beccastareyes - Tumblr blog

[beccastareyes]

Been working in pest control for 3 months now and i can confidently say that nobody on earth seems to understand that sometimes You Will See A Bugs and that's Normal if you live literally anywhere with oxygen

[beccastareyes]

buckaroos know

[beccastareyes]

I understand why a lot of fantasy settings with Ambiguously Catholic organised religions go the old "the Church officially forbids magic while practising it in secret in order to monopolise its power" route, but it's almost a shame because the reality of the situation was much funnier.

Like, yes, a lot of Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages did practice magic in secret, but they weren't keeping it secret as some sort of sinister top-down conspiracy to deny magic to the Common People: they were mostly keeping it secret from their own superiors. It wasn't one of those "well, it's okay when we do it" deals: the Church very much did not want its local priests doing wizard shit. We have official records of local priests being disciplined for getting caught doing wizard shit. And the preponderance of evidence is that most of them would take their lumps, promise to stop doing wizard shit, then go right back to doing wizard shit.

It turns out that if you give a bunch of dudes education, literacy, and a lot of time on their hands, some non-zero percentage of them are going to decide to be wizards, no matter how hard you try to stop them from being wizards.

[beccastareyes]

from one chronically anxious person to another: the world is not going to go up in flames. What happens will be more slow, more bureaucratic, more boring. There is no catastrophe to end all catastrophes, no rapture, no sudden end. You can't give into the call of the void, because there is no void. So you just have to do the work to make tomorrow a better place, anyway. Because that's how it gets better.

[beccastareyes]

"terminally ill people should be allowed to choose to die if they feel it is the best decision for them" and "euthanasia can easily become eugenics" and "we should provide support for depressed and suicidal people" are statements that can come into conflict but should all be respected

[beccastareyes]

I, for one, am happy these actors feel comfortable being loud about how much you and your friend suck. If you’re doing something so against that show as voting for a rapist convicted felon who wants to end democracy, what did you expect? Especially from those women?

Actors being loud about how these assholes are NOT welcome makes fandom safer for a lot more people who deserve to be there.

Maybe your fav actor hating you for your bigoted politics should be a cause for reflection about what’s gone so wrong in your life. You know, if this bothers you so much.

[beccastareyes]

a few years back my car insurance company offered me a discount if i stuck a dongle in my car that would tell them how i drive (specifically reporting hard accelerations and stops), with a base discount of 10% even if i drive like a madman up to 40%ish if i drive like a grandma. and of course naturally my first thought was "huh i bet i could make something running off an Arduino that filters hard brakes and accelerations out of the incoming data stream to get that 40% discount" and i got as far as looking up OBD2 protocols before realizing that that would just be insurance fraud. yes im an engineer raised by two engineers how could you tell

[beccastareyes]

[beccastareyes]

watching @nanowrimo within a single hour:

make an awful, ill-conceived, sponsored post about "responsible"/"ethical" uses of ai in writing

immediately get ratio'd in a way i've never seen on tumblr with a small swarm of chastising-to-negative replies and no reblogs

start deleting replies

reply to their own post being like 'agree to disagree!!!' while saying that ai can TOTALLY be ethical because spellcheck exists!! (???) while in NO WAY responding to the criticisms of ai for its environmental impact OR the building of databases on material without author consent, ie, stolen material, OR the money laundering rampant in the industry

when called out on deleting replies, literally messaged me people who called them out to say "We don't have a problem with folks disagreeing with AI. It's the tone of the discourse." So. overtly stated tone policing.

get even MORE replies saying this is a Bad Look, and some reblogs now that people's replies are being deleted

DISABLE REBLOGS when people aren't saying what nano would prefer they say

im juust in literal awe of this fucking mess.

[beccastareyes]

The duality of man is thinking “children cannot help themselves and we all need to be patient with them as they explore what it means to be human in public” and also “damn, I wish this crying baby was not on the plane rn :/“

[beccastareyes]

“I’m the Labor Day Fairy and I’m here to teach you the true meaning of collective bargaining.”

[beccastareyes]

pls give me 1(one) reason aces have ever been oppressed, and 1(one) example of aces being a part of lgbt history(before 2004 at least) and then maybe i’ll consider the idea that aces belong in the lgbt community lol

[beccastareyes]

Solar Archery Capstone:

Sidereal Archery Capstone:

Abyssal Archery Capstone:

[beccastareyes]

One of the best ways to endear me to a character like Cordelia Vorkosigan who is closer to the traditional action-badass, especially when she is younger, is to show that she relates to other women who don't have her talents and training. Like, Alys is one -- in the chronologically-latest book, Cordelia's grown son mentions that rumors about the family he heard growing up had Cordelia and Alys as lovers, and Cordelia told him 'I'm straight, but they are crediting me with good taste'. I'm also realizing a big theme of Barrayar is that Cordelia recognizes that her action-badassness, despite being considered unfeminine, is respected more by the locals when turned to 'feminine goals' (protect kids), than the local women surviving and trying to achieve the same goals without having grown up in a culture that gave them the training and encouragement to develop Cordelia's skills. Like, it's clear Cordelia respects Alys, and Princess Kareen (the child emperor's mother) as people trying to survive and protect their kids in an environment where most of the power they have is social. And that she's pissed on Kareen's behalf when the men dismiss her collaboration with the coup leaders, when Cordelia (correctly) guesses her motivations are to survive and either find her son or get revenge on his killers.

