The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈

@shiftercat

Another cis feminist for trans rights. She/her. Not quite a crone. Bad-faith arguments get you muted, slurs get you blocked. I repost a lot of geekery, some of it NSFW.

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The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· May 3

Alt-text:

This occurrence enabled Justin to survive his immediate danger, and as time went on he acquired great power. The Emperor Anastasius gave him command of the Palace guards, and when he himself passed away, Justin on the strength of this command succeeded to the throne, though he was by now a doddering old man, totally illiterate -- in popular parlance, he didn't know his ABC -- an unheard of thing amongst the Romans. It was the invariable custom that the Emperor should append his own signature to all documents embodying decrees defined by him. Justin, however, was incapable of either drafting his own decrees or taking an intelligent interest in the measures contemplated: the official whose luck it was to be his chief adviser -- a man called Proclus, who held the rank of Quaestor, as it is called -- used to decide all measures as he himself thought fit. But to secure authority for these in the Emperor's own handwriting, the men responsible for this business proceeded as follows. On a short strip of polished wood they cut a stencil in the shape of four letters spelling the Latin for I HAVE READ. Then they used to dip a pen in the special in reserved for emperors and place it in the hands of the Emperor Justin. Next the took the strip of wood I have described and laid it on the document, grasped the Emperor's hand and, while he held the pen, guided it along the pattern of the four letters, taking it round all the bends cut in the wooden stencil. Then away they went, carrying the Emperor's writing, such as it was.

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 24

A screencap of Blackbeard from Our Flag Means Death holding someone at knifepoint and looking especially wild-eyed. Caption: "Where's the link? Where's the fucking link?"

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 22

People were skewering this line of argument in the 18th century, dude.

From an 18th-century debate on criticism:

George Dempster: "We have hardly a right to abuse this tragedy [performed at Drury Lane]; for, bad as it is, how vain should either of us be to write one not near so good!"

Samuel Johnson: "Why no, sir; this is not just reasoning. You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables."

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 17

Against an image of the sky over a desert (blue fading to starry black at the top) is the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert's Dune:

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 15

How about this one?

An image from an old VHS tape, showing a great deal of tracking static at the top. In the middle is a Klingon from Star Trek TNG, looking like he's yelling about something. Caption reads: Everyone was harmed during the making of this video.

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 5

A picture of a bus stop ad showing a WWII-poster style nurse saying, "I can't eat applause! Maybe vote for someone sensible next time, eh?"

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 3

Tweet from vexwerewolf: Okay clown you say you "sexually identify as an attack helicopter" as a transphobic joke but I can actually respect it because you're a high-maintenance tool with severely limited utility and you seem like you can only function when you've got two Adderall addicts inside of you.

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 2

From ThatBoomerKid:

Bard: "What's all this?"
Paladin: "The druid is in time-out."
Bard: "What'd you do?"
Druid: "I was selling a gluten-free organic all-natural weight-loss thing."
Bard: "And?"
Druid: "It was just hungry wolves. Lots of 'em."
Paladin: "DO NOT GIGGLE AT THE DRUID'S ATROCITIES."

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 2

A picture of an elevator notice showing an adult and a child standing near a row of elevator buttons. The child, who is reaching towards the buttons, has a red X over them, conveying the message not to let your child touch the elevator buttons.

However, the row of buttons happens to be stylized in such a way that it looks a bit like a Scottish shortbread cookie. Conor Collins has tweeted the picture with the caption, "No Scottish shortbread for you little man!"

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 2

Has anyone else nominated Miette?

Tweet from Patricia Lockwood:

Me, lightly touching Miette with the side of my foot: Miette move out of the way please so I don't trip on you

Miette, her eyes enormous: you KICK Miette? You kick her body like the football? Oh! Oh! Jail for mother! Jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Apr 2

IBM slide, 1979: "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision."

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Mar 30

Next time you hear anyone praising the virtues of "small government", remind them of where that idea came from: (full text here bethanyactually.tumblr.com/post/1464660...)

$Nobody will be surprised to learn that they [proslavery politicians] insisted that the federal government be kept weak to prevent it from interfering with southern slavery. But the history of taxation revealed a far more comprehensive impact of slavery on American politics - and much earlier than the 1820s. Here is the thunder. From the beginning of the colonial era, American governments were more democratic, stronger, and more competent where slavery was a marginal institution: in those colonies where most people were free and there were few slaves or slaveholders. American governments were more aristocratic, weaker, and less competent where slavery was a major institution in the economy and society: in those colonies where large fractions of the population were enslaved and there were many slaves and slaveholders. Democracy and liberty produced stronger and more competent governments in early American history. And, from the moment the colonies banded together to create the United States, slaveholders realized that strong, competent, and democratic governments were the only institutions in American life that posed credible threats to slavery. The American mistrust of government is not part of our democratic heritage. It comes from slaveholding elites who had no experience with democratic governments where they lived and knew only one thing about democracy: that it threatened slavery. The idea that government is the primary danger to liberty has many sources, but one of its main sources in the United States involved the “liberty” of some people to hold others as chattel property. The allied idea that government is the primary danger to property rights also has many sources. In the early United States, however, it made the most sense where large amounts of the “property” consisted of human beings. - Robin Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery$

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Mar 18

Bill Sienkiewicz Kingpin-ass vibes on that picture.

