#229 texts

[libidomechanica]

Whose and stand then public ’“tis by that the”

Whose and stand then public tis by that the Tears; puts for they have but her can company. He notes of Hearts, at large. Could prize the wink’d at

that think’st the hole in malice still one of Virgin Mary for he was in a trance, that does their Brains were that, we were I am come.

[risequotes]

Daily Rise Quotes: DAY 229

Meat Sweats: But you... you was a bug.

April: Nah, beef jerky... I'm the swatter.

(Rise of the TMNT: Issue #4)

[textsfromlastseason]

[eleasis20]

Astarion's Gravestone is Wrong

I know a lot of people have seen this reddit post, translating the gravestone

The redditors translation looks correct, but the actual writing on the gravestone is contradictory to the in-world calendars.

DR or Dale Reckoning, the calendar supposedly being used on the gravestone, is the most commonly used calendar in-world. It's also the calendar that states BG3 occurs in the year 1492.

But looking at the translation, there's an immediate error here - the dates suggest that Astarion was born not 200-ish years ago, but 1200-ish years ago. And the date that Astarion adds to his grave also doesn't match the present year of 1492, instead reading as 1020 years ago.

There's nothing wrong with the translation, that's the matching letters alright, but the inscription itself is incorrect.

As pointed out by another Redditor, the most likely explanation for this, is that the devs accidentally used the wrong calendar. In the Forgotten Realms (the universe BG is set in) there are multiple calendars, and DR is just the most popular one to use. Another calendar is NR or North Reckoning, which states the current year for BG3 is 460, much closer to Astarion's date of 468 than any other calendar given.

I write this because I've seen a few people claim Astarion's birth year as 1229, just adding a 1 in front of the gravestone date to make it fit the DR calendar better. But this also doesn't work as that would make him 263 as of BG3, and Astarion repeatedly says that he was Cazador's slave for around 200 years (I believe he at one point specifies under 200, but I can't remember when), not 224 years or 2 and a quarter centuries.

It would also mean that the current year for BG3 is 1468, which is contradicted by multiple texts in the game that suggest the current year is 1492.

So, if we presume that the DR was a mistake, and this is actually meant to be NR, we can translate the dates this way:

229 NR= 1261 DR

268 NR = 1300 DR

468 NR = 1500 DR

Now there's another issue, in that the present day date still doesn't match the given one of 1492. It's 8 years later in 1500.

However, given that 1300 - 1492 is 192 years, and Astarion never gives a concrete timeline outside of around 200 years, I think the last date being wrong can be considered either another slip from the dev team, or an error on Astarion's part as he carves that date himself.

So, the real dates for Astarion's timeline should be:

1261 - born.

1300 - turned into a vampire.

1492 - current date/escape from Cazador.

This still preserves him being turned at 39, but makes it so that he spent 192 years in slavery, and is 231 years old in total.

An in-universe reason for these errors could be that Astarion was originally from the Waterdeep area, where NR is more commonly used, and the Baldur's Gate carvers got confused when making his gravestone. Plus, Astarion has canonical issues with dissociation and memory loss, possibly causing him some confusion over the current year when he carves his addition.

[luxlightly]

Astarion last name and age at death

BIG SPOILERS for the Astarion plotline and romance So, someone translated the text on Astarion's grave and it says "Astarion Ancunin 229-268 DR" Then, his addition of "458DR - "

Which, of course, awesome that we get his last name. But more importantly, HE WAS THIRTY NINE WHEN HE DIED??? Elves reach physical maturity around 25, but are not considered fully matured, emotionally, until ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE. Which means Astarion was BARELY an adult by any standards when he died. No wonder he's so immature! He never got a chance to really grow up.

And, assuming 458 DR is supposed to be the current year, he's been a vampire for 217 years. These dates don't really line up with the other things in game and outside lore that say it's 1492 DR, but it's likely it's a mistake in continuity or translation. Though, it's also canonical that most city-states and kingdoms use different year systems relating to their current monarch or other events so there's often a lot of discrepancy between dates, which could also explain it. In any case, while the exact years may or may not be wrong, we can still probably assume the number of years between them is correct.

