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Gilrandir

@gilrandir.bsky.social
36 followers 75 following 182 posts

Mostly lurking these days

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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Ways that I explain my asexuality: 1. "Y'know the amount of sexual attraction that straights feel for the same gender, or gays/lesbians feel for the opposite gender? That's the amount I feel for EVERYBODY." 2. "It's like appreciating the aesthetics of a painting, and also not wanting to boink it."
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
The US has much more British heritage than it likes to admit. Yeah yeah you fought a ~*~revolution~*~ in the 1700s but also you just Brexit'd yourselves without even an EU to scapegoat.
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Walking through the local cemetery at night is actually quite nice. It's like a lovely, well-tended little park, with dead people in it.
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Quote: "What will it take for us to stop linking American identity to skin color? What will it take for us to treat all Americans equally?"
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Has anyone ever tried explaining to the "I want the government to run like a business" types that taxes are a subscription fee for having a functioning society? (If so, how did it go?)
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
"Anything with a mouth can bite." - A wildlife rehabilitator I used to know.
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
One of my friends, in a discussion about frustrating people that we've had to work with: "Be incompetent or stubborn, but not BOTH."
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
I still maintain that "千年之戀 (A Thousand Years of Love)" by 信樂團 (Shin) is the pinnacle of Chinese romance, and it's sung like two lovers having a screaming argument at each other across generations of reincarnation XD knowmandarin.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/1... www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fo5...
knowmandarin.wordpress.com
(^127) 千年之恋
Chinese lyrics and translation. Lyrics are not translated word for word. They are translated by meanings. 千年之恋 – 信乐团/戴爱玲 Love Over A Thousand Years – Shin / Dai Ai Ling qian nian zhi li…
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
IMHO if the US doesn't want to go the violent revolution route, the most viable option is a grassroots takeover of the Democratic Party, like how the Tea Party took over the Republicans. Hard mode: Rehaul the voting system to make 3rd parties actually a thing. (Approval voting > Ranked choice)
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
I'm trying to figure out what kinds of privacy precautions I should take in the upcoming US regime, and ironically the person who is the most tech-privacy-oriented one I can ask, also innately believes that the authorities' actions will be bound strictly by the lawbooks when the time comes. (lolsob)
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 08/11/2024
It's kinda sad that I feel like "having conversations with people firmly entrenched on opposing sides of the Balkanized Left" has become a surprisingly radical act. If we can't even fucking talk to each other, then how tf do you expect to talk to *anyone else* in order to build a mass movement?
Tweet that reads: "I don't have friends on 'both sides', I have friends in 400 varying leftist splinters and they all hate each other."
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 21/10/2024
Some of my favorite Taiwanese (Mandarin and Hokkien) idioms/sayings: 你問我 我問誰啊? 六個鍋, 五個蓋 我哪有那種美國時間啊 管它去死 臨時抱佛腳 When songs on the radio sneakily work 草泥馬 or 衝三小 or 雞掰 etc into their lyrics 火燒屁股 Wa li leh 他不鳥我?! And also the way people 理所當然 speak a mishmash of Mandarin, Hokkien, Japanese, and English
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 21/10/2024
USA women. If you want squatties for public toilets, then culturally fucking build squatties. (Actually don't, because they SUCK, and I know this because they were my only option growing up.) Don't squat on toilets and piss all over the seat, because then YOU are the reason why we can't sit on them.
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 04/10/2024
One of life's great pleasures: putting your head up against a purring cat and feeling the purrrRRRrrrRRRrrr reverberating through your entire world.
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 06/09/2024
Where's the line between "giving someone a chance to see if they'll do the right thing" and "testing someone"? (Someone that you have an ongoing relationship/connection with - friend, family, lover, etc.)
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 30/08/2024
I have a fanfic idea for a crossover between Fullmetal Alchemist and Avatar The Last Airbender in which alkahestry and bending are based on a common set of principles derived from traditional Chinese medicine... but alas I have no capacity to write it :'(
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 28/08/2024
An IRL friend identifies as "demisexual" and I really don't want to be gatekeep-y but "I don't think that word means what you think it means", b/c she keeps talking about feeling attracted to strangers in bars. (Just because you're too scared to *act* on it due to trauma, doesn't mean you're demi??)
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 11/08/2024
