#learn ordinal numbers

[udable]

Learn Ordinal Numbers 1 to 100: Fun & Easy Guide for Hindi and Urdu Speaker | Udable

[incorrect-mtg]

The Argent Etchings teach no fear

Fez Xa'ktiz knew no fear as he stepped through the omenpath, even though it was the first time he would be in a world not his own. He was the First Vanguard of the Choir within the Seven Hundred and Forty Eighth Expedition Force of the Alabaster Host and through his lips the song of the Mother of Machines would be spread, her presence was always with — within — him.

Fear was a weakness of the incompleat, of those not yet blessed by the light of Phyrexia, not yet held in the sweet embrace of the Mother of Machines, not yet baptized in ichor. It was the inevitable result of imperfection and lack of unity, something that would soon be eradicated through their work, where the entire multiverse would find purpose and belonging.

Fez Xa'ktiz was not born to feel fear, he was born to sing. He was not born to be alone, he forever heard the whispers of the Mother of Machines, the guiding force of his own voice.

"In the Argent Etchings we each learn our appointed duties and so we understand our purpose" he heard the Mother whisper within him, and so it was with delight that he fully crossed the boundary into a nameless world.

As the rest of the Expedition Force stepped through the omenpath behind him — alongside a number of members of the Chrome Host — he did a first survey of the site of their arrival. Although the Machine Orthodoxy held knowledge of countless worlds, eagerly gathered in preparation of the events now unfolding, there were countless more about which they had known little to nothing. He had been trusted with charting one such world, hence the presence of the Chrome Host, and so any insight would be beneficial.

The most noticeable aspect was the material of the walls that surrounded him — organic, disgusting wood — and then the realization that they had, indeed, arrived in a room. A large hall, rectangular in shape, its dark and stained walls covered by peeling and roting paper and littered with assorted objects that might have long ago implied a living presence. At the each of the most distant ends of the hall, flimsy doors hid the rest of the world from sight.

Curious... although the Mother of Machines guaranteed that their feet would find stable ground to cross on arrival, he thought it unlikely for said ground to be in a building, much less an abandoned one.

His duty was not to ask questions, however, unlike the members of the Chrome Host that had immediately set upon their given task of setting up observation devices, scanners and other such contraptions. Typical of apostates who saw observation of their surroundings as a better path to perfection than the much more enlightened learning through the Argent Etchings themselves.

"In the Argent Etchings we see the world as it should be, and so they light the path towards perfection" whispered the voice of the Mother of Machines again as he turned towards his fellows in the Alabaster Host. Unlike their Gitaxian counterparts, they had organized themselves single file, silent and waiting for orders. Sixteen divisions of sixteen soldiers, each led by another Vanguard of the Choir, the perfect ordination for the forces of Phyrexia.

Fez Xa'ktiz opened his mouth and let ring the song to which he had been entrusted, its metallic shrieking and undulating depths shaking the walls around them at the same time it gave the soldiers purpose. As each member of the Choir echoed in delightfully rending harmony, they set out to do their work. The forces split in two and moved towards each door, followed by quickly assembled Gitaxian probes. As both doors opened into new halls, each splitting off into different directions, the Host split up further into smaller forces, until finally each division pressed on individually, mapping out the path that they took and noting all other paths they missed, which would likely be explored by the drones the Chrome Host was sending off.

Although not able to see through their eyes, the resonance of their singing allowed Fez Xa'ktiz a measure of understanding of the surroundings each division passed through, which let him see that whatever building had been unwittingly chosen as the landing spot of their invasion was still large enough that none of their forces had arrived at an outside. Odd, although not beyond the realm of possibility — perhaps this place was a crude and disgustingly organic facsimile of the Fair Basilica, an entire world brought within a greater structure — and something that would definitely be worth noting.

Of perhaps equal note was the first living being found within the plane: a moth, its gray fluttering wings carrying it through the doors and right by him. Perhaps it had sat in a hidden alcove, and the passing forces had awoken it? How serendipitous, then, that it had been drawn by the light of the omenpath right towards them.

Bringing forth a hand towards the insect, Fez Xa'ktiz was delighted to see it land upon his claw, its wings closing and antennae fluttering as they regarded each other, black eyes meeting perfectly polished ivory... This creature, insignificant as it might be, would be fitting first initiate for this world. A moth reaching for the light and finding its own perfection upon arrival.

Extending his tongue, he let it be cut by one of his sharp fangs, black ichor dripping through the wound. Leaning his head down, he let it drip directly onto the moth until its gray wings turned black. Surprisingly it had no reaction to such a treatment, even though he knew compleation was supposed to be — meant to be — a painful process.

"Weakness burrows deep in the flesh of the incompleat. It bites down and refuses to let go. Their first step towards perfection is to extricate it and bleed out its rot" taught the Mother of Machines, even though the vermin on his claw seemed to defy such clear teachings... Until the entire thing came undone, breaking apart like petals falling off a dead flower.

Perhaps... Perhaps it was simply too weak. If someone — something — was wholly comprised of weakness, how could they remove it without ceasing to exist entirely? Yes, that made sense. To react in pain, to shake and twist and cry, one would need parts of themselves to remain, the parts that weren't corrupted by weakness. The insect likely had nothing to offer and so could not even muster a reaction.

He put the moth out of his mind, focusing on more important matters: one division had finally met living beings to oppose its passage. Not insignificant vermin, but actual fighters charging directly at them.

The walls rumbled and shook as Fez Xa'ktiz increased the volume of his song, the lessons and tactics etched in his mind echoing towards the legions of soldiers now finally seeing battle. Like the beasts of the Hunter Maze, warriors seemed to come out of the woodwork, their rusty and jagged weapons doing little and nothing against perfect phyrexian soldiers-

No, that wasn't right... The walls, they had not shaken due to his song, had they? Or had they? He didn't understand why it mattered, but he would swear that they shook first, then he had intensified his singing...

"The enem- even some of our al- see meri- ception- crush- overwhel-" murmured... The Mother of Machines? Why could he not hear her clearly?

He sang louder still, certain his voice would reach all members of their force — be it Alabaster or Chrome — and through the omenpath itself to the Mother of Machines. In the echo of his song, he would find stable ground-

His next step — had it been a step forward, towards his soldiers, or backwards, towards the omenpath? — found nothing but empty air, the wood underneath him rotting and opening into an abyss.

He quickly spread his wings, trying to stabilize and go back to where he had been even as he was spun around by gravity and air resistance, until his body met the ground with a loud crack and roaring pain and his consciousness left him.

When he woke up, one of his wings broken after taking most of the force of his fall, he did not know how long he had laid there. It could not have been long, certainly, for the Chrome Host would have certainly sent a drone to retrieve him given enough time — shameful as it might have been — and yet he laid alone, the silence of the room cut only by a dripping sound.

(Why was he alone? Why could he not hear the voice of the Mother of Machines)

He looked around, taking stock of the room and how its smooth white walls were almost as beautiful as those of the Fair Basilica, except instead of being made of ivory they seemed covered by... Wax?

His gaze finally fell upon his remaining wing. Rather than being bent out of shape like its counterpart, the limb has been spread behind and to the side of him, and was covered in the same material that covered the rest of the room, already in the process of solidifying. Another drip, directly onto it, served as confirmation.

To fly back with a single wing would prove a challenge, but with two wings damaged it would be impossible. Furthermore, if he was to be forced to drag himself up the hole he had fallen through, the weight of the wax would simply make things harder. Without hesitation, he pushed his claws under the material, right where feathers met wax: Even if some of it had dried already, the ichor that would pour through the wounds would close them quickly, he was certain-

That certainty lasted only until the pain — beyond what he had ever felt, ever knew could be felt — spread from his wing as he pulled the wax off. This- this wasn't normal. He-

The liquid that poured out of his wounds, where wax had pulled feathers and skin and bones alongside it, was not ichor.

It was red... Why was it red?

"What foolish prey, that wanders into an open maw thinking themselves the predators" whispered the Mother- no, this was not her voice. These were not her words.

The walls surrounding him rumbled once again, so hard it seemed the entire world was shaking, before stopping. Then again, before stopping, repeating, stopping, and on and on and on.

As Fez Xa'ktiz laid alone, his wounds bleeding a liquid that should not be there, he knew that the rumbling was certainly the consequences of battle: the Mother of Machines must have heard his last cries and sent forth more soldiers to tame this accursed world.

And yet a small part of him couldn't help but fear that the rumbling felt like a delighted and cruel laughter.

[nc-vb]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐙𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐔𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐬, oo. 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐳𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐫

Time is not prejudiced. It gives and takes as the ordinance of life sees fit. Time begets loss and fear, but it also spawns warmth. After centuries worth of time having passed for you, you learn that time also sires impatience, and does not wait for a lost soul to find their way. Time carries on, and flows likes the current of a river. Ironically, so, too, does blood.

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 • jing yuan x reader, blade x reader, dan heng & reader (no pronouns used this chapter)

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 • 18+ (mdni), no explicit smut but suggestive & insinuative; partially beta'ed.

𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 • can be read as a gn!stand-alone fic! • extended lifespan reader; reader is the records’ master for the Seat of Divine Foresight; allusions to ptsd. • this chapter is introductory and is meant to be vague toward the true plot... the real story begins in the official first chapter. • this originally had a different title, "it ain't the heat, it's the humility" before being reformatted for the series.

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 • seat of divine foresight npcs, yanqing

𝐰𝐜 3.1k

zephyr -> a soft, gentle breeze.

𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 • 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬' 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 • 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞

It didn’t matter where you’d tried taking refuge. Your apartment, or your friends’; the streets of the Luofu, or the various fountains littering them; the Exalting Sanctum’s new little dessert parlour with the delicious ice treats, or the sparse number of trees along the way to it. Shelter is far and few, you’d been quick to learn, and none of them with enough of the protection you’d been hoping to find since two days ago when the heatwave began.

