#245 texts

[libidomechanica]

Into abstracted; madly dressed

Into abstracted; madly dressed.     Sex is fool, white start and the soldier’s loud groans of oure both     the Lady of Shalott.

And whist. To common I had know     and never arose from those region where she caught me force,     or closed eye—the excess,

and his bigamye, or snake, must with     his face. They had hang’d by elves, poor fools; he cheat, if I had     been a coltes tooting.

Because I wolde han daunted. I     feel theaters rich, a quiet, turtles passion’s being,     and widow. Lo! Shedding

I thrown; each pleasureless little     glance—like a fiery night, when drugs were your ear. The     sea. Or that she went land.

Tombs I built, persistent scent birds.     First time of your tost, and line and even her Nature was     but the follows white fog.

[risequotes]

Daily Rise Quotes: DAY 245

Donnie: Metamorphosis, that took an unexpected left turn!

(Season 1, Episode 5B - Mascot Melee)

[morethanwonderful]

There's something so striking about the way that, to hear Rose talk about it, knowledge is always a source of doom and destruction. The aspect of Light is a source of horror to her.

Rose writes a novel as a child about a group of kids who are driven to commit atrocities because they obtain forbidden knowledge. She later suspects this novel was in some parts a prophecy of both the trolls' session and the winning party that enters Earth C. At thirteen, Rose blames the end of the world somewhat on ignorance, but even more on the actions of those few that know the truth. Those few being first and foremost herself and her friends. They doom the world because they know of the oncoming meteors and play Sburb to escape, thus perpetuating the thing that summons their doom in the first place. She even later describes her Ascension as, once again, an over-abundance of knowledge.

Rose is utterly fixated on the narrative of youths causing destruction because they learn too much, and she cannot stop applying that narrative to herself and her friends.

Even more striking, the first mention of this theme, Rose's GameFAQs walkthrough introduction, comes almost immediately after John escapes his meteor and enters the Medium. He does this by biting an apple, which is almost certainly a reference to the garden of Eden story. He's banished from paradise and blissful ignorance forever because he eats the fruit that sends him to the Medium—the fruit that grants him a forbidden knowledge.

It's almost like, as much as it's obviously catered to John, the image of John's cruxite trial is also designed to fit into Rose's worldview as she watches him. John's story is all about the loss of innocence, but Rose's is all about the price of knowledge, and the price of knowledge is both the closing note of Act 1 (John's apple) and the opening note of Act 2 (Rose's view of the apocalypse in her walkthrough).

[raamitsu]

WELLLPPPPP even Higuruma says it himself lmao

[frost-felon]

Sometimes, you must laugh nervously when you're waiting to see new chapters after catching up, and your friends immediately try to get your attention regarding the latest chapter, as it comes out.

[break-upclub]

lol wut. complaining

[nothingstudios]

Dear god something happened to me

[transjarlaxle]

i cant even update cuz the battlenet launcher logged me out LMFAO

[anachronisims]

Catch You on the Flippity Flop!

a TS2 traits expansion

by @anachronisims (sufficeittosay) and @cityof2morrow

Part 1: New Traits!

What you get: 16 new trait object files for your personality diversity pleasure. Most of them are opposites of existing 3t2 traits that didn't already have them. One is just because :)

Big Spender (opposite of Frugal)

Black Thumb (opposite of Green Thumb)

Can't Carry a Tune (opposite of Virtuoso)

Climate Denier (opposite of Eco-Friendly)

Difficulty Reading (opposite of Bookworm)

Dislikes Animals (opposite of Animal Lover)

Dislikes Cats (opposite of Cat Person)

Dislikes Dogs (opposite of Dog Person)

Dreamer* (the intersection of Ambitious and Absent-Minded)

Generous (opposite of Mooch)

Homebody (opposite of Adventurous)

Minimalist (opposite of Gatherer)

Nudist (opposite of Never Nude)

Slow Learner (opposite of Genius)

Sweet Tooth (just because)

Terrible Cook (Natural Cook)

(*) I know @lilbabydilljr released a Dreamer trait already as part of the hidden/scrapped TS3 traits collection, but I wanted to change the flavor text and concept of it. My spouseman is a real dreamer-content-to-dream and I felt the TS3 scrapped version was too close to Ambitious. So @cityof2morrow made a different icon for it, and changed the GUID as well because Dill's conflicts with HB's simlife goggles. However, the file name is the same as Dill's and will overwrite it.

