No matter where I go, there I am

This is a common defense of abuse. The assumption is that anyone who wants to be abusive would always operate at 100% cruelty.

But if someone operates at 100% cruelty, they'd lose supporters and therefore lose the power to be cruel. So they have to operate at a lower cruelty level.

Also, the purpose of the cruelty is to terrify the victim into obedience under threat of more cruelty. So if they're always operating at the most cruelty that they can get away with, then there wouldn't be any room to threaten additional cruelty.

They also want to be certain that they'll maintain their power. If they operate at as much cruelty as they can get away with, they could miscalculate and end up not getting away with it. So they have to give themselves enough leeway.

éowyn pretended to be dernhelm, a man. to fit in, she must have worn men’s armor. so the armor in the illustrations is normal for rohirrim.

therefore, all the rohirrim rode to war just like that:

male or female

hero or villain

sea or land

even in the snow

“I am definitely an ass man. It blows my mind. Talk about simple shapes. Two very simplistic curves. It’s so dumb, but they are fascinating as hell. It’s more than that. It’s the way the rest of the anatomy ties into that area — incredible beauty”

(via bsky)

Each of the lyrics comes from an old-time hickory song for fiddles, and is a lyric from that corresponding song.

"Fire on the Mountain" --> "Fire on the Mountain, run boys run"

Fire On The Mountain - Fiddle Player POV

"The House of the Rising Sun" --> "The Devil's in the house of the rising sun"

House of the Rising Sun

"Ida Red" --> "Chicken in the bread pan peckin' out dough"

Ida Red - Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys

"Granny Will Your Dog Bite" --> "Granny does your dog bite? 'No child, no'."

FTC #149 Granny Will Your Dog Bite

And for your furthered education, The Mountain Whipporwill.

in a time before things like radios and record players, every time you heard music was because there was somebody in the room with you playing an instrument. and many, many, many social events involved dancing, which requires music. so, if you're planning any kind of gathering in the american south or appalachia, you need to find a fiddler. and the fiddler's job is to play music that everybody knows and likes and can dance to.

the mistake The Devil makes in his bet with Johnny is that he misinterprets the contest as being about technical ability, so he has this big flashy song. he plays fast and impressively with a band of demons playing unfamiliar instruments in unfamiliar rhythms. he's definitely more skilled at playing than Johnny, and thinks he has it in the bag.

This episode was a few years later, but I wonder if one of the writers for it hadn't recently read Night Watch:

He didn't do it.

The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.

Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?

Cop 1: "All right! We found the guy who shot that insurance executive at the McDonalds."

Cop 2: "We should search his bag ... for a BOMB!"

Cop 1: "Why would he have a bomb instead of a gun?"

Cop 2: "STFU! And don't bother evacuating the McDonalds for this bomb scare."

Cop 2: "Okay, all I found in his bag was a notebook. No bomb. You take him down to the station. I'll be right behind."

Cop 2 turns off bodycam, makes a stop to meet another cop, and passes evidence between them without a clear and impartial record of what they were doing with it.

Cop 3, at the station: "Let's empty out this previously searched bag and inventory everything in it. Okay, still no bomb, but now we found a gun!"

Even if you take the cops at their word, even if you believe they are being 100% completely honest, the fact that they searched a bag for a bomb, determined that no bomb was in it, but missed a gun means that even Barney Fife would tell them they're goddamned morons.

Timothy Zahn wrote a few more pre-Disney Star Wars novels; I don't remember the Hand of Thrawn pair as being all that great, but I did like Outbound Flight. Death Star was also enjoyable.

The test they're going to be using in 2026, the SRY gene test, is the exact same test they were using in 1992 and 1996.

I asked him which show he was talking about.

"All of them".

Name one. Just one.

"I don't know man, I don't watch TV."

About six months after that he walked up and proudly gave me an answer to that question. "Netflix made Joe Exotic's boyfriend gay in Tiger King."

Okay Jeff, first off - gay and transgender are not the same thing. Secondly, Netflix did not make Joe's boyfriend gay. Him being Joe's boyfriend in real life made him gay.

I'm not sure he ever figured out that Joe is also gay.

Doing a final project in my stats class, we have to pick a subject and collect data on it. We need at least 100 data points, and I figured this blog is big enough that a poll on here could get to that pretty easily!

Doing my project on if it’s more likely to be born in certain months :]

It might be more interesting to go all the way down to individual dates.

Or, in my case, potentially horrifying.