Sun Tzu is so fucking funny to me because for his time he was legitimately a brilliant tactician but a bunch of his insight is shit like "if you think you might lose, avoid doing that", "being outnumbered is bad generally", and "consider lying."

My personal favourite is his lengthy lecture on the subject of Supplies Being Very Important I Cannot Stress Enough The Importance Of Protecting Your Supply Lines But Also Supply Lines Are Expensive As Shit So Steal The Enemy’s Supplies At Every Opportunity. 

via- @elidyce

One of the more important things to consider about any historical work is the audience it was published for. The Art Of War was aimed at fancy nobles high on philosophy with little practical military experience who were nonetheless leading armies.

Sun Tzu, after desperatly trying to explain extremely basic logic to a bunch of upper-class twits, basically sat down and wrote the most elaborate "As per my last email" ever

the art of war is tedious and irritating when you read it as like, immortal prose by the most brilliant man ever to kick ass. but it’s incredibly fucking funny when you realize that sun tzu had to write every single one of those entries because someone somewhere did not know this ahead of time and made a really, really expensive oopsie doodles.

"Is darkness equal to daylight? Are sinners equal to the righteous? If you are born weak, which god should you turn to for solace?"

Ok wait let her speak

Please give evidence beyond “I hate them” or “I like sleeping in” or “I have to get up early”, none of which is actual evidence

Signed

an actual morning person

Night person who needs to see a doctor/get your car worked on/go to the bank/buy groceries, etc? You're gonna have to sacrifice sleep for it. Because for some reason it was decided that most places of business should open in the morning and close in the evening. Fewer and fewer places are 24/7. Wanna go for a nice stroll in the park? Tough shit, they close at sundown. Hell, want to just go for a walk in general? Fair chance of being harassed by the cops because being out and about in the dark is "suspicious" behavior. Want something that's not fast food and don't want to/can't cook for yourself? Best we can do is a diner like Denny's or IHOP. Got a loved one in the hospital you want to visit between work and sleep? Either gotta get up early or stay up late to meet visiting hours.

And let's not forget, no matter how little you actually sleep and how much you actually get done, if you're not awake during certain hours it means you're a lazy good-for-nothing. Express a desire for more places open 24/7? Selfish and entitled. Complain about how noisy your neighbors are during your sleep hours? Well you can't expect the world to tiptoe around you. But also you'd better keep it down at night because other people are sleeping!

But don't worry! There are plenty of guides on how to "fix" your sleep schedule out there! You just have to follow a strict, often disruptive routine that you can never stray from even a little or else you'll fall back to your natural sleep schedule lazy, undisciplined ways.

And at that, good luck finding a job that doesn't expect you to be in by 9 AM at the latest. Which means getting up at 7:30 AM at the latest, earlier if you have a commute. Which means getting to bed at 11:30 PM at the latest.

Which means night owls have a straight choice between self-employment/freelance work, with all its insecurities, or constant self-torture. (Oh yeah, sleep deprivation does count as torture, per the UN.)

So I work at a library and about a month ago I helped a little old woman who is legally blind figure out how to listen to our audiobooks on her tablet. We got to chatting and I mentioned that I always listen to audiobooks while I knit, which made her very excited and she told me all about the afghans she used to make when she could still see. She was so sweet and I was so glad to be able to help her figure out a way to still enjoy books without being able to read.

Yesterday I answered the phone at work and when I said my name the woman on the other line got so excited and said “Madeline?? You’re exactly who I wanted to talk to! This is Marie, you helped me about a month ago. How late are you working today?” It was her!! And about an hour later she and her husband showed up, and she was carrying a huge stack of old knitting patterns for me, and her husband brought in a few boxes full of yarn. They couldn’t stay long but I was so touched that she remembered me, and I struggled to not just flat out start crying when she handed me the patterns. When I looked through them later I realized it was her entire personal collection from over the years, including all her personal notes and drawings and even some photographs of her finished pieces. No one in my family knits, and to have someone pass on their legacy to me like that was incredibly moving.

