why are dudes in fanfic always getting hit with freight train orgasms. why not an orient express orgasm, classy and romantic. where are the shinkansen train orgasms? his orgasm hit him like the TGV atlantique breaking the passenger rail speed record. like the shanghai maglev, his orgasm was a feat of engineering but something of a commercial disappointment.
Don’t tell me delayed orgasms aren’t a thing
learning new things about the german rail system today
today was the day we finalized the migration of essential software at work from some old and busted shit that was ready to die at any time, to the new cloud version of the same software that we are no longer responsible for maintaining. which is good because no one was actually maintaining ours. it's just been slowly crufting into unusability for a decade. so anyway they set aside an hour for a teams meeting where they'd walk us through the different interface and how to go through normal processes.
"it's not that big a change," they said. "it's all the same stuff, it just looks a little different," they said.
they did not account for the fact that the primary user of this software is someone who doesn't actually know how it works or what it's doing. they learned how to do their job entirely through rote memorization. they know which buttons they are supposed to press in which order, and that is the full extent of what they know. they also did not account for the fact that this person's processes were learned thirdhand from other people who were not using this software normally to begin with.
it's like. imagine if someone had only ever used tumblr in the app. and you try to get them to use it in a desktop browser, but they cannot figure out how to post. and you go through explaining where the button is and how to format text and add tags, even though you could have sworn it was all the same in the app. but then they're like, "okay, but what's the phone number" and you're like "what" and they're like "the phone number to call to make a post?" and it turns out somehow they still had the ability to post by calling a phone number, and every time they posted on the app they called the post in first and then edited the audio post to transcribe it into text before screenshotting the text for a photo post. and nothing you can say to them will make them understand that none of that is necessary or correct. they shouldn't have even been able to do some of that. they can just type into the post box now, like a civilized person. "okay," they say, "but what is the phone number, though? because when i made my account my friend gave me this checklist and the first thing on it is to call the number."
so anyway we were on that teams call for almost three hours and they still don't have a handle on the new software
details have been changed but i want you to imagine that this software is used in part to record payments and send out updated invoices. in this software there is a special process to send invoices to collections. generally, you use special filters to determine what does and does not get sent off to collections. but this person kept asking that poor trainer to run the collections wizard on all invoices. every one of them. unpaid. paid. brand new. all of them. and the trainer is like. i am not doing that actually. and the person keeps insisting. "i need the report" they keep saying. "this isn't a report" the trainer keeps explaining.
as far as anyone can tell, decades ago, the person who first worked with this software added a custom report that prints before you can run the collections wizard. they would go through that report manually highlighting every invoice going to collections, with a highlighter, because they didn't trust the software. because this was old software without any kind of autosave functionality, they could just abort the collections wizard after they got the report, before doing it again and manually flagging the invoices they highlighted. everyone using this software since then has just. done that. assuming it was necessary for some reason.
"please," the trainer kept saying. "can you tell me what the report is called. what is the report. can you scan the report and send it to me. we can just run the report. we don't need to run the collections wizard. we actually specifically should not. there is no report here. we would need to add that in if you want that. but you won't need to run this wizard to get that report. you can just get it. the report. without doing this."
"it's fine," they kept saying. "i can show you the report. just hit okay on the wizard and it should pop up."
@grison-in-space your tags pass peer review
Having had actual significant success with these people:
You're welcome!
COSIGNED
Oh God, been there and done that. The above is all excellent advice, and it's why Project Management (TM) exists--because someone needs to account for additional training and documentation.
On a related note, there are entire business processes in your organization that were built around a particular software product, and possibly not the same product that's currently in use! Ask questions, figure out what the process should be, and do not under any circumstances accept the greasy assurances from the vendor that they can implement "custom development" to maintain your existing workflow. That's the sound of your pocket being picked.
You have to admire her audacity, if nothing else.