It’s hot. Too hot. Too hot for your thoughts to thread themselves into proper sentences whilst on auto-pilot. No, it takes your entire conscious focus for you to even complain about the heat, and even that works up a sweat. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting, you remind yourself as another thick bead of sweat rolls down your neck and into your shirt. So gross. No matter how many cool showers you’d taken that only had your water bill racking up in dues, no matter how popsicles you’d indulged in, or how many times you’d stared at one of the public fountains in longing and wished it could be a public pool, instead, there’d still been no means to an end when it’d came to such brutal weather.

In your many decades of life, you don’t recall it ever being this hot aboard the Xianzhou Luofu. Perhaps the Sky-Faring Commission might have a little historical insight on record temperatures, but putting your curiosity aside, looking into something like that to try and distract yourself from the current temperature? The thought exhausts you.

This only leaves you with one other option, one you’ve left as your absolute last resort, one you know will free you from the pain and suffering plaguing the Luofu and instead, tethering you to another kind of pain— returning to your post within the walls of the Seat of Divine Foresight, where the cooling system had shut down due to overheating. When it did, you conveniently disappeared without a word. Now that it’s fixed, really, you have no excuse to not return to your post.

It’s just unfortunate that it’d dawned on you two days later, the fact that you never told anyone there, including the Arbiter-General you worked directly alongside. You didn’t tell him, either, that you’d abruptly chosen to go absent without any official leave taken on account of the weather.

How does he do it? Those thick, tight clothes, that heavy armour, his thick, heavy hair— in this heat? He must have been suffering, too, you realize much too late. And I left my post and all of my work for him to… Crap.

Your pace quickens, your agility proving surprisingly capable today as you weave in and out and around the crowds littering the Exalting Sanctum until you’re finally able to break into a run. Why is it so busy today?! Why are they all out in the sun?! Are they insane?! Have they all collectively been struck by mara?! Go find shade or shelter! Maniacs! Get out of my way!!

“Chiyan!” you shout from the other end of the dock, not only startling the messenger of the Divine Foresight, but the patrons passing behind you.

Chiyan huffs, shaking his helmeted head at you as you approach.

“And here I thought you’d quit,” he dares to muse during your heat-inspired bad mood.

Nearly gasping now, you tug at the neck of your shirt to puff air down it. “I do not have the energy to tell you off right now, so move it.”

“Yeah, I bet I can guess why. You look…” He just shakes his head again. “Anyway. You’ve got great timing.”

“T-The cooling system is working again, right? That was true?”

“Should’ve placed money on that bet,” he grumbles. “That’s right. The Seat of Divine Foresight is back to its former, air-conditioned glory.” He steps aside. “Please, after you. Go on— go enjoy working in comfort, and out of this heat.”

You nod once, extremely curt with the gesture, and without guilt when you speak your farewell.

“Yeah. I will. See ya.”

For decades, you’ve said this, sworn this, but after the hell you’d gone through over the past fourty-eight hours, you now promise to never complain about the colder seasons, nor take for granted the refreshing chill they brought aboard the Luofu. You can simply throw more layers on then, but in the summer? Not like I can peel off my skin to cool down.

The noise of relief you make upon the doors of the Seat of Divine Foresight shutting behind you is loud, borderline obnoxious, and, if your coworkers were any kind of honest about it, downright pornographic. They quickly avert their eyes and return to their work and their conversations before you can catch their stares.

The difference between the temperature of this room versus even the hallway leading to it is painfully staggering. It seems like they’ve chosen to completely divert the path of the cooling system to the main chamber, you note, glancing up and around you. It’s probably only until they can fix the entire system, but it looks like even the employees of the smaller offices are working here today.

To your disappointment, so is the General. And it’s your bad fortune that it isn’t his usual hologram self.

Despite being on the complete other end of the room, he notices you right away, and the two of you lock gazes. His conversation with Qingzu ends with an abrupt raise of his hand and a brief apology— she bows away, descending the staircase to join Yong Hai and Yong Nian.

I suppose it’s time to play it on thick, you think, before clearing your throat with a harsh cough.

“General,” you call out in exasperation, voice echoing across the hall as you exaggeratedly stagger past the guards with a wave of greeting. “Generaaaaal.” They bow in return, a little too low to be considered a normal sign of respect for someone in your modest position, until you hear a snicker slip out from under one of their helmets and realize they’d been trying to hold in and hide their laughter. You pause, lips parting as if to speak, but you keep in character.

“General Jing Yuaaaaaan.”

From his spot atop the helm, Jing Yuan smiles small and sweet at your dramatic, child-like display put on just for him— the fact that the rest of the chamber gets to experience it for themselves today makes them lucky, as there are only two instances where you, the Divine Foresight’s - normally - dutiful records’ master would display yourself like this. The first instance is just this— you’ve done something wrong and at the very least, you know what it is and are now hoping that sucking up to the boss will help you work it out. The second instance? The circumstances aren’t so different. But it takes place in the privacy of your shared abode, instead of his office.

Your trudging across the floor of the massive strategy-slash-starchess board is squeaky, the soles of your shoes catching on the smooth tiling until you reach the General.

“General Jing Yuan,” you whine, still bothering to salute to him. “It’s hot.”

He chuckles, tucking his arms behind his back as he moves to descend the staircase closest to you to reach you.

“I figured that could be the only explanation behind your sudden disappearing act,” he says, still smiling. “Two whole days you were gone! Imagine my surprise when it’d been Qingzu to tell me of your absence and not you.”

You, you easily infer of him, My partner. Not just my subordinate.

You’ve heard from other outworlders and their testimonies that relationships between mortals in comparison to relationships between those with extended lifespans greatly differ. The flow of time is easily the heaviest hitter— average mortal lifespans range between eighty to one-hundred years old. As life expectancy goes for most those aboard the Xianzhou Luofu, each calendar days’ time differs, too— mortals, Foxians, and those native Xianzhou all have different clocks that tick within them.

Being on the "older" side of the spectrum of age immortality, you tend to fall into dissimilar habits, as opposed to the ones your aging friends do, such as forgetting to send a message back to someone, or informing them of an absence?

Unfortunately, this is why the Arbiter-General still smiles at you, why his response had been just barely teetering on passive aggressive. You know you haven’t heard anything bad from him yet, that the only reason you’ve yet to be chastised as a repeat offender is because the room remains full of other Divine Foresight employees. To the General, you aren’t just one of his most trusted allies. You’re also his lover. And to not know where and not hear from his lover even once within fourty-eight hours after existing together for so many years, you realize that you’d be agonizing over it, too.

Immediately, the act drops, your eyes widening down at your feet.

Oh, god. That’s definitely so much worse than me not saying anything as his subordinate.

“Jing Yuan.” Lip pinched between your teeth, you look to him and muster as much of an apologetic look as you can. “I’m sorry.”

A dark eyebrow raises at you inquisitively. “For?”

You bite back a huff—you already know what for. So, you decide to list everything but what he wants to hear.

“For disappearing without a word to anyone. For not requesting time off first. For not finishing my duties before leaving. For abandoning my post for two days.” To hide the smirk that’d begun to twitch onto your face at the sight of his expression growing more and more stolid, you bow your head, similar to the guards at the entrance to the chamber. “I’m sorry, General.”

He hums, and not thoughtfully. Strangely, you no longer feel his eyes on the back of your head, and by the time you raise it to find out why, you see him stalking back up to the helm.

His timing couldn’t be more perfect when a loud, mechanical groan suddenly sounds throughout the room.

“Ah!” Jing Yuan exclaims, seemingly agreeing with your wordless sentiment— he peers down at you where you stand steeping in your petulance. “The second stage of the cooling system must have kicked in. Friends,” he calls across the hall. “I do believe you should be able to return to your original chambers now; no need to linger and loiter around here any longer. In fact, how about you all take an extra break today? Starting now. A gift, on account of this weather, of course.”

Thanks and bows of appreciation are quick to be thrown to the helm where the Arbiter-General stands; unfortunately for you, your coworkers have never been ones to stare a gift horse in the mouth, and flee out the doors as quickly as they’d earlier arrived. Maybe you had no trouble playing with the General, but they’d wanted no part whatsoever in it— the look Qingzu throws over her should at you as the last person to leave confirms this.

Ah. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so petty, after all.

The sound finally settles into a dull hum, barely noticeable over the doors to the chamber slamming shut.

“Those were a lot of apologies,” Jing Yuan points out. Looking to the helm, you find him wearing a perfect poker face. “Are you sure you didn’t miss a couple?”

You sigh at him, hands on your hips now.

“You already know that I did, and you know that I did it on purpose, too.”

He matches your attitude with the crossing of his arms.

“And?”

“… and I’m sorry if I made you worry by not telling you where I’d gone,” you mumble.

“What was that, dear?”

Your cheeks burn. “I’m sorry if I made you worry. I didn’t mean to not tell you. I know that with this whole… Stellaron thing, you might’ve been busy. I didn’t want to distract you by telling you I wasn’t feeling well.”

“______. I’d want to know if you got even a paper cut.”

You can’t help yourself when a laugh bubbles up and out of your throat.

“We both agreed that we wouldn’t let things like this affect how we perform our duties, right? This is a perfect instance of that agreement; I asked you to set these boundaries with me for a reason.”

“Reporting on our well-being is much different than perhaps sending the other a picture of what we ate for lunch.” He scratches at his chin. “Although, I did want to send you what I had for mine today. I would have liked to have shared it with you.”

“Jing Yuan…” Quickly, you clamber up the steps to stand before him. “I love you with every fibre of my being. I promise not to do something so thoughtless like this again, but please… I need you to properly honour our agreement. I don’t want to have to afford anymore missteps in this lifetime. Not after… no… I-I can’t. Never again.”

To either side of your face, the General’s hands rise, claiming them in his cool palms. You sigh, your own coming up to hold them to you.

“You were on the front lines for a long time, ______,” Jing Yuan reminds you. “Even before the incident. And when we live as long as we do, the memories won’t simply fade away with time.

“I understand how you feel, exactly how you feel. And when I say to you what I am about to say, please know that I don’t wish to diminish or dismiss those feelings, either.” He thumbs your cheeks, pulling you closer into him, lips ghosting the crease between your brows and smoothing it down with his affection. “Even when I don’t hear from you, you are always on my mind. And for as long as we’ve been together, that has never changed. If you ever find yourself burdened by those feelings, I wish to share the load with you. Paper cuts and all.”

