They don't seem eager for a sip of contamination smoothie!

The UK government has just unbanned fracking while everyone's distracted by the royal circus

saw an ant on the bus today, what a horrible fate. moved an unfathomable distance from everything you've ever known because of forces you could never possibly understand. no matter how long you follow the pheromone trail you laid you'll never find your way home.

Did the spider that made a web in my cars mirror survive being barreled down the highway at light speed? Can insects feel fear in a way we understand? If I think too hard about this I start wondering if this is what the other side of a lovecraftian story looks like. An ant lost on the bus.

Don't you dare do this to me

[ID: tags reading “#this post has 100k notes. to me”. End ID.]

Thanks 

I don’t know which I find funnier “fuck shit up” or “faire smashy smashy”

TO DO SMASHY SMASH

trans people are so wonderful reblog to give green onions to a trans person 😙 (ID in alt)

there is something deeply funny to me about jokes

lost scene from Ninefox Gambit

@ruinconstellation Found it! Or something very close to it. This passage is from the third draft of Ninefox Gambit. (The version that got submitted was the seventh draft.)

This corresponds roughly to Ch 20, pp. 261-3 - you'll note a number of differences from the published version. I've marked the Out Of Character Linguistics Lecture. :)

===

"You've won," Jedao said when she woke.  She still had 1.2 hours before the next high table.

"It doesn't feel like it," Cheris said.  "The Fortress isn't stable.  My own commanders aren't talking to me.  And we're at war with the Hafn, who were supposed to be friendly."

"We're at the limit of the problems I can help you with," Jedao said dryly.

She had to laugh.  Then she looked down at her gloves.  It had been easy to despise him before.  Now she didn't know what to think.  She had sacrificed Kel.  Intellectually she knew that most commanders had to do this sooner or later, that the Kel were made to be sacrificed.  But it didn't make her feel better about it.

"Something could still go wrong," Cheris said.

"Oh, you have significant problems," Jedao said.  "But I would be surprised if anything went catastrophically wrong with the Fortress, and that's your mission."

"I wonder if they'll still outprocess me."

"They'd be fools to.  Admittedly you can't go back to being what you were, either.  But they'll find a use for you if that's what you want."

"I remember when I knew what I wanted."  It had been a long time ago.

"Yes, that's always hard," he said.

"What do you want?" Cheris asked.  She thought of him speaking of the darkness and the quiet, the absence of voices.

He had to live forever with himself for company.  She was beginning to see why he might want to die.

"I only wanted to serve.  It's a Kel sort of thing to want, so I shouldn't even admit it."

He didn't say anything about suicide.

"I wish I understood you," Cheris said.

They weren't going to have much more time together.  She understood that, at least.

"It wasn't your duty to understand, Cheris."

She thought he might have been about to say "fledge" instead, but no doubt it was her imagination.

When the time came, Cheris went to high table.  Commander Hazan was overseeing the command center, but she saw Rahal Gara, and Shuos Ko, and other faces that had grown familiar.  She tried not to flinch from the suicide hawk on the wall.  It was the same as the one in her quarters, after all.

Cheris had brought the simple cup that had been provided her--how long ago?  She took her sip, barely tasting the wine, and passed it around.  The ritual brought her comfort.  Here she was Kel surrounded by Kel.

She would have given much to have Kel Nerevor by her side, bright as fire, but no one had any word of her.

There were servitors along the wall, more than usual for the occasion.  Cheris didn't think the wine would interest them, although she could be wrong.  She rose and walked along the line to acknowledge them, wishing she could offer something better.  They were very quiet, and their eyes gleamed.

The servitors would have known which of her formations were suicide formations ahead of time.  Of the humans, only those in the affected companies had been informed.

The food was cautiously celebratory, richer than usual.  Cheris didn't care for the sauces, but she partook of them anyway.

"It's good to see you show an appetite," Jedao said.  "I'd hate to see you keel over from hunger."

Cheris dismissed this as irrelevant and kept a thoughtful eye on Ko.  He knew she was watching him, but he bore this as stoically as he bore everything.  The analyst who was a double for Heptarch Khiaz sat next to him, laughing at some joke Cheris couldn't hear.

"The problem with the Shuos," Jedao said, noticing her interest, "is that we select for competence and not much else.  I often think of the good Khiaz could have done for the heptarchate if she had been interested in others' welfare.  She could have been a brilliant leader.  And instead."