Literally my favourite thing about Rogue One is that it makes the opening of New Hope so funny. Like, Vader has followed Leia from a planet he just blew up seconds ago and pursued her across the galaxy and then she’s just like: ‘I’m on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan’
Vader: You’re a rebel. I just had a fight with your entire rebel fleet and followed you here. Straight from the rebels. Of which you are a part
Leia: *dramatic gasp* rebel? Me??? I was just passing through. Diplomatically. Thought it was a five-space-ship pile-up or something going on there…
death star plans? on my alderaanian diplomatic mission? it’s more likely than you think
ok but this is like legitimate Canon Improvement because I’d always wondered why Vader was so wildly furious at the start of the movie like “rahhhhh bring me the passengers I WANT THEM ALIVE!!!!” and now I’m like
ohh yeah okay they literally JUST blew up Vader’s base, stole his sh!t, and took off while giving him the finger from the window
while giving him the finger from the window
IT GOT BETTER
The other thing is, Leia has been strong with the Force her whole life without really knowing it. Luke is an insanely good shot, an ace pilot, quick with machines. These are the skill he learned growing up. Imagine Darth Vader’s and Padme Amidala’s ACTUAL DAUGHTER being raised as a diplomat and princess. Imagine Bail Organa introducing her to the Rebellion. Imagine the MASSIVE FUCKING LIES she’s told, and how they probably went something like an accidental Jedi Mind Trick for most of her life. And now here’s (secret) Dad, and he ain’t buying it honey.
That^^ addition. I like it.
Ooooh, that’s a great addition to my “stormtroopers can’t hit Luke, Leia, or their companions because they’re unconsciously using the Force to protect themselves” headcanon. (Nothing fancy, just enough to make shots go an inch or two wide. But you gotta figure the Empire has all kinds of numbers on their troopers’ accuracy, with specific tech to track performance. I bet the after-action reports on engagements with these two are really interesting.)
For my money Leia’s best moment is when she lies about the location of the rebel base and Tarkin believes her. Doesn’t stop him blowing up Alderaan, but he is so mad when he finds out there’s nothing on Dantooine. You gotta figure Tarkin’s good at seeing through deceptions, or he wouldn’t be where he is… but it’s already pretty much canon that Leia’s Force sensitivity helped her resist torture and mind probing, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that she gave Tarkin just the slightest nudge toward “she’s telling me the truth.”
edit: I can hear @mackensen quoting Obi-Wan’s line on “the Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded” at me and I am not saying Tarkin has a weak mind, but a) I didn’t say it was a strong influence either, just a nudge, and b) Tarkin does not expect a teenage girl to lie to his face with the fate of her home planet on the line. He expects her to just tell him where the fucking base is already. That’s not even an unreasonable expectation, but in this case it’s a weak point for her to exploit.
This post gets a little better every time I see it.
So the Star Was Roleplaying Game Second Edition manual (which has a great cover, check it out: https://archive.org/details/starwarsrpg) has a really good explanation of this dynamic when explaining modifiers for trying to con somebody (pages 83-84) and it maps to what @cumaeansibyl was saying above. Entirely possible this scenario inspired that mechanic. Difficulty is modified by whether the target of the con should know better, and whether there's a reason to suspect dishonesty. Tarkin ought to know better, but Leia is telling a very plausible lie. In fact, she's barely lying at all. There is a Rebel base on Dantooine, albeit a deserted one. It's not the Rebel base that Tarkin's looking for, but hey, maybe he should have asked a more specific question.
On suspecting dishonesty, Leia gives the accurate impression of being overwrought. Incredible to think that she'd lie in this situation. Tarkin assumes that bringing maximum pressure will work. On the other hand, there's plenty of evidence that people being tortured tell the interrogators what they want to hear, not the truth. Darth Vader was a foot away from Leia and missed several very important, relevant facts about her.
It's also possible that Leia has realized, however subconsciously (through the Force or not), that Tarkin's going to destroy Alderaan regardless. This is a known problem with the madman theory of foreign policy: "the inability of a madman to assure others that they will not be punished even if they yield to a particular demand." There's no reason to answer truthfully if the answer is irrelevant.