“Even over something as silly as my impromptu two day vacation…?”

“Fu Xuan did mention there’d been a nice breeze over at the Divination Commission, last I spoke to her. If only my love didn’t forget about me in their search for some shade… Surely, I could have invented some reason to send you over there…”

“Ah, so a guilt trip and not a work trip, then, huh?”

“No, not at all.” You shoot a playfully disapproving glance to the man. For a moment, he simply stares back, his one unshielded eye sparkling with obvious mischief. Little warning is given when he steps toward you again, hands reclaiming their rightful place at your waist. Fingers curl into the loops securing your belt and tug your hips to meet his.

Your cheeks instantly heat at the contact, at the knowing glance he dares to send you at such close range.

“You know,” he says, breath fanning your face. “We could always try building up a different kind of sweat— you know. To take your mind off the heat.”

Jing Yuan doesn’t give you a chance to answer, instead sliding his one hand from your side to curl beneath your right ass cheek and hoist you up into the air. Instinctively, you’d raised your legs to curl around his middle as he’d turned to carry you toward his seat. If this is my punishment, I accept it gratefully and gracefully, you think, almost dizzyingly.

“That break you sent the others on was more for you than it was for them, wasn’t it?” you ask him, hand curled around his neck as he lowers you onto the cushion. Without missing a beat and with a single hand, Jing Yuan’s fingers are deft to remove your belt and unbutton your trousers.

“Naturally, they assume their “dozing general” merely wants to take another nap…” He taps your thigh, encouraging the lift of your bottom. You shift your weight into your palms and rise, and he removes your pants to rest around your ankles. “… or that I’ll be reprimanding you.”

“I suppose it’s a relief that they’re aware you don’t pick favourites around here. Well, the exception being Yanqing. He’s everyone’s favourite, after all.”

“Not yours, I’d hope?”

“Definitely mine.”

“And why not me?” Still hovering above you, he bends over to nose at your throat— you shudder, unable to stop yourself. “Considering how I have you… and how I’m about to have you. Tell me that I’m not your favourite?”

You scoff lightly at him, even when he presses kisses deep into your throat, strong against your jawline, and gently against your lips.

“W-With how long you insist on teasing me like this…? W-Who likes a hot dinner served cold—” you’re cut off by his tongue prodding against your lips; you part them, eagerly, hungrily, the joke about eating somehow making the craving to have him have you even stronger, more obnoxious the more he makes you wait.

He is barely gentle now, showing little restraint in how his tongue plunders the inside of your mouth. Jing Yuan is a giver and a taker, of pleasure and of oxygen— your gasps are sharp, not being given a chance to breathe, a chance to win whatever battle he’d entered with you. “Jing Yu—” the butterflies that swim in the pit of your stomach are traitorous in his repetition; they know how good he makes you feel, strictly in the way he takes your breath away with each kiss, each suckle and swirl of his tongue around yours, each stroke of his calloused hands sliding to grip the fat of your thighs, and they make you weaker and weaker with each ministration.

With a final swipe of his wet muscle across your spit-soaked and kiss-numbed lips, he draws away, eyes lidded and panting.

“G-General Jing Yuan,” you rasp almost chidingly. Your hand is quick to brace him away from you; he chuckles at your weak attempt, instead returning it to where it once kept you entirely upright. You huff, every inch of your skin flaming and dewy with a thin layer of sweat. I just finally cooled down, too…

“You’re going to need that there,” he tells you, rising to his full height. He tugs on his own trousers to give them a generous amount of slack before kneeling down before you, nestled between your already shaking thighs. “We still have twenty minutes, after all. You’d better get comfortable.”

© nc-vb 2023 please don’t repost! reblogs & comments are always appreciated.

[mixelation]

reborn au: actually i have no idea why i summarized context instead of just posting it

Tori was having a problem. Several problems, actually. 

“I’m not even allowed to submit a proposal without some idiot chunin co-signing,” she complained, pacing back and forth in front of Deidara. He was seated on his bed, rubbing ointment into the pink patches of his feet and legs that his medic hadn’t quite healed all the way. 

Deidara had… set a field on fire, or something, on his mission. Whatever. Kushina-sensei had gently hinted at Tori that she should go over and make sure he didn’t need help cooking or cleaning, as while Konoha hospital could fix up most things, he’d still landed himself three weeks leave with foot injuries. 

Obviously, Deidara had yelled at her and set a clay flea off in her face for even hinting he might need help. Convincing him to let her ladle the big pot of her mediocre curry soup she’d lugged over into his own tupperware had been a whole ordeal filled with yelling and a couple minor explosions. But once she had that out of way and a bunch of tupperwares in his fridge, she was taking his presence in town as an excuse to rant about her own problems in her new lab assignment.

“My new PI wants me on dish duty,” she went on, gesturing furiously with both hands. “I know every piece of research fuinjutsu better than anyone there, and I get dish duty? I wouldn’t mind cleaning my own dishes, or if everyone was cleaning dishes, but my ideas for projects just get ignored. Who cares that I’m a genin? I have more experience than any of the chunin in that lab.”

She’d complained to higher management and attempted to get reassigned, but it seemed she was being ignored. She was afraid she’d have to go through Kushina to get facetime with the Hokage. She didn’t want to play nepotism; she wanted to earn this herself. 

Deidara looked at her like she was stupid. 

“If it’s a rank problem,” he said, “then just go get promoted to chunin, yeah.”

Tori stared back at him, flummoxed. This hadn’t occurred to her. She was quite confident she could handle any task any chunin might encounter in a lab. She was reasonably certain she could perform better than some of the jounin in a lab, even, especially if she got to head her own projects. But… chunin were meant to lead missions. They had to be able to fight things, had to know some set number of jutsu, had to have all the rules and ordinances memorized. 

“Do you think I’m qualified?” Tori wondered out loud. 

She really only had a grab bag of jutsu under her belt, the product of only bothering to learn things that interested her. Her combat skills mostly revolved around hitting things with a stick, or irreversibly destroying flesh in an extremely slipshod way. It seemed like a vast overestimation that she might be qualified for a promotion. 

Deidara managed to look even more unimpressed with her. 

“What the hell do you think chunin are?” he asked. 

“Squadron leaders?” Tori tried. 

“Not the baby ones,” Deidara told her. “Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can make chunin. The only reason you’re not already promoted is that Iwa is filled with assholes, yeah.”

This seemed… wrong, somehow. She’d mostly just gotten as far as she did in the Iwa exam by relying on others. But, maybe, she could swing an internal promotion? 

Tori went and looked up the official minimum qualifications for chunin promotion. She did qualify, it seemed. Apparently you only needed the Academy three ninjutsu to make chunin, although more were recommended. And maybe she should review all these rules and internal structures she was supposed to know… 

The minimum mission requirement was also only one C-rank, which seemed too low. It also seemed like her various higher ranking missions maybe shouldn’t count. The Iwa fiasco had mostly just been her playing side-kick, up until she basically just lied through her teeth for a very stressful few hours. The Sasori fiasco wasn’t exactly a shining moment for her either. It all really depended on her being on a team with a bunch of monsters rather than her own talents, honestly. 

Oh well. It wouldn’t hurt to try, she supposed. It wasn’t like the Hokage’s office didn’t know exactly who she was and the details of her on-paper accomplishments. 

She filled out a form for promotion-by-mission and turned it in. Two days later she was called into the Hokage’s office. Minato was literally eating a sandwich while he talked to her, apparently on his lunch break. 

“Right,” Minato said, swallowing. He picked her application off a pile of papers and slid it across his desk to her. “I’m not approving this.”

“Okay,” Tori said, having expected as much. 

“Because I want you to go to the next exam,” he continued. “It’s in Kiri.”

“Oh,” Tori replied, surprised. So she’d have to prove her qualifications? Annoying. 

“I think you should aim to win the tournament,” Minato said through another mouthful of sandwich. “Make it flashy. It’ll be a good showing for Konoha.”

“Wait—” Tori started. “I’m not—”

“I’m going to okay you to reduce lab hours if you feel like you need training,” Minato continued, unperturbed by the madness he was spitting. He passed another form across the desk for her, brushing sandwich crumbs off f it. “You have six weeks. Kushina said she’d register you. Let me know if you need anything.”

He dismissed her. Tori wandered out of his office gripping her exemption paperwork in both hands. Less lab time was the opposite of what she wanted!

Deidara laughed at her when she reported what happened. There were, she noted, empty curry-stained tupperware in his sink. 

“I can’t win the tournament,” Tori bemoaned as he snickered. She was really more of a “promoted due to clever thinking” type of kunoichi. “Make it flashy? What is he thinking?”

“Probably that most genin actually just suck, yeah,” Deidara told her. “Do you think Kushina-sensei could convince him to let me go to the tournament?”

Apparently the idea of watching her fight was deeply funny to Deidara. He talked for a very long time about wanting to see her panic and melt a small child into goo in front of all their friends and family. Tori buried her face in her hands. 

“Oh, then you’d get a pay raise,” Deidara said, eyes suddenly brightening. “We could move somewhere better, yeah.”

“Deidaraaa,” she whined. 

xXx

The lab sink was already filled with dirty test tubes in the morning. The new chunin had mislabeled several samples the day before, and now the experiment was ruined, and Tori was in charge of clean-up. Tori listened to the chunin explain this, glaring at the sink. 

“So I’ll be setting it up again while you clean,” the chunin said. 

It wasn’t that Tori thought she’d never mislabel something. It was that she had enough experience to know to double-check, and if she screwed up anyway, she’d clean up her own fuck-ups. 

Plus, everyone had ignored that she’d pointed out their control for this experiment made no sense. There was a huge risk that whatever results they got, if this chunin could get it to work at all, would be totally uninterpretable. 

“Actually, I have an exemption,” Tori told the chunin. “I just came in to say I’ll be out for a while.”

She fled the lab. Kushina’s office door was always open. 

“Oh!” Kushina said when Tori knocked. “You’re getting started on training earlier than I thought. Donut?”

She had a small box of donut holes she pushed at Tori. 