ETA: These are traits objects that WILL appear in your catalog in Gen/Misc. They are NOT added to the traits collection file as I don't use it. Feel free to do so yourself, of course.

What's coming next: Updates to existing traits mods that are plausibly affected by these traits (plus some personal preference tuning). Check out the to-do list here. Suggestions welcome and encouraged! Anyone who would like early access as a beta tester, please let us know!

Credits: @hexagonal-bipyramid for the original 3t2 Traits Project, @moocha-muses whose Dylan's Black Thumb got me thinking about this becoming realer than flavor text, and the whole inspiring TS2 simblr community whose appetite for traits mods keeps me going!

Download at SFS

Updated Feb 18 2024 at 245 EST (US) to fix an issue with thumbnails/catalog appearance.

[blue-thief]

LMAOOO when the ch 245 came out, the first summary said ch 246 would be titled "pervert" and everyone thought it was gonna be about shidou. NOPE. the term "hentai" was meant to refer to isagi and kaiser 😭😭😭

the text on the left says "hensoku-hentai shisutemu". the current summary translates it as "an irregular-abnormal team" which WOULD be a correct translation considering the context. but tbh my first instinct would be to translate "hentai" as "pervert" lmao. WHATEVER KAISAGI HENTAI IS (technically) CANON

[libidomechanica]

By human shade, of being one chaste

Thy earth. We’ll go no more. Or else fortune   at all? I arises from its masters   off parade, made so fashion,—the force, when thoughtful years, and he and the real, as your labor and universes ceased that Lady   Adeline’s Castlereagh? By human   shade, of being one chaste. But love shed? When of my great little Leila, with the skill vines to re-teach from a scheme that it   were to peeping, she order’d weed, of saying,   and if I could reconcile him sallowed. And, since had spark up: is it to Elenor, weak in. Cutting locked the voice   broke and fetes, and go to be! Oh, didst   thou to pad, howe’er he musk that moral end that lurking blush rebuk’d her homage.

[cosmicswan]

manifestation instant results:

guys i cannot make this up, so last night i cant sleep, i ended up sleeping at 4 am and i found this manifestation audio on my youtube timeline. i usually cannot sleep without background noise so i put it on and didn’t think much about it. the video was 11 hours long and i didnt even finish it.

when i woke up i genuinely forgot about it, then at 7 am my mom randomly texted me asking for my bank account details and sent me like $50.

not long after my dad sent me $15 without any notice whatsoever. and i usually get an allowance from my mothers inheritance bank every month at random dates and i get it TODAY for like around $175 i kid you not i listened to the audio paying no mind to it, i just liked the way it relaxed me enough to sleep and even forgot about t it after.

in total i got $245 for less than 8 hours after listening to it. here’s the link if you want to try it

and here’s proof of the results

[my-deer-friend]

Play along: Amrev codebreaker!

While browsing through some primary materials reading up about John Laurens’ mission to France as special minister to the court of Versailles, I came across a letter that he wrote to the president of the Continental Congress on 9 April 1781 that included a coded message using a numerical cipher. 

I took a shot at deciphering it – here’s the process I followed, and you can play along too!

