Tindalostalbot

I received a question, or perhaps more of a thought, on my Tumblr blog:

“What are the original purposes for Succubi/Incubi being among us? What is their mission for us and for their own evolution? Now do not get me wrong. I love them all, it’s just that no one seems to ask.”

I think it is an interesting question and I have thoughts about that … because … there is always a …

Purpose
By TeraS

One of the most basic questions that can be asked is … “why?” That is, of course a very broad question, and the answers can be as difficult to define as the question itself. That does not mean, however, that the question shouldn’t be asked, or answered.

To be clear, not everything—or everyone, for that matter—has all of the answers … well, with the possible exception of Tera and her Eternal … but the thing of that is: one cannot give the answer if the question isn’t asked. From that realization comes the explanation of why it is that Tera always, in all ways, makes time when someone in the Realm poses a question to her.

“Tera? Umm … Why are we?”

The question was asked by a purple-tailed succubi who was serving Tera a cup of tea at one of the Realm’s many, many tea shops. While, in the background, two black-tails talked loudly over their pie, Tera thought about the question for a moment. She smiled: “That sounds like how I would ask a question. Have you been taking lessons from me?”

Sybil, the purple-tail, replied with a faint smile: “Uh … a little? Kind of cute, you know.”

Tera picked up her tea cup: “Yes, you are. Come and sit with me for a bit. I’m sure that will not be a problem.”

Sybil was going to reply that she was working and needed to look after the other tables, but a look from Ester, the orange-tail that was serving customers with her that day made her change her mind and sit down with Tera.

The look was: “Dummy, she’s the Queen. Sit the hell down.”

After Sybil had done so, Tera regarded her as she traced a fingertip around the rim of her cup: “You ask “why?” My first answer is … ‘Why not?’”

Sybil sighed a bit. She was well aware of Tera’s mannerisms, she had been one of the Succubi for just over two millennia, and so she wasn’t all that surprised when Tera turned the question on her.

“Tera, please … I know you love to do this, but, please, could you just answer the question?”

“It is a bit difficult when you aren’t exactly sure of what the question is. Reminds me a lot of how the answer to the meaning of life is forty-two. We have an answer, but not the question.”

Sybil smirked: “Okay. What’s the question if the answer is ‘forty-two?’”

Tera lifted her tea cup to her lips and replied just before taking a sip: “How many licks does it take to make Sybil …”

Sybil’s eyes got really big and she waved her hands at Tera: “No! Stop!”, and at the same time she looked in the direction of Ester, who was trying not to be obvious in overhearing the conversation.

That question was one that Sybil did not want Ester to know. She’d been on the receiving end of many of Ester’s licks and did not, ever, want Ester to know what forty-two licks would do … probably. She’d have to think about that again.

Tera sipped at her tea, her tail swisching behind her slowly: “You asked. I was going to answer. That is what you wanted, is it not?”

Sybil shook her head and then sighed: “Tera, you know full well it isn’t.”

Tera shrugged and continued to enjoy her tea, occasionally looking at the two nearby incubi who kept looking in the direction of Ester, all while smiling to herself.

After a bit of time, Sybil asked: “Why are we not … well …”—she did finger quotes in a very Tera-like way—“Evil?”

Tera put her teacup down and then replied: “Evil is, to be blunt, boring. To be so is to act in a way that everyone expects you to. It’s boring to do the same things over and over again simply because you are …”—this time it was Tera who was doing the finger quotes—“Evil.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain the why.”

“The why isn’t all that complicated. Love is better for us. Lust is, as well. Passion, too. All of the positive things that we can do, can share, can be, makes us better and those that accept us better, as well.”

Tera pointed a finger in the direction of the two incubi: “In another place, another world, they would be seen as evil, corrupt, or worse. The same is true of every one of us. There are some places where we go and find that others, similar to us, have done much evil, and we have to deal with that.”

“So, why? If things are so stacked against us, what’s the point?”