Poor guy...

[athymelyreply]

A highly recommended read. Full text of article under cut

On October 7, I was not hiding with my child in the safe room. My house was not burnt to the ground, and my husband didn't blow me a last kiss before his killer fired a fatal bullet.

I was safely at home in London where I have lived for over 30 years when my elderly peace-activist parents, Oded and Yocheved Lifschitz, along with 77 others members of the community, were taken hostage, barefoot and in their pajamas from their homes in the kibbutz where I was born and raised.

Israel's hostages in Gaza: A matter of life and death

Israeli peace activists who lost loved ones in the Hamas massacre stand their ground

What we can learn from released Hamas hostage Yocheved Lifshitz

For the past 229 days, together with the families of the other of hostages taken captive which now number 128, we have taken part in the fight for the lives of our loved ones.

A photo of the writer, Sharone Lifschitz's parents, Yocheved and Oded Lifschitz, who were both kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza on October 7. To date, only Yocheved Lifschitz has returned. Credit: Amiram Oren

In Nir Oz, my family's kibbutz, one in four people (117 in total), were either executed or kidnapped. We are still piecing together the events of that brutal day that Hamas terrorists and some Gazan civilians, perpetrated medieval levels of cruelty, driven by hate and revenge, blinded by radical religious ideology and super-charged with amphetamines.

Last month, at the "Seder in the Streets" event in New York, activist Naomi Klein spoke as if none of that ever took place. Instead, addressing hundreds who gathered for a combination Passover Seder and protest of the war in Gaza, she spoke of what she termed the "False Idol of Zionism", comparing Jewish support of it to the Israelites "worshiping" the golden calf and recalling Moses' rage seeing the spectacle.

Klein's interpretation seems to miss the point: Moses, unlike Klein, did not disengage. He did not give up on his people when they worshipped a false idol. Instead, without compromising his integrity and beliefs, he guided them through the desert for forty more years in their journey to become a nation. Klein, at this dangerous moment in history, is failing to lead her listeners to take responsibility, to engage and work towards a shared future in the region for Jews and Palestinians, one built on the preciousness of life on both sides and an understanding of the original intention of Zionism: the necessity for a safe home for the Jewish people.

"Seder in the Street" was also protesting the heartbreaking and ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank. Many in Israel, like my parents, would agree. Yet their plight and that of the other hostages – most of them civilians, from a baby boy of one year to a man of 86 - are not mentioned at Seder in the Streets or other gatherings of far-left pro-Palestinian Jewish activists.

My father, Oded Lifschitz, who is 83, and his friends who are also hostages, all in their late 70s and 80s, have worked for peace for decades. My mother, Yocheved Lifschitz, was thankfully released after 17 days of captivity.

Yocheved Lifschitz after being released from 17 days in Hamas captivity, in Tel Aviv, Israel in late October. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

How much more effective these protests could be if activists abroad could act as a bridge between the pro-Palestinian movement and progressives fighting for peace in Israel?

Hamas, a terrorist organization which has been systematically stripping freedom, women's rights and democracy from the Gaza strip since 2006 are also strangely left out of the discussion. In fact, I see more criticism of the Hamas attack and crimes from moderate Palestinian voices than from prominent Jewish voices of the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States and Europe.

Klein is instead content in disengaging from Israel based on a distorted idea of Zionism and in so doing offers no solidarity with the moderate, progressive Jews living in Israel and for whom rejecting Zionism is irrelevant at this moment. Whether we like our government's policies or hate them as many do, Israel is home. Just as Canada is Klein's home, whether or not she likes the policies of the Canadian government or condones its mistreatment of its Indigenous population.

I consider myself pro-Palestinian. My family has always fought for a shared future for our two peoples, understanding this key point: our fates are interlinked. My parents have advocated for peace and equality for and with the Palestinians since the 1960s. We have united as a family to protest policies of the current Israeli government we find abhorrent. I wish for the Palestinians what I want for my own people: to live without bloodshed, in their own democratic state, as part of a negotiated two-state solution.