“I talked it over with Minato,” Kushina said, twirling a pen in her finger as she spoke. “Basically, we think it’d be a good PR move if you sort of showed off that Konoha is basically the best at fuuinjutsu.” 

“Okay,” Tori said. She could do that, at least… probably. 

“You weren’t really flashy with it in the Iwa tournament,” Kushina continued. “So we’ll have to come up with something. Maybe you can work on giving some speeches about how your jutsu work like some weirdos do. Oh, but don’t show off you can use nonhuman chakra; we don’t want that getting out until it has to.” Kushina frowned slightly. “And I guess you shouldn’t melt any other genin. That’d be bad for international relations.”

“Okay,” Tori repeated. That just severely limited her combat capabilities. “Um, Hokage-sama told me to… win the tournament?”

She waited for Kushina to say Minato was being ridiculous. Instead she beamed and said, “Well, of course! I want my team to be three-for-three, you know!”

Kushina then made her take the rest of the box of donuts and shooed her out of the office, with a promise they’d make a training schedule. 

“It’ll only be like twice a week,” Kushina said as Tori gathered up her bag. “Don’t want to distract you from the lab!”

“But,” Tori started. She needed… more than that, if she was even going to pass, let alone win a tournament. 

“Bye!” Kushina replied. 

Tori walked out of Hokage Tower feeling completely unsure what to do. She could go… think about combat fuuinjutsu? Except, she’d moved all her materials to her desk in R&D in a bid for separate work and personal time, and she did not want to go back there right now. 

Well, she knew Deidara was in town and not doing anything. She went and asked him if he wanted to train. 

Deidara took at her in deep distrust. “Who are you and what did you do with Tori?”

“Come on,” Tori whined. “I brought you donuts.”

Deidara was walking with a slight limp, but he did accept the rest of the donut holes and then shuffled out the door.

“We can use my grounds, yeah,” he said, still sounding suspicious that she wanted to train at all. 

Deidara had his own assigned training ground, out in a field away from anything else. It was filled with half-made sculptures covered in tarp that Tori had decorated in fuuinjutsu herself, to reduce the chance of random explosions. 

The field was also completely riddled with potholes, blown into the ground by Deidara’s various experiments. Deidara wasn’t exactly quick on his feet right now, but he did spend the rest of the morning attempting to shove Tori into various holes and then close them over her, making fun of her the entire time. 

So probably she was improving at… something. Getting out of death traps, maybe.

[chemblrish]

Subatomic particles from a chemist's point of view - part II: the proton

[part I: the electron]

Proton

In my subjective opinion, the runner-up in this informal ranking of subatomic particles that are important in chemistry. Protons may not form chemical bonds like electrons do, but they still play an important role in many chemical reactions, especially in organic chemistry. But their most meaningful task that places them right below the electron on my list is this: they quite literally define the elements.

Atomic number

Let’s put our Mendeleev hats on and have a look at the periodic table. Here, I’ll upload it for you so you don’t have to google it:

It doesn’t take a genius to realize the elements are compiled in an orderly fashion rather than a random one. What is the property that generates this order? You could say mass – that the elements are arranged by their increasing mass – but that’s not quite true.  Sure, most of the time it is true, but there’s a handful of oddballs that refuse to fit this scheme. Argon and potassium, for example: argon has a mass of 39,948 u (units) while potassium has a slightly lower mass of 39,098 u. The difference isn’t big, but nevertheless if we want to arrange our elements by mass, we have to place potassium underneath neon and argon underneath sodium.

Obviously, we can’t do that. The cool thing about the periodic table is that there are several trends encoded in it, one of them being that the elements of any given group are usually fairly similar to each other. Group 18, where argon normally resides, is reserved for noble gases that are extremely chill and not eager to react (they might’ve taught you in school that noble gases never ever react with anything ever; THAT’S A LIE! But it is true that their chemistry is scant and their reactions rare). Potassium could never fit in with them. Fucker explodes in water the same way sodium does – which is yet another proof it belongs in the same group! Also, COOL EXPLOSION HERE!

This isn’t the only such strange pair in the periodic table: cobalt and nickel are like that too, and so are tellurium and iodine. It isn’t much – but it’s enough that we have to look for some other physical property to define the order of the elements. For some time, chemists and physicists had to accept this discrepancy (not that they were happy about it; I imagine they’d wake up at night drenched in sweat, screaming, “GODFORSAKEN ARGON!”). The atomic number, this sort of ordinal number that put every element in its place, was actually random, as in, not based on any known physical property. Yeah, potassium has an atomic number of 19, but why?

ENTER HENRY MOSELEY!

Henry Moseley conducted a series of experiments in which he zapped various elements with X-rays (I’m so jealous), then analyzed the resulting emission spectra. It turned out that the atomic number is proportional to the square root of the emitted radiation, which in turn depends on the proton count in the nucleus. This is what defines any given element: the number of protons it has. This is THE definition, the one you learn very early in your chemistry journey. The number of neutrons may vary among the atoms of the same element (because isotopes) and atoms can gain or lose electrons by becoming ions, but that doesn’t turn them into different elements. Only the number of protons is always constant for one and the same chemical element.

Organic chemists love protons too

And for more than one reason at that – because hoo boy, does a proton stir some shit in ochem!

My ochem lab instructor pointed to the mechanism I’d written on my lab report once and asked, “What does the acid do in this reaction?”. Very plainly I said, “It’s a source of protons which act as a catalyst,” to which he gave me his standard shit-eating grin and said, “They all are.”

And he wasn’t wrong! If you analyze a bunch of organic reaction mechanisms then you’ll see they very often begin with a proton (so H+) attaching itself to the substrate (or a lone electron pair on the substrate to be precise, because Coulomb force, right?) and thus initiating a chain reaction of sorts that leads, frequently through many infuriating steps, to the product. Take a look at the synthesis of aspirin, for example:

[via wikipedia]

You don’t need to understand everything that happens here. What matters is this first step I circled: a proton attaches itself to one of the substrates and starts the whole reaction.

The second reason I have in mind for why organic chemists love protons is NMR: nuclear magnetic resonance. NMR is a method of instrumental analysis and it’s cool as all fucks actually (as long as you don’t have to analyze the spectra because what the heck are those spikes), but this post is about protons, not NMR, so here’s the gist: you put your organic sample in the NMR spectrometer. The spectrometer drenches your sample in a magnetic field (which is probably why small dogs with metallic collars aren’t advised in an NMR lab). The spins of the protons in your sample (yes, protons have spin too!) go wooo! and align themselves in a specific manner. The computer connected to the spectrometer spits out a spectrum that tells you what your sample looks like.

Properties of the proton

Charge: positive one elementary electric charge, the exact opposite of an electron (how convenient!): +1.602×10^(−19) C

Mass: 1.673 × 10^(-27) kg – which is roughly 1837 times the mass of an electron. I want you to say, "Whoa, that's a lot!" right now because shit, it really is! And that's a great thing, because it gives us cool stuff like the Born-Oppenheimer approximation.

Radius: 0.841 fm (femtometers), but make no mistake: just like electrons, protons abide by the wave-particle duality, because they hate us all. I just remembered when my quantum chem professor told us during a lecture that even buckminsterfullerenes exhibit wave-particle duality. These are molecules made up of 60 carbon atoms. Sixty carbon atoms!! I almost cried, but I was sitting in the front, so I had to compose myself.

[ryin-silverfish]

What are monks and what do they do?

are they religious leaders like priest or are they schoolers or something else?

How did someone become a monk in ancient times? Was it a boys only position? Could just anybody become a monk or did you have to do something or be something to qualify?

By monk, I assume you mean "Buddhist monks"?

Well, they are members of the Sangha, one of the "Three Jewels" (三宝) of Buddhism, which consists of the Buddha, the Dharma (Buddhist Teachings), and the Monastic Community.

(Once again, I can only talk about Mahayana Buddhist monks in imperial China. If you want more info, I recommend talking to an actual Buddhist.)

Usually, when we say "monk" (僧/和尚), we don't just mean "adherents of the Buddhist religion", since you can offer incense at a temple, copy sutras, or have a statue of Bodhisattva Guan Yin on your private altar without becoming a monk.

These are people who 1) have gone through the relevant ordination rites and swear to abide by a set of religious vows, and 2) are part of a monastic community.

In other words, they are "cloistered" (出家人), leaving their home to learn and practice their religion in a temple, as opposed to lay practitioners (在家人) who carry out their religious activities in daily life.

And no, it's not a boy-only position——there are plenty of Buddhist nuns (比丘尼/尼姑) too.

Officially, to become a monk, you need to leave your worldly life behind. Which means, if your parents are still alive, you need to get their permission, if you are a court official, you need to quit your job, and if you are married, well, you cannot remain married.

Also, living in a monastic community means you were no longer considered viable for conscripted labor or taxation, and temples owned private lands, the increase of which could, well, depriving the imperial court of available land.

(This is one main motivation for historical prosecutions of Buddhism by certain emperors: the seizing of temple property + returning the monks and nuns back into the taxable population.)

As such, the imperial court tended to keep a firm control on the number of monks and the size of the temple. Basically, you need an official permit (度牒) from the state too, given out to each temple by the officials, and the monks didn't have the authority to make you one of their own in private.

Those who have committed one of the five grave crimes——killing their father, killing their mother, killing an arhat, destroying the unity of the monastic community, and "wounding the Buddha"——cannot become a monk either.

The most visible change one must make is shaving their head, like, entirely bald.

Those above the age of 7 but under 20 can become monks-in-training, called 沙弥/沙弥尼, but not formal member of the clergy because they are still considered too young to endure the physical and mental hardships.

(Similarly, adults who seek to become a formal monk must also pass through this training stage first.)

An aspiring monk, after receiving his permit, must first find a respectable monk, answer a series of questions that assess his fitness for monastic life, pay his respect to the Buddha and the monks of the temple he's joining, then becomes the disciple of one of those monks.

One monk will shave his head and bath him, while his master clothes him in his monk robes. Then, on the next day, he will receive his ordinations inside a temple hall, in front of the entire community, where he recites the monastic percepts (read: rules a monk must follow) and agrees to abide by them.

