To The People I Pass On The Train At Night - Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is now available to pre-order! Get it here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky

Wonderful series of photographs offering a glimpse into female friendship in Maine, ca. 1898: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/babb-photographs

Growing up near a beach frequented by the elderly makes one more accepting of human bodies in general, I think. And it is gauche to criticize people for things they cannot control about their appearance.

However. Sometimes people do silly things to themselves. Take for example the man I saw at the beach the other day, who was obviously naturally hirsute (ok) and had removed a lot of his body hair (fair) but had done so in such a way that he ended up with a *perfectly* rectangular bathroom-rug-shaped patch of fur on his torso.

Artist's rendition:

like a hair teletubby

...i just really wanted to draw it

Me, on the welcome desk in the library: Good morning, how are you today?

Customer: I have welcomed Jesus into my heart and so I am well today and every day.

Me, a little unnerved: Okay then! Is there something I can help you with?

Customer, digging around in his bag and pulling out an iPhone in a box: Unfortunately, Jesus can't help me with this fucking phone, so I came to the library.

the fact that kobolds seem to be this more "animalistic" race, with kuro talking in broken language and like improper grammar. this, coupled with the fact that he seems unaware of the fact that he's being exploited by mick, makes kobolds appear to be less intelligent than other races.

but we actually find out that the simple speech patterns are in fact due to common being kuro's second language. and in a scene where kabru talks to kuro in his native language, it's actually kabru with the simple speech patterns.

we even learn that kuro seems to actually have a much better understanding of his situation with mick than we first imagine. merely wanting to stay with them so they can have someone who they can feel relaxed around.

this, coupled with a bunch of other things, really makes dungeon meshi stand out from other fantasy media. there are no "dumb" or "evil" races, they're all just people.

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."

(Stephen Gould, "The Panda's Thumb")

The Walrus v Fairy question really is a perfect example of the Internet Argument. I've been reading a bunch of posts on both sides and it's very clear that everyone is interpreting the question in a way that the other side finds ridiculous. And if you take the read of one person, it makes perfect sense why they'd think it was more/less surprising, and the question become more about agreeing with priors than the actual question being asked. Like, a lot of people saying the walrus is more surprising make comments to the effect of "how did a walrus walk all the way to my house" or "how did the walrus knock on the door". And for folks that think the fairy is more surprising, there's a lot of comments saying they assume the walrus was put there by someone. The question doesn't mention how the walrus/fairy got there, so someone reading it as saying that the walrus knocked is answering a fundamentally different question than the one where someone assumes that a person knocked and then like, hid, or whatever. Likewise, a lot of people on both sides talk about the number of assumptions that each creature's presence brings up. People who think the walrus is more surprising comment a lot saying that a fairy being there is just one fact, that fairies exist, and that the walrus being there involves a huge logistical chain at the very least. Where people who think the fairy is more surprising comment a lot saying that the walrus being there is one fact, that elaborate prank shows exist, where the fairy being there calls into question a lot of biology, as well as the massive and world-spanning coverup that would be necessary to keep fairies out of the public eye if they've been around so long, that it brings up a bunch of existential issues if not logistical ones. People are even disagreeing about the definition of the word "surprising". I saw two posts side-by-side, one basically saying "a huge animal on your doorstep is shocking" and the other saying "fairies existing is way less likely than a walrus being dropped off at my door". Two totally different (and accurate!) definitions of the word, one emphasizing the initial reaction, surprising like a jump scare, the other emphasizing the overall likelihood of fairies versus Mr. Beast's Epic Walrus Prank.

It's just a wonderful thing to watch a hill to die on being raised right before my eyes, and to see a new Airplane Treadmill be born.

a weird thing is that we got waves of people going "who cares if its cringe or youre annoying! have fun!" but no one really learned how to accept the fact that some people will find you annoying or think your art or your work or posts or anyrhing sucks and thats ok. rather it just became a weird "if people think youre annoying theyre just morally bad. let people enjoy things!". like no i think this yes man only biome sucks and people are allowed to not like artstyles and shows and media and other things

if youre an artist, a creator, or just someone whos involved in hobbies: learning that no matter what you do, some people will find you annoying is extremely important for your mental health, just as learning that not liking things is normal and youre allowed to do it

as people have mentioned in the tags, i think this yes-man attitude leads more people to make up random moral reasons to dislike things. if disliking something for no reason is bad, then you have to constantly justify yourself as to why this thing sucks, which is also not mature and sucks

30-something japanese lady trying to generate an ai picture of her cats: Hm, it's not quite getting them exactly right.

