#orders of magnitude

[stylistic-nightmare]

Napalm Death - Orders of Magnitude

[a-suspicious-lack-of-bagel]

domain of magnitude: factor of 10^16

kingdom of magnitude: factor of 100,000,000

phylum of magnitude: factor of 10,000

class of magnitude: factor of 100

order of magnitude: factor of 10

family of magnitude: factor of sqrt10

genus of magnitude: factor of 10^(1/4)

species of magnitude: factor of 10^(1/8)

[sffinsiders]

Review: Orders of Magnitude by Yuval Kordov — SFF Insiders

[jingerpi]

Nazi Germany lasted for ~10 years. the US' genocide of indigenous people inspired the Nazis, and we've been at it for ~500 years. 55 MILLION indigenous turtle Islanders were killed by American colonialists. Tell me again why we're arguing over whether or not these bourgeois politicians are 99% Hitler? This country is far worse than the Nazis were even remotely capable of. There are nearly 1.8 MILLION people in Slavery in the United States right now. This country is cartoon levels of evil, and beyond that! it's beyond parody! it's worse than you can possibly imagine. and that's just two examples over the 500 years they've been at this, and they only domestically! Do you have any idea what the ruling class has done in other countries? the war and famine they've intentionally induced from profits? The millions they've bombed? The only country to ever use nuclear bombs! and it was on civilians!

So yes, of course we cry out death to [US]America. Do you seriously not understand how deeply deeply evil this country is? Again:

Death to the USA

[squeakadeeks]

me at work regularly handling extremely lethal voltages and currents

[king-of-men]

I think nonny has a typo - they actually meant to accuse you of not even making 400k. And they got it right! What a loser!

Keep deepthroating that corporate cock and opposing a fucking basic LIVING wage. Probably some incel earning like 40k trying to act like there a hot shot but in reality just some poor loser

1/ I would rather not take your job, you seem far more talented and deserving of that position.

2/ they're*

3/ You were close, but a little bit more than 40k

[inamindfarfaraway]

The Exorcists’ Masks of Virtue

The vast majority of Exorcists in Hazbin Hotel have a notable design element that other angels don’t: their masks are missing an eye. Specifically, the right eye.

I believe this is a reference to the Bible, Matthew 5:29. Jesus says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

He’s being hyperbolic. Mr Free Healthcare was not pro-mutilation. What he means is that you have to be willing to make sacrifices to prevent sin. The context of the eye metaphor is him condemning adultery and warning that even something as easy, casual and small as a look full of lustful intent can lead to further, worse sin if you don’t notice your sin, hold yourself accountable for it and do the work to not let it influence your decisions. This will probably be hard. It could be very, very painful. Changing your perspective can feel as horrible as plucking out your eye, so many people can’t bring themselves to do it. But although it won’t feel that way in the moment, it’s healthier for our general wellbeing in the long run to abandon traits and behaviours that damage ourselves and/or others.

(You may notice that Jesus’s teaching that you can have sinned, redeem yourself by giving up sin and thus escape damnation is the founding principle of the Hazbin Hotel. You may also notice that it contradicts everything the Exorcists believe.)

The Exorcists seem to follow this idea of painfully excising badness for the sake of the greater good devoutly to the point of placing it above teachings like ‘Thou shalt not kill’, with their job being to remove sin, in the form of sinners, to protect Heaven. Hence the missing right eyes. They’re a declaration of moral righteousness and inability to stumble.

But the truth is that the Exorcists all have their right eyes. Their flawlessness is a facade. Underneath, they are untouched, think themselves morally untouchable and, as shown by their horror and outrage when even one of them is killed, would much rather be physically untouchable too. This perfectly represents their complete unwillingness to acknowledge their own faults, let alone improve. They are never the ones who sacrifice. They force the sinners to sacrifice and don’t compensate it with any salvation. They metaphorically rip out the sinners’ eyes, but still condemn their entire bodies as inherently, permanently sinful. So they’ll just have to do another Extermination to get the other eyes! And another one to cut off their right hands! And so on until there’s nothing left.

The only exception to the rule is Vaggie, both in appearance and character. Her mask has the left eye crossed out instead. Even before her expulsion, she’s set apart to the audience as an Exorcist who has the capacity to, shall we say, see a different side of things. Her mask having its ‘sinful’ right eye reflects her understanding that the Exorcist worldview is wrong.

When she almost kills a demon child, her hateful vision clears. She discards the part of herself that’s an unquestioning, merciless agent of death, terror and grief… and as punishment for what Lute perceives as treacherous weakness, gets her eye plucked out.

Of course Lute leaves her with only the ‘sinful’ eye. It brands Vaggie forever as the inversion, a perversion, of what the Exorcists are meant to be.

You know, all this talk of eye removal in the Bible reminds me of another line - ‘an eye for an eye’. Adam directly quotes it in “Hell is Forever”. He uses it to frame the Exterminations as Old Testament-style punitive justice; the sinners did harm and so they receive it. But putting aside the debate about how ethical the concept of revenge is, the entire point of taking an eye for an eye is that it’s proportional. The punishment fits the crime. If someone cuts your eye out, you shouldn’t murder their whole family in front of them and then slowly disembowel them to death. That would be the sin of wrath. You should just make them pay without excessive pain or collateral damage. This is the fairest form of revenge.