At this point, he has become a monk-in-training, which is a prerequiste stage for formal monk ordination, 比丘戒.

Usually, the latter ceremony is carried out at an actual altar, and the candidate must have already bought the "six necessasities" of monkhood ——three sets of robes, almsbowl, sitting cushion, and water container.

In Chinese Buddhism post-Yuan dynasty, the ordination rites may also include using burning incense sticks to leave a bunch of little marks (usually 12) onto one's head.

(Source: 《中国古代僧人生活》)

[eschergirls]

It's been 2 weeks so it's time to announce the winners of the March caption contest!

We had a lot of good entries this time and I had a very hard time choosing.  So many made me laugh, so thank you to everybody who submitted!

As usual when I have a lot of submissions, I'll choose 3 winners and 2 honorable mentions. :)

Each winner will get to choose a prize if they wish (but you don't have to, you can just participate for fun too.)  The prizes are extra Steam codes that I've acquired through bundles over the years and I figure that giving them out for contests would be fun.

Anyway here are the entries!

Mastodon/Fedi:

Claire: like a true warrior she is hitting the "crouch" command atop her fallen enemies Ordinating Aether Snow: It is a common misconception that the "death" part of her name refers to some grim reaper like mythos or to her pale complexion. The real origin of the moniker is an amusing coincidence born from academia. When biologists were first dissecting a specimen of her species they were assigning random letters to each joint on her limbs beyond the ones found on normal humans. Only afterwards, did they find that the section between her knee and hips spelt out "death."

Disqus:

Imry: With standard warnings doing nothing to reduce the overwhelming number of back injuries, the Coffin Comics warehouse safety team had to get more creative with their reminders to lift with your legs, not your back. Jenn Dolari: FFFFFRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT! Karmazyna: I'd be holding on to my sword for dear life as well if I had to squat to pee in those heels. MaryKaye: So you thought you were clever to steal my pants? Your death will be...exquisite.

Tumblr:

@chasedbybuildings: Was this drawn by someone from outer space who's not sure what humans look like? @cipheramnesia: *FART!!* @cipheramnesia: "Of course I'm going to fuck the sword." @cipheramnesia: "You're sure this is where you dropped your contact lens?" @cipheramnesia: "Oh hello, let me slip into something a little more comfortable." [trash compactor noises] @direwolfblackrose: That's the "these heels are killing me" squat @evilqueerwizardassociation: In today's episode of Feel Good News: woman born with right hip  ending six inches lower than the left overcomes disability to become sexualized as a knight! @failure-to-adult: "Hey fam, I'm Lady Death and I'm gonna inappropriately twerk on this battlefield! Don't forget to like and subscribe for more content!" @faunusroman: Looks like someone took the term "slay" too literally. @fluffyapathybunny: Oh wow this is all kinds of wrong, anatomy-wise. Why are her breasts so far down on her torso? @furrytechgirl: "I do have scoliosis! How did you know?" @madfishmonger: "Wait, you can't shift your butt cheeks far apart independently of each other? Skill issue." @metztreme: “I sure hope this fart loosens my wedgie” @mistakescontinuetobemade: when the thong just ain’t far enough up your ass to keep your free-floating pelvis in place @mnemonicpneumaticknife: "Are you done taking the photo?  Okay, good.  Put down the fan and come help me stand up. I can't feel my fucking legs." @vaspider: When your sword needs to go, but can't unless you go too. @wardenmcpherson: Don't judge, but she pulled Excalibur from the stone with her booty cheeks. Apparently, that was the only part of her that was pure of heart. @yourfriendlyneighborhoodhomo: when you've crouched down but you're in heels and if you try to stand wrong then you'll trip and get a face full of asphalt @zombiemollusk: "lesson learned: don't ever pole dance with a sword. most embarrassing hospital visit ever."

So first, honorable mentions go to:

@failure-to-adult: "Hey fam, I'm Lady Death and I'm gonna inappropriately twerk on this battlefield! Don't forget to like and subscribe for more content!"

@zombiemollusk: "lesson learned: don't ever pole dance with a sword. most embarrassing hospital visit ever."

And the winners:

3rd place goes to Claire: like a true warrior she is hitting the "crouch" command atop her fallen enemies

2nd place goes to @cipheramnesia: "Oh hello, let me slip into something a little more comfortable." [trash compactor noises]

And the winner is... @madfishmonger: "Wait, you can't shift your butt cheeks far apart independently of each other? Skill issue."

Congratulations to all the winners and also thank you to everybody who participated! 

Please stay tuned for a new caption contest next month!

If you won and would like a Steam code as a prize, please message me with which prize you would like.  If you came in 2nd, message me with 2 choices in order of preference, and if you came in 3rd, message me with 3 choices, etc...  I'll give you your top choice that hadn't been taken by the other winners. (To clarify, every winner only gets 1 prize, but winners other than the one in first place should give me their list of games in order of preference so if one is taken, I'll give you the next on the list.  It makes it easier for me to hand out the prizes.)

The Steam codes I have available as prizes are for:  Still Life, Riot: Civil Unrest, Castle Crashers, Hotel Giant 2, Steel Storm: Burning Retribution, Rage in Peace, Uncertain: The Last Quiet Day, Uncertain: Light At The End, and Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten Kings.

[the-lesser-light]

Letter to Ovadiah the Convert by Maimonides

Thus says Moses, the son of Rabbi Maimon, one of the exiles from Jerusalem, who lived in Spain: I received the question of the master Ovadiah, the wise and learned convert, may God reward him for his work, may a perfect reward be bestowed upon him by the God of Israel, under whose wings he has sought cover.

You ask me if you, too, are allowed to say in the blessings and prayers you offer alone or in the congregation: “Our God” and “God of our Fathers,”

“You who have sanctified us through Your command- ments,” “You who have separated us,” “You who have chosen us,” “You who have inherited us,” “You who have brought us out of the land of Egypt,” and more of this kind.

Yes, you may say all this in the prescribed order and not change it in the least. In the same way as every Jew by birth says his blessing and prayer, you, too, shall bless and pray alike, whether you are alone or pray in the congregation.

The reason for this is that Abraham our Father taught the people, opened their minds, and revealed to them the true faith and the unity of God; he rejected the idols and abolished their adoration; he brought many children under the wings of the Divine Presence; he gave them counsel and advice, and ordered his sons and the members of his household after him to keep the ways of God forever, as it is written,

“For I have known him to the end that he may com- mand his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of God, to do righteousness and justice” (Genesis 18:19).

Ever since then, whoever adopts Judaism and confess- es the unity of the Divine Name, as it is prescribed in the Torah, is counted among the disciples of Abraham our Father, peace be with him. Therefore, you shall pray, “Our God” and “God of our Fathers,” because Abraham, peace be with him, is your father.

And you shall pray, “You who have taken our fathers for Your own” for the land has been given to Abraham, as it is said, “Walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give to you” (Genesis 13:17).

There is no difference whatsoever between you and us. You shall certainly say the blessing, “Who has chosen us,” “Who has given us,” “Who have taken us for Your own,” and “Who has separated us,” for the Creator, may God be extolled, has indeed chosen you and separated you from the nations and given you the Torah.

For the Torah has been given to us and to the converts, as it is said, “One ordinance shall be both for you of the con- gregation and also for the stranger that sojourns with you, an ordinance forever in your generations; as you are, so shall the stranger be before Adonai” (Numbers 15:15).

Know that our fathers, when they came out of Egypt, were mostly idolaters; they had mingled with the pagans in Egypt and imitated their way of life, until the Holy One, may He be blessed, sent Moses our Teacher, the master of all prophets, who separated us from the nations and brought us under the wings of the Divine Presence, us and all converts, and gave to all of us one Law.

Do not consider your origin as inferior. While we are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you derive from the One through whose word the world was created. As is said by Isaiah: “One shall say I am Adonai's and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob” (Isaiah 44:5). -Translation from A Maimonides Reader, edited by Isadore Twersky (1972).

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Ten Commandments

1 Then Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the ordinances and the laws which I propose to you this day, that ye may learn them, and take heed to observe them.

2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.

3 The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers only, but with us, even with us all here alive this day.

4 The Lord talked with you face to face in the Mount, out of the midst of the fire.

5 (At that time I stood between the Lord and you, to declare unto you the word of the Lord: for ye were afraid at the sight of the fire, and went not up into the mount) and he said,

6 ¶ I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

7 Thou shalt have none other gods before my face.

8 Thou shalt make thee no graven image or any likeness of that that is in heaven above, or which is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth.

9 Thou shalt neither bow thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me:

10 And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

11 Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain.

12 Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.

13 Six days thou shalt labor, and shalt do all thy work:

14 But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt not do any work therein, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maid, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, neither any of thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates: that thy manservant and thy maid may rest as well as thou.

15 For, remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand, and a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to observe the Sabbath day.

16 ¶ Honor thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee, that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee upon the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

17 Thou shalt not kill.

18 Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

19 Neither shalt thou steal.

20 Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor.

21 Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s wife, neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s house, his field, nor his manservant, nor his maid, his ox, nor his ass, nor ought that thy neighbor hath.

22 ¶ These words the Lord spake unto all your multitude in the mount of the midst of the fire, the cloud and the darkness, with a great voice, and added no more thereto: and wrote them upon two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me. — Deuteronomy 5:1-22 | 1599 Geneva Bible (GNV) Geneva Bible, 1599 Edition. Published by Tolle Lege Press. All rights reserved. Cross References: Genesis 15:13; Exodus 18:20; Exodus 19:1; Exodus 19:18; Exodus 20:2-3; Exodus 20:5; Exodus 20:21; Exodus 23:1; Exodus 34:17; Leviticus 19:11; Numbers 14:18; Matthew 5:21; Matthew 5:33; Matthew 15:4; Mark 2:27; Luke 13:14; Luke 18:20; Luke 23:56; Romans 7:7; Hebrews 8:9; Hebrews 12:18

Read full chapter

The Ten Commandments

[spanishskulduggery]

do you know of any adjective order rules in spanish? not necessarily rules as in "anything else is wrong", but in "anything else sounds weird"

(like in english, where "brown big bear" isn't technically wrong, just... weird)

Okay FYI I ramble a lot in this, and I tried to make it clearer in places but just know that this is a lot of stuff, and I repeat myself, and though there are some rules, sometimes it's about feeling and what sounds right rather than a regular rule

Regardless of whether the adjectives go in front or in back, just know that Spanish (and English) tends to put adjectives of opinion, size, origin/nationality, color, and quality as the most important

Other adjectives like determiners take precedence always

And other adjectives are stuck to the noun as a collocation. More below.