Just Vulture Culture things: happily collecting the bones from an almost-perfectly skeletonized rabbit carcass in your neighborhood, after a week of crossing your fingers that no one's going to fuck with it before it's clean enough for you to yoink XD
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 29/06/2024
I have aphantasia (no visual imagery) and mostly anendophasia (no inner voice) unless I'm deliberately trying to mentally verbalize things. It's very dark and quiet and soothing inside my own head. Apparently this is not what the inside of most people's heads are like, and *that's* strange to me XD
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 18/06/2024
why are you lgbtq+? correct answers only 1. I tried being a girl, then I tried being a boy, and then realized my gender was "meh, irrelevant". 2. In my 20s, I realized when people say "[person] is hot", "I'd fuck them in a heartbeat", etc. they literally meant it, and I was even more confused.
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Reposted by Gilrandir
Min Chao @wordsfromtaiwan.bsky.social · 13/06/2024
I've had the honor of discussing the art of translating Sinophone poetry with @yilinwriter.bsky.social, poet-translator of "The Lantern and the Night Moths" — a bestseller of modern Mandarin Chinese #poetry — and researching the 5 poets from this anthology. wordsfromtaiwan.medium.com/encountering...
wordsfromtaiwan.medium.com
Encountering kindred spirits in Sinophone poetry: Q&A with Yilin Wang
Meet the poet-translator of ‘The Lantern and the Night Moths’ — a bestseller of modern Mandarin Chinese poetry — and the five featured…
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 13/06/2024
My Libby hold finally came in, and I ended up finishing it in the wee hours of last night (technically this morning?) XD If nothing else, joining Bluesky was worth it for introducing me to this book!
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 26/05/2024
Hot take: The computer game "Going Under" is a fucking literary work of art AND hilarious as hell. Every detail is either a biting commentary on toxic tech startup culture, a way-too-apropos nerdy reference, or, gloriously, both. It's pitch perfect all the way through to the end. Just, like, *damn*.
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 21/05/2024
"Not my circus, not my monkeys" is one thing. But "not my mob, not my pitchforks" is not actually the same...
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 14/05/2024
From the Taiwanese Linesphere (@yilinwriter.bsky.social, you might find this amusing?) 《春曉》 春眠不覺曉, sleep sleep in spring night, 處處聞啼鳥, gu gu gu gu birds say hi. 夜來風雨聲, hua la la la rains come by. 花落知多少! oh, shit ! flowers all die !!!
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 13/05/2024
The most important thing I've discovered from my extremely trial-and-error gardening over the last couple of years: my impatient brain seems to think I live two USDA zones south of where I (and my sad chilly plants) actually live... "Eh it's above freezing, they'll be fine right??" 🙃
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 10/05/2024
The wonderful and tragic thing about humans is, nobody knows exactly what it's like inside your own head, except yourself. (Sometimes not even yourself, heh.)
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 02/05/2024
Useful info for protestors. Also has a list of alternative (non-protest) ways to get involved. stone-soup.ghost.io/protest-reso...
stone-soup.ghost.io
Protest resource round-up
Digest 05.03.2024 - Stone Soup
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
I'm just mentally substituting the word "autocomplete" for "AI" in the discourse now. Because that's basically what it is, at our current level of technology - people trying to make better and better autocomplete (in text or images or video), with all the conveniences and horrible pitfalls thereof.
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 11/04/2024
Hot take: "Hoshi no Samidare" (aka "The Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer") was a great manga, and it's a huge shame that the anime adaptation was unwatchably shitty. (Literally - I got a couple episodes in and was like, I can't, I just can't...)
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 30/03/2024
Sometimes ya just wanna be an ancient mysterious horrorterror...
A slim person wearing a mask in the shape of an elongated horse-like skull with curling horns and glowing red eyes, with three golden cords attached to the base of the horns and a red headcloth attached to the back of the skull. They are also wearing a white shirt, black waistcoat, black dress pants and shoes, and blue bola tie.
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 03/03/2024
Several years ago I started translating songs from my favorite band, 五月天 (MayDay), and then life (and COVID) happened... Starting to contemplate going back to this project though 🤔 gilrandir.dreamwidth.org
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 14/02/2024
Some days ya just feel like a rickety pile of coping mechanisms all frankensteined together...
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Gilrandir @gilrandir.bsky.social · 09/02/2024
I'm an old-school Livejournaler and phpBB webforumer, and I'm hoping this new wave of social media sites (like Bluesky here aka "we're not Twitter" and Tildes aka "we're not Reddit") can recapture the best spirit from those way-back times. (Tumblr, you keep on doing you.)
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