My Hoard of Random Stuff

I like lurking on Tumblr, especially about anything that I am currently interested in. Apparently people put their age here but I definitely will forget to update that on a yearly basis so I will just say I was born in 2000

[church-on-a-lakeside]

"A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power."

Storm Front by Jim Butcher, the first book of The Dresden Files; end of chapter 24 (pg 318)

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

I love this in context of Twelve Months and Harry's conversation with Lara about stepping carefully and also his statements to her about careful and thoughtful ritual magic is his strong suit. His best magic is thoughtful and careful and he is a careful and thoughtful in his interactions with other people. He is capable of big flashy magic and is capable of stepping on toes but he controls himself wherever possible and that comes through in what magic he is best at!

[puppetmaster55]

suddenly thinking about the courtroom scene, of Stratt being accused of pirating literally everything, and Grace later having everything in the various computers aboard his ship that he gave a copy to Rocky without issue, and the beetles having such a massive memory capacity and...

Stratt was a historian. She wasn't just pirating for the sake of entertainment for the astronauts, she was doing a full historical backup of the planet. Who knows how much knowledge and communications ability, how much art and culture and history, how much niche knowledge of how to make specific pieces of modern technology or modern medicines, was lost as the wars for resources isolated everyone, as the death tolls led to the deaths of specialized trade workers and scientists, as the power grids failing across the planet (or cut off, potentially) led to all the cloud servers going dark. Stratt was facing methods of combating extinction and she did her best to ensure that if/when the Hail Mary worked, it would send back not just the hope of the future in the solution to the astrophage, but the restoration of history and culture and knowledge.

Just.... she pirated everything, and put it all on the Hail Mary.

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

The beautiful thing about it too is she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. Humanity's entire knowledge was saved and propagated to an entire other planet and species. Our history was given a complete backup with caretakers across the stars who value it as artifacts of a species who helped to save them and have knowledge they didn't have yet. Stratt goes down in history as the greatest historian of all time, the one who permanently saved all of humanity's knowledge safeguarding it beyond our ability to destroy it.

[puppetmaster55]

suddenly thinking about the courtroom scene, of Stratt being accused of pirating literally everything, and Grace later having everything in the various computers aboard his ship that he gave a copy to Rocky without issue, and the beetles having such a massive memory capacity and...

Stratt was a historian. She wasn't just pirating for the sake of entertainment for the astronauts, she was doing a full historical backup of the planet. Who knows how much knowledge and communications ability, how much art and culture and history, how much niche knowledge of how to make specific pieces of modern technology or modern medicines, was lost as the wars for resources isolated everyone, as the death tolls led to the deaths of specialized trade workers and scientists, as the power grids failing across the planet (or cut off, potentially) led to all the cloud servers going dark. Stratt was facing methods of combating extinction and she did her best to ensure that if/when the Hail Mary worked, it would send back not just the hope of the future in the solution to the astrophage, but the restoration of history and culture and knowledge.

Just.... she pirated everything, and put it all on the Hail Mary.

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

When Gabrielle said "I see why you gave him a daughter. I see why you took her back"

I understood it to mean why you were willing to have Claudia back in your life for Louis's sake after she left

But after thinking on it, I am now interpreting it as why you had her killed. As it took her back away from Louis.

What do people think Gabrielle meant?

Worked to coexist with Claudia

Killed Claudia to remove her from Louis

Interpretation in reblogs/comments

Voting ended onJun 22

[doctordomealittle]

no new drawings today but i fixed this sketch up a lot more, and it took me like an hour so it counts. the relationship between lara and thomas is so fascinating to me. what if i was a monster. what if i helped raise you but you were my brother and also i knew our dad would probably kill you before you reached adulthood. and then what if you lived?? and we were both monsters?? what if i watched you struggle to not be a monster, knowing your efforts were doomed and maybe hurting you?? idk idk. two weeks and change till ‘twelve months’ comes out!!

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

I really wonder how Lara's example to rise above her nature and to work with her hunger to be more humane inspired Thomas' fight against his hunger and struggle to go even further than her in his fight for his morality. Especially in context of her raising him and them both being part of the Venatori. Like there's no coincidence in them both being Venators. Did Lara bring him in or did she join because of him?

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

I am doing a reread of Twelve Months and just realized that Marcone sent Gard to help defend Dresden and his castle. No favors. No strong reason given besides not liking belligerents in his territory and letting his Valkyrie stretch her legs.