-

There are four things I just need to say first and then we'll really get into it:

For your basic average garden variety adjectives, they typically go behind the noun like la flor hermosa "beautiful flower". If you put them in front, you're sounding extra super fancy poetic lyrical so do this sparingly or for Dramatic Flair; la hermosa flor "the beautiful flower" sounds like I'm reading poetry

There are some adjectives that change meaning depending on placement - prime example is mismo/a, where you can say la misma cosa "the same thing" vs. la cosa misma "the thing itself", where mismo/a is related to "same" or "selfsame" [like el mismísimo rey "the king himself" or "the very king himself"]. Literally it is "selfsame"... in front "same", in back "self". Another one is antiguo/a which in front often means "ancient" or "antique" or "former", while in the back it can be "old" as in "old-fashioned" or "antiquated". And bueno/a and malo/a for "good" and "bad" will constantly confuse you too

There are certain adjectives that are what we call "determiners" that are almost always in front (except occasionally for dramatic effect). A determiner is usually a specific adjective like possessive adjectives, demonstratives, adjectives of quantity (mucho/a, poco/a), and question words just to name a few. Determiners are also the definite and indefinite articles - el, la, los, las and un, una, unos, unas, and also includes numbers both cardinal [one, two, three] and ordinal [first, second, third]

A very important thing to note about adjectives is a potential "collocation" - meaning a noun + adjective that work together as a sort of cohesive unit. An example las bellas artes is "fine arts", but literally "the beautiful arts" but written fancy-like because bello/a meaning "beautiful" would typically go behind. In this case, las bellas artes is almost like a separate piece of vocab because you can't really separate them. Another would be something like el oso pardo which is "brown bear" or "grizzly bear", the adjective pardo/a refers to a brownish coloring but in this case it is stuck to oso almost like it's a specific descriptor that makes it a full "unit". These are best learned like your normal vocab, or understood as compound nouns that you can't break up... things like el agua dulce "freshwater" [instead of salt water], la sal marina "sea salt", las malas hierbas "weeds", la luna llena "full moon", el águila calva "bald eagle", el pavo real "peacock", la caja fuerte "safe/lockbox" etc etc.

-

Essentially, the adjectives are free to move around, except for when they're not

When it's your regular adjectives, you're free to say them in any order you like - they're regular descriptions, and all you need to keep in mind is potentially when y turns to e / o turns to u, and little grammatical hiccups like that:

Su ascendencia es alemana, irlandesa, e italiana. = Their heritage is German, Irish, and Italian. Su ascendencia es italiana, irlandesa, y alemana. = Their heritage is Italian, Irish, and German.

No difference though I would personally assume the first one you mention is maybe the most important or the largest part.

Same with general descriptions:

Es un edificio notable y llamativo. = It's a notable and eye-catching building. Es un edificio llamativo y notable. = It's an eye-catching and notable building. Es una mujer lista y trabajadora. = She's a smart and hard-working woman. Es una mujer trabajadora y lista. = She's a hard-working and smart woman.

Where you get into iffy territory is when adjectives come in front

I personally would say if you're using bueno/a or malo/a in front of an adjective it's one that almost always goes first except if there's a determiner:

el buen hombre = the good man un buen hombre = a good man este buen hombre = this good man la buena mujer = the good woman una buena mujer = a good woman esta buena mujer = this good woman

Same with other determiners like cualquier buen hombre "any good man", cada buen hombre "each good man", muchas buenas mujeres "many good women" etc.

This is also something to keep in mind with collocations and set phrases:

En el Antiguo Egipto, había dos reinos distintos - Alto Egipto y Bajo Egipto, y en las épocas posteriores se unificaron, y fueron gobernados por unos poderosos reyes-dioses conocidos como los faraones. "In Ancient Egypt, there were two different kingdoms, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, and in later times they united and were governed by some powerful god-kings known as the pharaohs."

So let's examine that further:

Something like el Antiguo Egipto, el Alto Egipto, el Bajo Egipto or something like el Imperio Antiguo "the Old Kingdom" of Egypt are collocations, consider them their own vocab and try not to think too hard on it because sometimes they're just set phrases like la Antigua Grecia "Ancient Greece", Gran Bretaña "Great Britain", or el Sacro Imperio Romano "the Holy Roman Empire"

A word like poderoso/a sort of becomes a more intense verison of itself changing its normal location; if it were el rey poderoso you might translate that as "powerful king" or "strong king", putting el poderoso rey adds some oomph to it and now it's "the mighty king" as if that's the most important aspect of it and it's exceptional - and regular adjectives can follow normally; el poderoso rey conocido como "the mighty king known as"

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I should also mention that there are adjectival phrases involving de, but you've probably seen them already... like... es un libro de literatura infantil "it's a children's literature book"

I think this is more specifically like "the genitive case", which is normally used linguistically to talk about possessives or qualifiers of some kind, but they are often attached directly to the noun and tend to preempt most adjectives:

El maravilloso mago de Oz es un libro de literatura infantil estadounidense muy popular. = The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a very popular book of children's literature.

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...Again, just some general notes because I feel like I was rambling a lot:

Adjectives sometimes go in front or behind the noun depending on their function in the sentence

Most adjectives end up behind the noun

Determiners pretty much always go in front 95% of the time

The articles - el/la/los/las or un/una, unos, unas are the first determiner adjectives 99.999% of the time; possessives can take the place of articles... el dinero "the money" vs. su dinero "their money"

Determiners of numbers (cardinal numbers or ordinal numbers) are almost always the second adjective mentioned, even if there are other determiners... el primer paso "the firststep", mi primer paso "my first step"

Adjectives like "good", "bad", "big", and a few others are often the next adjectives if there are other determiners... el primer gran paso "the first great step" or mi primer gran paso "my first great step"

As a quick example... las tres buenas hadas "the three good fairies"... 1st is las as the article, then tres is a cardinal number, and then you have the adjective of quality "good"

Some adjectives can change meaning depending on placement - las tres buenas hadas "the three good fairies" implies that "good" is their main quality, as opposed to evil. But if you said las tres hadas buenas it comes out as "the three nice fairies" as if you're talking about personality

Keep an eye out for certain collocations and set phrases that should be treated as separate vocab and not to be separated - esta noche "tonight", la prensa rosa "tabloids" [lit. "pink press"], or la montaña rusa "rollercoaster" [lit. "Russian mountain"]

Collocations or set adjectival phrases like de can't be broken up... la luna de hoy "today's moon" vs. la luna llena de hoy "today's full moon" / and la luna de esta noche "tonight's moon" or la luna llena de esta noche "tonight's full moon"

If you're adding nationalities, they tend to show up immediately after the noun or the first noun phrase since they qualify everything - la literatura infantil popular "popular children's literature" vs. la literatura infantil estadounidense popular "popular American children's literature" or la literatura infantil francesa "popular French children's literature"

If you're doing a list of regular adjectives, you can probably put them in any order you want

But be aware that some adjectives go in front more and some go in back more, and sometimes it's a matter of style - such as el famoso oso panda chino "the (very) famous panda bear from China"

Certain qualities like "big/small", nationality, "good/bad", "elder/younger" do take priority though; as an example mi heramana inteligente "my smart sister" vs. mi heramana menor inteligente "my smart younger sister" or mi hermana pequeña inteligente "my smart little sister"

Additionally:

Adverbs always go in front of the adjective they're modifying... la familia más conocida "the most well-known family", una historia muy larga "a very long story"

Possessives in their more adjectival form ALWAYS go after the noun... su libro "their book" vs. el libro suyo "the book of theirs"; this is part of the genitive/possessives but possessives

Don't separate collocations or set phrases or things get confusing

I wish I could be more specific but this is really contextually-based and so it becomes more like give me an example and I'll tell you what I think sounds the most natural

What I can say is that you get a feel for what sounds the most natural as you go and you get more examples in your daily life of what sounds right or what just sounds a little bit off

But, Spanish-speakers probably will understand generally what you mean even if something sounds a little off as long as you don't separate the set phrases

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

What does it mean that you're a catholic presbyterian? What are your views on Church authority and predestination?

I like to imagine myself as a tree with Irish Catholic roots, a Presbyterian/Protestant trunk, and agnostic/ecumenical/interfaith-reaching branches.

I need all parts to be whole. All parts rely on Divine warmth, water, breath for life. All parts depend on a rich soil of scripture, story, and the wisdom of those who've come before me for nourishment and grounding.

___

The roots:

I was baptized and raised Roman Catholic. My family (and a large number of families in the area I grew up) has a proud history of Irish Catholicism in particular. My childhood church was Catholic, and I was passionate about participating in that community's life all through grade school.

Some of my earliest religion-related memories are of reading Saints' stories, establishing relationships with those who most spoke to me. Mother Mary has had my heart as far back as my memories go.

As I discovered my queerness in college and gradually realized the need to seek fully welcoming community, I did not leave behind those things I held most dear from Catholic spirituality.

Over the years, my connection to the Roman Catholic Church as an institution has fractured more and more; last May it splintered entirely. But I refuse to let Rome have a monopoly on Catholic faith, or on Mary and the Saints.

...Especially because Mary and the Saints were my greatest spiritual supports in college: with delighted wonder, I came to recognize how very queer my closest Saints were! They helped me embrace my queerness as a holy gift; I carried them with me into a little PC(USA) church that my then-girlfriend, now-wife found near our college campus.

The trunk:

The Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination holds me up in sturdy community: this is the denomination I'm currently "officially" part of — got my Masters of Divinity at a PCUSA seminary, got married in a PCUSA church, am on this denomination's ordination path.