Tera wiggled that finger: “My usual answer is, ‘Just ‘cause.’ But I’ll do better than that. The point is that we can change things. We can do things that others cannot. We can make dreams.”

“Sounds like a business card.”

Tera had the oddest smile as she replied: “Yes, actually it is. But you wouldn’t be aware of that; you’ve never been outside of the Realm since you came to be. We’ll have to do something about that sometime.”

Tera looked at the two incubi and saw that they were surrounding Ester and she was becoming a bit flustered. Turning to Sybil, she commented: “But, for the moment, your girlfriend has her hands full with two horny incubi, and I think you had better go help her.”

Seeing that Tera was right, Sybil excused herself and went over to “help” Ester with the problem. At the time, Sybil didn’t think anything of what Tera had said, but, the next morning, she found a note by her bed that read: “Sybil, would you and Ester please see me?”

Sybil considered the tangle of limbs, tails and sheets around her and sighed: “Me and my big mouth.” The muffled answer from Ester left her with a blush that was still on her cheeks when the two of them finally arrived at the Realm Castle, where Tera was waiting, standing just outside of the main doors.

Looking at them with a knowing smile, Tera asked: “So … had a nice time, I hope?”

That blush of Sybil’s turned contagious as Ester blushed as badly as she did. Then Sybil asked, in a very embarrassed tone: “Um. Why did you ask us here, Tera?”

“I have an answer to your question of ‘why.’”

The confused look that Sybil had was nothing compared to that of Ester, who had no idea what was going on.

“Okay. But why are we here?”

Tera’s tail pointed in Sybil’s direction: “And there is the question, is it not? Why are we here, exactly?”

In reaction to Tera’s answer, both Sybil and Ester began rubbing their temples as their migraines started. However, Tera simply smiled in response and pressed onwards. “If we were anything other than who and what we are, none of what happened to you at the cafe and last night would have. There would have been no passion, no love, no need, no desire. None of these things would have been part of you.”

Tera looked at the Realm beyond where they stood: “None of what is would have been. All of this would be nothing.”

She turned to them once again: “Why we are here, why we exist, is because we do. Why is not the real question. How is the better one. How is it that beings like us can exist? How is it that we can do what we can? How does it happen that beings like us, that look to some to be evil, are not?”

Ester, a white-tail, answered: “Because we made a choice?”

Tera smiled: “Exactly. We chose to be. We decided that this, all of this, was what we wanted to be.”

Sybil was still rubbing her temples: “Migraine … getting worse.”

Ester had a slightly mischievous smile: “We’ll take care of that soon. I think forty-two licks will do it.”

Sybil froze and then rubbed her eyes: “Oh, geez.”

Tera giggled lightly: “It is a nice thing to have problems like that, isn’t it? To be able to be different, to feel something that others cannot … to have a purpose?”

Sybil looked at Tera: “A purpose?”

Tera ticked off her fingers in turn as she replied: “To give, to receive, to share, to belong.”

Sybil just blinked at Tera’s answer, so the Queen continued: “To have a purpose, to be able to make that choice on your own, to find your way; that’s why and who we are. We exist because we have a purpose. It’s simply to be. That’s all. Everything else is optional.”

Ester tapped Sybil on the shoulder: “If you haven’t figured it out yet, the answer is that it doesn’t matter why. It matters that we do the best we can and be all that we can be.”

Tera winked and then waved at them: “And that’s the answer to the question … or at least the one for today. There will be more, there always is more. Now go on. You have better things to do than be here.”

Tera watched them leave, smiling knowingly and waiting patiently. Just after the pair of succubi had left her sight, she felt a familiar and beloved presence at her side.

“You know you didn’t answer her question.”

Tera looked at her Eternal and batted her eyes: “Didn’t I?”

Keith chuckled: “No. You didn’t. You danced around it really well, confused them to no end, but you didn’t answer it.”

Tera kissed him as she hugged him tightly: “They’ll figure it out soon enough. How does it help if I reveal to them something that they need to find on their own?”