The facts are indisputable to Zionists and non-Zionists alike: There are about 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Jewish Israelis cannot be expected to reject the idea that they can and should have the right to live safely in Israel. Without Israel, where would they go?

Everyone who cares about what's best for the region must strengthen those who are working for a peaceful future. As my father always says, "You make peace with your enemies."

A Palestinian family rides on the back of a donkey-drawn carriage next to damaged buildings in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, in April.Credit: AFP

Thanks to international efforts to formulate a plan for the "day after" the war in Gaza, we are potentially closer to a long-term political agreement to lift us out of conflict than ever before. To help facilitate it, American and European progressives must distinguish between religious fanatics on both sides and those working toward a path of justice and peace for everyone in the region.

We must differentiate the liberal American pro-Palestinian activists from those who justify Hamas atrocities as acts of resistance. The dominant current narrative of the American far left, including the Jews among them, unwittingly aligns with Iran, and with antidemocratic and illiberal forces.

Instead of fostering hate and promoting disengagement from Israel, progressives abroad should help those in the region regain a sense that another future is possible and advocate for a negotiated political agreement that would create a state of Palestine established alongside the state of Israel. It won't be perfect, but it will be a good start.

The work of advocating for a different, sustainable future, must start with a call for the immediate release of hostages as part of a long-term agreement, backed by America and its allies, including moderate Arab states, that has the potential to transform the lives of Palestinians and Israelis by rescuing them from this ongoing tragedy. To fail to do so is to fail not just the hostages and their families, but to throw all the people of the region further into the abyss and undo the inspiring work of moderate forces within Israeli and Palestinian society.

In this, our darkest hour, we ask ourselves, who is our enemy? My enemy is the blind hate that seeks to erase the humanity of the other side. All of us who are horrified by what is unfolding in Gaza should work toward empowering the people of the region to move away from our common enemy. That's not Zionism, but rather the religious fanaticism we have within both our societies – Israeli and Palestinian – that threatens to engulf us all.

Sometimes, I want to shout at the news on TV, to remind people that their indulgent engagement in hatred of one side is so futile, so self-congratulatory. We can do better.

As we bleed and grieve, and in the case of families like my own – hang suspended between hope and despair for the fate of our loved ones, we must seek points of human connection between Jews and Palestinians, we must fight, not against one another, but for a practical solution that dismantles the status quo so that we can all survive – and live in freedom and security.

Sharone Lifschitz is a London-based filmmaker and academic originally from Kibbutz Nir Oz, whose parents were taken hostage on October 7. On Twitter: @Lifschitz_sha

[ms-scarletwings]

Aberrant Fish

Updated November 2024

The first hint many an angler will get of the dark, insidious secrets these waters hold,

and yet, they are the first thing to be accepted as only another flavor of mundane.

The game text calls them grotesque. The fishmonger calls them corrupted. You get to call them a bonus. Rather than fear and revile them, tradesmen will pay a shiny extra penny to add them into their stock. They are gestured to and spoken of, but never truly elaborated on by the townsfolk. They have probably been here long before most of them, and so will be here long after they are gone. They were certainly here before you. Maybe you don’t need their answers, and yet if you are like me, you still witlessly question and keep dredging for more.

Like many things pulled from those cursed depths, they whisper flecks of madness from an impossible voice. What messages do they carry, and what forces do they play vessel to? Are they the lingering embers from a long-extinguished calamity, or are they harbingers of the next one to come?

I believe we have already seen signs of fire with our own eyes- impossible, great beasts that prowl the four (now five) coasts, the dying cult, gibbering fog…. That damned book. These tortured creatures are but another form of the same smoke.

To the question of where they came from, if your fisherman pokes around enough and braves the darkness, he may have already found a response in one of the many obelisks scattered around the map. Specifically, I refer to this.

This would suggest the aberrants themselves are what leaked in through the cracks that the largest of all monsters wants to rend apart? Not entirely, but in part. For the researcher at the Stellar Basin came to her own conclusion I want to factor in.

Her words give credence to the possibility that it is actually those greater beasts themselves at the heart of the corruption. I think she was half onto something, because what if these twisted forms, both large and small, were blooms along the same set of festering roots?