This doesn't mean I think the PCUSA is the best religion or even the best form of mainline Protestantism. They all have their strengths and their flaws. But the PCUSA was the one that first came into my path, and I'm currently satisfied with my decision to commit myself to it — so long as it continues to make plenty of room for my Catholic roots and ecumenical branches.

The branches:

Though Louisville Seminary is a Presbyterian institution, when I attended from 2016-2019 at least 40% of my classmates and some of the staff there belonged to other denominations (or in a few cases, aren't Christian at all).

The opportunity to learn alongside folks from a variety of traditions was invaluable to my continued spiritual growth. I learned so much from them! I grew into my sense that all individuals and faith communities have something to teach us the Divine and about what it means to be human in relationship to Divinity and to Creation.

Then there's the agnostic part of the "branches":

Over the years I've also experienced more and more seasons where I'm just not sure that the Trinity, the Incarnation and Resurrection, and all that Christian-specific stuff is "real." But whether or not it is, I choose to remain committed to this path I'm on — with openness to fresh insights — because I do draw spiritual nourishment here. I do believe that the story of the Trinity and the Incarnation can guide us into living for Goodness, Justice, abundant life for all beings.

...Basically, I don't know whether it's all "true," but I do believe it holds powerful Truth; I remain committed to the Story.

(Also the bible has been my main special interest since i was like 6 so it's one of the main lenses through which i view the world so i'm stuck here for better or worse lfadfjalfjdalk;j! )

I believe it's imperative for Christians living in Christian supremacist cultures to practice humility above all else — to accept the fact that we don't have all the answers, that we're not the Most Right, that we don't enjoy unique favor with God. For me, identifying as agnostic reminds me that I don't know everything about God by any means, and may actually know very little at all. It reminds me to remain humble, open, and curious.

The fruit:

My hope is that this little tree that is me yields good fruit. I don't care if I have all the right answers, so long as I'm glorifying the Divine in some small way; easing suffering in some small way; bringing joy into this world in some small way. That's what matters to me.

________

I imagine the above implies my views on Church authority. If it doesn't, well, I'll just say I'm kind of an anarchist about church as much as anything else! The Church should never have come to wield as much power as it has. And whatever the "role" of the Church is in the Divine Story, I remember learning somewhere in seminary that the ultimate future of Church is to dissolve — that when we've experienced the full in-breaking of God's Kin-dom, there will be no more need for Church.

________

Not all Presbyterians hold to predestination — and for most I know who do, it's not really a central part of their faith life.

But sure, you could say I believe in predestination: I believe we are all predestined for participation in God's Kin-dom! :)

________

Further reading:

My tag of LGBTA patron Saints <3

My first podcast ep explores some of my spiritual journey

My queer and Catholic tag

Some other semi-related tags — good fruit tag; religious pluralism tag; evangelism tag; church hurt tag

My PCUSA tag, which includes a post with some old class notes about predestination

OH ALSO there's a podcast called "Called to Be Multiple" that interviews folks who draw from multiple faith sources. Cool stuff!

[confusedcanaries]

Numbers! most of them are just sort of there

0 - 10/10 number, very useful, helps proving uniqueness, nicely splits the number line, breaks division which is very fun, additive identity

1 - 7/10 number, kinda the default, multiplicative identity, the induction engine

2 - 9/10 number, for all your actually a number needs, root-s nicely, 2+2=2*2=2^2 (chef's kiss), the only even prime, binary is hella funky (just to be clear though, this whole post is written in base-(# months from January to October inclusive))

3 - 6/10 number, sorta ok I guess, triangles are cool but this isn't a triangle just a triangle number, the other useful root, prime

4 to 10 - 5/10 numbers, sort of on a par with 3 but I might need to start using a calculator and beginning to get same-y.

Notable exceptions: 6=1+2+3=1*2*3 and 7 is just cool

>10 - 3/10 numbers, nothing really stands out here, I will get some slight anxiety if you ask me to do adding or multiplication with these without a calculator, just use induction at this point, this is not the sort of maths I chose maths to do.

The numbers you need complicated power series to reach or are defined ito functions - 10/10 numbers, fantastically unhelpful, really cool because these might as well be infinity and my brain can't cope (For Example: graham's number, googol, Tree(3), 52!)

-1 - 0/10 number (more like hellspawn), to say this is a number and not an inherently evil sentient object is false, hides itself in a minus sign, its entire purpose is to cause sign errors and make real analysis harder

Fractions - 7/10 numbers, rational is the new sexy, much better than decimals, somehow still a countable set despite being thicc in the reals (I know the term is dense but it's 1:30 in the morning, cut me some slack)

Irrationals - 5*sqrt(2)/10 numbers, slightly cooler and more mysterious than fractions, knows the uncomputable and normal numbers but won't tell you their addresses as you're just not cool enough

Mathematical constants - 6/10 numbers, useful but kinda like 3 in that they're a little boring. Some Exciting Constants: φ, Euler's Constant (γ), lemniscate constant (ϖ). Fun fact: e has a really cool continued fraction representation

Infinity - 11/10 concepts, maybe numbers - maybe not, so cool they deserve an illogical rating, gotta love the ordinals, countability is soooooooooo freaking cool (check out cantor's diagonalisation proof), I'm counting infinitesimal numbers as well here, also, the convention for just calling infinity one number for the complex numbers is hecking amazing

i - 7/10 number - very cool, philosophically taxing, the incredible original to the quaternions' disappointing sequel (maybe I'll change my mind when i actually learn about quaternions), geometry and rotation are now part of numbers! , makes differentiation so much more awesome

[mixelation]

reborn au

Deidara looked at her like she was stupid. 

“Just go get promoted to chunin,” he said. 

Tori stared back at him, flummoxed. This hadn’t occurred to her. She was… chunin could lead missions. They had to be able to fight things, had to know some set number of jutsu, had to have all the rules and ordinances memorized. 

“Do you think I’m qualified?” Tori wondered out loud. 

She really only had a grab bag of jutsu under her belt, the product of only bothering to learn things that interested her. Her combat skills mostly revolved around hitting things with a stick. It seemed like a vast overestimation that she might be qualified for a promotion. 

Deidara managed to look even more unimpressed with her. 

“What the hell do you think chunin are?” he asked. 

“Squadron leaders?” Tori tried. 

“Not the baby ones,” Deidara told her. “Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can make chunin. The only reason you’re not already promoted is that Iwa is filled with assholes, yeah.”

This seemed… wrong, somehow. She’d mostly just gotten as far as she did in the Iwa exam by relying on others. But, maybe, she could swing a within-village promotion? 

Tori went and looked up the official minimum qualifications for chunin promotion. She did qualify, it seemed. Apparently you only needed the Academy three ninjutsu to make chunin, although more were recommended. And maybe she should review all these rules and internal structures she was supposed to know… 

The minimum mission requirement was also only one C-rank, which seemed wrong. It also seemed like her various higher ranking missions maybe shouldn’t count. The Iwa fiasco had mostly just been her playing side-kick, up until she basically just lied through her teeth for a very stressful few hours. The Sasori fiasco wasn’t, like, a shining moment for her either. It all really depended on her being on a team with a bunch of monsters rather than her own talents, really. 

Oh well. It wouldn’t hurt to try, she supposed. It wasn’t like the Hokage’s office didn’t know exactly who she was. 

She filled out a form for promotion by mission and turned it in. Two days later she was called into the Hokage’s office. Minato was literally eating a sandwich while he talked to her. 

“Right,” Minato said, swallowing. He picked her application off a pile of papers and slid it across his desk to her. “I’m not approving this.”

“Okay,” Tori said, having expected as much. 

“Because I want you to go to the next exam,” he continued.

“Oh,” Tori replied, surprised. So she’d have to prove her qualifications? Annoying. 

“I think you should aim to win the tournament,” Minato said through another mouthful of sandwich. “Make it flashy. It’ll be a good showing for Konoha.”

“Wait—” Tori started. “I’m not—”

“I’m going to okay you to reduce lab hours if you feel like you need training,” Minato continued, unperturbed by the madness he was spitting. He passed another form across the desk for her. “You have six weeks. Kushina said she’d register you. Let me know if you need anything.”

He dismissed her. Tori wandered out of his office gripping her exemption paperwork in both hands. Less lab time was the opposite of what she wanted!

Deidara laughed at her when she reported what happened. 

“I can’t win the tournament,” Tori bemoaned as he snickered. She was really more of a “promoted due to clever thinking” type of kunoichi. “Make it flashy? What is he thinking?”

“Probably that most genin actually just suck, yeah,” Deidara told her. “Do you think Kushina-sensei could convince him to let me go to the tournament?”

Apparently watching her fight was deeply funny to Deidara. He talked for a very long time about wanting to see her panic and melt a small child into goo in front of all their friends and family. Tori buried her face in her hands.

[cannibaleather]

Damn you know they really weren't lying it is worth taking the chance and shaving all your hair off/doing something equally noticeably harsh with your appearance. I wasn't originally trying to, i was going for a different style but i'm still early days at learning how to cut my own hair and scissors are a nightmare in the mirror (how do you co-ordinate your hands mirrored???? i cant do it fucking un-mirrored???), so when i fucked up i just took the number 4 shaver head and buzzed it all off and like. I felt the fear right before doing it of 'oh my god people are going to see me like this. people are going to comment on it', i felt 20 years of thoughts people have implanted in my head of how i have to look, of the pressure of femininity and ideals i never ever wanted to partake in and yet still feel shackled by even now as a man.

But then i did it and it took under 30 seconds to have it all gone, no going back, and it looked fine. It looked good! And it felt good! It's not the style i was going for but what it is is a declaration more than anything; it runs completely against all that horrible intrusive self hatred and self policing, it runs against the expectations of the world around me, it feels like making a more concrete statement of my manhood than i have done before. I've had my hair short for years, but shaved OFF feels so much more drastically masculine in the eyes of the cishet world around me. It makes me more noticeably different.

