Steve Rogers becoming a famous artist in the modern world, but not in the way anyone expected:
Sketching Bucky and Sam and Natasha on the placemat at a restaurant; the waitress figures out who they are from Sam’s credit card and sells the drawing on ebay
Drawing little monsters on kid’s casts at the Children’s Hospital, until Natasha finds a ‘Florida Man’ article about some idiot who tried to break his arm on purpose
Getting really hammered with Thor and tagging the side of Tony’s newest building with a DayGlo yellow caricature of the team – fifty stories up
Doing commissions for charity once and then never again, after someone seriously offers to pay him $200 for a six-stroke cat doodle
(He does a nice watercolor of their childhood pet for free, and donates $1000 of his own money back to the charity)
Sending dumb doodles to his fans on Twitter; someone actually has one tattooed (insp. x)
+1
Secretly starting a Tumblr and posting whatever he wants, when he wants, as ‘fanart’
at eleven, was described by his teachers as ‘bright’
at the same age, according to the Sorting Hat: “Not a bad mind, either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes” and “You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head”
mastered the challenging Patronus Charm at thirteen and proceeded to teach it at fifteen
resisted the Imperius Curse at fourteen and soon learned to throw it off completely, even when cast by the incredibly powerful Voldemort
also at fourteen, learned to cast a powerful Accio Charm
at fifteen, was training other students
at the same age, under extreme stress, tested as ‘exceeds expectations’ or ‘outstanding’ in every subject that required actual magic (including the dreaded Potions)
same age, cast a briefly effective Cruciatus Curse
at sixteen, became a star Potions student simply by following superior instructions
at seventeen, successfully cast the Imperius Curse on his first try, and used it repeatedly
at the same age, cast a successful Cruciatus Curse
He was able to immediately connect the dots between the package that Hagrid retrieved from Gringotts to the break in based on a news article and Hagrid’s reactions.
He was the one who figured out the motive of Quirrell when he played cards with Hagrid betting a dragon’s egg.
He figured out that it was Myrtle who died when the Chamber of Secrets was opened before and seemed to be the only one who was smart enough to actually ask her about her death.
He figured out that it was Lucius Malfoy who gave Ginny Tom Riddle’s diary (with subtle clues from Dobby) and used it to outsmart Malfoy into freeing Dobby.
He knew that Draco Malfoy was up to something (even though Ron and Hermione didn’t believe it) their 6th year. He also figured out Malfoy succeeded when Trelawney told him she heard a male voice whooping in the RoR.
He was the one who figured out that there was a horcrux inside Bellatrix’s vault judging only by her reactions to their possession of the Gryffindor’s Sword.
He figured out the connections of the Peverells, the cloak, the ring (and the snitch by extension) and the elder wand to the Deathly Hallows. He even figured out that it was Dumbledore who owned it and that ownership was passed on the Draco Malfoy and, eventually, to Harry himself.
These are only the ones I could remember right now but I’m pretty sure there were more instances that showed how perceptive he really is.
how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?
like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’
was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’
sometimes i wonder
oh my GOD
the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print.
here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.
however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around.
but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh).
conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr.
(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.)
I needed to know this.
See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.
Ancient Iliad fandom is intense
Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).
And then there’s this gem from Plato:
“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus - his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” - Symposium
That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.
More on this glorious subject from people who know way more than I do
Man I love this post.
And to add my personal favourite story: after reading Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa in the 18th century, Elizabeth Echlin decided that she was NOT HAPPY with the ending and basically wrote her own fix-it fic. No-one dies and Lovelace (the villain) was totally reformed and became a super nice guy. It’s completely OOC and incredibly poorly written and it’s beautiful.
Also, so many women fell in love with the villain, Lovelace, and wrote to Richardson about it, that he kept adding new bits with each edition to highlight what a hideous person Lovelace was. So it’s almost unsurprising that reading novels in this period was actually considered dangerous because it gave women unrealistic ideas about men and made them easier prey for rakes.
Basically, “I want my own Christian Grey” has been a thing for hundreds of years.
Also a thing with fix-it/everyone lives AUs: at various points in time but especially in the mid 1800s-early 1900s (aka roughly Victorian though there were periods of this earlier as well) a huge thing was to “fix” Shakespeare (as well as most theater/novels) to be in line with current morality. Good characters live, bad characters are terribly punished – but not, you know, grusomely, because what would the ladies think? So you have like, productions of King Lear where Cordelia lives and so do Regan and Goneril, but they’re VERY SORRY.