This isn’t what I usually post here, but with life being especially dark lately I wanted to share a moment of happiness and a reminder that a bit of kindness goes a long way ♡

going a bit nuts over the first interaction between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji upon his return from the Burial Mounds.

aside: i’m assuming that Lan Wangji acquired the title Hanguang Jun during the Sunshot Campaign (i don’t recall this being explicitly stated but it seems to make sense??), so it would have to have happened during the three months that Wei Wuxian was missing. and when he returns, he tells JC that he investigated and learned that he and JYL were well before going on his revenge path. but he addresses LWJ as Hanguang-Jun, revealing that he’s also checked in on him.

but to my point:

when LWJ refers to him as “Wei Ying,” it implies a closeness or intimacy after everything they’d shared and been through, even upon seeing him like this!! that’s a lot for LWJ! but when WWX, who has called him “Lan Zhan” even when it wasn’t appropriate and kept pushing for them to be friends all these years, suddenly calls him by the respectful honorific “Hanguang-Jun,” it’s a direct “fuck off, we are not friends.” and i think this is an intentional distancing from someone he cares about, someone whose opinion he values but whose affection he simply can’t bear at this time bc he’s overflowing with pain and grief and guilt and hate. and this has to be just as jarring for poor LWJ as seeing him like this in the first place.

then, when LWJ confronts him about his methods and WWX is clearly annoyed, he challenges him with basically a “wtf are you gonna do about it?”, before jumping to an obviously disingenuous “Lan Zhan”, coldly mocking LWJ’s belief in their friendship. (“We’ve just been reunited after so long […] That’s not nice, is it?” is enough to give you whiplash after the initial response.)

when LWJ doesn’t budge, WWX takes it a step further, imitating JC’s address of “Lan-er-gonzi”, again in a subtly mocking way. LWJ calls him “Wei Ying” once more, still trying to reach out, until WWX says his well-being is none of LWJ’s business.

at this point, LWJ loses his cool and yells “Wei Wuxian” to be met with an equally angry “Lan Wangji!” and this last outburst is basically LWJ conceding and taking a step back, allowing the distance between them bc WWX won’t let him near.

the way they say each others names says more about the conversation they’re having than the actual words they’re using, and i’m losing my mind about it.

Friendly reminder that Graham Chapman was out and talking about bisexuality on a national late night talk show in 19-fucking-82.

What I’d give for one of the Cinderella remakes to go into how when you’re in an isolated and abusive situation, sometimes you need to be saved and you’re not weak if you can’t escape by yourself

I’ve never been a fan of bad faith reinterpretations of fairy tales, especially ones which flatten the originals into “princesses is saved by a prince and nothing else”, to then go #girlboss. The princess can save herself because she’s a strong female character! (Implying if you’re in a bad situation, it’s because you’re not strong enough to get out)

Also the concept of the Prince over the course of like… a couple hours hanging out with Cinderella  going from ‘Haha nice I really like you’ to ‘oh fuck i can tell from context clues alone that your home situation is FUCKED UP’   it’s good shit   ‘I have just met you but ON GOD I’m gonna get you out of there beautiful mystery woman’   cinderella  makes desperately yelling into the night ‘how can I find you again!??!’ when she’s taking off that much more poignant really

He’s been trained to read the room. To read the context clues. To read politics and scheming and planning and people. He’s a Prince, it’s either that or accidentally drink poison by age 15. And he reads her and …

She’s impossibly wealthy. The dress isn’t a fabric he can recognize, but it’s beaded with cut diamonds, faintly milky opals that shimmer with a rainbow, little pale aquamarines, and somewhere are little bells gently ringing with each step - he’s a Prince and he can’t afford to dress like that. The slippers ring too … there is nothing like that crafted by the hands of humans. That’s fairy stuff. She has an in with them that eclipses royal politics. She is powerful in the Old Ways.

All this wraps around the poorest woman he’s ever seen in his entire life, and he’s seen some very, very, poor people in his time.

Poor in money, but poor in “oh you poor thing!” as well. This is someone who has been robbed blind. This is someone who carried themselves waiting for the lash, for a browbeating, for harsh, cruel, abrupt, punishment.

He expects her to be haughty, or hard, or meek or… something else… but she’s just nice. She’s just … nice.

The rigid posture comes out of his back, his tongue unsticks. She’s like sitting by the embers of a low, calm, fire. He feels warmed and rested simply speaking to her. He wonders if it’s magic, and it might be, but if it is it is magic that is her own.

And that terrifies him, because he’s trained to see these things and he knows someone with a cruel hand is waiting to douse her, and snuff her, and beat the last glimmer out of her shining eyes - eyes that put that dress to shame and and and and… she’s gone.

Oh god, she’s gone. It will be all over her sweet, kind, warm face that she transgressed and … oh god they’ll kill her, whoever they are. This will embarrass them and if there’s anything he knows, it’s that you don’t humiliate someone who has power over you and walk away unscathed.

And all he has is a fairy slipper that will only ever fit her foot (it’s not merely shoe size, it’s a kind of spiritual fit as well), and the vain hope that he can keep such a bright light from burning out. It doesn’t even touch his heart that what he’s feeling is a kind of pure philia, not until it enraptures him soul to bones, all at once. Oh god, oh no, oh shit… he’s reached well above his station, but…he can try to be good and worthy.