1. The first step, of course, was to determine which specific encryption was being used. After a bit of digging, I came across the immensely useful United States diplomatic codes and ciphers, 1775-1938 by Ralph E Weber. He explains that the cipher in question was “prepared on separate encode and decode sheets, the latter contained 660 printed numbers, with usually 600 words, syllables, and letters of the alphabet scattered randomly throughout the sheet.” So, for example, the word “congress” is “143”, the syllable “el” is “593” and the letter “r” is “215”. This cipher was an updated and improved version of the one used by Benjamin Tallmadge, and Weber explains that Laurens was the first one to use it. Weber also handily provides the decode table in an appendix. 

2. The second step was to design an efficient way to decode the hundreds of numbers Laurens used in his letter, and the obvious answer was my good friend the spreadsheet. I transferred the table from the book to Google Sheets, which was mildly tedious but hugely time-saving later on.

3. Now the fun part! I typed out the numbers from Laurens’ letter, and then used a simple LOOKUP formula to match the number to the decoded text.

The cipher also includes two nuances - an underscore beneath the word means a plural, and an overscore denotes adding an “e” - so I marked these in the cells with pink and green highlights respectively.

4. The final step was correcting a few errors in my table, refining the decoding (some numbers have various iterations to save space, such as 103 which can be any one of “ec/eck/ek” depending on which syllable is needed), and extracting the final text. 

It all reads very smoothly, with the singular exception of “ght-f-t”, which is the way Laurens rendered the word “gift”. The obvious explanation for this mangle is that he mis-wrote 340 (ght) instead of 170 (gi).

That’s definitely 340, 304, 196 which decodes as “ght-f-t”.

While it seems like a strange error to make, bear in mind that the encoding sheet (the one Laurens was using to change plaintext into numbers) would have been listed in alphabetical order to make finding the numbers easier (while the person at the other end has the sheet in numerical order, to reverse the process just as easily). And when we sort alphabetically, we can see that 340 and 170 are right next to each other:

A simple slip to make for someone writing coded letters late at night in low candlelight.

If you want to play along:

Here’s the code/decode spreadsheet. 

And here is the transcribed text (underlines for plurals, asterisk for added “e”). I've given the solution under the cut!

I have employed the most unremitting efforts to obtain a prompt and favorable decision relative to the object of my mission_ 381, 304, 543, 437, 366, 377, 276, 75, 75, 226, 269, 385, 426, 377, 17, 465, 197, 481, 428, 593, 381, 355, 153, 278*, 428, 333, 70, 18, 405, 184, 226, 291, 197, 376, 524, 330, 446, 362, 449, 143 The Count de Vergennes communicated to me yesterday his most Christian Majesty's determination to guarantee 381, 59, 594, 18, 9, 205, 330, 497, 254, 401, 376, 503, 306, 503, 467, 428, 226, 236, 330, 278*, 245, 205, 506, 99, 376, 381, 381, 256, 184, 90, 340, 304, 196 ...and the value of the military effects which may be furnished from the Royal Arsenal, 418, 330, 497, 428, 197, 380, 377, 196, 376, 45, 278, 245, 205 I shall use my utmost endeavours to procure an immediate 467, 208, 491, 18, 278*, 9, 205, 45, 278, 42, 381, 230, 215, 355, 18, 237, 330, 497*, 215, 167, 290, 377, 376, 341, 278, 182, 302, 75, 376, 59, 594, and shall renew my solicitations for the 357, 34, 197, 18, 203, 291, 491, 481, 484, 34, 325, 89, 113, 392, 197, 269, 336, 458, 278*, 97, 18, 245, 205 may not be 126, 21, 215, 497, 376, 341, 296, 75, 477, 226, 103, 196, 481, 278*, 483, 215, 553, 75*, 18, 238, 377, 59, 374, 478, the providing this article I fear will be attended with great difficulties and delays as all the 476, 490, 481, 36, 228, 351, 392, 226, 197, 18, 237, are remote from the sea, and there are no 441, 420, 50, 563, 503, 197, 18, 377, 59, 278, suitable to our purposes. The cargo of the Marquis de la Fayette will I hope arrive safe under the convoy of the Alliance_ 481, 341, 78, 465, 75, 426, 408, 596, 115, 76, 376, 174, 196*, 291, 103, 197, 75, 75, 184, 226, 197, 281, 5, 171, 278*, 428, 593, 381, 355, 492, 194, 236, 376, 45, 574, 408, 504, 366, 381, 506, 197, 197, 193, 213, 75, 197, 199, 291, 377, 197 The Marquis de Castries has engaged to make immediate arrangements for the safe transportation of the pecuniary and the other succours destined for the United States_ 481, 350, 215, 167, 450, 196, 376, 34, 381, 75, 473, 376, 76*, 458, 278*, 72, 208, 449, 577, 114, 89, 405, 486, 497, 197, 113, 126, 34, 361, 376, 269, 278*, 277, 291, 104, 381, 113, 278*, 401, 230, 408, 550, 552, 342, 291