Aka all your problematic faves are redeemed and Everyone Lives! AUs for every protag.
Slightly tangential but I wanted to add my own favorite account of Chinese fandom to this~ I don’t know how many people here have heard of the Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦), but it is, arguably, the most famous Chinese novel ever written (There are four Chinese novel classics and A Dream of Red Mansions is considered the top of that list). It was written during the Qing dynasty by 曹雪芹, but became a banned book due to its critique of societal institutions and pro-democracy themes. As a result, the original ending of the book was lost and only the first 80 chapters remained. There are quite a few versions of how the current ending of the book came to be, but one of them is basically about how He Shen, one of Emperor Qian Long’s most powerful advisers, was such a super-fan of the book, he hired two writers to archive and reform the novel from the few remaining manuscripts there were. In order to convince the Emperor to remove the ban on the book, he had the writers essentially write a fanfiction ending to the book that would mitigate the anti-establishment themes. However, He Shen thought that the first version of the ending was too tragic (even though the whole book is basically a tragedy) so he had the writers go back and write a happier ending for him (the current final 40 chapters). He then presented the book to the Emperor and successfully convinced him to remove the ban on the book.
According to incomplete estimates, A Dream of Red Mansions spawned over 20 spin offs, retellings, and alternate versions (in the form of operas, plays, etc.) during the Qing Dynasty alone.
In 1979, fans (albeit academic ones) started publishing a bi-monthly journal dedicated to analysis (read: meta) on A Dream of Red Mansions. In fact, the novel’s fandom is so vast and qualified and rooted in academics of Chinese literature that there is an entire field of study (beginning in the Qing dynasty) of just this one novel, called 红学. Think of it as Shakespearean studies, but only on one play. This field of study has schools of thought and specific specializations (as in: Psych analyses, Economics analyses, Historical analyses, etc.) that span pretty much every academic field anyone can think of.
(That being said, I’ve read A Dream of Red Mansions and can honestly say that I’ve never read its peer in either English or Chinese. If for nothing else, read it because you would never otherwise believe that a man from the Qing dynasty could write such a heart-breakingly feminist novel with such a diverse cast of female characters given all the bitching and moaning we hear from male content-creators nowadays)
I am the ’70s child of a health nut. I wasn’t vaccinated. I was brought up on an incredibly healthy diet: no sugar till I was 1, breastfed for over a year, organic homegrown vegetables, raw milk, no MSG, no additives, no aspartame. My mother used homeopathy, aromatherapy, osteopathy; we took daily supplements of vitamin C, echinacea, cod liver oil.I had an outdoor lifestyle; I grew up next to a farm in England’s Lake District, walked everywhere, did sports and danced twice a week, drank plenty of water. I wasn’t even allowed pop; even my fresh juice was watered down to protect my teeth, and I would’ve killed for white, shop-bought bread in my lunchbox once in a while and biscuits instead of fruit, like all the other kids.We ate (organic local) meat maybe once or twice a week, and my mother and father cooked everything from scratch—I have yet to taste a Findus crispy pancake, and oven chips (“fries,” to Americans) were reserved for those nights when Mum and Dad had friends over and we got a “treat.”As healthy as my lifestyle seemed, I contracted measles, mumps, rubella, a type of viral meningitis, scarlatina, whooping cough, yearly tonsillitis, and chickenpox. In my 20s I got precancerous HPV and spent six months of my life wondering how I was going to tell my two children under the age of 7 that Mummy might have cancer before it was safely removed.So the anti-vaccine advocates’ fears of having the “natural immunity sterilized out of us” just doesn’t cut it for me. How could I, with my idyllic childhood and my amazing health food, get so freaking ill all the time? … My two vaccinated children, on the other hand, have rarely been ill, have had antibiotics maybe twice in their lives, if that. Not like their mum. I got many illnesses requiring treatment with antibiotics. I developed penicillin-resistant quinsy at age 21—you know, that old-fashioned disease that supposedly killed Queen Elizabeth I and that was almost wiped out through use of antibiotics.*
“If you think your child’s immune system is strong enough to fight off vaccine-preventable diseases, then it’s strong enough to fight off the tiny amounts of dead or weakened pathogens present in any of the vaccines.”
A former hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical businessman has purchased the rights to a 62-year-old drug used for treating life-threatening parasitic infections and raised the price overnight from $13.50 per tablet to $750.