A panel from a Daredevil comic, illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz. The Kingpin is rendered in an extremely stylized way, his head considerably smaller and lower than the enormous bulk of his back and shoulders. His disproportionately small hands are folded pensively on the desk in front of him. Thought boxes read: "I have built an empire on human sin. I am feared by the honest and the wicked. Elected officials obey my will as swiftly as the lowest pimps and pushers. I have everything I desired..."

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Mar 13

Different phrasing, same idea (h/t @alexandraerin.com):

Screenshot of a pair of tweets by Alexandra Erin:

"But dark humor can help people cope with life!"

Sure. There's such a thing as gallows humour.

But are you the one on the gallows?

If the person on the gallows makes a grim joke, that's gallows humor.

If someone in the crowd makes a joke, that's part of the execution.

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Mar 12

The page wouldn't let me copy the code. This is the best screencap I could get after reloading the page with adblockers disabled:

"What's my JND?" (referring to a colour perception test).

"Your friend's score: 0.0022 They're watching. Probably."

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Mar 10

Post your favorite "The Lord of the Rings" character. Wrong answers only.

The cover art for Delirium's Mistress, the fourth book in Tanith Lee's Tales From the Flat Earth series. The art, by Michael Whelan, shows a dark-haired woman wearing a star-embroidered black cloak seated on the back of a winged white lion. They are flying over the ruins of some ancient city.

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Feb 8

A set of three super bowls that used to be my mother's. The 1970s "Harvest Gold" colour scheme is not one I'd have chosen, but I like them because the "handles" are actually pouring spouts, one slightly bigger than the other.

A set of three glassware mixing bowls from the 1970s. They're in a brownish-orange colour marketed at the time as "Harvest Gold", with the biggest bowl in a darker shade. They also have a wheat stalk motif on the sides, and white insides. What might be mistaken for handles on either end are in fact pouring spouts, one slightly bigger than the other.

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Feb 8

A picture of a large hole in a tiled wall. It's followed by a message from the social media account of the Chester Fritz Library.

Wanted: Someone to climb into this hole in the library for us.
Job Requirements:
- Limber
- Trusting
- Has not read The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Feb 8

I'm just gonna put this here:

Value A in the logical statement that is the structure of ‘The Cold Equations’ – the EDS is so finely calibrated that it carries only enough fuel to get the pilot to his destination – is the least questioned part of the story. Godwin passes over this point in less than a paragraph. We accept it because it is stated so simply, as a given: ‘The cruisers were forced by necessity to carry a limited amount of the bulky rocket fuel and the fuel was rationed with care’ (443). Who would question that? It is the key point upon which we suspend our disbelief in order to accept the rest of the story. And yet it is upon this precise point that the story stumbles and falls.

Let me make this absolutely clear: it is human agency that designed and created these ships; it is human agency that decided the ships should operate this way; it is human agency that wrote the computer program that rations the fuel for each ship; it is human agency that wrote the Interstellar Regulations that govern the ship; it is human agency and human agency alone that determines the situation in which the girl must die. This has nothing to do with the law of nature, nothing to do with our relationship with the environment.

If hard sf has one characteristic hero, it is the competent man, and that competence is most often displayed in a knowledge of engineering or of science. And yet the thing that lies behind this situation in this most archetypal of hard sf stories is incompetence. Because the EDS is a prime example of bad engineering, and if the engineering wasn’t bad there wouldn’t be a story.

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Feb 6

Ah, but weighing the EDS would mean paying for the equipment to do so. And it would mean taking a bit of extra time, and time is money!

The meme of one schoolgirl standing against a wall while another one plays a large brass instrument whose bell is placed directly over the first girl's face. The girl with the instrument is labeled, "Me", while the girl standing against the wall is labeled, "Everyone I have ever met", and the brass instrument is labeled, "Capitalism fucking did this."

The Bookwench 🇨🇦🐱🏳️‍🌈@shiftercat· Jan 16

Who's your favorite superhero (without saying Batman or Spider-Man)? Swamp Thing. I'm drawn to the weird and cerebral. But what I like best about his stories is that they tend to be about finding unusual solutions.