Keith kissed Tera on her horns: “Right. I forgot how much you like riddles.”

“Oh I do. But there’s one riddle that I know the answer to: the one that gives me purpose.” She looked into his eyes, smiled knowingly, and took his hand in her own.

As they walked off down the path together, Keith replied: “The best one of all.”

Yesterday was a special day for myself and my Eternal … It was our anniversary, and, every morning when I wake up, I am thankful that he’s there. I try, so much and so often, to say how much love he and I have for each other, how much in sharing that love with our family, with the ones we love, and more, matters. The day we met is the moment in my life that I remember more than any other and so clearly that it feels like it happened just moments ago. There’s a certainty that I have in me, one that never leaves me, one that just … is … Always.

Certainty
By TeraS

The morning rays of the sun warmed the bedroom as she slept under the covers, the tip of her red tail just poking out, seeking out the sunlight so it might keep warm, as well. Off in the distance, echoing through the house, there were sounds of someone in the kitchen doing something. The sounds were muted by efforts not to wake her, but, of course, while she didn’t hear everything, she knew who was in the house with her, knew with certainty, and she dozed on.

In the kitchen, he was stirring a bowl of batter, working towards his goal, and humming an idle tune as he did so. He kept checking a cookbook that had been given to Baker for safekeeping, in which one particular recipe had been marked by a folded-over page as the right one to make on that day.

Finding that the batter—Devil’s Food Cake, of course—was about ready, he turned away to look for a cupcake baking sheet. Looking at the cupboard, he puzzled over where she would have put such a thing; baking was, after all, more her thing than his. Nonetheless, after a bit of rummaging around, he found what he was looking for and turned back to the counter …

… to find a certain blue tailed daughter poking her finger into the mixing bowl.

“Rianna, what are you doing?”

She pulled her finger out of the batter and stuck it in her mouth, mumbling around it: “Testin’.”

Amused, he set the baking sheet on the counter and crossed his arms over his chest: “Really? I hope you don’t expect to be licking the spoon as well.”

Rianna shook her head and then nodded towards the fridge, where a certain silver-tailed daughter was poking around inside: “Nah. That’s her job.”

Branwyn looked out for a moment: “And I get the leftover frosting, too … if I can find it. How do you find anything with all of this Redi-Whip in here?”

He chuckled: “Hours of practice in searching, and there’s a reason why there’s so much whipped cream in there.”

The fridge door closed with a thump as Branwyn waved a small tin of frosting in the air: “Found it!”

He shook his head and looked for a ladle: “No tasting the frosting—or the batter—for either of you. Not until I’m done.”

His daughters set themselves on the other side of the kitchen island where he was working, and, as he did so, they started talking …

“Ya’ know Dad, what’s so special about those cupcakes, anyway? Either you, or Mom, makes them, and you make them only once a year.”

“That’s right! They don’t show up on any holidays, or when people visit, or anything. What’s the deal?”

He was rubbing some butter into the baking sheet, a slightly far-off look in his eyes as he did so, before replying: “Today is a special day for us. It isn’t a Realm holiday, it isn’t something that everyone is supposed to celebrate. It is an ‘us’ holiday. Today marks our wedding anniversary in the human world.”

Rianna and Branwyn looked at each other for a long moment, then Rianna asked: “Okay, but what’s so special about that? Isn’t the day you became Mom’s Eternal more important?”

He put the baking sheet down, and, after dragging the mixing bowl away from Rianna, he started stirring again: “It’s just as important … probably a bit more so.”

Branwyn’s tail swisched behind her: “Okay, Sis is being a little stupid, ‘cause we know that it’s important. But why keep it a secret so much? Everyone celebrates the King and Queen’s vows here. So why not your human ones, too?”

He dipped the ladle into the batter, smoothing out the batter with a knife, and then poured the first bit of batter into the cupcake sheet: “It all goes back to how we married in the human world.”

Branwyn looked at Rianna: “This sounds like a three-Kleenex moment, Sis.”