Dear necromancers, why would you bother summoning human corpses when dinosaurs are an option
there is an entire movie series dedicated to explaining why we do not reanimate dinosaurs
are you suggesting necromancers were behind jurassic park
Everyone acting like the Dinosaurs were the Problem in Jurassic Park seems to have forgotten that all of their problems traced back to the fact that their entire IT Network was a single-point-of-failure system, a single underpaid SysAdmin who intentionally sabotaged the park for profit.
The only reason the system had a single point of failure was cost cutting. This was never going to end well because the man running it did not actually care about doing things the right way.
Yea exactly. I guess most folks didn’t read Michael Crichton’s entire bibliography like I did, so the fact that literally every plot of his can be boiled down to “Private Enterprise cannot be trusted to operate in secret without Public Oversight” got glossed over in favor of sexy Jeff Goldblum’s “Life uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Finds A Way”
Given how popular neoliberal deregulation has been since the USSR collapsed, that shouldn’t keep surprising me. And yet.
So it’s fine to resurrect dinosaur skeletons if i pay my crypt acolytes a union wage got it
Finally! Someone capable of listening!
Part of Crichton’s particular message for that book was “sometimes shit will just Go Wrong because it is in the nature of complex systems to behave unpredictably, and you cannot control every variable, or plan for every contingency.”
This is a supporting argument for “we can’t just let private enterprise do whatever they want,” but it’s also its own thesis that he wants to explore, because chaos theory was a sexy new discipline that had recently caused a great deal of annoyance by telling everyone they were wrong about everything (much like Ian Malcolm).
it’s easy to skim over the parts of the book where Malcolm, high on morphine, rambles about the nature of the universe for paragraphs at a time, but it’s not just about corporate evildoing. It’s about how our whole understanding of the universe has been mechanistic and oversimplified – input A always produces output B – and we all need to check ourselves and develop a shitload of humility before we wipe ourselves off the map.
So no, you should not raise dinosaurs from the dead.
“Well, the question is, how can you know anything about an extinct ecosystem? And therefore, how could you ever assume that you can control it? You have plants in this building that are poisonous. You picked them because they look good. But these are aggressive living things that have no idea what century they’re in and they will defend themselves. Violently, if necessary.”
– Dr. Ellie Sattler
I have a whole conference talk half-written in my head that boils down to "Jurassic Park and lessons in IT disaster recovery." This draws more from the book than the movie. You have this whole complex IT system managing this park and you have never turned it off before. You don't know if you can. You have no procedure for this. The only person who could write a procedure for this (Nedry) is missing. You can't call anyone. If you do nothing people, including you, will likely die in the next day or so.
I work in IT. This is a horror movie. This is the nightmare scenario that wakes us up in a cold sweat. Repo Man spends his life getting into intense situations. IT guy spends his life writing documentation to avoid intense situations.
A bus may have only a couple of passengers, especially at the beginning or end of its route. But let's also take fuel efficiency into account.
If there's one person on a bus because that person cannot or doesn't want to drive, the bus is succeeding.
Honestly, part of why it irritates me when people act performatively shocked at the homophobia in 2000s media is it wasn't just media. "Can you believe this aired in 2008" buddy, in 2008 I was having shit thrown at me from moving cars for having long hair, and you wanna get worked up about sitcoms?
Like, I need to emphasise that it's really only within the last ten years that I've been able to stop worrying about being physically assaulted in public over piddly shit like "being a dude with long hair"; if that surprises you, you have no frame of reference for how recently things were real bad out there.
This is tangential, but theres this pervasive push in Canada right now against SOGI material being taught in school (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. Basically, anti-bullying workshops). The wildest thing about the discourse surrounding it is that they do have numbers about the effectiveness of the programs, and the results have shown that in addition to a decrease in verbal harassment of queer youth, there's also been a notable decline in verbal harassment of cishet boys.
Like, when being queer is framed as bad, and you've got a pack of dudes in a heirarchical pyramid scheme built off of dominance and control (patriarchy), then being perceived as gay/effeminate is one of many vectors by which someone can be mocked and ostracized. You then you get a hell of a lot of homo/transphobia aimed at straight boys.