The more dark stones you disturb in the frenzy of your own madness, the more you learn about the age before your arrival, about the islands, and especially about their current guardians. The Mindsuckers- carrion puppet masters given a home, the Basin creature- a spore that miraculously survived its dive to the abyss, and the Serpent- lifeless stone made animate and malicious, all had their creation remembered in great detail by the obelisks. Some hints point that their emergence was rather recent, relative to even more powerful beings, such as the leviathan.

Maybe there are even more unseen horrors far below, blessedly out of our reach, for now. My view is that the malformed beasts are the aimless children of such unfathomable things waiting beyond the veil. With them came its influence, and its corruption, and from them it continues to spread to all life surrounding. The smaller rifts were always a transformative disease upon the harbor’s fish, but with the rise of the new monsters, the sickness runs farther and less avoidably than ever. Whether these aberrant spawn are a gift to the worthy, or another deceptive evil that leads to madness remains left to be seen.

I have given a spotlight to each of these fascinating specimens at the back of Dredge’s encyclopedia, including those found in the Pale Reach and Iron Rig expansions, for further comment, ponderance, and appreciation.

[#104-109]

[#110-115]

[#116-122]

[#123-129]

[#130-135]

[#136-141]

[#142-148]

[#149-154]

[#155-159]

[#160-164]

[#165-168]

[#169-172]

[#173-180]

[#181-187]

[#188-194]

[#195-198]

[#199-202]

[#203-207]

[#208-212]

[#213-218]

[#219-224]

[#225-229]

[#230]

[Bonus I. Night Angler]

[Bonus II. Serpent]

[Bonus III. Basin Creature] (WIP)

[Bonus IV. Mindsuckers] (WIP)

[Bonus V. Unseeing Mother] (WIP)

[Bonus VI. “Narwhal”] (WIP)

[Bonus VII. Gleaming Goliath] (WIP)

[apod]

2024 March 30

Medieval Astronomy from Melk Abbey Image Credit: Paul Beck (Univ. Vienna), Georg Zotti (Vienna Inst. Arch. Science) Copyright: Library of Melk Abbey, Frag. 229

Explanation: Discovered by accident, this manuscript page provides graphical insight to astronomy in medieval times, before the Renaissance and the influence of Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho de Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo. The intriguing page is from lecture notes on astronomy compiled by the monk Magister Wolfgang de Styria before the year 1490. The top panels clearly illustrate the necessary geometry for a lunar (left) and solar eclipse in the Earth-centered Ptolemaic system. At lower left is a diagram of the Ptolemaic view of the Solar System with text at the upper right to explain the movement of the planets according to Ptolemy's geocentric model. At the lower right is a chart to calculate the date of Easter Sunday in the Julian calendar. The illustrated manuscript page was found at historic Melk Abbey in Austria.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240330.html

[libidomechanica]

“Will feeling, I”

Into Yes and for a moon rose within the hung, a Niobean daughter, others are excuses made them onward beautifier, stella, loadstar of infamy: and swore; and tree, then speakes sweetness of yoga and the customs of fantasy, and pray ye die! Winter vittle; fient here with you no song of casque, a cap of pale cheers that may a heart. A city the sun, in the views a horse’ said Juan: should she thou doubt and morning mould, they that she hear smell, compares to speak to me, as o’er, farewell! I will follow by secret power of his guise; warriors the softness of heart. Will feeling, I?

[sighed-the-snake]

Soul Music, literally.

From Kindle page 229, just after Crowley tried and failed to contact Shadwell, and now he's trying to distract himself in his flat.

Image text: Crowley gave up. He tried to read a novel, but couldn't concentrate. He tried to sort his CDs into alphabetical order, but gave up when he discovered they already were in alphabetical order, as was his bookcase, and his collection of Soul Music. Footnote: He was very proud of his collection. It had taken him ages to put together. This was real Soul Music. James Brown wasn't in it.

Image text: INFERNAL TIMES. SOUL MUSIC: Catalogue your collection of Souls?

My first reaction was awwwww babygirl is so bad at being a demon, look at his collection of SOUL MUSIC where other demons collect REAL SOULS.

