On September 11th 2001, Two Planes Crashed Into The World Trade Centre In New York City. It Was A Massacre.

Dear Neil, I am a horrible person. How to be kinder, please?

Sometimes I suspect we are all horrible people. Or at least, we are human people. Same thing. We are impatient, judgmental, irritating and irritated, grumpy, easily offended and the rest of it.

So how to be kinder if it doesn’t come naturally? 

Fake it. 

Fake it a little bit at a time. 

Because there isn’t actually any difference between doing something nice for someone because you are naturally saintly and perfect, and doing something nice for someone because you are secretly demonic and trying to cover it up. It’s still an act of kindness either way, and you still made their lives better.

Smile at people. Say hullo. Ask about their lives. Remember what they’ve told you about their lives. Do small things to try and help them. (They will not know you are horrible, do not worry. They will just perceive that you are helping.)

Give people the benefit of the doubt. Remember that it’s more often stupidity to blame than evil, that everyone can screw up (including you) and what’s important is learning from that.

Think “What would an actually kind person do now?” – and do that. Don’t beat yourself up when you fail. Just be as kind to yourself as you will be to others – even if you have to fake that.

And good luck.

it’s been said before, of course, but i just love the scene at the end of guards! guards! where the men are offered a reward, and it’s just… vimes hadn’t even considered it, and as to the others – well, vetinari calls it a petty wage increase and a domestic utensil. and a dart board. a hogswatch present, basically, and a yearly raise.

the sort of thing you get for being a decent employee of a boss who vaguely appreciates you: five extra dollars a month, and a dart board. oh, and we’ll replace the lost kettle.

vetinari expected them to ask for a reward that matched the heroism of their deeds, and was completely taken-aback by the pettiness of their request, but that’s the point: they did ask for a reward that matched, to them, the heroism of their deeds. because they weren’t Heroes. they were just some guards who thought it was wrong that a fine lady was going to be sacrificed. who believed that the city wouldn’t stand for feeding one of their own to a dragon. who, when left without supervision or leadership, said well we might as well try and got on top of a distillery to shoot an arrow in a million-to-one chance that maybe they could do something about it.

and a lot of that is carrot’s inspiration, but it’s also worth noting that colon and nobby are repeatedly shown to be the quintessential men of the street. in later books, vimes asks them how they feel and what they think to get an idea of how the city is reacting to the events at-hand, because they represent the common people of ankh-morpork. 

and these two common people, out of shape and cowardly and bumbling, just a couple of guys – when the new recruit says it didn’t ought to be like this, and says, what are we gonna do next?

these two common people say, well what the hell, let’s give it a try. the city, the people, with no one left on their side but themselves and the dragon crowned triumphant, look to one another and decide to try.

and to them, that isn’t heroism, because it’s… just common. they’re just people. they’re just doing what people do.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around Men at Arms.

It's a fantastic book, but it is also so different from Guards! Guards! in tone. And maybe that's where the key is. It's not that the villain of the story is perhaps one of the most proficient killers in all of Discworld (all two and a half of them... D'Eath, Cruces, and The Gonne) and their goal is to actually kill. It's not even that the crimes that the watch are investigating are murder, because even though paid assassinations are legal death and murder are part of the setting. Death is literally a character here, though much more briefly than G!G!. Frankly, I don't even think it's because of the racial allegories.

The tone in Men at Arms is different because the first one to die is a clown. Because Pratchett literally killed the joke (the entire thing and all of its subsets). There's nothing funny about a clown funeral, the dogs are the biggest allegory for racial issues, a gun really is evil, Cuddy literally draws the short straw. It's all literal. Everything is extremely literal. For once, Ankh Morpork isn't a joke. For once, the city feels like a city. And it's the book where Carrot, the most literal character there is, becomes a man (literally and in every sense) and takes his mantle of leadership.

Everything in Men at Arms is literal. Because the villain killed the joke to death and it was the shining moment for Carrot to step up.

There's also an extensive running bit that even the silly construction of the silly, courtesy of Bloody Stupid Johnson, is actually stupid. Within the narrative itself, the book is calling itself out. It is saying that this absurd veneer that we have found ourselves on is just that. This city was built on itself, on its own bones, on the the bones of empires--fueled with the blood of many. The architecture beneath Johnson's flawed works, the aqueducts and sewer systems below the city, are vast and strong and powerful--maybe even beautiful. But they're dangerous. The past is incredibly dangerous. Even Carrot, whose potential is very much rooted in the past of the city, is dangerous. His victory is not one I expected in the moment it came. The line about how you must hope that whoever is looking at you from the other end of their weapon is an evil man... Was harsh and true and honestly a little frightening for a story which also contains a scene where a sentient rock man chucks a dwarf through the skylight of Schrodinger's pork warehouse to save both of their lives.

Perhaps this puts the rest of the book in context as well. Especially the things that made me cringe when I read them. Like everything about Coalface, Angua being included in the story because she was a woman and every book needs at least one (preferably one that can leap over a building or deadlift a draft horse), the high school clique-ificarion of all the guilds, Vimes talkin to the nobles after dinner and almost letting himself believe he could be like that (even though he ends up laying into them with some excellent biting sarcasm), Vetinari not being in control and not realizing it. It's all very real, but real like a real serial killer in real life and not a crime drama. Maybe even real like a normal guy in a costume with their mask off.