Like, there has been a massive curbcutter effect with the advance of feminism and queer rights, and the youths just doooo not get how bad it used to be.
Oh yeah any reasonable cishet dude over 35 will tell you, the standards for masculinity in public school were VERY high, and it didn't really matter why you weren't living up to them -- no one who actually was gay or trans admitted it back then, so the harassment just went to those who were most visibly non-conforming. which could easily be cishet boys! I mean, those kids were coming up with esoteric gender signifiers you never even heard of, it was so easy to unwittingly do something "like a girl" and then you were just fucked.
(okay occasionally someone did admit to being gay but usually it was because everyone was already convinced they were gay so what was even the point)
basically if you ever want to prove that the patriarchy hurts men too, look at what boys put each other through in middle school and think about the lasting scars that kind of shit leaves
I caught more than my fair share of homophobic slurs in middle school and high school--this was in the American Midwest in the 1990s. I wasn't even non-conforming! Just kinda misshapen and brainy and awkward. You really cannot overstate the level of casual, unchecked homophobia in that time and place.
Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.
I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.
As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.
Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.
IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.
Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.
This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.
Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.
watching abortion ballot measures perform better in certain states than kamala
people hate Republicans’ RESULTS without ever actually tying those results to Republicans. (Trump bragged about the fall of Roe & correctly took credit for it, but people blamed Biden because Dobbs came down in 2022.)
people prefer Democrats’ RESULTS without ever actually crediting those gains to Democrats. (We had one of the strongest pandemic recoveries of any nation, millions of people’s wages & fiscal well-being went up due to the various stimulus policies in a extremely strong labor environment backed by an aggressive Department of Labor, but nobody credited government.)
people like how Democrats work, but they prefer how Republicans look and talk. I really think it is that simple, and that stupid.
the data scientists will have to dig into this but there are, broadly, two possibilities:
it's not uncommon for people to only vote for president, which is why GOTV efforts are always saying "make sure to pay attention to the down-ballot races too!" here's an article from 2020 about it. if you go look at any given state's election results you'll see that, for the most part, senators and congresscritters from both parties get fewer votes than the presidential candidate.
it's impossible to tell how common it is for people to vote a split ticket, so we don't know if that was a significant factor. we do know that some Republican GOTV efforts focused on younger men who are non-voters or infrequent voters. that kind of person might just vote for Trump and not care about the rest.
in other words, the question is: did Harris do worse than other Democrats, or did Trump do better than other Republicans?
if it's mostly the latter, there's a shred of hope, because it means the popularity of Trumpism is tied to Trump himself, and that other people who try to ride it do so with indifferent results at best. the 2022 midterms would point in this direction.
I think we should account for the possibility (the likelihood?) that a significant number of people voted to keep abortion legal in their home state but also for Trump, because they'd heard him say he would leave it to the states and haven't paid enough attention to hear him contradict himself on that, and also believe he'd be better than a Democrat on inflation. It's hard for me to wrap my head around but there might be a lot of voters who really thought pro-choice AND pro-Trump made perfect sense.
I have seen evidence that some voters believe Biden banned abortion because it happened during his term -- these are probably the same people who think the president is directly in charge of gas prices -- but that doesn't explain the Dem senators who won in states that went red.
... though, to be fair, it's also possible that the individual R candidates were shit. I know Kari Lake was.
Counterfactual: on Earth 2, Trump responds more responsibly to the pandemic in 2020 and loses to Biden anyway because voters resent the restrictions and don't know how bad things were on Earth 1.
Recalls this classic Willie and Joe cartoon from Bill Mauldin.
I, for one, am happy these actors feel comfortable being loud about how much you and your friend suck. If you’re doing something so against that show as voting for a rapist convicted felon who wants to end democracy, what did you expect? Especially from those women?
Actors being loud about how these assholes are NOT welcome makes fandom safer for a lot more people who deserve to be there.
Maybe your fav actor hating you for your bigoted politics should be a cause for reflection about what’s gone so wrong in your life. You know, if this bothers you so much.
"Why did this panel turn so political out of nowhere?"
"We asked Kate Mulgrew for her political opinions...."
