Wasing the always of wanting of knowing

The eternal desire of a hungry soul is knowledge. The amount of time I spend on the computer would make me an expert in any other hobby. Avatar made by mikeswheeler.tumblr.com

[birdlord5000]

next year james patterson is slapping his name on a book called "the secret lives of booksellers and librarians," which is real bold considering that every bookseller and librarian that i've met in my time as a bookseller and librarian absolutely loathes him. including me.

[birdlord5000]

"rowan if you hate james patterson how come you know about a book of his that's coming out seven months from now?"

I Must Keep The Scope Of My Sniper Rifle Trained On The Beast At All Times

[foxofninetales]

Okay, I feel the need to explain just why James Patterson is so hated by librarians.

See, it's not just that he writes mediocre, churned-out thrillers; there are many, many authors of mediocre, churned-out thrillers out there, he ain't special.

It's also not that he "writes" them with "coauthors" and slaps his name on them - again, this is not unique.

It's not even - though this is starting to get there- that he chases every publishing trend and creates His Version of everything from Diary of a Wimpy Kid to Nicholas Sparks, which nobody likes as well as they like his thrillers but still buy because they have His Name on them like a summoning charm.

No, what makes James Patterson uniquely loathed is the combination of the frequency of publication and his popularity. Because, to be honest, I'm not sure that anyone even likes his books anymore, but it doesn't matter, because if they have the James Patterson name on them then readers will be queuing up like zombies desperate for a fix of decaying cerebral matter. Which would be tolerable if he had the decency to only write one book a year like most other bestselling authors, but "James Patterson" (quotes VERY intentional) puts out roughly two books per month. So as a librarian, not only do you have to buy every new book James Patterson puts out, you have to buy multiple copies in order to fulfill demand. Somewhere around 5% of my fiction budget is spent ENTIRELY ON JAMES PATTERSON. Every new James Patterson that comes out means a dozen or more queer romances, inventive sci-fi novellas, unique cultural viewpoints, etc, etc that you can't buy because YOU HAVE TO BUY JAMES PATTERSON INSTEAD. (See also, you just weeded and shifted the Ps in fiction to make room and now it's full again oh god why.)

And the clincher - the absolute clincher - is the knowledge that the publishers will be "finding" "unfinished manuscripts" by "James Patterson" for a minimum of fifty years after his death, so even if some right-minded bibliophile with a claymore takes one for the team, we will never, ever be free.

And that is why we hate James Patterson.

[iheartallthethings]

I was wondering about this when i saw the first version of this post

[kvothes]

a good thread

[canon-autopsy]

*platform decay spoilers*

When they're waiting to board the boat and the crowd is all listening in on Murderbot telling the humans its going back to help the militia hold off the corporates

The crowd all parting to let it through and Mb thinks it must be its angry face and not the fact that everyone just heard its going off to protect them

When passengers spot it in the water and work together to pull it aboard

Random humans recognizing its heroism and working to help it

[wolvesandcomputers]

They hear its kid? say "They will kill you" they hear its wife? ask if it's "going to do the thing." It has a past the kids don't know about. It's going to protect everyone or die trying. Its going to buy its family time to get away. You know every human on that boat was relieved when it made it back aboard.

[akaanir-of-starfleet]

#😭😭😭😭 #murderbot #god yeah they probably DO think that's its family!!!! #and it is. to be clear. farai is about to report back to tano like 'bad news :/ i'm on ayda's side about the secunit now.' #[communist bugs bunny meme] OUR secunit #but my point is that a bystander probably sees what they think is a heavily augmented human person #someone so augmented that it MUST have been some kind of lifesaving measure rather than a choice (per artificial condition) #who has their wife(?) and their mother(?) and their THREE children(?) with them #and THAT is the person who says with total authority that it's going to protect them or die trying #of course they step aside to let it through #that's some entertainment feed quality heroism right there! (via @words-writ-in-starlight)

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

And if I said Megamind is one of the few movies that understands Superman.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

And if I said Megamind through its three subversions of Superman shows a deeper understanding that the point of Superman is that he was loved and taught to love by good, present parents, and because of that he is able to return that love to a world even if it doesn't always accept it, and he is not corrupted by his power, than many other films either subverting or playing the superman story straight.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Megamind has three Superman subversions. One is obviously Megamind himself. He was not raised loved by the world, but rather was loved by those hated by the world. Because he was still raised with love, he does care about other people, hence his character development. But because he didn't receive wider love growing up, his own is misplaced at first.

