France, Russia, and Belgium. Britain, allied with France and Russia but more importantly fearing that a German conquest of France could endanger Britain, declares war on Germany.

-- World War I happens.

So, like, that's pretty long and complex, and that's after I've left out almost everything that's not directly relevant. You can't sum it up in a pithy sentence. But we do know exactly why World War I happened.

[frustratedasatruar]

"Since Russia obviously had the manpower advantage, once her railways were a match for Germany, well... German Chancellor von Bethman Hollweg's diary from July 7th tells us these thoughts: that Russia had become a nightmare, and that the German generals say there must be a war before it was too late. By 1917, Germany has no hope, so better 1914." -Indy Neidel, The Great War

[starling125]

Yo since we all have ADHD brains there's also this If WWI was a bar fight to help you interpret it:

[mysharona1987]

[o-blivia]

If you're wondering why there's so much resistance to the idea of a 4-day work week, or why automation hasn't actually led to people working less like it was supposed to...

[heymerle]

They complained about the 5-day week, and before that the 6-day week, and less than 12 hours in a work day. But I know how much wasted time there is in a workday...

[starling125]

Y'know, I don't see enough people on Tumblr referencing Henry Ford, who played a major part in establishing the 5-day work week. His rivals clutched their pearls when he implemented it, but it really worked out for him.

You know why? He wasn't selling a ton of cars so he asked his workers why they weren't buying any, and they said, when would they use it? They were at work all the time. And when he gave them more time off, they DID buy more cars. His business boomed.

I learned this in high school and I can't find an exact article that words it in that way, but here's something:

https://www.schmitbrosdodge.com/blog/2024/august/27/how-henry-ford-helped-shape-the-40-hour-work-week.htm

[catie-does-things]

Star Wars really said "Anakin Skywalker had issues rooted in childhood trauma that was not his fault" but also "Anakin made his own choices as an adult for which he alone is responsible" but ALSO "In spite of the truly evil things he chose to do Anakin was still capable of being loved and redeemed" and I think that's important.

[crystalis]

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

[teaboot]

I wish I could travel through time and transcend language to hold this woman’s hand and tell her “girl, he ain’t shit”

[shittymoviedetails]

Kevin is the real villian in Home Alone

[orgyporgy]

The movie establishes that the phone lines to the house are down, that’s also why nobody is able to call Kevin at home. The movie also establishes that all of his neighbors are out of town which is why he couldn’t borrow their phones. The movie ALSO BEGINS by introducing the main antagonist as a “police officer” which is why Kevin doesn’t trust the cops. I’m so tired of the ignorance. The slander.

[foxyclock]

FINALLY we’ve reached the time of year for home alone discourse

[hypokeimena]

#he did what he needed to do to survive. then he did a bunch of other stuff he felt like doing (via @hotcrossedfangs) 

[christopher-bryant]

home alone is just die hard for kids

[godsperm]

He also stole that toothbrush so was even more scared to call the police in case they arrest him for theft too

[syntactition]

Kevin knew that ACAB ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[violetwolfraven]

Keep in mind that the robbers could have turned around and left at any time. Kevin set up the traps, but they didn’t have to walk into them. They could’ve left and robbed an easier house, but didn’t because they wanted to get the 8-year-old who was beating their asses. At some point, it stopped being about stealing the McCallisters’ stuff and started being about killing Kevin, at which point Kevin was justified in doing whatever the hell he wanted to them.

[magic-owl]

Skdhsjdhsk okay Home Alone discourse? xD I recognize this is a joke but I’m jumping into the shark pit regardless because I just love this movie and wanna talk about it so HERE GOES

Lol so yeah actually the phone line argument is a bit confusing because yeah the phones are down at first, but they obviously were fixed at some point since his family tried to call him from the airport in Paris or later on he wouldn’t be able to order pizzas or call the cops from his house at the end of the whole attempted robbery night, so there IS the question of why Kevin’s family doesn’t keep trying to call him daily.

HOWEVER, as people have already mentioned, Kevin thinks he’s a criminal due to stealing a toothbrush and has already been chased by a cop, he’s not gonna contact the police about the robbers.

Calling the police about his family leaving him? He’s not gonna do that because he doesn’t KNOW they’re in Paris, Kevin believes he magically wished his family out of existence the night before they left after they were all right dicks to him. He doesn’t know they have the power to come back, that’s why he asks Santa to return them later on, what use is telling the cops who (in his eyes) will probably blame him for it?

Also ppl be criticizing him for the booby traps like this isn’t the THIRD time Kevin’s had to chase these guys off his property? First he tried to fake a house party, they still came back, he tried to fake a MURDER, they spied on him and declared they were coming back again. Kevin’s given them two nonviolent chances to leave his house alone, they’re the grown men deciding they’re gonna come back and rob a house they KNOW has an eight year old in it. They announce their presence by knocking and taunting that they know he’s alone and “helpless” in there and that they’re coming in anyway, what their original plans for dealing with him were, we don’t know. After they spring his first traps, their plan switches from robbing the house to specifically harming Kevin in revenge.