According to the New York Times, Martin Shkreli, 32, the founder and chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, purchased the rights to Daraprim for $55 million on the same day that Turing announced it had raised $90 million from Shkreli and other investors in its first round of financing.
Daraprim is used for treating toxoplasmosis — an opportunistic parasitic infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems in babies and for people with compromised immune systems like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients — that sold for slightly over $1 a tablet several years ago. Prices have increased as the rights to the drug have been passed from one pharmaceutical company to the next, but nothing like the almost 5,500 percent increase since Shkreli acquired it.
This is absolutely monstrous. He’s like a parody of a capitalist from a Marxist propaganda film. Jesus H. Christ what a piece of trash.
Spread his face around. Don’t let him be anonymous. Let everyone know his name and what he looks like so that he’ll never, ever be able to go about in public again without being utterly terrified.
dear god
Smdh
No. please tell me this is not real. No.
I googled it…it’s real.
People are fucking sick. How dare he play God with people’s lives. Do you know how many lost souls he would be responsible for. Fucking idiot, he doesn’t even know what he’s doing! That level of bad karma isn’t fixable..
Yesterday this was on 2k notes. I have no doubt it can get to 500k uno.. Let’s drag this man
pleeeeeaaaaase don’t make fun of people for being overenthusiastic about their interests. if you see someone getting really excited about something and you think it’s a good idea to ruin their fun (and don’t think people don’t notice your eye rolls and side glances) you’re an asshole
12th Century Wizard Linfred of Stinchcombe (also known as “The Potterer”) created magical remedies for his unsuspecting muggle neighbors.
He’s credited with creating remedies that would one day evolve into such potions as Skele-Gro and Pepperup Potion.
The Potters are related to the Peverells through marriage.
Most, if not all, of the Potter line lived in the West of England.
The Potter fortune was made by hard work throughout the generations.
Harry was a FAMILY NAME.
James’ parents were named Fleamont and Euphemia.
FLEAMONT.
Fleamont credited his dueling skills to having to fight people who made fun of his name in school.
If you’ve any doubt that James is Fleamont’s (FLEAMONT’S) son, the above bullet point is all the proof you need.
Fleamont invented Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion and sold the company for a huge profit.
It is likely that Fleamont and Euphemia did not have James until after Fleamont’s retirement.
Fleamont and Euphemia lived to see their son marry Lily Evans.
They were ALIVE for the WEDDING.
But they succumbed to Dragon Pox before Harry was born, dying within days of each other.
James inherited the invisibility cloak after his father’s death but we can probably all collectively ignore this point because the marauders need that cloak at school they need it
one thing I find hilarious is when Shakespeare quotes are used out of context
like, people are always saying “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them” as if it’s all deep and meaningful when actually it comes from a prank letter in Twelfth Night
and “This above all: to thine own self be true” comes from Polonius in Hamlet wherein the joke is that he’s an old pompous dude giving a long and rambling speech full of contradictory pointless advice to his son
“Brevity is the soul of wit” is another joke, because again, it’s made by Polonius who will just not shut up
it’s “we are such stuff as dreams are made on” not “of “, as in, “such stuff as dreams are built on”
“wherefore art thou, Romeo” doesn’t mean “where are you, Romeo” it means “why the fuck are you called Romeo, shit, I wanted to bang you but I can’t because you’re a goddamn Montague”
all these lines have acquired a kind of dignity in text that they never had in performance or are constantly misinterpreted
It’s not necessarily bad but it is kind of funny, sometimes.
“
Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
“
And the one the that ALWAYS pisses me off
Why, then the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open. I will retort the sum in equipage.
Oysters are not easy to open. You open them violently and with force. The world is not your oyster easily. It is your oyster with force and brutality.
“it was a dick joke” EVERYTHING he wrote was a dick joke
Re the last comment: UNTRUE. Sometimes he wrote cunt jokes.
psa “here’s a #suicide hotline with zero context” is so unhelpful and upsetting
i need to know at a minimum if they’re 1. religious-based 2. lgbT-competent 3. risk-reduction or total abstinence 4. going to inform any authorities, call ambulances, that shit
jfc shoving a string of numbers at ppl with “this’ll fix it!!!” is so insulting and unrealistic, you have no idea how many folks have been failed by this shit already
moreover: tag your fucking suicide hotlines
ok this is the single most relevant, important thing ive seen on tumblr in fucking months i want to throw OP a fucking party
a good majority of these numbers you’re flinging at people have the most INSULTING approach imaginable, they basically will just repeat everything that you’re saying back to you (“it sounds like you’re really sad! :\”) and if you mention you are actively suicidal/in severe distress they either call an ambulance against your will or tell you they “can’t help you in this severe state” and hang up on you
literally, i am not joking.
i have yet to hear of a single hotline that does not have religious/cult motivations, is respectful of the caller’s wishes not to be contacted by EMT’s/police if they so choose, and is fully equipped to actually have a fucking functional conversation beyond repeating sentences back verbatim and spoon-feeding DISGUSTING and insulting advice/platitudes (“too many people love you, you have to think of them”, “look for the positives!” “be strong!!!!”)