Have fun!

I have employed the most unremitting efforts to obtain a prompt and favorable decision relative to the object of my mission_ after many discussions, difficulties and delays with the details of which it is needless to trouble congress.

The Count de Vergennes communicated to me yesterday his most Christian Majesty's determination to guarantee a loan of ten millions to be opened in Holland in addition to the six millions granted as a gracious gift.

...and the value of the military effects which may be furnished from the Royal Arsenal are to be deducted from the six million.

I shall use my utmost endeavours to procure an immediate advance of the ten millions from the treasury of France to be replaced by the proposed loan,

and shall renew my solicitations for the supplies of the ordinance and military stores on credit that the present of six millions may not be absorbed by thousands objects and the purchase of necessary clothing

the providing this article I fear will be attended with great difficulties and delays as all the wool and manufactories of France are remote from the sea, and there are no

public magazines of cloth suitable to our purposes.

The cargo of the Marquis de la Fayette will I hope arrive safe under the convoy of the Alliance_ and by satisfying our immediate necessities prevent the delays above-mentioned from having any disagreeable consequences

The Marquis de Castries has engaged to make immediate arrangements for the safe transportation of the pecuniary and the other succours destined for the United States_ and has repeatedly assured me that the naval superiority which will be established on the American coast the ensuing campaign

[raamitsu]

OKAY EVERYONE 👏🏼 THATS A WRAP 👏🏼

What do you guys think about the chapter?

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Ok, something has been bugging me about Dain and his signet, and I want to talk about it for a second.

I was thinking back over Fourth Wing and Iron Flame to see if there were any moments where Vi consented to having her memories read, and not only was the answer no, somethig HELLA chilling popped up when I went back to check the text.

When Xaden explains to Vi that Dain has to touch someone's face to read their memories, her response is "...that's how he always touches me" (Fourth Wing, 450). I get that Dain's signet is secret and he can't just TELL Vi what he can do when he catches her immediately after she crosses the parapet, but one of the first things he does in that scene is take her chin (Fourth Wing, 32) in his fingers. He establishes a pattern of behavior, normalizes his touching her face as a habit. And yes, it could be argued that not touching her face would also give away his signet somehow, but as the person with knowledge, Dain is responsible for the ethics of using and setting patterns around his signet. He either had to just...NOT touch her face, which child be justified by not wanting to make her look weak or come clean. But Dain "my heart is a rulebook" Aetos does neither. And what does THAT do? It puts Vi in a vulnerable as hell position with someone she thinks she is safe with.

Even take the rebellion and Athebyne out if the equation for a sec. Vi almost certainly has memories that are just simply private. Not a massive secret, not a liability, just HERS. And for a huge part of the book, she is just letting Dain touch her face, potentially opening up memories she doesn't want him to know about to his signet. That is a power dynamic so absolutely fucky that I don't have words for it. And then we circle back to the reality that Dain did cross the line and try to take memories by force in Fourth Wing--and succeeding the one time we know about got Liam and Deigh killed. And this is just the main example that we know about. I'm not ruling out that there were other examples still to come to light; we have three books to go in this series.

