Everything Cookie

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!

Here's the cat burglar. She wears comfy clothes and has zero social skills. She has sex appeal but only if you're into a very specific type of woman, and crucially she has zero idea she has it. She probably doesn't know what an innuendo is.

Here's the hacker. He's a Black nerd, and also the most moral character of the bunch. He's a nerd but also not socially awkward; in fact, he's the second best at grifting, right after the person who's been doing it for decades.

Here's the muscle. In his heart of hearts, he is a chef. He is tough and manly but he uses that to look out for the working class and children and everyone else the system leaves behind. He's feared by politicians and he reminds his friend to tip the delivery person.

Here's the femme fatale. She's over forty years old, and she's the one seducing the mark. She's the heart of the team. Her calling is to be a director. She loves attending her own funeral.

Here's the mastermind. He's the only one who doesn't start out as a career criminal. He manipulates his own crew, kills two people after promising them he won't, and takes deals behind their back. He was in seminary school.

Here's the new guy. No, he's not the new Mastermind, he's a fixer. He's a former lawyer, but the unslimiest you've ever met. He knows he's fucked up and is atoning for it. He loves his daughter. He might be queer and is just discovering that at the same time he's become a jaunty cat burglar. He's played by middle-aged Noah Wyle getting to show off his comedic chops.

They added in these two new characters, and not only do they not feel awkward or forced, but they're just as multi-dimensional and lovable as the original crew, and they each bring out beautiful new aspects of each of the crew, as well.

(The color values of her skin tone still don't look right in this scan — it looks like the color balance has shifted too much into the red — but at least the registration is crisp, which shouldn't be too much to ask.)

The smile at Talia getting held up in the lobby.

Her offense and the patronizing ass clap.

THE FEATHER. TALIA BEING LIKE “WHY THE FUCK A FEATHER”.

THE BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE PHOTOS OF HOSTAGES.

OH THEY’RE SO CATTY. SO WONDERFULLY CATTY. PETTY THY NAME IS DICK GRAYSON. SCHEMING THY NAME IS TALIA AL GHUL.

#also the presaux team was a little nice to murderbot one time and it shot itself in the chest to protect them #so yeah it makes sense to me that three met the original copy of the person who liberated it from a hellish existence and went #'yeah fuck it i'll get in an argument with an all powerful homicidal ai and then risk my life let's ball'

by definition, it can be categorized as a slur

i don’t think it should be treated the same way as other slurs (insert john mulaney quote “if we’re comparing the badness of two words but not even saying one of the words, that’s the worse one”) and to imply that bitch has the same power as racial slurs is blatantly wrong

bitch as a word generally has been used for so long that it feels ridiculous to say no one should be allowed to use it

people, especially men, should be aware of the way they use bitch as an insult because of the inherent misogyny of the word since it Does often get used as a “slur”

“but men get called a bitch too” isn’t a good argument because 90% of the time a man gets called a bitch, it’s to imply he’s acting like a woman

i Personally don’t think men should be regularly using it as an insult and i side eye men who do

just because i don’t think men should use it doesn’t mean any man who uses it should be automatically assumed to be a misogynist

i do however think that men who use it haven’t examined their own biases and how misogyny affects their actions in a patriarchal society since we do not exist in a vacuum

people who argue that there’s no problem with the word bitch think of misogyny as a “lesser” form of discrimination and don’t consider it a serious issue

even if you disagree with me i still don’t understand why anyone would bother arguing in favor of men using bitch as an insult because why would are you joining the war on misogyny on the side of misogyny

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."