argumate:

davidsevera:

I hate it when I’m strangled to death by silken bed sheets in my Imperial Harem as the hushed laughter of chambermaids wafts in from nearby hallways, betrayed by a firstborn son to whom I had denied nothing and given all and an élite bodyguard whose oaths in the name of the Sacred Powers to protect me with their very lives proved all too feeble next to the lust for power which coils like a worm in the hearts of all men.

tfw

somewhere-in-the-dungeon:

shlevy:

raginrayguns:

I hate it when people name their things after properties they want it to have, which has not been proven to have. “Scalable vector graphics”? “Timeless decision theory”? stfu. Even “secure shell” is pushing it

“universe”, “atom”, “fusiform face area”…

I think my favourite (Or rather most obnoxious, but also audacious) example is the Bolsheviks. From the way my history teacher explained it (which Google seems to agree with, but I don’t speak Russian so I can’t confirm) that word was an actual word that meant ‘majority’ and was then used as a name for a political party, even though that party was not in fact the majority.

It’s not unlike calling your highly decisive protest group “the 99%” actually.

Yeah, that is the story I’ve heard.  Specifically, Lenin seized upon one specific moment at a conference when his faction had a majority of delegates because a bunch of the opposing delegates had resigned, and used the opportunity to take the “Bolshevik” name and make it stick.

Here is how Bertram D. Wolfe tells it in Three Who Made A Revolution:

While Lenin was battling day and night for the soul of every delegate, the giddy wheel of fortune took an unexpected turn. The Bund delegates, who had been nursing their wounds apart since the blow dealt them on the question of autonomy, announced their withdrawal from the Congress – five solid votes that had been cast for the proposition of Martov! Following up this advantage, Lenin proposed a motion calculated to drive out another group of his opponents: he moved to dissolve the Rabochee Delo and give exclusive recognition toIskra and its foreign organization as the only émigré body. Martov, as a loyal Iskrist, fell into the trap and voted in favor of the motion. Thereupon, two more delegates who had supported his draft of Article I of the Constitution withdrew from the Congress in a huff. Lenin’s bloc was converted from a minority of five or six to a majority of two votes!

[…]

Now his keen sense of organization and power taught him that, with the aid of the slender majority handed to him by their withdrawal, he himself could “put through many things.” The first of these was a moral advantage: the adoption of a name for his new caucus: Bolshinstvo (“Majority”) or Bolsheviki (“Majorityites”). Though but yesterday he had been in a minority, and, more often than not would be in the minority in the future, he would never relinquish the psychological advantage of that name. A name, he knew was a program, a distilled essence, more powerful in its impact upon the untutored mind than any propaganda slogan. What pride it could give to his caucus, no matter how it might dwindle, always to call itself “Majorityites.” What conviction, what an air of legality, of democratic, majority sanction, it would give in appealing to the rank and file and the non-party masses. If he had remained in a minority, he would have chosen some other banner name – like “True Iskrists” or “Orthodox Marxists” or “Revolutionary Wing of Russian Social Democracy.” But it is characteristic of the ineptness of his opponents that they permanently accepted the designation of Mensheviki (Minorityites) for their group.

(via somewhere-in-the-dungeon)

raginrayguns:

I hate it when people name their things after properties they want it to have, which has not been proven to have. “Scalable vector graphics”? “Timeless decision theory”? stfu. Even “secure shell” is pushing it

This post is making me newly appreciate the name “Pretty Good Privacy”

And oh by the way Mario is only still alive because he is the keeper of the ORB OF NINTENDO and you need to get the other ORBS OF FORCE from Pac-Man and Sonic and incidentally there’s an ANTI VG Universe which “…is the opposite of the VG Universe: were ALL Villians live in chaos…” oh and you already have the ORB OF ANIMETRO because you defeated the BLACK LEGION in NINTENDO WORLD 1 and the Mario gives YOU THE ORB OF NINTENDO, THE ONLY THING KEEPING HIM ALIVE AND HE SCREAMS “IT DOESN’T MATTER!!! ALL HEROES SHALL BE READY TO DIE…I’M READY TO GIVE MY LIFE FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE OF THE VG UNIVERSE!! BARRY, PLEASE HELP THE HERO IN HIS TASK!!!!!”

Today’s misread: “larval trash bags” for “large trash bags”