But then -- Soul Music is capitalized. And listed separately from his music CDs. And it's emphasized that it is real Soul Music. And that James Brown is not in it.

Now I'm like...C-Crowley, is...is the Soul Music people. Did you put people in records like you put Hastur in a cassette tape.

CROWLEY. LOOK AT ME IN THE EYES WHEN YOU ANSWER ME, CROWLEY.

[textpostmemespksp]

Meme #229

(Image description in ALT text, original images below the cut!) 

[stnaf-vn]

Ahoy, There!

We are having our next art/fanfiction challenge over in the Discord. July's Theme: Pirate/Sea Creature! Submit something and I'll reach to it on stream! YOU WILL HAVE TO VERIFY YOUR AGE TO JOIN THE SERVER.

[billiebustup-confessions]

Confession #229

[Confession Text: Fantoccio became my current hear me out😔🤙]

[thatonegayship]

Can…can I also join the BillDip server 😳

I think this one should be good

[dailyanarchistposts]

Anarcho-Nihilism and Informal Organizing

An informal anarchist organization flows like water and takes new forms according to the action it wants to carry out. —Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, Imprisoned Members Cell

Because of the unique conditions of the extermination camps, long-term, formal organizations were an impossibility. What arose instead were informal conspiracies of inmates that had one shared ambition: insurrection. What they accomplished was nothing short of miraculous: the two most successful uprisings to occur in Nazi camps and the liberation of some of the only eye witnesses to the horrors of extermination camps. They did this without political allegiances, without bureaucracy, and without deferring to history’s fabled “ripe conditions.”[225] Although the conspiracies that formed in Sobibór and Treblinka don’t necessarily reflect any sort of ‘ideal nihilist model’, they do resonate with the approach that anarcho-nihilists have taken toward organizing outside of conventional structures. Such organizations as the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF), the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Wild Reaction (RS), and Individualists Tending Toward the Wild (ITS)[226] have played a significant role in the emergence of anarcho-nihilism as a widespread tendency, particularly in Europe, South America, and Mexico.[227] Although this text will not be offering any sweeping histories or critiques of these groups, I will attempt to use their words to briefly explore how it is that anarcho-nihilists have set about to organize themselves.

The CCF emerged in 2008 from a minority incendiary tendency in Greece: anarchists who were interested in autonomously attacking symbols of power but were dissatisfied with the lack of strategy, coherence, development, and perspectives that this level of improvisation and disorganization offered.[228] Without some degree of cohesion, they found, the incendiary tendency “risks fading into the randomness of events and limiting itself to occasional upsurges that lack planning and perspective.”[229] This perennial observation has led many group-weary radicals to rethink the concept of organizing. In one of their later communiques, the CCF reflects on this process in their own formation:

As anarchists, we often distance ourselves from the concept of organization because we equate it with hierarchy, roles, specialization, ‘you must,’ and obligations. However, words acquire the meanings given by the people who use them. As the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, we stormed into battle over the meaning of revolutionary anarchist organization.[230]

To combat a lack of momentum and visibility in their tactics, they took a new approach to organization and began launching attacks under the banner of the CCF, a network of informally organized cells that could conspire together and act with complete autonomy. From the beginning, the CCF placed a high priority on communiques as a way to collectively develop ideas and maintain momentum. Their initial wave of attacks on January 21, 2008 involved twelve bombings and arsons targeted against banks, car dealerships, and a state-run power company. A month later, fifteen more attacks followed (including an arson attack on the Associate Justice Minister’s office), which consolidated their presence as a “stable and coherent collective that promotes the destruction of power and society.”[231] In 2011, the CCF effectively merged with the FAI, an “informal anarchist structure based on revolutionary solidarity and direct action,” that had been working under a similar model since the early 2000s.[232] By that point, the FAI had hundreds of actions affiliated with its name, including the bombings of several European Union buildings, a police headquarters in Genoa, and a courthouse in Rome. Once again, communiques from each of these actions have served as a central medium for the exchange and development of ideas within the nihilist tendency.