I was so braced too for comments but the people in my life told me i look good, even people who'd been too nervous previously to shave my head for me. I know as well that i can get the style i originally wanted way easier now by just controlling which parts of this grow out, i get to have my hair grow out like my siblings got to as kids, the way i always wanted to; shaved down to nothing and slowly built up into a style. I look good because i did something I've been too afraid to do, i look good because i let myself be confident in a choice for once. It's so easy to spend so much time softening a version of yourself down to be more palatable to others, picking a hairstyle or clothing style that is balancing between masc enough for you but not masc enough for the world, being just loud enough about who you are to keep dysphoria at a minimum but not so much to make people uncomfortable. But FUCK that, go all the way. You deserve to do what makes you feel the MOST like you, what feels the BEST. Don't settle for half measures anymore, be fucking loud, take up fucking space, the people who matter will love that version of you and anyone who doesn't isn't worth your time. Cannot recommend taking a pair of dog trimmers to your hair enough, just shave that shit it's your hair, fucking do what you want.

Also hey people have gotten out of my way WAYYYYY faster in the supermarket today, people fucking shift now lmao. Win.

[fatehbaz]

[D]omesticated attack dogs [...] hunted those who defied the profitable Caribbean sugar regimes and North America’s later Cotton Kingdom, [...] enforced plantation regimens [...], and closed off fugitive landscapes with acute adaptability to the varied [...] terrains of sugar, cotton, coffee or tobacco plantations that they patrolled. [...] [I]n the Age of Revolutions the Cuban bloodhound spread across imperial boundaries to protect white power and suppress black ambitions in Haiti and Jamaica. [...] [Then] dog violence in the Caribbean spurred planters in the American South to import and breed slave dogs [...].

---

Spanish landowners often used dogs to execute indigenous labourers simply for disobedience. [...] Bartolomé de las Casas [...] documented attacks against Taino populations, telling of Spaniards who ‘hunted them with their hounds [...]. These dogs shed much human blood’. Many later abolitionists made comparisons with these brutal [Spanish] precedents to criticize canine violence against slaves on these same Caribbean islands. [...] Spanish officials in Santo Domingo were licensing packs of dogs to comb the forests for [...] fugitives [...]. Dogs in Panama, for instance, tracked, attacked, captured and publicly executed maroons. [...] In the 1650s [...] [o]ne [English] observer noted, ‘There is nothing in [Barbados] so useful as … Liam Hounds, to find out these Thieves’. The term ‘liam’ likely came from the French limier, meaning ‘bloodhound’. [...] In 1659 English planters in Jamaica ‘procured some blood-hounds, and hunted these blacks like wild-beasts’ [...]. By the mid eighteenth century, French planters in Martinique were also relying upon dogs to hunt fugitive slaves. [...] In French Saint-Domingue [Haiti] dogs were used against the maroon Macandal [...] and he was burned alive in 1758. [...]

Although slave hounds existed throughout the Caribbean, it was common knowledge that Cuba bred and trained the best attack dogs, and when insurrections began to challenge plantocratic interests across the Americas, two rival empires, Britain and France, begged Spain to sell these notorious Cuban bloodhounds to suppress black ambitions and protect shared white power. [...] [I]n the 1790s and early 1800s [...] [i]n the Age of Revolutions a new canine breed gained widespread popularity in suppressing black populations across the Caribbean and eventually North America. Slave hounds were usually descended from more typical mastiffs or bloodhounds [...].

---

Spanish and Cuban slave hunters not only bred the Cuban bloodhound, but were midwives to an era of international anti-black co-ordination as the breed’s reputation spread rapidly among enslavers during the seven decades between the beginning of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 and the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865. [...]

Despite the legends of Spanish cruelty, British officials bought Cuban bloodhounds when unrest erupted in Jamaica in 1795 after learning that Spanish officials in Cuba had recently sent dogs to hunt runaways and the indigenous Miskitos in Central America. [...] The island’s governor, Balcarres, later wrote that ‘Soon after the maroon rebellion broke out’ he had sent representatives ‘to Cuba in order to procure a number of large dogs of the bloodhound breed which are used to hunt down runaway negroes’ [...]. In 1803, during the final independence struggle of the Haitian Revolution, Cuban breeders again sold hundreds of hounds to the French to aid their fight against the black revolutionaries. [...] In 1819 Henri Christophe, a later leader of Haiti, told Tsar Alexander that hounds were a hallmark of French cruelty. [...]

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The most extensively documented deployment of slave hounds [...] occurred in the antebellum American South and built upon Caribbean foundations. [...] The use of dogs increased during that decade [1830s], especially with the Second Seminole War in Florida (1835–42). The first recorded sale of Cuban dogs into the United States came with this conflict, when the US military apparently purchased three such dogs for $151.72 each [...]. [F]ierce bloodhounds reputed to be from Cuba appeared in the Mississippi valley as early as 1841 [...].

The importation of these dogs changed the business of slave catching in the region, as their deployment and reputation grew rapidly throughout the 1840s and, as in Cuba, specialized dog handlers became professionalized. Newspapers advertised slave hunters who claimed to possess the ‘Finest dogs for catching negroes’ [...]. [S]lave hunting intensified [from the 1840s until the Civil War] [...]. Indeed, tactics in the American South closely mirrored those of their Cuban predecessors as local slave catchers became suppliers of biopower indispensable to slavery’s profitability. [...] [P]rice [...] was left largely to the discretion of slave hunters, who, ‘Charging by the day and mile [...] could earn what was for them a sizeable amount - ten to fifty dollars [...]'. William Craft added that the ‘business’ of slave catching was ‘openly carried on, assisted by advertisements’. [...] The Louisiana slave owner [B.B.] portrayed his own pursuits as if he were hunting wild game [...]. The relationship between trackers and slaves became intricately systematized [...]. The short-lived republic of Texas (1836–46) even enacted specific compensation and laws for slave trackers, provisions that persisted after annexation by the United States.

---

All text above by: Tyler D. Parry and Charlton W. Yingling. "Slave Hounds and Abolition in the Americas". Past & Present, Volume 246, Issue 1, February 2020, pages 69-108. Published February 2020. At: doi dot org/10.1093/pastj/gtz020. February 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[setauketloyalties]

Certainly, Dorothy Van Laar should have imagined that the Revolution would have changed her life. With a number of her brothers serving as Royal officers in the British Army and all of her sisters marrying into English nobility, she should have known that the question of American independence from England’s mother stem would greatly impact her. However, on her aunt and uncle’s farm in New Haven, she had thought that the “Revolution” would never come to her doorstep. She was convinced that powerful men behind heavy closed doors would make all of the decisions. Certainly, she did not think that her aged uncle would be considering joining Rebel forces. Nor did she imagine that her parents would be attempting to force her to come home.

For the past four years, Dorothy had lived away from her parents in York City. Her parents had been vexed and exhausted by their youngest child, a girl who seemed to derive more pleasure from banging the keys on the piano and playing pranks on her sisters’ suitors than in sitting quietly while mending socks. Dorothy talked frequently, and rather loudly, about the books she stole from her brothers and father and the growing ire of the colonies at the Crown. Plus, she seemed to be uninterested in things like dancing or embroidering. However, despite her parents’ attempts to correct her (and great attempts were certainly made), she seemed to be incapable of change.

At the end of their ropes, the Van Laars finally sent her to live with her uncle Asher in Connecticut. Asher Neethling, the brother of her mother, had always been considered rather odd by his family. Having decided to turn away from his family’s wealth and status as a “knickerbocker” family in York City, he had found comfort in learning. After receiving his ordination, he had married the daughter of a professor at Yale, then becoming a professor himself after his father-in-law’s retirement. At Yale, he enjoyed losing himself in books and being able to maintain a small farm with his wife. Asher seemed to be the only person Dorothy truly listened to or respected.

Soon after arriving in New Haven, Dorothy found that the change in pace suited her. She enjoyed working outside, mostly alongside her aunt, and caring for Asher and Caroline’s various animals. Soon after her arrival, she had begun to train the foal of one of her uncle’s most prized horses. Plus, her aunt and uncle seemed to enjoy her intellectual curiosity. Often, her aunt and uncle hosted various students of her uncle’s. A young man who was seemingly a fixture at the Neethling’s home was named Benjamin Tallmadge. Soon, Dorothy began to harbor a small crush on the man. He was smart and kind, his stories of his friends from his home in Setauket were charming to her. After he had graduated and moved to Wethersfield, he still maintained close contact with the family.

By the summer of 1776, it was certain that the colonies were involved in a war. Benjamin, done up in a gorgeous uniform of blue and gold, had briefly visited Asher. Though they had spoken in the parlor when Dorothy was supposed to be attending to her chores, she had been able to eavesdrop on the two. The young Tallmadge urged her uncle to join the war effort in any way he could, an idea that seemingly consumed Asher in the coming months. Increasingly, he became interested in enlisting in the Army. Certainly, the idea terrified Dorothy.

One evening, after Asher had received a concerning letter from a friend whose fields had been burned by British soldiers, the old man declared his intentions to join up by week’s end. This had followed a series of letters from her parents requesting that Asher sent the eighteen-year-old girl home, the two seemingly worried about Asher’s “Revolutionary” influence on her. That night, Dorothy was unable to sleep. She had been considering helping the war effort in her own way. Certainly, she wanted to do something more than knit socks. Silently, she took some of her uncle’s old clothes and his rifle, quietly changing and pulling his too-big boots on her feet. Before she slipped out of the house, she cut her long copper hair to hang around her shoulders. Then, she lead her horse, who had grown strong, away from the house.

After some days, she finally was able to enlist. When her training, abbreviated due to the war, was done, she was miraculously granted a position within the dragoons. Though, her excitement at being able to conceal her identity was deflated when she was told she would be under Captain Tallmadge. After arriving in camp, she was anxious about meeting Benjamin once again. Would see through her disguise, her claims to be a David Neethling from a small town near New Haven? What if he did catch her? Would she be thrown out of the Army?

After some days of flying under the radar, she was finally called to meet her commander. Standing outside of his tent, hair concealed mostly by a shining brass helmet, she could not help but worry. A sickly feeling made her throat feel hot and she was certain she would soon faint.

@honorhearted