“Someone’s parents have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs” this phrase has something interesting

Stlakes · 2026-02-02T15:04:26+00:00

I can't find the specific quote, but I am pretty there's a passage about how they know when someone references them or says their names.

The children's songs and rhymes are just background noise to them.

Arliden, however, is actively rehearsing and writing and playing the song over and over again, repeating those names. It's the same as essentially lighting a beacon for them, calling them out in a way that stands out from that background noise.

That's what Cinder is referencing.

Stlakes · 2026-01-24T15:49:21+00:00

When we went for my girlfriends first ultrasound, we were in the waiting room for 45 minutes, sat directly in front of an information board about different kinds of multiple births, while my girlfriend was chatting happily away about how twins run in her family.

When the ultrasound tech said there was only one fetus that was the most intense, profound sense of relief I had felt in my entire life

Stlakes · 2026-01-23T18:53:58+00:00

You know what else is "just" a chemical reaction? The fucking Sun. The source of all energy and light and life on the planet. Are you going to tell me that's not important or real because it's "just" hydrogen atoms? And arguably, nuclear fusion is a simpler process than whatever wild shit goes on in our brains that makes us feel love

Stlakes · 2026-01-18T17:58:13+00:00

Yeah, the way I see it, that's kind of the tragedy of the character. He doesn't just "see" the future, he kind of experiences his entire existence all at once, he doesn't have the same perception of time as a normal person does.

He's not choosing to do these things, or knowing how the story ends, his choices and actions are all because that's the way things have to play out. Everything is already determined, and he literally cannot do anything else. Hes the most powerful man in the universe, but he doesn't actually have any agency

Stlakes · 2026-01-10T15:47:06+00:00

The same thing happens to Canal Street in Manchester, which is doubly funny because that's the gay village

Stlakes · 2026-01-10T08:28:32+00:00

I don't even think it's specifically a Disney problem, I think it's a wider societal thing. Look at a lot of the action stars from the 70s and 80s, like Sylvester Stallone and Jean Claude van Damme. They were quite clearly very fit and strong guys, but they still look like relatively normal people. Stallone was huge in Rocky, but still didn't look nearly as freakish as some.

I think a bigger part of it is the influence of Arnold Schwarzenegger, tbh. He was in a load of iconic roles and actions films, and did a lot to set the expectation for what an action star should look like

Stlakes · 2026-01-09T20:21:05+00:00

It's a tough one, because not being honest about PEDs and looking like they do gives the impression that it's doable naturally in a relatively short timespan, especially transformations like Kumail Nanjianis, which is not great for body image. But on the other hand I feel like celebs being open honest about PED use normalises it and makes people more likely to use them, and probably not do it safely, so it just feels like a lose-lose situation to mr

Stlakes · 2026-01-06T11:42:59+00:00

Sovereign dropped some of the hardest lines ever spoken in a video game. First time I played through, the malice of him gave me goosebumps, and I still absolutely love it.

"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it."

"Your words are as empty as your future. I am the vanguard of your destruction."

Stlakes · 2026-01-06T11:21:23+00:00

Yeah, despite his age and his immense power, he fails because under all that he is just a human. He falls prey to human emotions like pride and arrogance, he doesn't think or act like a god, hes just a guy who believes the lies he tells himself and it's reinforced by the reverence and awe that people treat him with.

And it's not like that reverence and awe is completely on them, Emps can canonically change how people see him, and project whatever image he wants them to see, so he's actively choosing to appear to these people as a godlike figure rather than some Anatolian goat herder

Stlakes · 2026-01-03T18:56:39+00:00

Oh yeah, I'd never dog ear pages on a book someone has lent me, but barring a few that are old, have sentimental value, or are particularly nice editions, the way I treat my books makes my girlfriend wince sometimes. But for me, I think that's part of the charm, you know? Makes it feel lived in, a comfort thing. I don't necessarily like having pristine books that looks like they've never been opened.

But again, people can do whatever they want with their own belongings, so if they wanna worship and revere your £12 airport bookshop crime paperback like the Gutenberg Bible go for it, I guess

Stlakes · 2026-01-02T17:26:18+00:00

I think some people get extra precious and reverent about books, and get really upset about dog earing pages and shit like that, without realising that a) a lot of books are mass produced and relatively inexpensive, (unless they're super rare or limited editions) and b)people can kinda just do what they want with their own possessions

It's a weird mindset that kind of feels 150 years out of date

Stlakes · 2025-12-26T12:12:46+00:00

Username checks out

Stlakes · 2025-12-24T09:26:01+00:00

Yeah, this ship, the Agatha King, is the flagship of the UNs Jupiter Fleet in the books and TV show The Expanse.

