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@lastpositivist.bsky.social

31K followers 1.9K following 9.7K posts

Aspiring philosopher; tolerable human; "amusing combination of sardonic detachment & literally all the feelings felt entirely unironically all at once" [he/his]

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · Nov 10

I really think at its heart philosophy is one giant battle, taking place over many eras and nations, between people who are basically pleasant bureaucrats and people who are sexy murder poets, and it’s both super important and super boring that the pleasant bureaucrats must win.

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 10m

What do you think of the take of them as Dominion expys?

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Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty @irhottakes.bsky.social · 13m

It’s me, the only woman who ever cared even slightly about Vespid lore. AMA.

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Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty @irhottakes.bsky.social · 18m

My main problem with the Tau in 40k is that there’s so much room for creativity with the multispecies auxiliary stuff and every edition we get a slightly different take on battlesuits and gunlines and maybe Kroot if they remember.

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1d

I actually do think that the Tau are very akin to the Dominion from DS9 and I once wrote an overly long Reddit post saying as much.

I really like the comparison with the Dominion from Star Trek: Deep Space 9. They are a functional multi-species empire that is clearly far from hellish to live in, but at the same time clearly authoritarian in their basic political structure and expansionist in their foreign policy. Fwiw there's a long but I think really good fanfic which explores this take on the Dominion, not by me so this isn't just self-promotion! It is a post-canon story of Odo basically going on an inspection tour on behalf of the Dominion and so it gives you a sense of what the empire is like at a day to day level.

(There is a difference in that - the driving force of the Dominion is the changelings' paranoia, whereas I take in Tau society there is a genuine heartfelt belief in the Tau'va and thus a sense of evangelical mission. Utilitarian missionary imperialists are probably less bad than paranoid militarist imperialists, but on the other hand they can be a bit more scarily fanatical.)

I like this comparison because I basically like the Tau whereby they are a group that would be badguys relative to any other setting, but in the context of 40k they might genuinely actually be the best hope for the galaxy. This might really be it, this might be the best we can hope for. So I think anchoring them on a faction that really were basically evil antagonists in DS9 - though DS9 is nuanced enough to not be so black and white - and then finding yourself routing for them in 40k is wonderful to me.

Noah Van Nguyen I think has a slightly more noble take on the Tau than this but Elemental Council is genuinely great (I wrote up my thoughts on the lore therein here.) And he is writing an epistolary fanfic that I am really enjoying, you can check it out here. So I will say that if he becomes The Main Lore Guy for the Tau I would have no complaints even if it is a slightly different take from mine. Not that I have anything against Kelly - for the simple reason that I ain't read his stuff.

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 26m

Oh yeah @starshine.bsky.social it also feels inevitable that you shall one day write a guest story

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Embrace the Void @etvpod.bsky.social · 54m

I very much appreciate the invite on this and took to heart Liam’s writing style of leaning into the narcissism and making myself the monster. Enjoy hating it!

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1h

In what might actually be a first for the Sanguinary Utnapishtim, @etvpod.bsky.social has actually used the Guest Post thing to outline his actual philosophical opinions... in more murdery form. He's also done me the ultimate honour of inventing a new slur.

sherdenpact.neocities.org/GuestPostLuck

Sherden Pact

sherdenpact.neocities.org

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Embrace the Void @etvpod.bsky.social · 51m

Don’t drop that hard K unless you’re at least a little warp touched or they will throw wings with you.

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1h

I love it when I get guest posts I really do, I love this being a shared creative space that many people have now contributed to. :)

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1h

Of all the usual crowd reading I feel like @drsvg.bsky.social @economeager.bsky.social @williameburns.bsky.social @iris-meredith.bsky.social might especially be suited here. I also note that @category-fury.bsky.social you still owe me a story!

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1h

So read on if you want to know the new bad-word for Tzeentch worshipers, the case for everything being luck (if, you know, you decode a bit), and why it is that a Khornite empire dedicated to murder maximisation might actually be massively in favour of Aaron's forthcoming publications!

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1h

Sherden Pact

sherdenpact.neocities.org

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Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty @irhottakes.bsky.social · 2h

I love RPG shops. Going over to some dumpy looking peasant and being like “Here’s 50,000 gold pieces. I need a tome of necromancy, three scrolls of fireball, a potion of invisibility, a dagger, an axe, an amulet of feather fall, and no questions asked,” is such a mood.

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thinkingbayonet.bsky.social @thinkingbayonet.bsky.social · 3h

I like The Lord of the Rings a lot but we need more bite sized swords and sorcery fantasy TV/movies. Willow is the platonic ideal of lightweight high fantasy, and Dungeons and Dragons (2023) is its spiritual successor. But overall the field seems very thin 🫤

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Stellaween? @antlervel.vet · 2h

Babygirl you are so offputting and abrasive and clearly have at least one personality disorder. I’m thinking I’ll develop a crush on you that, god willing, will go absolutely nowhere

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 19h

I was watching The Big O and then suddenly realized in Ep. 4.....THERE'S GLONZO

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Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty @irhottakes.bsky.social · 3h

They look like they’re marching off to join some form of far-right organization.

Every Pokemon Frame in Order @pkmnframes.bsky.social · 5h

Pokemon - Pikachu's Vacation
Frame 1469/2537

Timestamp: 00:11:49.524

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jay pico @jpco.io · 2h

this is beside the point of the post but as an American I am curious about this concept of freely-refillable mocha that the UK has

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After Dinner Conversation® @afterdinnerconversation.com · 2h

Are we going to post all year about how the writers on #chillsubs named us their top fiction magazine? Why yes, yes we are. This is one that makes us so very proud as it's voted on my writers, the reason we got into this in the first place!

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Dr Juliette @ferrydanini.bsky.social · 2h

I'm blocking people calling "mademoiselle" or "ma chérie"

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 2h

Just blocked a bunch of people cos their vibes were bad. Nothing they did really. This isn't a democracy.

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RoninMacbeth ☠️🎢 @roninmacbeth.bsky.social · 3h

Per @charltoncussans.bsky.social , "a command economy where the only command is 'no.'"

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Michel Nivard @michelnivard.bsky.social · 3h

Britain right now is like the deity did some vibe coding, flipped the sign on the national loss function, and it’s finding the least optimal set of parameters minimizing the number of satisfied individuals…

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Corey @coreysoper.bsky.social · 3h

Tbh I struggle to conceptualise how diverse an army consisting of trillions of people from millions of different planets would have to be to be "improbably diverse"