Maybe not.

It's not a perfect book (which bites, because G!G! was nearly there), but it remains a very intentional book. I feel like less people have read it than G!G!, and I can see why. It's messier, it's not as funny, there's a lot more allegory and it's a lot more blunt.

But it's still extremely topical (sadly). I retain my opinion that it may be one of the most important books I've ever read. And I'm beginning to understand, finally, why.

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

Weapons from Celtic Myth

Celtic myth is wack, and the weapons are some of the weirdest stuff out there, so here’s a short list of my faves.

The Gae Bolg- The spear of Cú Chulainn. If you wash it in a stream before use and throw it from the foot, it extends barbs down every blood vessel in the victim’s body. You don’t remove the spear from the corpse so much as clean the corpse off of the spear. Very nasty.

The Spear of Lugh- This thing is so bloodthirsty that if you don’t keep it immersed in a bath of blood while it’s not in use, it’ll burst into flame and consume the blood of everyone nearby. Fortunately, if you don’t have enough blood to fill a bathtub, poppy juice will do.

Claíomh Solais, the Sword of Light- has seven edges. Emits blinding light.

Caladbolg- the sword of Fergus MacRoích. It leaves a rainbow trail when you swing it, and once lopped the tops of three mountains when Fergus missed a strike.

Fragarach, the Answerer- A sword that can cut through anything, inflict wounds that never heal, control the winds, and prevent people from lying when it’s pressed against their throat. That last one may not be a magic power per say.

Excalibur- You think you know it, but those basic boring Athurian Legends you’ve read don’t show off its best powers. In Welsh stories, this thing burns out the eyes of its wielder’s enemies, and cuts through anything that isn’t enchanted like a lightsaber.

If you know any others, feel free to add them!

The U.S. Midterms are Tomorrow, November 8, 2022

If you're eligible to vote in the midterms already and haven't yet, make a plan for how to go vote tomorrow.

Know your polling place and when it opens and closes. Know the rules in your state and at your job about taking off from work to vote. Be prepared to wait in line.

And then go vote!

Where do you get your modern war and foreign policy news? Trying to figure out what's happening in with Turkey and Russia from a a strategic point of view but I can only find pieces from the big news outlets bogged down with unrelated politics and iffy knowledge on the subject.

In no particular order:

Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Defense One, The Cipher Brief, Brookings, RAND, Center for New American Security, Brookings, War on the Rocks, The Strategy Bridge, The Diplomat, School of Advanced International Studies, The Soufan Center, Divergent Opinions podcast, among others. Some of those require subscriptions, some do not. You might also want to look for the experts that are employed in places like RAND or Brookings for the AOR you’re interested in.

Thanks for the question, Luke.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

How To Tell If A RWBY Character Is Sharing Their Body With Another Soul

Their reflection fails to reverse when the other soul is talking.

Remember Volume 4? Oscar notices something wrong with himself in the mirror just before Ozpin makes himself known.

Here's Oscar initially looking in the mirror, and not seeing anything wrong:

And here's the exact next shot, directly before Ozpin speaks:

Notice how the pockets on his arm and chest fail to switch sides, to be a reverse image like mirrors project, in the second image, but not the first.

Okay, maybe it was a goof in that second shot. It doesn't prove anything.

Here's some images from The Lost Fable with properly reversed reflections:

And now here's Ozma 2.0, just before and during his host asking him what they're doing:

Notice his lock of hair has failed to reverse in the reflection. It's swept towards his left-hand side in both.

Now, this is not foolproof. Not reversing a reflection is a very simple animation mistake to make, as we can see in Volume 7 Chapter 3:

Though, admittedly, Blake is metaphorically a person with two souls. Beauty and Beast in one person, symbolising the struggle between who she is and the person Adam wanted her to be. So maybe it's not a mistake? After all, she is the person who introduces us to the concept of people with two souls...

So, anyway, why do I bring this up?

Well, a lot of people have been discussing Cinder looking sad in her reflection in this week's episode:

Only, as a post by @witch-of-the-world has pointed out, her reflection has failed to reverse.

Now, this could easily be an animation mistake. Place a transparent model of Cinder behind the glass, fail to reverse-image it, easy mistake to make.

And, I mean, where would Cinder even get a second soul from? It's not like anyone was merging souls with the Fall Maiden powers just as Amber died-

Oh.

Both Salem's forces and even Lionheart have repeatedly said that that Ozpin's reincarnation this time around has been much faster than usual. The process usually takes longer.

So, to answer the question, why does Cinder look sad in her reflection?

And we're what? A year out from the Fall of Beacon, as opposed to Oscar's six months?

And there's just... little things that have left me and others suspicious. Her use of spears at the Attack on Haven, knowing that hurting Weiss would hurt Jaune, bringing up the Destiny line out of nowhere in Volume 6, the sheer amount of parallels between Ozma and Pyrrha (even using the same effect for their final deaths), the fact that Cinder's outfit looks kinda inspired by Pyrrha's...

So, to answer the question, why does Cinder look sad in her reflection?

I think there's a small chance that it wasn't Cinder in that reflection.

“You clap for us now.”

— Britain’s immigrants and children of immigrants who are key workers 

Credit: created by Sachini Imbuldeniya