So wait a minute, this is interesting to me, because I don't think it's the usual "Star Trek suddenly became political oh no."
Say what you will (and is [sic] true) of Star Trek (particularly modern Star Trek), but it's a fucking convention.
I think what he's saying is this: "I know Star Trek has always been liberal. I don't actually like that it's liberal and I know people here at r/conservative are going to call me out for it. But I should be allowed to ignore a good 30-50% of the franchise's content because I'm here to have stupid fun and I don't want to have to think about anything too hard."
White men hate it when they're forced to think about the fact that they are white men in a world that oppresses people for not being white men. As far as they're concerned, they should never have to confront that, and anyone who asks them to is mean and unfair.
I guess these guys thought, since they have the privilege of ignoring political content, everyone else would do them the favor of maintaining their safe space for them. Whoops.
Star Trek is a liberal vision of the future and liberal actors are attracted to that vision. There's nothing controversial nor surprising about that.
what if you get divorced, and your ex writes a novel about it, and you write a novel about it, and your ex writes another novel about it, including about the novel you're writing, and that gets published before your novel. welcome to another article at new york magazine
Earlier this year, Ewell published a novel, Set for Life. Its narrator is unnamed, but his initial circumstances closely mirror what Ewell’s once were: a frustrated writer married to a more successful novelist, the two of them teaching in the English department of a liberal-arts college, his job offered as a “spousal hire” to help lure her. In the novel’s first chapter, the narrator, on his way home from a writing fellowship in France, stops over to see his and his wife’s good friends, a couple living in Brooklyn. (In the book, they are named Sophie and John and his wife is named Debra.) Near the end of chapter one, the unnamed narrator sleeps with Sophie. [...] Ewell is far from the first writer to pivot on the intimate details of their personal life. But one circumstance in which he finds himself is somewhat less commonplace. In May 2021, he sent the manuscript of Set for Life to an agent. That November, he learned some disconcerting information. In his novel, the narrator — who in this fictional world initially returns to live with his wife, his affair still secret — eventually realizes that his wife has known about the affair for some time and has been writing a book that will chronicle the disintegration of their marriage. Now, in the real world, Ewell discovered that a version of his story was actually happening. His ex-wife had written a book about their falling apart, and it would be published nine months before his. [...] One further peculiar aspect of all this is that Ewell had already touched on these events in fiction several years before his novel, in a 2019 story called “Halloween” that was published in Juxtaprose magazine, but appears strangely unaware that he did so. “I don’t think of that story as being very rooted in experience or anything,” he says when I mention it, seemingly mystified that I might bring it up in this context. I point out he is clearly using his marriage in it. He seems perplexed. “There’s an ex-wife with a boyfriend or something?” he asks. To which, well, yes, but rather more than that: The narrator’s ex-wife has stayed in the college town where they’d both once worked and married a man named Bruce, the former chair of the department, who has a daughter from a previous marriage. She is made full professor in three years. All of this mirrors Pittard’s subsequent life (aside from the fact she and her partner, Jeff Clymer, are not formally married). [...] “Weird!” Ewell says. “I don’t remember that at all. But, yeah, I mean I guess I’m calling on my experiences and memories more than I thought.” [...] All of which takes on greater significance for a very particular reason: This is a story in which the narrator’s ex-wife, Angela, is stabbed to death by a homeless man on the university campus. In other words, if we accept that Angela is based on Pittard, Ewell has written a story in which he imagines and depicts her murder. I ask whether he didn’t consider what Pittard would think if she read this. “It didn’t occur to me at all,” he says.
how else would they write novels about their failing marriages
I remember the horrified look on @cumaeansibyl's face when she found out from me that the husband in Elizabeth von Arnim's Vera was based on her disastrous marriage to Frank Russell (who was a real shit).
“To protect their copyright, streaming sites do not allow for screenshotting of any kind.”