The way he sees it, sometimes even the strongest people can be brought low and need just… a little help. She had enough in her to do whatever she had to do to free herself of those evil relations if she had to, but she shouldn’t have to. There’s no glory in blood. Sometimes it’s okay for the ending to be happily ever after.

Fandom misconception - "Wei Wuxian has an awful memory"

No. No, he doesn't. He has a selective memory that is impeccable when it is something that actually interests him. He only forgets things if they are unimportant to him - like who the hell Su She and Jin Zixun are lmao. But things he finds interesting? Like LWJ for instance...? He can remember every single instance they met some 18 years prior - having been dead for over 13 of those years, no less!

Yes, he (mostly) forgot where he heard what we know as Wangxian from, but he was feverish and slipping out of consciousness at the time. Yes, he forgot that LWJ saved him and protected him after Nightless City, but he was traumatised and physically drained.

WWX only forgets things during rather extenuating circumstances or due to trauma. Otherwise, his memory is actually impeccable. He remembers the melody he heard JGY play once (or twice?) during his forced empathy with NMJs decapitated head! Able to recall the song and play it note for note a few days later, after being out of it from being stabbed! He actually remembers the 'Hundred Holes' curse from glancing at it in a random book once in the Lan library some 5 years prior to seeing JZX2 riddled with holes.

He remembers every single exchange he had with LWJ during their teens. He remembers that LWJ paid for the food and A-Yuans toys during their impromptu Yiling date. He remembers the way the candlelight made LWJ's long lashes cast delicate shadows over his fair cheeks back when he was transcribing lines back at the Cloud Recesses!

WWX's memory is actually really, really impressive! He just doesn't hold onto useless facts, just as he doesn't hold onto resentment.

prompt for @/tinybingy jc trying to make yanli’s lotus rib soup for young jin ling, having some sort of breakdown over it bc its not the same and he can’t do it but jin ling eats it anyways and without meaning to makes jc feel a lot better about it all

There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

There once was a man from Verdun

There once was a man from the sticks Whose limericks stopped at line six. They were fine till line five Then they took quite a dive — But the problem is easy to fix If you just ignore the last line, it doesn't even follow the rhyme scheme oh god I've really lost control of this thing I'm so sorry...

There once was a man

From Cork who got limericks

And haiku confused.

There once was a man from the sticks

Who liked to compose limericks

But he failed at the sport

Because he wrote them too short

@limerickshere

There once was a fellow named Dan, Whose poetry never would scan. When told this was so, He replied, "Yes, I know-- It's because I try to squeeze as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can."

On Tumblr did lasses and lads Their way with fail poetry had. You're having your fun But you're fooling no one - It takes skill to do something this bad.

i used to be so good at writing strong, thoroughly-researched, thoroughly-edited essays.

as a kid in hs, my teacher literally came up to me, holding my 40 page essay on the intersection of the European witch hunts and capitalism/exploitation/gender roles (it was supposed to be 7 pages...whoops) and went like "this is literally a master's-degree level thesis. what are you doing?? you could literally use this as your final dissertation in a master's program, what the fuck."

NOW??? NOW?? you'd think I'd be oh so skilled. but alas. i can barely piece together two ideas. adhd skill-regression is so so real. im SOBBING

The skill can come back and it often does. It is not unusual for it skill recedes during stressful and painful times. Maybe you just need more stability/safety/kind people around you.

I have been through something similar a few times in my life with writing, yoga, studying...

Admittedly, my life is always financially and socially precarious, so my notion of stability currently just means "enough money to pay the rent and food for the next few months."

It is hard to hold onto anything when you have to fight for survival all the time, either materially or emotionally.

Wow, uh. Okay, I'm gonna need a minute to process "It is hard to hold onto anything when you have to fight for survival all the time...". You're genuinely rewiring my brain is we speak.

Thank you, this means a lot to hear. <3

Thank you as well. We have to help each other in this hellscape whenever we can.

Love the concept of scissors. Someone was like, “a knife is clumsy for this task, what if I used TWO knives?” and they were right.

#posts that have 10k to me. 

I am putting my two knives inside you.

How did that work out for you, huh? “Ooooh this post is gonna have SO MANY notes oooh I’m investing early” how did that investment pay off? You like your return? You like being completely fucking wrong? Look at that note count. As of this reblog, barely two thousand notes on this pathetic weakarse knife post. You’re all shitty market speculators and you should all be so fucking embarrassed.

Don’t mock me like this :(

Should we mock you in a different way?

This website already does don’t worry

Who are your favorite Canon or Head Canon asexual characters. My Favorite is Perry the Platypus

ヽ(*＾ω＾*)ﾉ