"You hated her," Cheris said around a mouthful of spinach with sesame seeds.  Bad manners, what would her parents say?

"I'm going to be devastatingly honest and admit that half my problem with her is that, in her domains, she was better than I was.  Crushed my ego."

That almost made her smile, although his tone was worryingly flat.

After high table, she had to adjudicate a dispute between Colonel Ragath and Medical.  Ragath was typically blunt, Medical was typically blunter, and she ended up siding with Ragath.  After that she slept again.  She thought she could get used to that.

When she wasn't at the command center, she felt driven to talk to Jedao.  Making the most of what time remained.  "Do you know what happened to your previous anchors?" she asked.

She was asking if he would know, or care, what became of her, but he was kind enough not to call her on it.  "No one ever told me," Jedao said.  "I tried asking, but it was discouraged.  So when I say I think Kel Command will have a use for you, that's conjecture.  On the other hand, I have a certain amount of experience with how Kel Command thinks.  I'm probably right."

"When the Nirai run tests on you, what's that like?"

"It depends on the test.  If you ever have to take a personality assessment that's all about fruit, remember that they don't like it when you associate pomegranates with fertility.  Which I had thought was standard, but who knows what that's about."  And then: "Tell me something about yourself, Cheris.  What it was like in the City of Ravens Feasting.  That luckstone means something to you, but you haven't looked at it since I--since I spoiled it for you."

"I spent my childhood trying to leave," Cheris said, wishing they didn't have to talk about it.  But it seemed only fair to answer.  "I told you once I'm natural-born.  My mother's people are old-fashioned, barely within approved norms.  Most of them are concentrated in a ghetto in the city, although we lived near one of the parks.  I didn't speak the high language until I entered school, and then I couldn't get rid of the accent until Kel Academy."

"I've never heard you speak your native language."

She felt a rush of embarrassment.  "I don't speak it well anymore."  Was she embarrassed because of her ineptitude, or because she spoke it at all?  She couldn't tell.

"There was a ferocious dispute when I was young," Jedao said, "over which language the heptarchate was going to standardize on.  There were three reasonable candidates based on population sizes, and a lot of unreasonable ones.  Then there were several minority factions pushing artificially constructed languages for the purpose, only one of which ever caught on.  Tieneved won, mostly because it had support among the Andan and a significant fraction of the Kel spoke it, the way the demographics shook out.  You might say the poets and guns settled the matter in combination."

"I wonder why they don't do away with the low languages," Cheris said.  The idea alarmed her.  She wasn't sure why she cared; why it hurt her.

"Too hard to control," Jedao said.  "Look at historical linguistics sometime.  If you think about the fact that the high language I speak natively isn't the high language you speak, you'll see the problem.  Multiply drift over time by factions, ethnic groups, and the number of settlements in the hexarchate, and it becomes a nightmare."

"Is Tieneved your native language?"

"Fox and hound, no, although it was easy enough to learn.  Even with the consonant changes to the present day--if you look at my birth name you can tell.  'Shkan' contains a consonant cluster that isn't permitted in Classical Tieneved."

"Languages aren't my strong suit," Cheris said ruefully.  "Does your name mean something?"

"Does yours?"

An exchange, then.  "In the old tradition," Cheris said, "I would have been named after--after a saint's day in the old calendar.  A heretical calendar.  So instead my parents named me after the day in the high calendar I was born on.  'Cheris' is the word for 'twenty-three.'  It's a vigesimal system.  That's all it is."

"My mother had three children by three different fathers," Jedao said.  "She found this tremendously funny.  My mother was an eccentric by the town's standards.  You're not supposed to name children after living relatives, it's disrespectful, but Shkan was my father's name.  I only met him a few times.  My other name is derived from a root that means something like 'honesty.'  You can bet that made my life hell when that got out at Shuos Academy.  Of course, at Shuos Academy you can count on everything to get out.  But that's all there is, nothing exciting."

"Your mother was a farmer?"

Jedao sighed.  "She was an agricultural researcher for the government.  She did small farm things on the side because they amused her.  And to provide chores for her offspring."

The thought of Jedao doing farm chores was tremendously amusing.  There was a paucity of amusing things in her life lately.

"I have no complaints about my childhood," Jedao said, "and anyway the Nirai scraped it over for clues already."

She had forgotten again that he was a madman.  It was almost going to be a relief when Kel Command removed her, unstapled her from Jedao, so she knew what things to believe again.  At this rate he was going to ruin her for the Kel.

