Huh? In all her officially sanctioned art they have four limbs and two wings

I’m not saying bend over backwards. I’m saying ‘everyone involved in war will SUFFER and live horrible lives and be miserable WRETCHES until they die!’ is in its own way just as bad as ‘and after the war everything will turn out SPARKLY and PERFECT with sunshine and unicorns and rainbows!’, just on the opposite end of the spectrum.

The message ‘you’ll have a terrible life and there’s nothing you can do’ isn’t ever a good message to teach kids, I think.

The truth is the human condition is more nuanced than that. From war, you get everyone from Mad Jack, who routinely charged entire enemy camps with his bagpipes, his sword, and maybe one person as backup, complained when the war ended ‘because it was so much fun’, stayed in the army until retirement, then went on to race boats and make radio-controlled model ships; to the grimly determined people like JRR Tolkien who went through the trenches, processed the horror, and eventually moved on from it, to people like General Ulysses S Grant, who never really recovered from the horrors of war and descended into alcoholism.

If children are old enough to be taught ‘war is hell’ in graphic detail, then I think they’re old enough to understand that different people will react to traumatic events differently. I also think showcasing how people can maybe recover from the trauma of war if they seek help is a better thing to teach than a blanket ‘you’re doomed’.

Eeeehhh the ending was a little…

Like, the author said she wanted to make it as depressing as possible to drive home the point that war is bad.

And yeah, I agree war is really, really bad, and plenty of people never really recover from it. But at the same time plenty of people do, and go on to live at least decent lives. Some of them even turn what they went through into something inspiring. I doubt The Lord of the Rings would have been half as good without JRR Tolkien’s experiences in WWI, for example.

I think that exploring both those themes, and what it takes to come back to yourself after the horrors of war, would have been more poignant. And I also feel that perhaps showing a way through that darkness for at least some of the characters might have been better than the message ‘war sucks and since you got involved you’re going to suffer and have a shitty life forever with no possible escape from the pain but death, fuck you’.

Well, the Victorians called it ‘man sitting with his knees up’, but given that they were massive prudes and ancient Egyptians… weren’t, it’s possible it’s exactly what you think it is.

lol yes

That and the idiots that slap those gun decals with something like ‘we believe in the 2A’ or some dumb shit on their trucks. Which is basically just slapping a ‘free guns—break glass’ sticker on their vehicle.

Seriously. That’s like me thinking someone’s dumb because they don’t understand the function of chloroplasts in a cell or something. Not everyone in the world is into your specialty.

Probably about the time people stop sending him AI-generated images, comics, and game demos based on Cepper, Pepper, and Carrot.

Or Alex. Or Tristan.

You should post this in youcantparktheremate

So, you’re saying you want to have an aggressive, screaming match focusing on blame-throwing towards victims instead? I mean, you do you, but I’m pretty sure you could just go to Xitter for that.

For anyone who’s actually wondering, with snakes, ‘king’ is generally used to denote snakes that eat other snakes (like kingsnakes, for example).

Grief is love.

I mean, imagine if your dog died and you felt nothing. The memories will bring her spirit into the future with you.

I did like that one anonymous quote:

It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them, and every new dog who comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are.

OMG can you imagine if people did that though? ‘This person posted about the Dodgers! I hate the Dodgers! I demand that nobody post anything about them ever because I don’t want to see it!’

Even when not grown as a crop, alders, willows, and birches tend to have a more ‘human’ lifespan, around a century or so.

Then on the other end of the spectrum, there are trees like yews, sequoias, and bristlecone pines, which live for millennia.

Editorial Page editor Adam O ‘Neal testified that he doesn’t have a Bluesky account, and doesn’t regularly check social media in the mornings. But he did receive messages from various individuals about my posts. Individuals whose names and identities he then could suddenly not remember.

Sounds like Bezos got butthurt that not everyone was mourning his darling little Charlie lol

The same fantasy world where feeding ducks makes them forget how to eat grass and touching a baby bird will make it smell too much like humans so the parents reject it lol

That one’s got two competing theories. Either from Petre, the Latin word for ‘rock’, or Peter (that is, St. Peter).

One goes that ‘peter’ most likely referred to saltpetre, the main ingredient in gunpowder, which was the explosive of choice in early gold mining. Seems the term ‘peter out’ was first widely used by US gold miners in the 1800s describing veins that had run dry.

On the other hand, there is some colloquial evidence to trace it back further, and to England, and a type of fishing boat called a ‘peterboat’ (which picked the name up from St Peter). Those were long low boats that once oft plied the Thames, and were narrow and pointed at both ends so they could easily go either way in the current. ‘Peter out’ referred to the thin sharp double-taper of the boat-ends.

If we’re going by Stoker’s rules, they can, but can only leave the ship for land at certain parts of the tide.

Those are really nice! I especially like in the first one how you captured the city lights on the water and filled in that potential darker space on the left with the bridge span.

Of course, there’s scenic photography, which is basically having really good composition skills, knowing good locations, and timing, and then there’s people photography, which is… extra. I don’t blame photographers for charging more for that shit lol

‘I want our wedding photos to be the two of us on a cliff at the beach at sunset with really pretty clouds behind us!’ And you’re thinking, okay, drive time, waiting for a good colorful sunset instead of a cloudless or too cloudy or foggy one (always a fun game of roll-the-dice in Oregon at least), and they want their backs to the sunset, so that’s extra lighting (that you’ll have to carry to the location) and extra time in photoshop to be sure you can still see their faces clearly…

Technically yes. It basically just makes your skin crazy itchy for a few days.

The real threat is that in North America, they’re an introduced species, and so have no natural predators. Big infestations can denude large chunks of forest.