Metro Man was not loved growing up in a way that mattered. His adopted father was clearly very absent, and while we don't know much about his family, their relationship seems superficial. Because of this, his sense of duty to the world is also superficial, hence his boredom.

Hal wasn't raised with power. He gained it and was shown how to use it by a 'space dad' who only taught him power and not love. Hence, he sees it only as a grasping means to an end.

All three of these subversions, in their negative space, create the silhouette of the superhero that they are parodying. That silhouette is of a space child that came to earth and was cared for very deeply by the world, and taught love through his experience of love, and because of that holds fast to his duty to the world. Which is Superman.

[dramatic-dolphin]

people are so fucking weird about uncontacted tribes/peoples oh my goddddd you are not making it out of the colonialist mindset

[dramatic-dolphin]

fun fact uncontacted peoples are not ignorant they are fully aware of the "outside world" and are CHOOSING not to have contact because they (rightly) feel it would add no value to their lives and place them in an exploited position. it's voluntary. they are isolated on purpose.

[dramatic-dolphin]

sentinelese people aren't like some ignorant noble savages, or actual savages who are all about warfare and killing (wildly racist take i see very often), they are literally regular ass fucking people who have seen the exploitation of their neighbors (other andamanese people) AND the massive disease outbreaks caused by contact, and decided they want no part in that. they are literally regular people choosing to survive. that's it.

[dramatic-dolphin]

glad that this is getting traction, but if you're saying things like "yeah, and they are right! modern society is a curse! they are living The Right Way and are more enlightened have better lives than us!" you are also the people i'm talking about. sorry. they are regular people living regular lives. please internalize this fact and stop exoticizing.

[louisegluckpdf]

they won't tell you this in therapy but sometimes the best way to stop catastrophizing/anxiety is to interrupt your spiraling with "girl what the hell are you talking about"

[ytpreviews]

It's not a cure but you have no idea how many times this image has helped me with my OCD

[notgreatthanks]

This tag has been more effective than any meds I’ve ever taken

[the-haiku-bot]

This tag has been more

effective than any meds

I’ve ever taken

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Sherlock Holmes having a universal ace experience -- expressing disinterest and immediately getting called an inhuman robot.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#images#sherlock holmes#sorry i don't turn rabid and marry the prettiest girl in sight at the push of a button my dear watson

Watson is like "of course I proposed marriage to a girl I met two days ago, I'm normal and make rational decisions"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#I read this part just the other day#He literally proposes within two days it’s crazy

Every Sherlock Holmes remake that tries to make Watson the straight man does him a great injustice. Mfer is a total madlad. Everyone's like "oh he's not addicted to hard drugs and doesn't do chemistry experiments in his bedroom for fun" there are subtler ways to be completely unhinged.

[elf-kid2]

The thing is, Watson may or may not instigate the Situations & Shenanigans, but he voluntarily spends most of his Sherlock Holmes, who DOES!

““Normal”“ people do not do that.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Watson will show up at Holmes' place and be like "are you doing any investigations of super weird shit today" and Holmes will be like "yes I am cornering this dangerous mass murderer, you should come and bring your gun in case anyone tries to shoot us" and Watson will do it without question, thinking "I'm so glad he's got something wholesome to distract himself with so he doesn't take more cocaine".

[itswalky]

[geeoharee]

[ms-demeanor]

Are you kidding? Poor impulse control, emotional dysregulation, and novelty-seeking - ADHD is what's wrong with Watson and Holmes is trying to get him to be reasonable and do cocaine about it.

[rainintheevening]

Okay, we got a new one, boys.

[fleshengine]

Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.

[comma-souptra]

Prev you can’t bury this in your own tags

[hope-chest-resources]

ID: A screenshot of tags left on the tumblr post. They read "#it's actually kind of a reverse Chekhov's Gun #Chekhov's Gun says "If there is setup there must be payoff" #Asimov's Tail says "if there is payoff there must be setup" #and I think the tail is also important #a tail is not something you'd expect to see on a character unless explicitly pointed out #someone stepping on the tail not only reveals its existence but also tells us things about it #eg it's floor length sensitive and the character either can't or won't keep it out of the way of foot traffic #the upshot seems to be "acclimatise your audience to things they don't understand before you use them" #you don't need to explain how a gun on the mantelpiece works in the same way you need to explain how your protagonist's tail does" End ID.

[silverfox66]

Adobe is going to spy on your projects. This is insane.

[audacityinblack]

For general graphics: use GIMP For vector graphics: use Inkscape For drawing and illustration: use Krita For print and web publishing and design: use Penpot For PDF authoring: use LibreOffice For PDF reading and form filling: use Okular

All are free, open source and cross-platform. None use AI.

