So I finally started reading Almost Nowhere and goddamn shit this is so good. I was already having a fantastic time, and then there was Chapter XIII and then after that the bit where a character ynhapurf vagb gurve va-havirefr rkcynangvba bs ubj pbafpvbhfarff hfrf culfvpf va beqre gb jbex, which felt like it was pandering to precisely me in particular because that shit was my favorite part of Anathem which is probably my favorite book. Yeah I’m a nerd, fuck you, it’s great.
For over a year now I haven’t gotten much reading done because I keep picking things up and half-heartedly putting them down again because I’m not into it, and I was just thinking “huh, maybe I don’t enjoy fiction anymore?”, and then Almost Nowhere happens and it’s like falling in love again.
this is fainter praise than it should be, because i don’t read a lot of fiction, but i started and finished what’s current of Almost Nowhere in a few delicious sittings over the last few days; haven’t been dragged obsessively into a work of fiction like that in a long time
only part that even remotely dragged was the sex plotline; i feel like litfic and fanfic are united in finding sex/jealousy/etc all that much more emotionally interesting than i have in my own emotional repetoire, and AN despite its Eganish specfic core that has got me feverishly dreaming of boltzman brains has very strong fannish and (at the risk of slander) litficcy notes
Oh yeah, I see it now… this does seem like a new tumblr display bug.
The web UI has been going through some weirdness lately. Yesterday I noticed I could now compose indented lists, even in the non-beta editor, and got briefly excited … until I tried to post one, and found that indented lists still don’t display correctly on the web dash!
My findings so far:
—-
I used the API to get these posts in both NPF and legacy formats. I also did this with some non-bugged asks, and some other test cases.
The bugged posts are malformed in NPF, in a specific way. A typical case looks like:
In NPF answer posts, the layout entry of type “ask” designates some content blocks as part of the ask. All other blocks are assumed to be part of the answer.
Here, block 0 is designated as part of the ask. Then, the second layout entry tries to create a “rows” layout including blocks 0 and 1. But block 0 is in the ask, and block 1 is in the answer.
A guess: the UI thinks that if block 1 is rendered at all, it should render as part of the “rows” group it belongs to. But that group cannot be rendered at all … so it just skips block 1.
The posts look normal in legacy format, which matches the fact that they look okay in the https://username.tumblr.com/post/id view. (Possibly dependent on theme)
I have not been able to reproduce the behavior manually. I have tried the following matrix of cases:
Ask sent via: mobile, web NPF (new), web legacy
Response made with: web legacy, API legacy
@cyle you probably know all this but figured I’d tag you
EDIT: the fact that this is even possible seems like a … if not necessarily a flaw, then a weird property of NPF. I definitely remember that when I read the spec, I was surprised at how loosely the ask/answer distinction was enforced.
yeah this is most certainly a bug on our side, we’ll get it fixed
@betterbemeta are you able to translate this? Is it true horses can see netherbeings?? Will we ever know the extent of their powers???
I think I have reblogged this before but I’ll answer it again bc its a fascinating answer I feel and i was more funny than informational last time.
The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.
Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.
Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.
To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.
This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.
However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!
On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.
The joke in OP though is that many horses that are bred to be very fast, like thoroughbreds, are also bred and encouraged to be high-energy and highstrung. Making them more anxious and prone to seeing those ‘demons.’ All horses in a sense are going to be your anxious friend, but racehorses and polo ponies and other sport horses can sometimes be your anxious friend that thinks they live in Silent Hill.
Reblogging some horse knowledge for certain people who write fantasy books but know nothing about horses *cough cough*
“The viewscreen shows nothing, only the void that is human-visible Maxwell Light down at 4 km. Maria can only see her hands in front of her thanks to the dim, candy-colored lights on the control panel. The atmosphere resembles that created by driving a car in the middle of the night. She thinks this every time, although it ceased to have meaning years ago. A stock memory.”
towardsagentlerworld asked: you always have the highest quality shitposts and they are hilarious and wonderful, thank you for this valuable contribution to my life