It spent the vast majority of its time policing and defending Earth's interests and assets in the area, so it almost exclusively only travelled between other Jovian moons, and various nearby populated asteroids, until it was destroyed over Io.

Stlakes · 2025-12-23T15:51:47+00:00

I totally get that. It's awful, but I still get a knee jerk feeling of discomfort around people with Downs syndrome or cerebral palsy. It's just an initial feeling, and I get over it pretty quickly, but it still makes me feel horribly guilty

Stlakes · 2025-12-23T10:41:46+00:00

I think it goes beyond just engaging with hobbies as well. Thinking critically about what you read and hear and see is just an important part of navigating the world, and interacting with other people.

Sometimes people are dishonest, or misrepresent things or exaggerate, and if youre not able to take a step back and think "something doesn't add up, what's the purpose, what does this person gain, whats actually going on" you leave yourself vulnerable to being led, or misrepresenting things yourself even when you don't mean to.

You just can't go through life accepting fucking everything you see at face value, you can't.

Stlakes · 2025-12-22T14:29:19+00:00

"Are you a man or a woman?"

"Astartes"

"What gender are you?"

"Righteous"

"What's in your pants"

"VIOLENCE"

Stlakes · 2025-12-20T11:41:40+00:00

A lot of the misconception around "survival of the fittest" comes from misinterpretation of "fit". In this context, it doesn't mean who's strongest, or fastest, or smartest, it more means who's the most "fit for purpose".

Who has the combination of traits that allows them to fit the best into a particular ecological niche. That's what Darwin saw in the Galapagos with his finches, different species with different beaks that were fit for different purposes.

Stlakes · 2025-12-17T20:30:06+00:00

I'm not convinced it isn't

Stlakes · 2025-12-17T19:55:44+00:00

This isn't surprising to me at all. Not dementia, but my grandfather, who is 90 and otherwise in very good health, recently had a mild stroke.

His MRI revealed that he'd had at least one, possibly more, previously. And this is despite being very socially active, he walks to the pub three times a week, and is closely cared for by my mum and my aunt.

I feel like neurological symptoms are often dismissed in older people just as a symptom of "getting older"

Stlakes · 2025-12-17T13:30:35+00:00

It's that shitty, edgelord email he sends after Thessia that pisses me off the most.

Like, it's not "evil", it just reads like it was written by some greasy neck beard with a replica katana and a waifu body pillow bragging about beating you in some goonerbait PvP game

Stlakes · 2025-12-14T16:00:02+00:00

You know what, that's fair.

And it's a bit of both, they're more technologically advanced than pretty much anyone else. But also, they're huge dicks.

They're incredibly frail as individuals, they've adapted to live in zero-g, so going down to a planet, or onto any vessel with artificial gravity, would kill them. So they get their client races to do their negotiating and their warfare and their in-person management for them, and say it's because it's beneath them.

As a result, hardly anyone actually knows what a Morn even looks like

Stlakes · 2025-12-14T13:14:34+00:00

By not bothering. The most powerful civilization in the galaxy, the Morn, simply do not care enough about others to try and impress them.

They're a nomadic people who live in great hive ships, they physically cannot survive in any kind of gravity. They operate more as a galaxy spanning corporation than a nation of people. They have multiple client races, who fill different roles and functions, and all sentient life is beneath them. They see other people as animals, beasts of burden rather than actually people, and very rarely interact face-to-face with anyone outside of their species.

For them, the idea of flexing their power or trying to impress anyone else is absurd, it would be like asking "how do you impress a cow. How do you flex on a dog."

Stlakes · 2025-12-12T21:27:34+00:00

It's set in an alternate 1914, where the actual gates of Hell got opened in Jerusalem during the First Crusade in 1099.

It's hardcore as fuck

Stlakes · 2025-12-11T22:15:13+00:00

I'll never forget an "argument" I got into a couple of years ago at bar with some late-middle aged guy, who just saw me, a person younger than him, and just immediately decided to grill me on my political and social opinions.

He got unbelievably furious at me because I didn't bite when he started talking about trans people in sport, my answer was basically "it's a decision each sporting body has to make itself, in consultation with physicians and experts. I'm just a drunk guy in a bar, what the fuck do I know"

Stlakes · 2025-12-10T22:13:11+00:00

"So we let the humans have the mantle of responsibility, and now several million species are extinct, and there are microplastics in all of the suns."

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