[thekidsfromyestergay]

This was on a post about how it's ignorant and privileged to wear headphones in public and I fear its already become a part of my vocabulary. Must everything harbor a moral failure.

[prokopetz]

The wizard down the street got sick of rivals dropping giant rocks on them to circumvent their Anti-Magic Field, and decided to invent an Anti-Physics Field instead. We're not sure what happened next, on account of nobody who looks at the affected area can remember what they saw, but there's probably a research paper in it if anyone figures it out.

[ender--gaming]

[creekfiend]

sometimes people think I am on Mad At Them Island, when in fact I am far more often paddling around in the waters of Slightly Annoyed With Their Recent Behavior Bay, or perhaps on the beautiful Peninsula of Get Well Soon But I Will Not Be Engaging With All Of That

[creekfiend]

You Owe Either Myself Or A Loved One A Specific Apology Island is also a different location

[ramavoite]

[kalinas-std]

the word economy on this guy

[orcboxer]

trivial. next challenge

[luulapants]

Got into a discussion about emergency response at a professional retreat recently and everyone was going on and on about agility, and I was like, "Okay but what about contingency?"

And they were like "What?"

And I was like, "Agility isn't the ultimate form of preparedness. Contingency is. Agility still requires you to flounder and figure out a solution in the moment, but if you have a contingency plan, all you have to do is implement it."

And they were like "But you can't make contingency plans for every situation!"

And I was like, "Yeah, you basically can if you just identify all of your basic dependencies and contingency plan around the loss of any dependency," and then I gave a few examples.

And they all stared at me like I'm an alien.

Anyway, that's how I figured out I'm Batman-coded and also learned how Batman must feel talking to supposedly professional superheroes who never bothered to run disaster scenarios until I pointed out that it's insane that they don't already have a plan for if Superman turns evil.

[nestofstraightlines]

There’s a phrase that really stuck in my head around this. It was from one of the British divers who enacted the Thai caving rescue, though I couldn’t tell you which one or which interview.

As he described to the interviewer a moment of panic and how he he overcame, the interviewer said, in one of those, summarise-last-answer-given-with-appropriate-levels-of-respect-in-order-to-proceed-to-next-question phrasing’s, “Wow, so you rose to the occasion -“

And the diver said, “No, actually people always get that exactly wrong. In an unexpected and urgent situation you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training.”

[throckmortons-thrussy]

[penny-anna]

Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?

Then about a week into their journey like

Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying

Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst

Legolas:

[penny-anna]

~*~earlier~*~

Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits

Merry: Frodo what’d he say

Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish

Merry: I mean you could do that but consider

Merry: you can only tell him ONCE

Frodo: Merry. You’re absolutely right. I’ll wait.

[penny-anna]

#legolas’ hick accent vs #frodo’s ‘i learned it out of a book’ accent #FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible

Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK

Frodo: :)

[storywonker]

Frodo: Hello. My name is Frodo. I am a Hobbit. How are you?

Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve

Frodo, crying: please I can’t understand what you’r saying

[ramshacklefey]

Ok, but Frodo didn’t just learn out of a book. He learned like… Chaucerian Elvish. So actually:

Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.

Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.

Aragorn: *laughing too hard to walk*

[reformedkingsmanagent]

@ghostriderofthearagon

[cryptidscrypticcrosswordclub]

dYinGggGggg…

[whetstonefires]

i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.

english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.

they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.

so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.

plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.

so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.

[whetstonefires]

to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.

so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!

considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.

…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.

which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.

this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!

[bowditch]

Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.

Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*

[linguisticparadox]

Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now

Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?

Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?

Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.

Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.

Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y'all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.

[sainamoonshine]

Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man

Boromir, from beyond the grave: j e s u s

[esser-z]

Tolkien would be SO PROUD of this post

[runiaimperii]

It got better

[peaceheather]

there may come a day when i do not reblog this post, but it is NOT THIS DAY

[trytocallmecal]

here to bring honour to Tolkien’s memory by spreading this hilarious language analysis post

[inkedinserendipity]

the "art doesn't lie actually" post

this post has been rotating in my head for weeks now, so i decided to actually write it out. thesis: despite what murderbot claims, art doesn't actually lie.*

this is gonna be long, so buckle up!