After being let down by the mental health system so many times I’m practically fucking underground I am EXTREMELY passionate about this, PLEASE reblog the fuck out of this so people can gain a better understanding of what suicide hotlines actually are and will stop offering them to distressed people reaching out for help and then frolicking away thinking they were a super special helpful snowflake
Like seriously I wish we had a more comprehensive sex education program in the U.S. You know how many guys I know who had no idea an unaroused vagina is only 2-3 inches deep? Or that the cervix raises up when aroused to accommodate dick? Or that if a girl is “tight” that generally means she’s not turned on and you’re shitty in bed? Or that the cervix has an entire cycle it goes through throughout the month where is changes hardness, placement in the vagina, wetness? Like, when you’re ovulating your cervix gets soft and raises high up into the vagina and your hormones get you really horny. It’s like natures way of moving the furniture around and fluffing the pillow for dick because it wants to get pregnant. And before menstruation, it gets really hard and low in the vagina. It’s basically inactivating it’s Facebook and saying “I just need some alone time for a few days”
Ladies and gentlemen, take a moment to learn about vaginas. Men, take an interest into your woman’s menstrual cycle!
U.S. Needs better sex Ed because I’m a 23 year old woman and didn’t even know all of this
“you call me child,
you call me weak,
you call me naive,
oh, but sweetheart, i am a goddess,
my blood is made of stardust,
and my heart of burning flames,
i have the strength of a warrior,
and the mind of a wise man,
you thought you could lock me in your grasp,
but my sword is sharp,
and your grip loose,
and this is how i become the queen.”—my blade is red, and i have come to take your crown // k.s. (via worthystevie)
That fact that anyone working with food in America doesn’t have guaranteed paid sick days is a health hazard to the public.
no but for real, the CDC has said the leading cause of foodborne illness is the lack of sick days for people who work in the food industry and that it costs billions a year to the economy.
My mom has been preaching about being pro-Hillary for like 90 years. SO TODAY I made her takethis quiz which asks you a bunch of questions about your personal/political beliefs and matches you with the candidate that sides with your issues most. So she takes the quiz and her highest match was 98% Bernie Sanders. Hillary? 83%, Which isn’t terrible, but fuck! There’s a candidate that you agree almost 100% with and you’re not gonna vote for him? Now she’s questioning her vote. That’s a good thing. Please take this quiz you guys. It’s called isidewith.com and it is so helpful ESPECIALLY*** for young voters who don’t know a lot about issues. WE NEED YOUR VOTES MY YOUNG FRIENDS. This guy could seriously change our country for the better. Even if you don’t vote for Bernie, take the quiz anyway because it will help you figure out the candidate for you. It’s not that long and it’s REALLY IMPORTANT!
I really hate this post bc i really disagree with it and I think it makes a bigger impact that a Hufflepuff was the Hogwarts Champion than if a Slytherin was bc Hufflepuff is the house that is treated the worst in canon (and in fanon too). Malfoy says he would rather leave Hogwarts than be in Hufflepuff and Hagrid says that Hufflepuff is full of duffers (or something like that). So I really think it was a big deal that Cedric (a Hufflepuff) was the Hogwarts Champion bc really Hufflepuffs deserve way more recognize than they get by everyone.
Yes! The whole point was that in-universe, Hufflepuff got so little recognition or respect that even a House defined by its adherence to fairness seemed to feel is was kosher to mock Harry because they believed he was hogging the spotlight. In terms of the narrative, Slytherin might have gotten the short straw, but in-universe, Hufflepuff was the house of the despised, the disrespected, the ‘also-rans’. Cedric being the champion had been the ray of hope for them.