Hey remember VHS where you bought a box to plug into your tv and you could legally record whatever was playing and then own it for free forever
I cannot emphasize enough that you not only COULD, it was ENCOURAGED. Blank video tapes for recording whatever you wanted were available everywhere and it was hard to miss the record button on the machines. They also deliberately designed stuff like VHS players that you could tell when to start recording things - as a kid I'd tell the player to record the cartoon channel beginning at 6 or 7 and then sleep in and watch the tape later - and then they would tell you how to do it in the owner's manual, this was no secret. You were SUPPOSED TO record shows you wanted to keep or that you wouldn't be home for to watch later.
The essential piece of information missing here is that the people who made the VHS machines and the people who made the TV channels were, and I cannot stress this enough, different people.
Like, of course Disney didn't used to want you to record their stuff for free and watch it forever. When VHS home recording came out, the companies that invented it were...sued! Of course they were!
It's just that the TV companies lost the lawsuit. It was deemed that once the signal got to your house legally you could do whatever the hell you wanted with it as long as it was for personal noncommercial use. It would have probably gone differently if the TV companies had the ability to detect whether you were recording them and then shut the signal off.
Like, I am 100 percent on the side of "you should be able to keep and own stuff permanently, I just also think there's a limit to how much breathless mythmaking about the halcyon days of the early nineties I can handle before it starts drifting into low-key misinformation.
In the United States the relevant case law is Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., decided in 1984, which was very much a close call and decided 5-4 but not under what would be considered normal liberal/conservative lines for that era. At the time of the litigation it wasn't recognized what an important revenue stream home video would be. The fact that people could make recordings from broadcasts absolutely affected the willingness of companies to license their intellectual property for over-the-air broadcasts.
As a veteran of the media distribution wars of the 1990s I can tell you that while making your own copies off TV broadcasts on to VHS was possible, it wasn't exactly encouraged, and relatively low quality of analog taping was probably a factor in limiting pushback from studies.
Also s/o to Mr. Rogers, whose argument in favor of time-shifting probably swung the Supreme Court decision.
currently maybe possibly single-handedly crashing whatever servers eton hosts its archived student newspapers on because me and a friend are getting obsessed with a single outspoken prefect from 1883
@queenlua Happily! This is going to be long, so here's some set dressing first:
Eton College, for anyone unfamiliar, is a prestigious boys' school in England that has famously educated MANY MANY politicians, royals, nobility, and other assorted famous people. All you really need to know about it is that's it's incredibly posh and expensive and exclusive
The Eton Society (called “Pop” internally) is a self-selecting body of senior students at Eton that have historically held a decent amount of power at the school. If you’ve ever attended a school with a prefect system/house system etc you probably know a little bit about how obnoxious this kind of group can get. Now imagine they're all called Lord Godfrey Pickerington or something. Are you getting it? Is the set being dressed? Good.
Now that the scene is set, here’s our tale!!
I stumbled into Eton’s archives while doing research for a fanfiction and we’ll just leave that admission where it is!! It was in reading old issues of their student-run paper, The Chronicle, from 1883 that myself and @carebewear started becoming fixated on one guy in particular.
Cecil B. Gedge (from this point on known as Gedge) was a member of the Eton Society in 1883/84. He won a few Science awards during his time there (Biology!!) and seemed to like rowing during school sports events. He went on to become a barrister, which will make sense once you know more about him.
The best part of Gedge, though, is his appearances in the minutes for the Eton Society meetings. At least at Gedge’s time, the Eton Society seemed really fond of staging debates (more like loosely organised discussions) on a wide variety of topics.
Here are some of the riveting questions they discussed!
And my personal favourite: "Are Ghosts Real?"
(They were very divided)
Gedge first came to our attention in debate about the annexation of New Guinea, in which he apparently started an "abusive attack on the British army and missionaries":
Wow! Based Gedge!? He continues to spit period-typical truths about things like how we shouldn't tax bicycles actually because it would disproportionately affect poor people. YIMBY Gedge?? He would've loved light rail.
The final nail in our Gedge obsession was a debate on women's suffrage, in which Gedge vehemently advocates for women's right to vote and then gets no supporters at the end of the meeting. But I appreciate that he said it anyway and kept saying it. He is more persecuted that Christ, to me.