*obligatory disclaimer: we're cherry-picking a specific definition of "lie" here, because art actually lies by omission all the fucking time. but what's interesting to me is that art's words are factually true. so here we're taking lie to mean (shoutout merriam-webster, y'all i did homework for this), an untrue or inaccurate statement. in the real world lies of omission are still lies etc etc etc., but afaik english doesn't have a word for "factually true but missing backstory". so really this is a manifesto on how when art says something, its words are factually correct, you just might need to look a little further. (and how that ties into its interactions with murderbot in particular. our most funky and fabulous unreliable narrator.)

okay! so!

art doesn't lie, in the sense that the words it speaks are factually true. in a way it reminds me of the fae - it is very careful with its wording, and you have to be wary of double meanings or missing context, but it does not lie to you. art 100% means what it says.

examples that come to mind, in no particular order:

i have a debris deflection system, it says. murderbot says, you have a weapons system. it says, for debris deflection. rating: technically true! it has not lied. however. those are in fact guns. and guns by any other name can still kill you.

art says, my crew has the means to produce the original charters. murderbot, who knows art really well, goes so you mean forge. and art ignores it. because forgery is, technically, the means to produce. rating: true! wholly missing context.

arada goes, transport can you please explain what the fuck happened? art says, i am prioritizing the medical system. it could definitely respond! but it definitely does not want to! (it's fine, secunit will explain when it wakes up, right? right?) rating: probably true! most likely, it is prioritizing the medsystem!

and the most recent, from rapport: art says, completely truthfully, No intel drones have been aboard me. it is correct. (as far as i can remember,) secunit didn't have its drones with it during artificial condition. rating: true! technically! but leaves out the much more alarming fact that oh my god art you let a secunit aboard???

(sidebar: that last one convinced me of this theory. that is such a specific statement that is so clearly meant to cover up a bigger secret. art, you obfuscating ass, you haven't had drones aboard you but you have had a fucking secunit!! i am so full of affection for this absolute menace of a transport.)

there are probably more examples i'm not thinking of. but as far as i can remember, art does not lie. it omits, and it obfuscates, but when it tells you something, you can be pretty fucking sure it means what it says.

so, why does it lie? is it, like our beloved murderbot, completely devoid of self-esteem? or does it just enjoy lying? no! this is the Asshole Research Transport, the Perihelion, the machine intelligence who will demonstrably do absolutely anything to keep its people safe. no, art lies because it has something to protect.

in each of these examples, art is protecting something. its identity. its crew's mission. its prospective relationship with secunit's humans. secunit's entire existence.

(you know, the more i write about art, the more i become convinced that protectiveness is its #1 defining character trait. as a side note.)

so, when art says something, you can be pretty sure that art is telling the truth. but wait a second. murderbot calls it a liar. why could that be?

(theory over now, by the way. this is about to diverge into headcanon/make fun of murderbot time. shoutout @marvelousmawn for the idea, because her brain is so big and sexy!)

yeah, why would our funky little secunit decide that art is a liar? what could art possibly tell its favorite construct that would make it decide that art is lying through its metaphorical teeth? what has secunit consistently, constantly been wrong about throughout the entire series? any guesses? i've got one!

yeah, my bet's that art complimented it one too many times, and murderbot decided it was full of shit.

what a way to get a reputation for being a liar. by being too nice to your bestie.

seren end theory.

[oh-dameron]

-Network Effect, ch8

Is it proof that ART was holding out on MB? If ART has the array of internal sensors that MB describes would it also need cameras? What for? It can sense and understand everything going on inside itself just fine. When the humans need to see another part of the ship it doesn't give them a camera view, it whips up a hologram. ART is a deep-space research vessel, the visual input it's used to getting is probably more like the James Webb space telescope than a security camera. And once it made friends with SecUnit in AC there was no particular reason not to allow camera access: there was no-one else on board to spy on and its research modules weren't attached.

If, however, you're a humungous space reaseach ship and you're used to looking at supernovas way the fuck over there and using your spidey-senses for stuff happening in your hull then it makes sense that visual media might not grab you. It's not encoded with heat, density, motion: it's mostly just optical. Which, you're a hyperintelligent supercomputer, you can parse it into a format that you can understand, but. Ugh. Why? There isn't even any gravitational lensing. It's like reading something boring in a language that you've got a rudimentary grasp of but aren't fluent in: you can do it if you make the time and effort but it's a lot of work for something that isn't even fun.

And then Murderbot shows up and gives it a three-week intensive course on Why Visual Input Is Fun, Actually. It gets a lot of practise and ART learns very quickly. So now that it's tagged and released Murderbot back into the wild it needs to upgrade its on-board systems to provide an appropriate habitat for once its multi-step plan to find it again and convince it to stay forever comes to fruition (hopefully the plan did not originally involve kidnapping).