Straight person: I like this cause its so realistic. Gay people don’t just talk about how gay they are all the time. Their sexuality is never brought up just like in real life because whats important is they are people not the gender they love
Actual queer person: I’m so gay guys. Like really really gay do you realise how gay I am? Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about how fucking gay I am my gay potential is through the roof god save my queer soul
minerva mcgonagall deciding not to go into retirement after seeing james sirius isn’t quite as bad as either of his namesakes or his father and is silently relieved because sure, he does some pranks but he also really loves transfiguration and adores learning and tends not to disrupt class. and she figures albus and lily luna can’t possible be worse. and she’s right about albus for the most part, the kid is quiet, if with a tendency to wander the castle after hours
but lily luna
oh god
minerva thought she was safe. but lily luna potter is the biggest menace she has ever seen in the smallest body. lily aces her classes and still manages to have at least three running pranks per school day. lily, backed by her pseudo maurauders molly and lucy weasley as well as the combined genius of the scamander twins. lily who wins the maurauders map from her brother within the first week of first year using a very cleverly planned game of exploding snap and some innovative taunting to get james to bet the map in the first place.
lily luna who is somehow her grandfather and her mother and her uncles fred and george all combined into one, with the evil genius and ambition worthy of a slytherin
minerva survives a few months before she decides to call it a day and leave asap. the scamander twins are amazed that lily calculated that retirement almost to the day
a friend of mine told me about her friend i think from high school who was gay but not out, and he pretended for a while to have a girlfriend named Amanda who he would go see a lot, and they’d be all, come hang out with us and he’d be like sorry I’ve got a date with Amanda, and they were like when are we gonna meet this Amanda??? anyway he kept this up for like a year until he finally came out; and when his friends were like, “wait, what about Amanda?” he said, “IT’S A MAN, DUH.”
i have literally never admired anyone’s commitment to a joke more
- She was outed by her mom
- She has dated men and women which I would assume makes her bisexual
- Do not go around saying she is a lesbian
- Do not spread rumors
- Be kind
Feel free to add onto this.
- A married man once cheated on his wife with her, and she, Kristen, had to apologize publicly. The man, whom had cheated on his wife, didn’t have to.
- That she doesn’t show many emotions in Twilight doesn’t make her a bad actor. Actually, it makes her a rather good actor, since that’s exactly how Bella is described in the books.
- She has every right to be rude against paparazzis, since they fucking stalk her and have made her cry publicly more than once. The same goes for every other celebrity ever.
Life is about learning, right? Upon coming to Ireland, a couple things were clarified for me by my Irish friends. For instance, no one speaks ‘Gaelic’ in Ireland.
Before people start fainting, let me explain. Gaelic is a linguistic term that covers three different Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. It’s what’s called in the biz, ‘Q-Celtic’, because when certain words in the Gaelic languages were making ‘Q’ or ‘K’ sounds, their sister-words in ‘P-Celtic’ languages were making ‘P’ or ‘B’ sounds. Welsh, Breton, and Manx make up the P-Celtic, Brythonic languages.
Here’s an example:
In Irish, the word for ‘son’ or ‘boy’ is mac.
In Welsh, that word is mab.
See what happened there? This is why asking an Irish person if they speak ‘Gaelic’ will only get you a confused reply. The Irish speak Irish. Basta cosí.
The second thing my friends made clear was that Irish myth is Irish, Welsh myth is Welsh, Cornish myth is Cornish. ‘Celtic’ is another word that won’t get you very far.
Like Gaelic, ‘Celtic’ is a linguistic umbrella term. It makes about as much sense to talk about a book of ‘Celtic myths’ as it does to talk about the ‘Romantic cookbook’ you used for that lasagne recipe (Italian is a Romance language). Often, when people talk about ‘Celtic’ myth, what they really mean are the myths of one of the six languages mentioned above.
TL;DR. Celtic ≠ Irish
≠ Gaelic, etc.
Why does this matter?
It matters because these are different cultures we’re talking about, different histories and social identities. In calling the character Rhiannon a Celtic goddess, she loses definition. She becomes vague. In calling her a Welsh character, she has a context, a history. Cú Chulainn is not a Celtic hero, but an Irish one, with all the literary and historical implications that brings. It doesn’t help that we don’t have, archaeologically or linguistically, any evidence to say that all the cultures that spoke Celtic languages shared a similar cultural identity.
Liz Bourke and Charles Stross have recently blogged on similar lines, and I admit I was inspired to say something, myself, after reading them. (Check them out!)
Is this all a bit pedantic? Maybe. To be honest, it’s worth being a little persnickety if it means adding definition and clarity and understanding to our world. Understanding, in my mind, is always a good thing.