(It also endears me to an author who, even when depicting a sexist society, shows that women still try to have agency even when their tools are limited. Even Cordelia is willing to use less direct tools: when her husband tells her that they will be the foster parents of the emperor, he was told he had to keep his foreign wife from providing undue influence on the emperor, but that local tradition considered early education as 'the mother's job'. Cordelia was incredulous but delighted that they hadn't realized the contradiction in their two statements.)

Actually even though it’s been a few years since I last read the books I want to elaborate on Lady Alys Vorpatril, Greatest Of All Time, from the Vorkosigan Saga.

Her earliest chronological appearance has her guiding the protagonist of the book in question (Cordelia Vorkosigan, formerly Cordelia Naismith) through the imperial high society that marriage has suddenly thrust her into. Alys isn’t a physical badass like Cordelia is, but she knows her terrain (the social sphere) and she plays it very well. Both womens’ husbands and unborn sons are targeted by a coup (not a people’s revolution, just some other noble guy who thinks he should be in charge instead) due to their relatively close relations to the imperial family (the husbands are cousins through a dead princess) and Cordelia needs to rescue Alys and help her through the birth before getting her out of hostile territory (during all this, Alys is widowed).

Alys then becomes one of the most influential people in the entire empire. She and the Vorkosigans help raise the child who was the only survivor of the imperial family while he grows up and learns to be a very competent emperor. Shes in charge of hosting events and all that entails for the imperial household because (again) there was only one survivor of the imperial family. She is friends with like Every Politician’s Wife. Her son is 4th in line to the throne and has such himbo energy that people keep trying to get him unwittingly involved in treason, but Alys didn’t raise a fool, or if she did she at least managed a politically conscious one, so it never works for any of those people. When the empire’s spymaster of like 30 years retires she ends up marrying him, and they’re compatible because they’ve spent that whole time doing the exact same shit with different people. She is instrumental in codifying trans rights.

Literally the top quote on her wiki page is “Richars Vorrutyer sat right there and informed me that Lady Alys held no vote in Council. The fact that she has spent more years in the Vorbarr Sultana political scene than all of us here put together seemed to escape him.” She’s the best ever.

[beccastareyes]

Note to vacationing non-Americans: while it’s true that America doesn’t always have the best food culture, the food in our restaurants is really not representative of what most of us eat at home.  The portions at Cheesecake Factory or IHOP are meant to be indulgent, not just “what Americans are used to.”

If you eat at a regular American household, during a regular meal where they’re not going out of their way to impress guests, you probably will not be served twelve pounds of chocolate-covered cream cheese.  Please bear this in mind before writing yet another “omg I can’t believe American food” post.

[beccastareyes]

@zahnie i am kind of mad tbh bc now i keep thinking about that leverage/batman crossover and it’s ridiculous. they’re using a charity gala as a way to get into the manor. eliot immediately pegs alfred for former mi6, but he can’t figure out what the fuck bruce’s deal is. something about the way he stands or the way he watches the room or his shoulders or something. “is it not distinctive enough?” “oh, it’s distinctive as hell, i just don’t know what it is”. let’s say it’s older bruce so hardison has to get into a hacker fight with tim. sophie can’t grift bc there are too many rich people who’d recognize her in attendance. parker can’t infiltrate the catering service because they run that shit tighter than the white house (WHY is he so paranoid about his CATERERS what the HELL i’ve seen BANKS less lax about tracking employees than this) so she has to pretend to be a model. that backfires so fast because bruce is so nice and wants to know if she’s okay bc she seems uncomfortable. parker is thrilled when she discovers the house is full of secret passages but that also ends poorly when she turns a corner and bruce is standing there like “hey there, you seem lost”. he’s still wearing the tux and drinking his champagne. he helpfully guides her to the bathroom since she is having such trouble finding it. eliot has a tense standoff with alfred bc this is wayne manor alfred and that means he is like an older, british eliot who’ll shoot a motherfucker. hardison and tim get distracted playing wow together and it isn’t clear exactly how that happened. there has to be at least one scene where eliot and bruce are fighting and the rest of the team just watches instead of doing anything useful because it’s actually kind of really hot. they don’t even really hurt each other so it’s fine. probably fine. just let them keep pinning each other to the floor for a while, it’s fine. bruce has a lot of helpful critiques for nate’s plan that nate does not appreciate. the obvious thing is that they figure out he’s batman but it’s kind of funnier if they don’t and just think bruce wayne is an inexplicable bamf. they’ve all learned a valuable lesson about judging people based on appearances. bruce flirts with sophie and nate pretends not to be bitter about it but he gazes out at the gotham skyline and broods. it’s just what happens when you’re in gotham. it’s a very broodworthy skyline. make fun of batman all you want but you look out at that skyline and try not to brood. you can’t. even superman broods. i mean, he looks like he’s brooding. he’s usually trying to remember if he left the oven on because every time he decides to make himself a nice dinner a supervillain attacks and four hours later his baked ziti is charcoal. it still counts as brooding. nate never stood a chance.