I'm actually working on maybe a little bit of a rundown on Achur occult practices. It seems like trying to extract ancient wisdom from those might keep Mr. Nauplius focused on stuff that doesn't involve ... you know. For a while.

Thank you for not derailing my thread!

So, who are you dating lately, hun?

(Do dates have nuts?)

Napkins, haven't you been permanently prohibited from talking to all women on the basis of being terminally creepy?

Not if he keeps ditching his dates because of a little harmless fun.

The fact that I ditched Ms. Raske without a word during her own party and weeks earlier had ditched one of the Shelby sisters before the party even began demonstrates that I am not as horny and desperate as some people would have you believe, even concerning some of the most smoking hot ladies in the cluster. There are certain lines of dignity and decorum that ought not to be crossed, and I have demonstrated my ability to walk away when the sin and depravity has reached unacceptable levels.

Open, Oh can of worm!

It seems to me that one of the most dangerous sentiments in this cluster is, "It can't be worse." It's really, really rare for that thought to be true.

I'll never claim it couldn't be worse. Only that the Sani are different from the rest of the Amarr only in the particular flavor of self-indulgent religious justification for their obscenities. Just because the mainstream Amarr collectively say 'that's not what we want to do' doesn't mean that they wouldn't, if it was. Or that they wouldn't justify it with 'God said so'.

And yet, the vast majority of the cluster has managed to avoid openly endorsing enslaving other peoples for generations with the express purpose of destroying their cultures.

Funny, that.

I think the Amarr hold that being Amarr makes you different from everyone else, and fully justified in commiting your atrocities because your 'Book of Why We're Better' says so. And until the atrocity ends, it should be opposed. If I thought we'd accomplish more than just annihilating ourselves and expanding the proportion of Matari in chains from 'some' to 'all', I'd be right there with Miz on burning the Empire down to ash.

That's quite an inference you're taking there. To be blunt:

Do you support slavery? If so, your clone contracts should be cancelled and you should be shot.
Do you oppose slavery? If so, great. If you're still in the Empire, what are you doing to end it? If nothing, then you're actions say you're indifferent.
Are you indifferent to it? Congratulations, you're giving slavery your tacit support! Let's get you that bullet.

Well, you're the only one who's made that assertion, so feel free to keep complaining about it.

If you're not contributing to the Empire anymore, then there you go: you're not providing them with tacit approval of slavery. No bullet to the head on that score.

And now you're conflating slavery with something that doesn't affect anyone else. Tell me, do you really believe that there are people in the Amarr Empire who've never heard of the Minmatar Republic? Who've no idea that Matari are kept as slaves? That there was a slave rebellion, or that Empress Jamyl I became Empress after fending off a fleet of Matari vessels intent on liberating slaves?

Do you think anyone who lived through the wall-to-wall Jamyl-for-Messiah hype after she died doesn't know it?

We are all responsible for the choices we make, even when our choice is to not make a choice. To attempt to excuse people from their responsibility as human beings to own their own decisions is to infantilize them, to render them nothing more than brain-damaged children who can't possibly be expected to make their own decisions.

Who exactly is it insulting 'your people' now? The person treating them like adults and demanding they act like it? Or the person who insists they can't be expected to know what they're doing?

Two pages into an off-topic discussion thread and it has turned into a debate about slavery. I am guessing within another 3 it will be about comparing who is the most Caldari.

So, there I was, somewhat rashly, having rented out a ground-car, and going for a spin in the desert, to get away from it all, and be able to think without distraction, when the car hit a rock and punctured the tyre.

I looked around, and there was nothing in sight except sand, and the occasional rock. So, I tied my dress to the car's radio mast, to act as a flag, and awaited rescue.

Lo, some time later, a ground car passed by, and came to a halt. The driver got out, and asked me if I was alright.

So, I said "Yes, fine. Say, do you know the way to Kaztropolis ?"

To which the other motorist said "Sorry, I'm a stranger here myself".

And with that, they departed.

Are they human beings?

Are they capable of rational thought?

Are they capable of empathy?

Do they want to be enslaved? To see their children under the lash?

What other 'learning' do you need?

You talk of reserving my hate for those who maintain the system... the system is maintained by the apathy of the common men and women of Amarr. Speak all you want about the terrible monsters keeping the masses down... but those monsters make up less than 0.001% of the Empire. The masses are kept down because the masses let themselves be 'kept down'. Because for all you plead oppression, the masses of Amarr still get to hold themselves better than a slave. The most menial drudge of a free Amarr holds himself above the most skilled and cared-for slave.

You seek to excuse the masses' apathy with feeble whining about 'they don't know any better'. They are human beings. They can see other human beings. They can imagine whether or not they would want to be slaves themselves. In every other major culture of New Eden, that is enough to say 'slavery is wrong'. But not in Amarr. Because the dregs, the poor, and the vermin at the bottom of Amarr society still get to tell themselves 'hey, at least I'm not a slave'.