I really think Marcone appreciates Dresden and wants him in his city more than Harry realizes, even if he doesn't directly employ him. Marcone has never really taken a swing at Dresden and almost every time he appears in the books, either helps Dresden or lets him get away with things unthinkable by anyone else.

Something I have been thinking after reading Out Law is that Dresden is kinda like a cat to Marcone. An independent, ill-tempered, ill-mannered, outdoor feral cat. He takes care of problems and pests around the area. He certainly would bite or claw if Marcone tried to get close, but otherwise he serves Marcone's purposes quite well.

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

Did anyone notice how throughout Twelve Months, Dresden would say to everyone and everything that he just needed time. From Lara asking him what he needed and him responding with the beds, meds, and docs stuff, saying that he needed more hours in the day. Or when Mab was telling him off for his weakened state and saying that he just needed time to heal.

Well, in the climax of the book, what do we see Mab do for him? When they are trying to help Thomas? She does one of the most intense pieces of spell work we have seen in the books and literally bends time and existence to make just a bit more time for him.

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

I really think that The Law and Out Law could have and maybe should've made a good single book, broken up as a part one or a part two. Regardless, I think readers would be well served to be very familiar with The Law before reading Out Law. Trip Gregory and Max Valerious are characters whose stories really continue from the first to the second story.

However, I loved Out Law, even if I should have reread The Law first. Definitely gonna have thoughts as I chew on it.

[the-alethiometer]

Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If more than 50% of people press the red button, everyone who pressed the blue button will die, and those who pressed the red button will survive. Which button would you press?

Blue button (everyone lives)

Red button (reds live, blues die)

Voting ended onMay 7

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

One thing I find fascinating to speculate on in PHM is that there is be going to be a massive arms race on Earth due to the astrophage as a source of energy conflict and a driver of new technological innovation. The energy storage in the Astrophage is massive compared to anything we can even dream about and would enable weapons that are currently sci-fi to us due to the energy storage requirements. Things like mech suits, laser guns, and massive bombs that have no radiation, but are on the same scale as nukes.(BTW, I would be very curious to hear what weapons or technologies people think would be enabled by astrophage)

And to drive this, in addition to the things that Stratt mentions in the book and movie about starvation driving conflict, there is a new source of conflict that Stratt created! When she paved over the Sahara Desert, she said that the project would permanently lift Africa out of poverty after the infrastructure was used for Project Hail Mary. But in truth, it would lead Africa into a permanent state of war! A gigantic apparatus to harvest energy has just been built with the funding and manufacturing capabilities of the industrialized advanced economy countries. After the Project Hail Mary is finished and Stratt no longer has ultimate authority, it is in the hands of the fractious North African countries. The USA, the EU, China, and Russia (as Northern countries more affected by the coming cold), with their advanced military forces, would all rush to secure their own supplies of Astrophage in North Africa. A supply that they built and paid for (a fact that would certainly be used for all sorts of political maneuvering to justify military actions). If you think the current oil conflicts are bad, imagine what the conflicts would look like for an energy resource significantly better and far more concentrated geographically. And the arms race to develop weapons, vehicles, and tools for this conflict would be unlike anything we have seen in history.

Paving over the Sahara may have given humanity a hope and a chance for survival. But the moment the Hail Mary takes off, like Eva Stratt predicted to Grace, a sci-fi hell is unleashed on Earth.

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

You know a really underrated horror of Ryland Grace's life? After being sedated in the grass, he will never see another living plant again. No plants in the Hail Mary Ship and no plants in his geodome habitat

No seeds available, no hope even of growing any at some point as every piece of biological matter from Earth on his ship other than himself was cooked food

The absolute lack of plants has got to have some psychological effect on him over the years in space and then on Erid.

Given the massive boost to mental health the presence of plants has on humans, it is shocking that Stratt didn't have some plants on the Hail Mary. Not for food, but for mental health, like in Cowboy Bebop. Giving the water recycling system is in place and that we have had decades of experience of growing plants in space, it wouldn't have been that hard for them to be kept alive. And with the concern for the mental health of the crew, this should have been a feature.

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

It is covered why humans have more advanced understanding of physics and astronomy than the Eridians. Our primary exploration sense is vision and we could see the stars. The electromagnetic spectrum is more intuitive to us because a range of it is directly observable to us. This allowed us to see and make observations about space more easily, from antiquity on to modern times. We were able to figure out relativity from this data.

