In appropriateness for Thanksgiving, the question of the nature of thanks. In an etymological discussion on Google+, back in July, which some of you may remember, in which various languages’ ways of saying “thank you” were discussed and their comparative original meanings – in terms of obligation, or gratitude, or mercy,
…for the delay in bringing you various things. I regret to say that my writing is presently being interrupted by, ah, irritating hardware problems, which honestly, I’m not all that thankful for. Unlike, say, my readers, for whose patience I am particularly thankful right now…
Large Ham Title: Played straight in formal introductions; everyone from the Empire to relatively local branches issues an assortment of titles, and formal protocol, at least, is to use all of them, or at the very least all that could possibly be relevant, in introductions. (Remember, pride is a virtue.
In the anonymous-questions box today, I received an inquiry into what the point of divergence, as it were, was that led to the eldrae Spaceflight Initiative developing with vigor into exactly the kind of space program we didn’t get? Well, I’ve touched on a little bit of this
La Résistance: The Resolutionist Faction (your local name may vary; it’s not like they can agree on one) are a loose coalition of hundreds, if not thousands, of separate groups, struggling valiantly against the lack of tyranny imposed by the Empire and, to a lesser extent, the Accord of
The most important thing to remember about the Shadow Realm is that it does not exist. “Cyberspace” is a null concept. The selfness of the Transcend is a distributed, heavily parallel, sophic process-set. It runs on the fractal chandeliers of CorĂcal AilĂ©k, as close to a central node as the
…well, no, actually we got steined. But however you care to verb it, thanks to Dunhamshire Creations, I now have this rather splendid and entirely appropriate vessel to lubricate the old synapses from as I write. Shiny!
Language of Truth: There is no first-class language of truth (that is more or less impossible), but Eldraeic was custom-designed to make speaking logical fallacies – by a variety of logics – bad mathematical statements, woeful imprecision, etc., etc., as difficult as possible if not downright ungrammatical, especially when spoken in formal
The first thing I saw, after my arrival at CorĂcal AilĂ©k, was the Transcend’s root code. I didn’t see the live root code, of course. If you are one of the Transcend’s constitutionals, and so can enter Its mind – or rather, as they insist, the Shadow Realm
Will Not Tell A Lie: Not strictly played straight with the Imperials, but mostly played straight. They are very averse to lying, for reasons of honor/integrity, for reasons of ethics/religion (remember the appropriate verse of ElmirĂĂ«n’s Truths?), for legal reasons based off of those (“falsification of information”
Land of One City: Quite a lot of Imperial constituent nations are city-states – indeed, two of the founding members were the Cestian city-states of Eume and Baryvekar, and the later-joining Veilyns was a confederation of city-states. In more recent times, a plurality of underwater and sky cities, artificial islands, and
…we’ve got a hot soup spill in section 31, lead mops report immediately. Section is status yellow, caution… …spallation debris approaching starport orbital, get a laser grid on it… …can’t clear those remains for release yet, suspected contamination… …major fire, section 10, and area is negative on water