The idea that they should need more persuasion than 'would you want that to be you?' is insane.

Well, you're the Amarr here, sister. Better get to fixing the problem from within, before we do have enough bullets.

Considering this is the "off topic" thread:

I somehow rolled out of bed while sleeping and hit my face on the floor. Quite a strange way to start off the (early) morning..

I can't really speak for Ms. Kim, but, here's a bit of a rundown. Her answers are likely to differ a bit....

Is this offtopic? Am I doing it right?

I've lost almost all faith in Gutter Press. At least, I find it hard to believe that there are no such rumours about myself.

I find that your selection of devices has room for improvement.

What in the world is going on here?

I could really use some help acquiring the specs for the Sansha infomorph interfacing units and the architecture of the computational power that goes with it.

I-¦m really not picky.

You're not doing anything different here, you know.. the difference is that the rest of us are making direct points, something potentially productive (albeit rarely), and you're just 3rd partying on the discussion. That's far from productive. So why don't you go erect something, eh?

See how annoying that is?

Gods, it just occurred to me how much fun Gallentean heretics must be!

Oh. Yeah ... they probably don't have penitence pits either (still curious), since the whole business is organized around things you're not allowed to do to people.

Doesn't that kind of let them keep making all kinds of noise from prison (and after) about how their self-declared rights are getting stomped all over, though? I mean, there's no point at which you can just shoot them, right?

You mean being told that you won't get the completely unverifiable thing that you only thought you were getting because you were told that you were by the same people who tell you 'X, Y, and Z are bad unless it's us doing it, because the invisible magical sky fairy we can't actually prove exists said we should'.

First, I think you'd need to have the first idea what those are.

Having laid out precisely what my agenda is, just again in the last few days, I guess I'll leave you to find the trail of breadcrumbs.

People are all the time saying I am short. I'm NOT short.

And now they are comparing sizes among themselves. *Writes it down*

Its not about size people, its the way it performs and fits.

Don't listen to this negativity. It's the worst kept secret of the Matari that Elsebeth doth protest too much but then just squees and titters when hugged without warning or permission. Especially by Imperials. I wholeheartedly recommend trying it out.

Actually, she tends to use a lot of words improperly to say very little, and when it's pointed out, attempts obfuscation. Think of her as a verbal octopus, changing colors and textures, and then jetting away in a cloud of ink.

Ooo, though. Surely you knew that contradictions and assumptions and all other things, even sandwiches, will all disappear into something much more important once we are all an icky brain-jellyfish and transcend to something-or-other?

Because it WILL. And then we can start having important brain jellyfish feelings.

Implying those are fields with any prestige.


my sides !

Kinda my day job, you know?

I can't tell if I should wear glasses again. I was told they made me look more creepy, somehow.

I still don't get this fad of corrective or faux-corrective lenses.

You mean the bit where you create visible indentations in the skin of your nose that never go away?

Well they do have a neat head up display as well. Although that can also be achieved with contact lenses or implants.

Flaw? I cant grasp the concept.

Please be a crisis of consience. Please be a crisis of conscience. Please please please please.

Noted.

Feeling now a bit mutual.

The disagreement isn't why, Ms. Ember.

The attempt to manipulate me by implying you think I am or should be seeking your approval: that is why. That, and the suggestion I should silence myself.

I'm a bit childlike in certain ways, maybe, and approval's nice. There's only one person I really care strongly about it from, though.

I see my attempt to lighten up the discussion in this thread has been mostly in vain.

Napkins wants one thing. It's a thing he can't get unless other people give it to him. He's consistently made moves to provoke people into giving it to him. That's manipulation. He doesn't have to be deceitful or subtle to do it. He simply has to say 'you're going to give me what I want, because I'm going to do something that makes you give me what I want'.

That's it. So, yeah.. he's pretty manipulative. Openly manipulative.

If that disappoints you, be disappointed.

The post above is evidence that capsuleers can lose their 20/20 vision after screening.

What is the inference then?

Quite, in much the same way that the classical Amarr aquiline nose enabled their priests to more easily lead them around, and thus enabled greater social cohesion.

There's more here than victimhood. ... which doesn't seem like it applies so much, if I don't see myself that way.

There's something I want from him: the lives in his hands. (Also his temple out from its orbit around my homeworld, but that's likely to happen pretty soon anyway.) There are things he wants from me, too; I don't actually think my suffering's one, even if he sometimes gets that. If he did, it wouldn't matter very much to me. It would change the context a little, though.

I'm just a figment in this world, Ms. Ember. ... like any of us. Only, a little unusually, I'm aware of it. I carry my own life lightly.

