sophierathmannwrites

[sophierathmannwrites]

"I asked chat gpt–"

Well I asked HEX and the response was "+++?????+++ +++Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.+++". Worth considering.

[sophierathmannwrites]

[sophierathmannwrites]

Some PTerry quotes that feel especially salient at the moment:

"He asked you to shoot at people who weren’t shooting back,” growled Vimes, striding forward, “That makes him insane, wouldn’t you say?”

“They are throwing stones, Sarge,” said Colon.

“So? Stay out of range. They’ll get tired before we do."

- Night Watch

Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.

- Jingo

It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was “policeman.” If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.

- Snuff

The poor devils. They thought a king would make them free.

- Feet of Clay

Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say “we’re the good guys” and do bad-guy things. Sometimes the watching watchman inside every good copper’s head could use an extra pair of eyes.

- Thud!

[sophierathmannwrites]

Mustrum Ridcully (the Brown, but never to his face), Archchacellor of Unseen University, is literature's best and most astoundingly successful wrong man for the job.

Some context is important. Before ascending to the highest level of leadership within the Disc's premiere magical establishment for learning, the position of the Archchancellor was filled by whomever had successfully assassinated the previous occupant. The quickest way to move up in the world, literally speaking, was to make sure someone else dropped by an average of six feet. Of course, this led to a lot of power-hungry madmen who were convinced they could control the Forces Man Was Not Meant To Know, many of whom died with remarkably similar facial expressions when they were inevitably proven wrong.

Then along comes Mustrum. Unlike many wizards, he is an outdoorsman. He is loud. He is physically strong. He is a mountain man in a pointy hat who believes in keeping rare species rare by hunting them (and everything else he meets along the way). He is a sportsman and, generally, considered to be exhausting by the rest of the faculty.

He is also, seemingly, impossible to dispose of by the usual methods. On top of everything else, Mustrum Ridcully is a very powerful wizard. By the age of 27, he was a Seventh Level Wizard (out of Eight), and that was quite some time ago. Still, in a building of magical Oppenheimers and Einsteins, he is Theodore Roosevelt; loud, boorish, and utterly unmovable.

He has a one-track mind, and on that track runs the Ridcully Freight Train. He can focus like the sun through a magnifying glass when he wants to. He is not Stupid, but he can be a bit Daft. He would fight to the front of the line to push the button labelled 'Do Not Press, Ends World' before the paint can dry. As such, he can occasionally end up in situations no self-respecting Dumbledore or Gandalf would, but no one with half a brain would mention such things aloud for fear of being brought along on his next hunting trip or fishing expedition.

He mostly concerns himself with University affairs, taking particular glee in any legal motions a given idiot might attempt to bring against it. They have a whole pond full of people who have tried to sue the University, you see. But he also understands that the wizards, in order to be left to their own devices, should leave the world to all of the other devices.

Rare are the times when Ridcully NEEDS to step in to save the day. In fact, he never actually DOES so in any of the books. Certainly, he helps out. Does a thing here or provides a bit of information there. Despite this, however, there is never any doubt that were it absolutely required, Ridcully COULD end basically any conflict in the books with a pocket full of fireballs (9 times out of 10, anyway). That he does not, and that no one ever asks him to, speaks to the wisdom of the man and the face he shows to the world.

All the previous Archchancellors would have demanded to shape history and show off their power, you see. And they did.

But compared to his peers and especially previous holders of his job, Mustrum Ridcully is an extreme outlier and total oddity, but he is also the only Archchancellor of the UU to hold to job for more than one book. Obviously, it was the other Archchancellors who were wrong.

And Mustrum Ridcully is certainly the wrong man for the job. Here's hoping he keeps it forever.

[sophierathmannwrites]

^YES

when people like your OCs it is truly one of the best feelings ever. but when they also UNDERSTAND your OCs??? When they say or do something that just makes you go "oh they get it." UNBEATABLE.

[sophierathmannwrites]

#Discworld #discworld #terrypratchett #gnuterrypratchett #yesalloftheaboveareaccurate #youshouldreadthem

Describing Terry Pratchett’s books is difficult. Someone asked me what the book I was reading was about, and I had to tell them it was about banking and the gold standard, but like in a cool way with golems and action. 