These guys are trespassing on Kevin’s property AGAIN after multiple warnings, and they’ve announced themselves with a declaration of intent to harm him, he can’t call the police or they’ll discover he vanished his family and committed toothbrush crimes, Kevin needed to defend himself and he had FULL RIGHT to do so however he saw fit (which all proved entirely necessary seeing as literally nothing he threw at these men actually stopped them from trying to hurt him, they kept coming until his neighbor saved him)

Respect Kevin 2kforever 😤😤😤

[neurospicy-offical]

@hellsite-hall-of-fame where you at

[sexy-people-contests-2026]

I told my grandma about this one

[starling125]

Kevin did Nothing wrong.

[starling125]

Obi-Wan: You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Anakin: Or both.

Obi-Wan: What

[spacecasehobbit]

Azula felt unloved by her mother not because Ursa didn't love her, but because Ozai fed her a deeply unhealthy version of 'love' as a highly competetive, zero-sum game in which literally any degree of criticism or scolding must indicate general negative/unloving feelings towards the person being scolded.

Azula's feelings, particularly the ones she expresses in the beach episode, aren't an indication that Ursa didn't love Azula. They are an indication that Azula struggles to identify healthy expressions of parental love.

[starling125]

Or rather, Azula views love as something to be earned/can be taken away as a punishment.

Azula worked to earn Ozai's love, and she did gain his favor (not love, obviously), though we see her crumble when he leaves her behind in the finale. She says 'You can't treat me like Zuko!' as in, 'you can't not love me like Zuko, after all I've done to earn it.' She views love as an entirely tangible exchange, she observed what Oazi wanted and used it to earn attention and praise. I guess even her manipulation of Mai and Ty Lee were ways to 'earn' their 'love.'

Azula in turn worked for Ursa's love and couldn't earn it, but she saw Zuko get it easily.

[hellenhighwater]

A note, because not everyone knows this: if you're driving and another driver flashes their brights at you, this is a signal to be on alert and slow down. There may be debris in the road, a cop out of sight, or an animal crossing ahead of you. (Or, alternatively, your brights are on and they're getting blinded.) Whatever the reason, it's a signal that you need to focus and reduce speed. And possibly turn your own brights off.

This PSA has been brought to you by the four fawns and does that ran out in front of me at various points on my drive home.

Let's court death with mama!

[starling125]

Another car light communication not everyone knows: if a car in front of you flashes its brake lights two or three times, YOU ARE MAKING THEM UNCOMFORTABLE WITH HOW CLOSE YOU ARE. Slow down, back off them, or go around.

On the other end, if someone is coming up too close behind you, tap your brake a couple times. It doesn't always work but I've gotten a few pickup trucks to actually start behaving this way.

[heykayhayes]

Thought of these two the instant I heard this TikTok audio...

[dailymanners]

Always use your turn signal

Cars are several tons of metal moving at very high speeds, even though they're such a normal part of every day life they can be very dangerous or deadly when not used consciously. When you have several tons of metal moving at high speeds it makes it safer for everyone if we know which direction it's about to go, as being aware where the car is about to go reduces accidents and pedestrian/cyclist getting struck by cars.

[americanbrightside]

I use my turn signal even when there's no one around, because if there's someone I'm not aware of or missed, it's more important for me to signal what I'm about to do.

Driving safely is a collaborative activity!

[ninjakittenarmy]

Also while it’s harder to really internalize as an incentive than the above, you want to maintain that muscle memory. The idea that doing something when it doesn’t seem relevant at the time being worth it to form a habit is one of the most annoying things to hear and most frustrating things to accept but it’s WAY easier to just habitually turn on the turn signal at the turns than having to register whether it seems necessary. You’re not going to be able to assess that quickly enough a lot of the time.

[americanbrightside]

Oh that's also a really important reason! Or as I like to put it, "if I let myself stop doing it now, I'm going to forget to do it for the next month and a half"

[clementimetodie]

Please use them before you start changing lanes as well!! I know all too many people who have told me that they don't like to do so because "then the other driver will speed up to block me". I know people do that and I know it's annoying but that's not a good reason!! There also exist courteous drivers who will let you in because now they know you want to get in their lane. The entire POINT of turn signals is to telegraph your movements so that others know where you intend to go. Just as well, don't be the kind of driver who blocks others if you wouldn't want them doing the same to you!

[sztefa001]

And also, it's supposed to signal "watch out! I'm about to turn!" and not "hey look at me! I'm turning right now!"

If you use the signal at the time of the maneuver being performed and not in advance, then it's useless. Everyone can already see you did that dipshit.

[starling125]

I use my turn signal religiously, even when I am going into my own DRIVEWAY, and I shame anyone who doesn't. FOR SHAME. You turn-signal-less HEATHENS.

[redd956]

Obsessed with the idea of an already wounded/exhausted character going "I... can take it." Like no bish you can't, but love enthusiasm and the horrified looks of your team.