10000 socially maladjusted american teenagers and young adults: Landlady i want you to read the paragraph i wrote about how you're a complete piece of shit

I feel like a lot of people couldn’t get their heads around “the increasing power of generative ai raises a number of serious concerns in a capitalist society, such as the potential for it to be used as leverage by large corporations to underpay artists” so they just decided it would be easier to treat it like a supernatural force of evil

Nah, I think most people just assume everyone knows what they know.

So like: us Always Onlines have had these discussions, we've hashed out all these arguments and landed on our particular positions about it. Then, these guys see this lady trying it out for the first time and they assume SHE knows everything they know about it, has had all the arguments and discussions and read all the articles THEY have about it, and react like that's the case. Of course it isn't, so her first exposure to the whole discussion is trying out something fun and having a bunch of young USians be shitheads to her for it.

People just need to accept that not everybody knows what they know(or thinks like they think, for that matter), and try to cut each other some slack.

airport people… everyone going home after christmas… including me ✈️

Can we talk about Magnus in Harrow the Ninth? Because there's a tendency to paint him as this constantly cheerful figure and he's not - he's just very Fifth.

He's the only person who seems even slightly upset about the whole gun-toting horror thing:

And he's got a very low opinion of Silas:

Behind the jolly Jeeves and Wooster-esque talk of biffing people, let's remember that this is Magnus - who from Gideon's POV never saw a teenager he didn't want to adopt - earnestly wishing that a grown man had hit a 16 year old kid.

And when Harrow explains that she thinks she saw him jump to his death, Magnus isn't particularly sympathetic:

and

This "never quite the thing" line is the same one Abigail uses when she says Ianthe shouldn't have become a Lyctor and you get the sense it has a quite specific meaning on the Fifth. You get the distinct feeling Magnus is saying "good riddance" in response to a teenager's apparent suicide.

And then of course there's Magnus' conversation with Harrow as the River bubble collapses, as Harrow debates whether she should leave her body to Gideon:

He doesn't pull any punches in laying out his understanding of the situation to Harrow:

He's trying to get through to her in a very fraught situation, but he's certainly not pulling his punches:

Abigail is also trying to talk her out of things, but she's much more discursive and apologetic. Magnus is kind, but it's kindness as a knife, not a cushion.

Magnus is so often written off as just a silly, goofy character, when he's more complicated than that. He's allowed to have a very real frustration with the River bubble and with Harrow, however much he does also care for her and want to help her.

And you know what, he's a CFO stuck in a horrorscape with his delighted ghost nerd wife and a bunch of soldiers. He runs with it - he cracks one of his House ordinal jokes while physically tackling a gun-toting ghost and makes a decent go at it before getting shot. But he's very much out of his comfort zone, angry, and no longer entirely held back by propriety.

Another thing I'd add to this, and not to take away from the different context which absolutely is VERY important here, is WHO he's talking to.

Like: We know that The Fifth has a reputation for being very political, very charismatic, and very parental, and it's reasonable to assume that learning how to read people, assess character, and tailor yourself to them, is considered a rather important thing in the Fifth(as @katakaluptastrophy notes: they've got a whole stock phrase for the first two bits). It's possible that, when Magnus looked at Gideon and even without her saying anything, he saw someone with friendly, outgoing instincts but no experience using them, starved for attention, spcl positive attention, and spcl spcl positive ADULT attention(and I mean: if he knew anything at all about life on the Ninth and Ninth laws regarding orphans[i.e. "you're property now"] he ltrl wouldn't have had to know anything about her to know about the attention).

So it's probable that the person he was to Gideon -- Kind, jokey, inclusive, unexpectedly soft and thoughtful, interested but never pushy -- was the sort of person he judged Gideon needed(or at least, that would work best with her), and the harder, more assertive and sarcastic person he is with Harrow is the version of him he felt suited her.

I hope anon and 10:30 reconnect and get married

There’s so much to unpack here:

"that's why i don't consider this a political issue but a human issue" you're not going to belive what sort of issues are covered by politics

sometimes I wonder how we all survive and then I look at my best friends and I go “oh, I survive because I don’t want to leave you yet” and it makes sense. life is so hard a lot of the time, but I want one more bowl of pasta with you.

btw part of what's at stake in accepting that the family form is inherently unjust & harmful to children is, you don't have to have endured an anomalous degree of violence, coercion, or abuse in order to have been traumatised by your family & your childhood. it is an inherently violent & terrifying situation to be completely at the mercy of people who have total material and financial control over you. it is inherently violent that they have the legal right eg to hit you or deprive you of privacy, whether or not they personally exercise these rights. all of this also applies to the other most obvious population made vulnerable by the family form, the elderly

I think this take will really help give a lot of people the freedom to examine any pain from their childhood they never felt their parents "deserved" to be taken to account for. It ultimately is not all that much about them or their actions as people. It's about the power structure that makes it impossible for a young person to ever feel that their life is their own.