It occurred to her that Kel Command had already done that.

thinking about how gentle Kim is with Harry on the swingset scene, making small talk with him for two hours, realizing that the amnesia thing really isn’t a elaborate interrogation technique or joke. choosing to be kind.

it just means a lot when Kim’s #1 coping mechanism, and really the only way he knows how to deal with Harry in general is Lets Focus On Work. I don’t know why there are so many depictions of Kim as relentlessly cold or distant when this scene is such a big part of the game. I’ll be the first to talk about how Kim is a pretty unpleasant guy you definitely wouldn’t want to know in real life but like

he does care about Harry. off duty and alone with him, he flirts with him about his high heels. he confides in his past as a moralist and his faith in the RCM. he openly admits that quitting smoking would be easier than his little ‘unnecessary' ritual. as repressed and as buttoned down Kim is…he’s just a guy. and we so rarely get to see that.

ultimately all these guys are cops first and people second so when you get to see the people part it’s all the more sad.

Bubbles was racing down the hill looking for a muddy spot to roll in. She stopped suddenly and laughed. “What a silly sight,” she said. Hanging upside down in a tree like a monkey was Applejack. “How did you get up there?” asked Bubbles. Applejack whinnied in embarrassment. “I was jumping for apples. I jumped so high that I caught my heels on the branch.” Bubbles sighed. “Your appetite for apples is always getting you in trouble, Applejack!” Then she helped Applejack out of the tree, and was treated to a fine red apple from her thankful friend.

We know that Facebook is brainscorching your parents and tiktok is brainscorching your cousins, but some of you refuse to admit that you got your brain scorched here. However unlike those sites there isn't an algorithm here you just make bad choices.

Tiktok brain poisoning: directed at children, potential to be the greatest consensus engine in history. They're victims

Facebook brain poisoning: I guess anyone that old should know better but like that shit is deliberate. They're victims.

Tumblr brain poisoning: you decided to go on a hike and thought to yourself "you know what would make this majestic hike even better, eating this cool looking mushroom next to that tree"

Facebook: more than one entire country where most of the population, who had never had internet access before, suddenly got Facebook and only Facebook, no other internet at all, on their mobile phones. Facebook made a deal with the telcos to provide this "free" "service". They had,effectively, an information monopoly. Guess how the next elections went? They went like you'd think.

Tiktok: a level of surveillance and privacy infringement that most social media app developers are ethically uncomfortable with, which is like saying "Philip Morris International thinks you're taking the selling addictive carcinogens too far." e.g. A keylogger. (So does Instagram, btw.) Among myriad other evils.

Tumblr: was provably infiltrated by Russian misinfo agents that time, trying to affect the US federal election in 2016. Like, I think by now a reasonably aware very online person knows this is happening on Twitter etc (this post doesn't even START on Twitter, but who has time? And anyway, its most egregious failings can be covered in two numerals, 45), but on Tumblr we know know.

Like, I personally got an email from Tumblr telling me which specific social justice posts I reblogged were a Russian op I fell for. If you're reading this and were on Tumblr back then, you probably got that email too. And that's without even going into the pornbots that still flourish and the genuine users who got permabanned in Tumblr's porn purge.

The majestic hike is over a radioactive wasteland. Yeah, we picked and ate that mushroom willingly, but the fallout was already everywhere.

I cannot overstate the importance of local school board elections.

We finally have a progressive supermajority in our district. Here are some things that are going on.

I have so many feelings. One of my friends is on the school board, and she's been part of this huge shift in priorities. I feel like good things are possible again. This is what free public education should mean.

Go out and consume art that isn't well done or excessively deep. It's good for you.

The problem is that, contrary to popular reporting, sometimes if you’re raised with an angry man in your house, you decide that there will never be the angry man in your house. And you think that you can achieve this by never being the angry man in someone else’s house. And you think that you can achieve this by making your body the house and the angry man your anger. And this. I am shocked after 21 years to report. Does not work.

we literally Should learn to speak in a language that rich people who don't dream can't comprehend.

AI images are a metaphor for how clearly surveillance capital can see you. which is to say, they can't, but they are very good at drawing an approximately human visage with the right proportion of features. like, the statistical average of you, and several thousand other people who are a little bit like you... they can't see you really, they can see a you-shaped fog. guessing things about you based on this does look like divination but it's a parlor trick for séances. the AI image is telling me someone was important to you, whose name began with... M? or possibly N? it's hard to tell