 I don’t think they believed me.

[sophierathmannwrites]

I think the most important takeaway from Sunrise on the Reaping is that. There’s a loss in implicit submission. In being passive, you give power directly to the other side. You help them by not acting.

And, on the flip side, there’s power in any kind of rebellion. Even rebellion that’s not noticed, or that fails. Every failed rebellious act is a step towards a successful one, even if no one knows about it. The Capital hid Haymitch’s acts of rebellion, and he failed; but Katniss only became the Mockingjay BECAUSE of the groundwork laid by Haymitch and the others for many, many years. She was used as the spark to light the flame that had been brewing for many, many years. Your small act of rebellion may not have an impact now, but it’ll contribute to that tipping point

[sophierathmannwrites]

Well, it’s finally finished.  It was a genuinely satisfying project. I present you Ankh Morpork in the guise of Google Maps.

[sophierathmannwrites]

The Jurassic Park book has no right to be this fucking good

[sophierathmannwrites]

[sophierathmannwrites]

“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”

-Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)

[sophierathmannwrites]

No matter how progressive or well-read you are, there are always going to be moments in your life where somebody pushes back against something that's so culturally ingrained you never even considered it before. And you'll say "Huh, it never occurred to me to challenge this but you're right" and that doesn't mean you were "morally toxic" before, it means you're a non-omniscient human capable of growth.

[sophierathmannwrites]

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

[sophierathmannwrites]

Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping? (Celeste Davis, Oct 6 2024)

"White flight is a term that describes how white people move out of neighborhoods when more people of color move in.

White flight is especially common when minority populations become the majority. That neighborhood then declines in value.

Male flight describes a similar phenomenon when large numbers of females enter a profession, group, hobby or industry—the men leave. That industry is then devalued.

Take veterinary school for example:

In 1969 almost all veterinary students were male at 89%.

By 1987, male enrollment was equal to female at 50%.

By 2009, male enrollment in veterinary schools had plummeted to 22.4%

A sociologist studying gender in veterinary schools, Dr. Anne Lincoln says that in an attempt to describe this drastic drop in male enrollment, many keep pointing to financial reasons like the debt-to-income ratio or the high cost of schooling.

But Lincoln’s research found that “men and women are equally affected by tuition and salaries.”

Her research shows that the reason fewer men are enrolling in veterinary school boils down to one factor: the number of women in the classroom.

For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied.

One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition! (…)

Since males had dominated these professions for centuries, you would think they would leave slowly, hesitantly or maybe linger at 40%, 35%, 30%, but that’s not what happens.

Once the tipping point reaches majority female- the men flee. And boy do they flee!

It’s a slippery slope. When the number of women hits 60% the men who are there make a swift exit and other men stop joining.

Morty Schapiro, economist and former president of Northwestern University has noticed this trend when studying college enrollment numbers across universities:

“There’s a cliff you fall off once you become 60/40 female/male. It then becomes exponentially more difficult to recruit men.”

Now we’ve reached that 60% point of no return for colleges.

As we’ve seen with teachers, nurses and interior design, once an institution is majority female, the public perception of its value plummets.

Scanning through Reddit and Quora threads, many men seem to be in agreement - college is stupid and unnecessary.

A waste of time and money. You’re much better off going into the trades, a tech boot camp or becoming an entrepreneur. No need for college. (…)

When mostly men went to college? Prestigious. Aspirational. Important.

Now that mostly women go to college? Unnecessary. De-valued. A bad choice. (…)

School is now feminine. College is feminine. And rule #1 if you want to safely navigate this world as a man? Avoid the feminine.

But we don’t seem to want to talk about that."

[sophierathmannwrites]

“This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.”

— Richard Powers, The Overstory

[sophierathmannwrites]

People have no idea what time is. They think it’s a line, spinning out from three seconds behind them, then vanishing just as fast into the three seconds of fog just ahead. They can’t see that time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died.

Richard Powers, The Overstory

[sophierathmannwrites]

“Property and mastery: nothing else counts. Earth will be monetized until all trees grow in straight lines, three people own all seven continents, and every large organism is bred to be slaughtered.”

— Richard Powers, The Overstory