The Exorcists don’t do that! The Exterminations aren’t proportional to the wrongs of all they hurt, nor was Vaggie’s brutal punishment equivalent to her extremely mild insubordination. Lute literally takes Vaggie’s eye, and more, after Vaggie does nothing to her! That’s the opposite of the phrase! Adam and his soldiers are wrathful and cruel, deriving satisfaction from others’ suffering. But they just can’t stop going on and on about how disgustingly evil the sinners are, in total hypocrisy… despite some of the sinners being far better people than the genocidal Exorcists are… it’s like they’re obsessed with specks of dust in the sinners’ eyes when they have massive logs stuck in their own. Oh hey, that’s in the Bible too!

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

I'm going to cause you to always get 700% error or more on your labs...somehow

[saints-who-never-existed]

Also, I've seen several people reading about the cut marks to his jaw and expressing a belief that Fitzjames' fellow men consumed his face.

From what I know about survival/disaster cannibalism though, it seems more likely to me that they wouldn't have done so. I've read in the past that in many cases like this, those doing the butchering often remove and discard body parts like heads, hands, and feet first because they're most indicative of humanity.

Essentially, it's much easier to avoid facing the reality of what you're doing if what's before you looks as little like a human and as much like plain haunch of meat as possible.

[st-just]

Today in 'things which I had thought were just universally understood common knowledge' - talking about my current read with some friends, none of whom seemed to know the 'apocalyptic smallpox epidemic which decapitated the government and started a war of succession' bit of how the Spanish were able to conquer the Inca.

[deadpanwalking]

hello, i'm watching one hundred years of solitude thanks to your posts and finding it absolutely captivating. i'm interested to know what you like most about the story if you feel like sharing!

I’ve been completely steeped in the book for well over half of my life, so I’m the worst person to ask about the narrative of the show—when I watch it, my brain slots in the missing context almost as quickly as the input makes its way up my visual pathway. So much of my enjoyment is rooted in how attentively the show replicates Márquez’s visual and sensory descriptions, and how ambitiously it goes about translating the lyrical prose through pacing and cinematography.

[blackkatmagic]

Found an Alpha-17/Padme/Granta WIP that I'd completely forgotten starting and now my brain cannot think about anything else, even though I have negative time to write right now. This is pure suffering.

[sffinsiders]

Cover Reveal: Orders of Magnitude by Yuval Kordov — SFF Insiders

[maeamian]

I've finally found my people: folks who are deeply passionate about the waste of liquid helium. Sorry all you beloved mutuals who aren't into liquid helium you're dead to me now, get interested in cryogenics and we'll talk again.

[squeakadeeks]

im going to be a micro ass

as much as i was frustrated with a number of roadblocks over the past few months like my sewing machine breaking and not being able to afford infinite fabric lol- i had to return to illustrative art and that was a really good thing for my psyche. i think i can say that im like...actually genuinely happy with my art now? i dont want to come off as egotistical but i've always struggled with feeling OK about my illustrative stuff. But after the past few crash course months of daily exercises it feels like everything finally clicked. i can draw easier, faster, and when its done its like "oh yeah. thats my guy. there he is fr."

[anghraine]

I don't know if it's true for most (or any) others in fandom, but I've been thinking about how, despite being a nitpicky and opinionated person, the difficulty of accepting an obviously improbable AU fic premise often depends more on the framing than on the actual premise.

I mean, yeah, there are some premises that are so hard to buy for the characters or relationships that I can't wrap my brain around them enough to read or write the fic. But I've read and written plenty of AUs with premises I don't really find all that believable, and enjoyed them. What makes them typically work for me is a framing something like this:

Okay y'all, I know the premise of this one is out there, and there's a character who likely wouldn't actually do [Thing], but they have to for the story to happen and I tried to keep everyone in character otherwise! If you can't accept [Thing], that's fine, but then this fic probably isn't for you.

me, fairly often: hmm, intriguing situation for this particular cast to deal with! Let's see how it goes; it might be really interesting if it's done well.

There are different ways this can work more or less successfully for me personally (it can help if the break in plausibility is confined to a fairly minor figure to the fic/canon—but I have loved a few fics where my own blorbo is a main character in the fic and is the one who does something I find pretty wildly OOC to precipitate the plot). In general, though, "[Thing] wouldn't really happen but had to for the fic to exist" is something I can roll with as the price of entry. Sometimes it's an interesting challenge, even, to read or write something based on a concept that fundamentally beggars belief and think, "okay but if somehow it did happen, what could I believe of these particular characters?"

Basically, these AU scenarios exist in order to throw one or more characters into a specific situation that might well be vanishingly unlikely or impossible, and the fun is imagining what the cast might then do/think/evolve towards in this unfamiliar, improbable circumstance. Yes, there can come a point where I'm so puzzled or affronted by what's demanded for the proposed situation that I nope out immediately. But I can follow AU premises a fairly considerable ways before I hit that point.

On the other hand, a framing like this?

Okay y'all, I know the premise of this one might seem out there, and you might think [Character] would never, but he's just a man, after all/it's important not to stereotype women as one-dimensional ideals and let them have flaws/I actually see the character as less than perfect/etc, so that's why I made them a domestic abuser/sexual predator/murderer/whatever. It's not really out of character, just a different interpretation!

me, almost invariably: *backs away slowly*