Noscere Teipsum

An oldie, but a favourite.

My evidence: 

Ned is the only other Watchman who is new to the squad, and new to Ankh-Morpork.

He is supposedly the only person who knew the real John Keel, but he never calls Sam out for it. If there ever was a real Ned Coates, and he really knew John Keel, we only have Ned’s word for it.

When he and Sam spar, he fights just as dirty as Sam does, and claims John Keel taught him the tricks Sam uses himself. 

He’s protective of Vimesy, moreso than other Watchmen though he’s known them all for the same length of time.

He is clearly up to SOMETHING; Sam thinks he’s one of the real revolutionaries plotting to overthrow Winder, but none of the other revolutionaries interact with him or seem to know him that I can recall.

When Sam admits he’s a time traveler, he’s unfazed; his question “From how far back?” would make perfect sense as “from how far back in my timeline, where you are my dad?”

He supposedly dies in the last fight, but Sam doesn’t see it, and Sam supposedly died in that fight too.

Lu-Tze is 100% good enough to have two time-travelers operating at the same time without breaking the timeline; he does, however, worry about the unusual strain he’s creating.

So, let’s say an adult Young Sam has a time-travel accident. Possibly after some sort of major falling-out with his dad, one that’s got him still pissed off at him. And now he’s stuck in a vastly more shitty version of the city he grew up in, and the versions of his dad he has met so far are a) a dumb kid and b) kind of a dick. He is not having a great time. He really, really wants to go home, but first he has a revolution to see through.

carpe jugulum / small gods / lords and ladies / night watch

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.

In a book about an overbearing and baffling and misogynist God and the heroes being a ragtag regiment of literal women and monsters, I punched the air on that one. The layers of pun are built up like a millefeuille.

claws? but scales tho?

and so we get, like, kitten climbing Garak’s calf with tiny piton claws and Garak just kind of idly reaching down and scratching its head, “stop that, you’re tickling.”

and cat curled up on Julian (because of course Julian) because he’s warm and Garak doing much the same and Julian just being like fml

and Garak and cat making slow blinks at each other because affection and cat and Cardassian

and also, also cat sharpening its claws on Garak’s scales, like, on his elbow, and Julian looking over in bemusement.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

“It’s a trifle ticklish.”

“God. Ooh, that looks like it’s got to hurt just a little…?”

“I assure you it doesn’t.”

Rrrr, the cat corroborates.

“If she did that to me I’d jump a meter.”

“I honestly do not understand how cats and Humans have managed to peaceably co-exist. There must have been some mistake… yes, my dear, you agree,” and the cat rubs her head against his finger and redoubles her pleasant skritching. “Clearly the Progenitors made an error… you were supposed to be Cardassian, weren’t you… mmm, well, we shall pretend…”

“She’s not a reptile, Garak.”

“Oh, she very nearly is… look at you, yes, you are a heartless little killing machine, aren’t you…”

Brrrrrrrrt, says the cat.

Bashir trying to turn it around, like—

“Mrrrp.”

“Garak *is* very full of himself today, isn’t he, I agree—“

does this serve any purpose other than to make the publisher feel like they're Doing Something, and to help consumers feel like their purchases are meaningful political engagement?

I’m going to tell you about how a discord banner that was put up for pride month in the Lancer ttrpg official discord was so successful at getting bigots to out themselves, that it’s been the permanent official discord banner for 4 years now.

This is the updated version. It’s animated now.

But pride month 4 or 5 years ago, somebody made the server banner a Goblin mech dabbing in front of a trans flag.

And for your average person who joined the server, they just kinda went, lol cool.

For the trans people who joined the server, it made them feel extra safe.

And for the bigots who joined the server? They’d fucking bitch about it IMMEDIATELY. And promptly get banned.

And that month saw so many bannings of dipshits that they decided to keep that banner, because every single time a bigot joins the server, there is a high chance that they will out themselves IMMEDIATELY and be promptly banned.

While including text like this in a book is different than a community space, the reality is, fascists do not like being embarrassed or confronted about their beliefs; they have fragile egos.

So imagine you are going through the book with a group of friends, and you get to this block about “fascism bad,” and somebody is like, “I don’t know how I feel about this. It seems a bit stupid,” it immediately gets to raise a red flag for everybody that maybe this person isn’t, as cool to have at the table as they thought.

Similarly, you know how many bigots went and burned their beers/hats/shoes because some corporation supported trans people/gay people/Collin Kapernick?

This is performative, yes. But it’s not performative to puff up themselves as heroes. It’s performative, aimed right at the fragile skinned assholes who will boycott Oreos and Budweiser for “supporting the gays.”

It’s one of the FASTEST ways to reduce the number of virulent bigots in a community for ZERO COST.

Like, maybe the experience of the lancer discord is atypical, and fascists are learning to have thicker skins and lie about their beliefs better.

It’s still PROFOUNDLY CHEAP AND EASY to include this blurb.

So, it’s free, zero effort nazi repellent.

Frankly with that in mind, I’d regard anybody who ISNT doing this, as maybe a tiny bit cowardly.

It may be atypical but it's certainly not unique. Another example is the Heraldry discord I'm on, with an icon that is animated to switch its original colours and two other versions, displaying gay pride and transgender pride colours.

Bigots join, bigots mouth off, bigots get banned.

Sometimes we get a different flavour of bigot, ones who tolerate us queers but are racist as hell. They tend to out themselves, too, because it's a heraldry server. That fact alone makes them assume that we're all "European culture is best" and other racist bullshit. They get banned.

And that is TACTICALLY USEFUL.

Because game companies spend so much money moderating chat spaces (both forums and in-game chats) and they lose so much business when dominant third party online spaces associated with their game turn toxic. Hell moderation is the big money sink for social media. Managing that cost is one of the most difficult aspects of the business.

Now imagine telling a game or social media executive that you can eliminate half of their harassment in a single honeypot operation. Imagine telling them that you have a technique which surgically targets a majority of their most toxic members and immediately gets rid of them. Because that's what this is.

You slap up a big pride or power banner and an announcement that this company stands with [insert group here], or stands against fascism, and you take names on everybody who has angry or quibbling shit to say about that. And then you ban them all. And just like that the moderation load you're dealing with gets so much lighter. Keep it up with a similar announcement whenever a topical opportunity presents itself and you clean out any new trash which walks in too.

And it just so happens that the way to do this is to clear out the bigots and make a safe space for oppressed groups.

There are so many of these companies which are worried that by taking a stand like this they will hurt their user base. There are so many forums online with volunteer moderators who reflexively don't want to wait into politics because they think that will increase their workload. Give them good solid practical examples of this reducing their workload instead, and you will get some of them onboard.

I am reading Tim Curry’s 2025 memoir, Vagabond

and in it, he not only devotes a chapter to Muppet Treasure Island, but also references this very post

so, to recap

no, Tim Curry is absolutely NOT a Muppet; however