I'm not ... helpless. But a part of what I do with Mr. Nauplius is a matter of honor, and honesty, and even trust. Part of that is that I don't hide my intentions, or my feelings. If he wants my anger, or my hurt, he can have those. He can have my slightly-uneasy trust, too, and my admiration for his own kind-of-strange integrity. And even my sympathy-- it's an awful god he serves, an awful universe he sees with his waking eyes.

I wish I could show him a better one-- for his sake, and that of those at his mercy. So, he also gets a little of my hope, however frail it might be.

He can't have my hate. ... at least not for long. That's not something I give so easily.

If I come away now and then with a few unlucky people who stood to suffer more than I was ever at any risk of, I count the trade worthwhile.

Today has gone from a very nice day to a day to hide in your pod and cry until it puts things in the goo or whatever to calm you down again.

I know I'm not the only one who does that. Admit it.

If you even ticked any of those boxes, I might have liked yours...

Wait, I just defended PIE Inc on the IGS?

You guys will just have to keep writing the slash-fic.

Oh my god...

Throwing money at a screw-up to make a problem go away is not 'being responsible'. That is being irresponsibly delinquent in their duty to expose the failure points in the system that allowed the event to occur in the first place, and ensuring that they are rectified in order to avoid such failure in the future.

Taking responsibility is being responsible. Refuting it and undoubtedly lying through their teeth is most certainly not.

If you can't see what the benefit is in acknowledging failure in order to rectify it, you're seriously short-sighted.

I don't think this thread will win anyone any medals.

Lyris is gone. She got out of the biz, extracted all her combat and industrial skills.

Are we still gods if we can die? (We can. We do. It's not hard. It's not rare.)

Can gods retire? ( After we do, we're not likely to be any more immortal than any really rich person in this time we live in: our pseudo-immortality's a product of usually dying under ideal cloning conditions. Average capsuleer career length: about a year, I think, but that's probably old data. If someone's got updated information, please share?)

If we were gods, would we be qualified to hold such a position? (If not, it'll probably be pretty short-lived.)






... If I sound a little hostile to the idea that we're gods, well, I am. I've seen first-hand the resentment of baseline humanity towards those they perceive as immortal, even if we're all about to die together. It's not just a certain Gallentean journalist, though he was definitely noisy about it. It's nearly everyone.

We've been known, in the past, as "gods of destruction." That phrase seems to have kind of dropped out of favor, and that seems like a good thing to me. Embracing this kind of idea, even for aesthetic or marketing reasons, seems like it brings us closer, step by step, to someone deciding to practice a really proactive form of atheism:

"This day, all gods die."

Me neither. It's an idea that keeps popping up, though even my predecessor thought it was a bad one. It doesn't seem like a notion much good can come out of.

Trust and Secrets. They form somewhat of a paradoxical juxtaposition. We tend to only tell secrets to whom we trust, yet it can be hard to trust someone who keeps secrets.

People who tell you secrets will tell yours to others as well, but people who keep juicy secrets from you are just plain mean; and there's one reason why I'm a misanthrope at heart, I guess.

Although her views are a little, uh, "fringe," Ms. Kim's not actually unique or even very unusual in that.

At a glance, it can actually be a little hard to find daylight between the Caldari outlook and the Sani Sabik, unless you look at it from the right angle. Both groups seem to see the world as a kind of howling wilderness where only the strong survive, and so end up a little obsessive about strength.

There is a bright line, though: the Caldari, in the end, are about individual strength as a necessary ingredient in community strength-- and part of individual strength is knowing when you're becoming a burden on the community and it's time to take that long walk in the snow.

The Sani Sabik seem to be more about personal power, and typically aspire to live forever even at the expense of ... well, everybody. It used to be that just meant eternal spiritual life, but, now, with cloning, I guess that's changing a little in places.

The only thing the Caldari are aiming to make immortal is the Caldari. Individuals are expendable, as long as the whole moves on.

"The Winds care for us, not for you or me."

do I have to make the shirt short enough that people can tell I don't wear shorts, too? NOT A 'HE'.

If I typo enough, will we get nudes?

Hmm, I think we all have favourite. I have multiple. Sometimes I dont know which one to choose.

*takes out rocket from a drawer*

Actually, this is a model I made myself. Even have blinking light inside the fumes.

On the matter of educating one's self, if one was to buy a +5 intelligence implant and respec their clone to focusing primarially on Intellegence to a point surpassing your esteemed Achuran scientists, by that logic wouldn't that make a Brutor, Sebiestor or oh say for instance ethnic Gallante a more intellegent scientist than an Achuran one?

No, but books can offer you the solution to your angst and suffering. If you read enough.

They're not the opiate or the comfort. They're the path out.