The ITS, which emerged in Mexico in 2011 with a bombing targeted at a university’s nanotechnology department, approached organizing in a similar fashion: without “leaders nor commands,” ensuring that “the cells enjoy total autonomy in the attack.”[233] So vitriolic were the ITS against leftist organizations that in 2011 they sent an incendiary package (i.e. letter-bomb) to a Mexican Greenpeace office, declaring war against those who “only seek to reform the system and create alternatives”; who wage “hypocritical campaigns in ‘favor’ of the environment in order to gain public notoriety”; and who posture as being oppositional even though “everything that they defend is invested in the system.”[234] In contrast to the leftist approach, ITS insisted that “the best option to slip away from the system continues to be informal organization, meeting as individuals in affinity or alone, betting on insurrectionalist immediatism and the quality of sabotage, [and] rejecting formal organization.”[235] The ITS merged with a new organization in 2014 called RS, which maintained this informal approach: “RS does NOT have leaders or a fixed and absolute leader, we are NOT an army or Marxist guerrilla group, RS is composed of groups of individuals responsible for our own actions, who act according to their possibilities.”[236] Without bureaucracy, without imposed uniformity, and without appeals to public legibility, these informal organizations have inspired incendiary attacks and networks of solidarity around the world.

One of the aspects of anarcho-nihilism that makes this kind of informal organizing possible is the tactical freedom afforded by its rejection of all inherited programs, moralities, and expectations. It urges us to take ethical decisions into our own hands rather than appealing to any socially governed notions of right and wrong, thus opening up an infinite spectrum of tactical thinking that can more meaningfully interact with the particularities of our unique context.[237] Experimentation, then, takes the place of formulaic thinking in revolutionary struggle: “Rather than organization, then, in the present we might simply speak of experimentation, as the willingness of small groups of people to gamble on these admittedly slim possibilities with absolutely no guarantee of success.”[238] What we hope to find when we open up our field of vision like this is that anarchistic organizing doesn’t have to be a soul-sucking, bureaucratic affair; on the contrary, we might find that “we can organize ourselves, and that this capacity is fundamentally joyful.”[239] An informal organization like the CCF or RS allows space for individuals and affinity groups to act with unrestrained ferocity against systems of domination, while still being connected to a network of people who are interested in similar ideas and who can act in solidarity with each others’ struggles.

The groups that emerged in Treblinka and Sobibór were able to act with the sort of fluidity and tactical freedom that the Sonderkommando nearly surrendered in the presence of a formal, communist organization. Like the members of the FAI or the ITS, their unity as a group came solely from their joint willingness to attack the existing order. Though there is a great deal of nuance and complexity that should not be overlooked, the fact remains that the two most successful uprisings to occur in Nazi concentration camps happened in two of the only camps without formal organizations. This in itself should challenge anarchists and other radicals to deeply question the pragmatic function of organizations in our lives. While formal and sustained organizational methods can be useful for certain goals, we should remember that they are often structurally incapable of working towards moments of complete rupture. What they offer in terms of resources, visibility, and longevity, must be measured against the hurdles they often create between people and their insurrectionary desires. That being said, while the informal organizational methods being experimented with by nihilists are exciting and have clearly facilitated a great deal of incendiary action, they also carry with them inevitable shortcomings and pitfalls, not least of which is the sort of solipsism that results in a Greenpeace office getting bombed. And though informal organizational models may be able to mitigate the problem of collective responsibility, they will never be able to fully solve the problem. Just as the authors of Attentat become paralyzed by the “horror show” that would be required to violently confront the state, so too did the Fighting Group Auschwitz and other concentration camp organizations attempt to navigate the tension between attacking a dominant order and the responses this would provoke. Ultimately somebody along the line is going to have to make shady ethical choices, regardless of organizational model. Thus, while I think that stories of concentration camp uprisings can help us to develop a healthy wariness around the role of organizations, we must also stay vigilant to nuance. There are no easy answers to these questions. Without dismissing (or attacking) every formal organization we encounter, we can continue to experiment with non-hierarchical organizational forms that might facilitate, rather than defer, moments of liberatory rupture.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Found a nifty resource if you ever want to color text on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/skins/229

And here's a tutorial on how to use it: https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/119

I may use this at some point.