i just think it’s neat that odysseus gets put in a position where he has to kill his child to avoid going to war and he can’t do it and then agamemnon gets put in a position where he has to kill his child to go to war and he does it
this doesn’t render on windows unless next to a non-phallus hieroglyph so here is a version for windows users:
𓀐𓂸
Prev: mobile user here! theres fucking nothing here
It’s supposed to look like this:
Prev: How did someone make this??
Unicode, the technical standard describing what text symbols exist in computers¹ and how they are encoded², has a block containing Egyptian Hieroglyphs. And since there exists an Egyptian Hieroglyph depicting a penis³, they included it in the standard. And since most computers follow that standard, they can display a penis.
You can check out unicode characters for example here:
1) There do actually exist different standards describing which characters computers should use and how they should be encoded. These days pretty much everyone uses UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format) because when exchanging data between computers or programs everyone must use the same encoding to get readable results.
This also means that unicode must (try to) support pretty much everything any human could ever want to write, which means it includes many things like mathematical symbols, special symbols for just about every language, emoji, combining characters that modify other characters, a variety of spaces, box drawing symbols, control characters for eg. text direction, …
2) Which is actually somewhat complicated. Unicode assigns each symbol a number, but then the text (sequence of symbols) needs to be converted into a sequence of bytes. This is done via the Unicode Transformation Format, which actually results in different characters needing differently many bytes to store.
Also, certain emoji (flags, anything with skin colors or gender, emoji depicting multiple people) are actually multiple characters that get squished into one symbol when rendered.
3) There actually exist three. The above, a version with cloth (𓂹) and one with emission (𓂺).
Also the unicode standard defines words like character, symbol, glyph, … to have exact meanings, I used the interchangeably here.
this made me have a complete meltdown with delight as I went from “bwahahaha penis sign lol lmao” to “wait if hieroglyphs are unicode there must be an oryx one” and THERE IS!
look at it! 𓃲
𓃲𓃲𓃲𓃲 <- herd!
and the newborn hartebeest!!! 𓃛
frog! horned viper! CREATURES! I’m so happy! I’m gonna be so insufferable with this!
it’s kinda crazy. you can use these like more detailed emojis, or even make whole stories without using a single letter. here’s an example:
If we don’t microdose delusion we won’t make it through this reality babe….
So I remember reading about this study in grad school where they have a bunch of clinically depressed people and a bunch of non-clinically-depressed people a game that was partially chance and partially skill, and asked them to estimate how much control they had over the outcome.
The depressed people were far more accurate in estimating how much influence their actions had on the outcome of the game compared to their nondepressed counterparts, who consistently overestimated the effects of their own choices on their chances of winning.
Then I remember this other study (CW animal testing) where they put rats in a bucket of water that they couldn’t get out of, so they’d have to swim. There was a fairly consistent point at which the swimming rat would falter, and stop swimming, fated to drown.
Except that that’s when the researchers would pull the rat out of the bucket, give it a nice rest warmth and a meal.
When those SAME rats who had been rescued before were put in the same situation again, they swam much LONGER than they had before.
Why? The risk was the same either way- drowning. You’d have thought that the fear of drowning would keep them swimming to their maximum length no matter what.
The researchers conclusion was that the rescued rats had something they hadn’t had the first time- they had more hope. A miraculous rescue could come, and that let them swim for longer, just in case.
I think we do microdose delusion because sometimes that little overestimation of our chances, of our luck, keeps us swimming that little bit longer, just in case something good happens. And sometimes, that little margin really does make the difference.
“All right,“ said Susan. "I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
-Terry Pratchett, Hogfather.
hey, don’t just leave the quote there! the last line is what MAKES it!
“YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?”
“YOU NEED TO BELIEVE
IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW
ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?”
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”