Here are some more, from anti-conscription sentiment to indirectly calling his classmates stupid to weirding everyone out by saying he wants to donate his body to science (his friend dissecting him for fun):
We started getting the feeling people might not have liked Gedge that much, mainly since one of the Society members wrote a poem about all his friends and Gedge isn't in it.
In 1884, there was some extended drama in the Chronicle where someone whom I groundlessly suspect was Gedge under a pseudonym ("A Socialist"), wrote to the editor complaining that the "debates" published by the Eton Society were "bad" (genuine quote) and that they should make a REAL debate society at the school that ALL boys, not just the self-selected seniors, could participate in:
To make a long story short most of the vocal members of the Eton Society threw up their hands at this and refused to do anything, basically boiling down to "Just because we're the prefects of the school doesn't mean we should have to actually DO anything!! Unfair!!" and also this quote which reads exactly like at least a thousand real tweets I've seen in my life
Liberal. Gedge, of course, was there giving practical suggestions, but the discussion was ultimately cut short because their principal died and they had to push a memorial issue of the paper. We have a working theory that the staff might've used that interruption as an opportunity to get the boys to cut it the fuck out.
Anyway it's a little unclear what happens to Gedge after that. He isn't credited as being in the 1884 Eton Society in the larger school register but it's unclear if that's because he wasn't re-elected or if he just graduated. Either way, he went on to become a barrister in London, which makes a lot of sense. Sadly though, he passed away in WW1, which we were really normal about
Thank you Lt. Gedge, for truly embodying the eternal spirit of an outspoken debate-kid, a friend to the lefties, a proto-yimby, a terminal back-talker, and the kid in a biology class that's a little too excited for the dissections. I hope your life, however short, was a rich and bright one. Thanks for the incredibly entertaining afternoon, brother 🫡
The website Carved in Stone has some documents related to Gedge's life, including his military service. He volunteered for service on October 7, 1914, at the age of 45. The British Army was all-volunteer and would remain so for another two years. He was one of many men signed up after the first battle of the Marne and subsequent battles made it clear that the war would be a long one. Men volunteered in groups, the so-called "Pals" battalions. He was apparently in one of the Sportsmen's battalions, which had many men about his age.
He fell on the first day of the battle of Loos, a fate shared by many of the recruits from late 1914. John Kipling, only son of the poet, was killed two days later.
Vintage art for a Chesapeake & Ohio Rail Road calendar by Charles Bracker! So sweet. The sleeping kitty is "Chessie", one of the most successful cat advertising mascots of the 20th century. Source.
Thomas Dixon wrote a whole book about her!
I don't fuck w nerds, the moment I can smell lore correction coming I'm like "Oh Neptune" and I gotta call my mom and ask her to pick me up
If I'm like "I really liked the scene where Gandalf learns the truth about the Ring in the first movie" and someone's like "Oh you mean when he was in Minas Tirith, originally known as Minas Anor when it was first built in the Third Age?" I am pulling the nearest fire alarm
Them: Pelargir prospered further under the reign of the the Ship-kings, and Tarannon Falastur, 12th king of Gondor, built a home there, though Berúthiel, his wife, didn't care for it
Me, sweating: D. Did you know that. That Viggo Mortensen really broke his toe. In that one scene
hey quick question, probably not important - how did you know all that stuff to put in the hypotheticals
[Throws smoke bomb down on the floor] [When the smoke clears I am still in the room with you but lying facedown, possibly dead but more likely unconscious. There is a visible dent in the nearest door.]
When I was a sophomore in college and a real dick I walked into a Star Wars Trivial Pursuit game with a bunch of unsuspecting first-year students.
First question to me:
Q: Who was the commander of the Rebel Base on Hoth?
Me: General Carlist Rieekan, played by Bruce Boa, as seen in Octopussy.
"Oh shit".
Yeah, it went downhill from there.
Behind-the-scenes photos posted by Alan Fraser, camera operator for the Granada Sherlock Holmes series.
Part (1/2)
Tumblr isn’t letting me include the link for some reason, but the FB group is called Granada Sherlock Holmes TV series.
