Trope-a-Day: Possession Implies Mastery

Alistair Young

Jul 4, 2015

Possession Implies Mastery: Generally averted, as the very large pile of incomprehensible elder-race artifacts sitting around in museums and the vaults of companies like Probable Technologies, ICC would demonstrate. Some of them have been there for centuries, or even millennia, and are still no closer to being understood.

Played straighter with many items of Imperial technology, which tends to come with built-in diagnostic equipment and users’, maintenance and repair manuals, technical specifications, and a full schematic all stored on the device itself, readily accessible via v-tag. But then, their manufacturers know they’re selling to customers who like to tinker.
It’s not instant mastery, but it sure helps with getting there.

← The Importance of Physics Class | Concepts I Will Not Use →

Nom

“Consider, gentle reader, that even as the flesh of an Emperor, or of any man, is constituted of what he eats, so then is an Empire, in bones and sinew, constituted of what it eats. “Therefore, to maintain the health, and to avoid the manifestations of ill-nutrition, unseemly bloat, or

Shipshape

I saw this picture today, via an Astral Codex Ten post on distinguishing human art from AI art, but that is not the context in which I reference it: Instead, I merely point out that it would be an accurate representation of what the Royal Alatian (later Imperial) Navy would

My To-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours

Pressed bean curds are a common item in many Eliéran cuisines, in recipes both savory and sweet. I refer to them using this long description since, despite being identical in many ways and produced from the same small group of plants, they are one of the very few foodstuffs to

Crazy Eddie

As a brief cultural note, today, I happened to be looking something up on the Atomic Rockets Future Mythology page, and was reminded of Crazy Eddie. (The one from Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, obviously. Even if, sad to say, that

Read more

Nom

Shipshape

My To-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours

Crazy Eddie