The Eridians sense though sound, that's why their material science is more advanced than ours. Imagine if you could just hear what's wrong with a structure, which tiles are faulty, be able to hear when a material is faulty. Be able to tell the structural qualities of a material based on sound waves and how it vibrates. With that ability that makes material and structural analysis much more intuitive and easy, their sciences advanced much quicker in those directions.

[tinkerbelle]

I think it’s interesting the two most influential pieces of vampire literature were created by Christian’s (both different branches). By this I mean Dracula by Bram Stoker (a catholic) and Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (a Mormon).

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

Bram Stoker wasn't Catholic. He was a member of the Church of Ireland, which is a Protestant church branch of the Anglicans. In fact, there are many points of the book springing from this very much NOT Catholic background. While it could be a an in world lack of knowledge and respect, the treatment of the rosary and the Eucharist are both examples of a very much not Catholic approach to the subject of faith and articles of faith.

[drowsy-salamander]

I know the timelines and geography do not line up but consider, it's funny

[3liza]

99% of "mysterious disappearances" esp of people in their 20s who start acting weird for 48 hours and then vanish are not mysterious, thats just when a lot of reality-obliterating mental illness tends to kick in and it's pretty easy to get a short circuit in your brain that makes you go family guy death pose in joshua tree national park. it's not any less tragic, it's just a documented phenomenon and not particularly predictable. its a big reason the medical advice is for people with a family history of schizophrenia to completely avoid weed and psychedelics. "people just go crazy sometimes" is a principle of human health that used to be a lot more accepted prior to the american midcentury and to a certain extent thats a healthier way to conceptualize and prepare for the risk, as opposed to the modern assertion that anyone acting weird is dangerous and broken forever.

[3liza]

you should have a rough outline of a plan for if any of your loved ones experiences psychosis, it really does happen a lot. UTIs can cause psychosis. taking drugs, even safe drugs, or prescription drugs, can cause psychosis. i was once prescribed a heavy regimen of vitamin D because i was deficient, but the doctor never told me to stop taking it, so i moved to california, stopped being deficient, and developed vitamin d toxicity with downstream hyperparathyroidism which triggered significant hypomania that was undetected and uncontrolled for yeeeeeeears. i just slowly got Weird and started making impulsive decisions based on slightly out-of-gamut beliefs. i drove cross country by myself to have a love affair. the love affair was real, the series of decisions leading to burning down my life in pursuit of it were based on not great brain function however. etc. you see what i mean. churchill mentioned depression being the "black dog who stalks us" (one reason for Churchgrim's multi-referential name) but theres another, stealthier dog called Insanity and it's closer to some people than others but man it sneaks up on you. every time i see one of those "guy gets weird and drives into the wilderness forever" missing persons stories i think "yeah i could totally pull that off"

[oarfjsh]

"van gogh cut off his ear what a lunatic" you are 3 nights of bad sleep, getting unexpected upsetting news and taking a substance as benign as coffee at the wrong time away from doing the same hope this helps

[elf-trash]

reblogging this to add that long covid is also a documented cause of this, too. my best friend's mom who had never experienced a single symptom of any kind of mental illness for her entire life experienced full blown delusional paranoid psychosis after getting covid. like she had to be institutionalized because she became terrified that SWAT teams were coming to arrest her for hiding ski gear in the walls of her house. and again this was a healthy, active, fit, older middle-aged woman who had never previously been diagnosed with or displayed symptoms of ANYTHING. she fully recovered after treatment but yeah it really can happen to anyone!

[literary-potato]

There have also now been NUMEROUS accounts of people who previously appeared to be mentally well developing serious psychosis and acting on that psychosis after a conversation with an AI chatbot went awry. So if you or anyone you know are interacting with a chatbot on the regular and start thinking or talking about things like being surveilled, or machines achieving sentience, or developing romantic/sexual feelings for a machine, or anything of a religious or spiritual nature that’s not in line with their prior religious beliefs, GET HELP. And STOP using the chatbot.

[kolomo]

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

Is it just me or does it seem like Momo and Okarun's dancing matches and so does Aira and Jiji's?

[thecrazedbeekeeper]

I thought it was great in the recent episode with Momo's friends taking Okarun out for tea. I thought that it was just hanging out with him, but it was so much funnier that it was to troll both Momo and Okarun. The absolute shock on Momokarun's faces has to have been worth dragging him there for Miko and Muko.