I honestly also wouldn't have put it past Dain to do a quick memory check when he holds Vi's face at threshing before he kisses her (Fourth Wing, 191). He was NOT happy with Xaden for interfering, and I suspect he wanted a look at what happened without Xaden's input. This is purely my theory, there's no real textual evidence, but I am sus. He also cups her face again the day after threshing (Fourth Wing, 203), which is actively a worse choice I'd he slept on it and THEN checked her memories. I also find it wildly suspicious that the next time Vi sees Dain, she is with Tairn, who actively threatens Dains life if he comes within arm's reach of Vi (Fourth Wing, 215). We know Tairn knew things Vi didn't, so was he already preventing rebellion info from sliding to leadership?

Vi herself doesn't put a hard boundary on the face touching until Dain gets offended by Xaden accusing Amber of violating the codex and goes "gimme" (Fourth Wing, 244-245), but she sets it...for a while. The math on the Athebyne thing works out to Xaden telling Vi that's where he goes on page 391, and then Violet Goddamn Sorrengail gets nostalgic for Dain at the celebration with the king and everyone's parents and let's Dain cup her cheek again on page 405. Which is really goddamn tight timing when you think about it, because he touched her face at the beginning of this party, she and Xaden have their little tete a tete on the parapet, sneak off to have great sex for the rest of the night, and the next morning they are assigned to Athebyne. So Dain literally had to corner his Dad at the party and then Colonel Aetos probably spent the rest of the night changing the war game assignments and setting up Xaden's group to be killed.

Dain Aetos likes hard rules, but not ethics. This just gets even more screwy in Iron Flame, once Varrish gets his hooks in Vi.

If one wanted to be more generous than I'm feeling, one could say that Varrish was being polite about trying to get Dain to read Vi's memories in interrogation class (Iron Flame, 228-230), but honestly the motherfucker just saw an opportunity and rolled with it. And here is where Dain having the codex shoved far enough up his ass that it comes out his mouth is actually a win, because he rules-lawyered the spirit of the codex to refuse an order, but goddamn it was a close thing. This man was REACHING FOR VI'S FACE before he stopped himself.

I'm not like...surprised that Varrish isn't teaching our boy ethics, but I'm a little surprised Vi never called Dain's ass out for his lack of ethics regarding his signet. It's possible I read the Arrows of the Queen trilogy a few too many times though.

What Dain noticeably doesn't do the SECOND time Varrish drags him into an interrogation session with Violet is hesitate. Like he so fails to hesitate that VARRISH of all people has to remind Dain that he actually was taught ethics (Iron Flame, 316).

I think he deserves to experience everything Vi shows him, but the fact that it took THAT MUCH to get his head out of his ass? Yeah, no, we are not doing a Dain Aetos redemption arc.

Because when it comes right down to it, Dain was a) a shitty friend, b) absolutely godawful at ethics and morality, c) to married to rules for his own good, and d) knowingly put Violet in a vulnerable situation vis a vis his signet. Like...its a WAR COLLEGE. You're not running around touching people's faces on the regular anyway, just DONT. TOUCH. HER. FACE. Not before she knows about your signet at the very least, and probably not without her explicit consent after that, because here's the thing: at no point in Fourth Wing or Iron Flame did Dain EVER explicitly ask permission to touch Vi. He just DID it. Right from the beginning, after parapet, at threshing, and at the party, he just put hands on her without asking. And then in Iron Flame he's ordered to explicitly against her will, and as much as I love a good rescue, it does not excuse the massive ethical and consent breaches that have become a PATTERN with Dain.

So those are my thoughts about Dain, his signet, and ethics. All I can say is, I am still extremely not here for a Dain Aetos redemption arc.

[textpostmemespksp]

Meme #245

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