sainamoonshine

[sainamoonshine]

faeries are not real but i wish thwy were so i could spray one with raid

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When people get a little too gung-ho about-

wait. cancel post. gung-ho cannot be English. where did that phrase come from? China?

ok, yes. gōnghé, which is…an abbreviation for “industrial cooperative”? Like it was just a term for a worker-run organization? A specific U.S. marine stationed in China interpreted it as a motivational slogan about teamwork, and as a commander he got his whole battalion using it, and other U.S. marines found those guys so exhausting that it migrated into English slang with the meaning “overly enthusiastic”.

That’s…wild. What was I talking about?

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Toranaga wanted to be shōgun all along? Yeah, yeah, I could have told you that.

Toranaga: I kept Anjin alive for shits and giggles, no more, no less.

Well damn, I did not see that plot twist coming.

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oh captain my captain

Commission

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i'm sorry but this is the only submission to this trend that i'll consider giving any thought to

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Blackthorne's 'consider living for meee 🥺' gambit is sooo good because the obvious rejoinder (consider how little your feelings matter in the face of all Mariko has endured) is one he is already WELL aware of. It's so obvious that the only reason he's trying this fucking where's-my-hug style gambit is because there's literally no other option available to him--beyond, that is, accepting her plan.

And in the end what's a truer expression of love than that moment, holding the blade above her, waiting?

He doesn't understand the choice she's making--in fact, he hates it. After all, his whole life in this country has been in essence a second life. He was rebirthed starving and scurvetic and fucking stinking, covered in guts as he emerged from the pit! Life takes you to the edge and back again but so long as you are at its table there are always dice to be rolled. Death is, therefore, defeat, and off the table entirely. It is never a choice.

Blackthorne feels that as he experiences the world, so he defines it. If he ceases, the world ends also. It's not a selfish feeling: it comes very naturally to very many of us. What's the point in thinking about the world without us in it? We can no longer influence it, nor reap its rewards. He will probably always feel this, and for him it's true.

For Mariko, though, death is the reason she was kept alive. Her life has meaning to her, of course. Yet that subjective meaning--her experiential life--is subordinate to and distinct from her life's purpose. She has always stood where she was supposed to stand, left the room when it was time, known what to say--and she knows, as clearly as the trees know when to drop their blossom, that her death is always an option. Death confers a meaning onto her life that extends beyond her subjective experience and into the world. If she ceases to be, the world will react to it--and from her death, if she uses it correctly, a thousand ripples will emanate. She has gone through her whole life feeling this, and for her it's true.

Blackthorne talks in this episode about the simple words he has picked up in his time here. These pale in comparison to what he has learned about translation, which is: some things can never be communicated in a way you will understand. That does not mean they are untrue. It does not even mean your own, opposite truth is rendered false!

Sometimes all you can do when you love someone is make their incomprehensible choice easier for them to bear.

[sainamoonshine]

Blackthorne's 'consider living for meee 🥺' gambit is sooo good because the obvious rejoinder (consider how little your feelings matter in the face of all Mariko has endured) is one he is already WELL aware of. It's so obvious that the only reason he's trying this fucking where's-my-hug style gambit is because there's literally no other option available to him--beyond, that is, accepting her plan.

And in the end what's a truer expression of love than that moment, holding the blade above her, waiting?

He doesn't understand the choice she's making--in fact, he hates it. After all, his whole life in this country has been in essence a second life. He was rebirthed starving and scurvetic and fucking stinking, covered in guts as he emerged from the pit! Life takes you to the edge and back again but so long as you are at its table there are always dice to be rolled. Death is, therefore, defeat, and off the table entirely. It is never a choice.

Blackthorne feels that as he experiences the world, so he defines it. If he ceases, the world ends also. It's not a selfish feeling: it comes very naturally to very many of us. What's the point in thinking about the world without us in it? We can no longer influence it, nor reap its rewards. He will probably always feel this, and for him it's true.

For Mariko, though, death is the reason she was kept alive. Her life has meaning to her, of course. Yet that subjective meaning--her experiential life--is subordinate to and distinct from her life's purpose. She has always stood where she was supposed to stand, left the room when it was time, known what to say--and she knows, as clearly as the trees know when to drop their blossom, that her death is always an option. Death confers a meaning onto her life that extends beyond her subjective experience and into the world. If she ceases to be, the world will react to it--and from her death, if she uses it correctly, a thousand ripples will emanate. She has gone through her whole life feeling this, and for her it's true.

Blackthorne talks in this episode about the simple words he has picked up in his time here. These pale in comparison to what he has learned about translation, which is: some things can never be communicated in a way you will understand. That does not mean they are untrue. It does not even mean your own, opposite truth is rendered false!

Sometimes all you can do when you love someone is make their incomprehensible choice easier for them to bear.

[sainamoonshine]

Made the worst brownies ever created just now

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ortus nigenad is for all the failgirls and failboys who are not cut out for what people expect them to do and are a disappointment to everyone but who hold out hope that one day, the useless thing they're actually really good at is gonna come in clutch

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Me: I hate gossip

Also me:

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It was written by my friend.

SHŌGUN (2024) Chapter Ten: A Dream of a Dream

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[sainamoonshine]

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

[sainamoonshine]

yabushige: here is my death poem

yabushige’s death poem:

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My god fellow AO3 writers: if you're posting the first chapter of what you know is an ongoing story, mark it as an unfinished multi-chapter fic (with or without a final chapter count), not a completed fic that just grows more chapters as you continue.

I'm not talking about discontinued works or one-shots that authors go back and add more chapters to - IMO that's a totally valid use of "completed." But I feel like I'm seeing an uptick in people mislabeling their obviously work-in-progress fic out of what I suspect is the assumption that people auto-filter out incomplete works. So look, a) I promise I don't, I read uncompleted stories all the time, and b) tricking readers into thinking your fic is complete will not endear you to them! Own your WIPness!

[sainamoonshine]

I feel like people miss the point of the "war is bad" message

What it's supposed to mean is that war is terrible, it's destructive, it ruins lives, it leaves scars, and you should only partake in it when there are no other options, because even if you win, even if you survive, you will not be the same, which is why the phrase used to be more commonly known as "war is hell"

But "war is bad" seems to have been construed by people in fandom into "any fighting is bad, if you fight you're morally terrible and impure, you should not fight at all, no matter what", this is annoying in fandom, as it often misses the point fiction is trying to make, but what's worrisome is when people apply this to real life, as I have seen people do regarding russia's invasion of Ukraine

And that's almost never the point of "War is Bad" works

Works like lotr, atla, transformers, the clone wars, etc all have themes on how horrible war is, but they categorically do not say it is wrong to fight, what they say is usually along the lines of "war is terrible, and what makes it so terrible is that we have no choice but to fight, it would be ideal if we didn't have to fight at all, but we must fight, because not fighting is not an option, because not fighting, not opposing tyranny, conquest, and evil only allows those things to exist unimpeded"