Rianna nodded and dragged the box that had been sitting on her side of the counter between them both: “Prolly.”

Tapping the ladle, he smiled: “I’ll keep it short so you don’t wake up your mother.”

As he continued to fill the baking sheet, he explained …

“Where I came from, I couldn’t give her a royal wedding. I couldn’t go and pay for a huge ceremony, have all of my family there, and have her be alone. But there was no way to have your mother’s parents there, there was no way that anyone from the Realm could be there. At the time it was still a secret that we were going to marry, that I was going to be her Eternal. I understood that she couldn’t have something flashy and wonderful.”

He considered the portions and then started to put a bit more into each: “Still, I needed to make her happy. She insisted, as we all know, that she didn’t need anything fancy, that she was just fine with whatever came, even if it was just to trade vows in front of an Elvis impersonator.”

Rianna interrupted: “That would have been weird, Dad.”

“I think your mom would have loved it. Not to mention running up and down the Vegas strip laughing in the aftermath. But no, we didn’t do that.”

Both of his daughters were resting their elbows on the counter and staring at him, their tails up over their shoulders in a very familiar way. He chuckled as he looked for some chocolate chips to sprinkle on top: “I know that look; your mom is better at it. What’s the question?”

Rianna was first: “Couldn’t mom have just paid for everything?”

He tossed a few chips into the batter: “Could have. But I didn’t want her to–not because of pride, but because all of that flash couldn’t match her smile and how much I love her.”

Branwyn then asked: “Yeah, but she would have anyway, ‘cause she woulda’, ‘cause that’s what you expect from someone that’s the Queen.”

He balled up the now-empty bag of chips and tossed it off towards the wastebasket, missing by a mile, and sighed, “You’d think I would know by now that basketball isn’t my thing. As for what I expected from her: well, the only thing that I wanted was to make her happy. That came back to my being happy, and we went around in circles.”

His daughters looked at each other as he picked up the baking sheet and put it in the oven. They didn’t say anything as he returned and continued his preparations, this time putting a squirt tube of red frosting beside the chocolate frosting that Branwyn had brought over. He was in the midst of breaking in half a small pile of thin, red candy slivers as Rianna became inpatient and wondered: “Okay. So, what happened? Can’t leave us hanging, Dad.”

“The rings were simple. They were my grandparent’s. Oh, they had to be resized a little, but that wasn’t a big problem. We did the paperwork at City Hall, and it amazed me that your mother could come up with the paperwork they needed by looking in her purse for it. I’m amazed she can find anything in there when she’s carrying one.”

Rianna and Branwyn just looked at each other knowingly. That was a special skill that they had been taught and were not supposed to share. After all, it was important that, as two of the Succubi, they always had access to Redi-Whip … among other things.

He stared off into space again for a moment, smiling at the memories, then continued: “So, we had the paperwork, the rings … but, as for the ceremony, well, that was something special.”

There was a soft ‘ding’ and he removed the now-baked cupcakes, popping them out of the pan and then waiting for them to cool. He looked at the cupcakes and continued to explain … “I found a bakery nearby and, in the window, I saw a tray of cupcakes; chocolate ones, which I knew your mom liked. But they were a little bit different and it was that difference that made them something that she’d remember.”

He nodded towards the cookbook he had been using: “I went inside and asked the baker there for one, to my surprise he gave it to me for free. He also gave me that cookbook, said that it was meant to go with me. Of course I couldn’t accept that, and so I paid for it, and the cupcake, with the last of my change that I had with me. Keep in mind that we were intending to leave the human world for the Realm shortly afterwards, so, after that moment, there wasn’t anything left.”

Rianna nodded, Branwyn considered the cupcakes, a thoughtful look in her eyes.

“I met your mom in the town’s park, and I put her ring on her finger, and she put mine on me.” He spread the frosting over the cupcakes, then drew a pattern down the middle with the red frosting before sticking two pieces of red candy on either side. He then held up the cupcake to his daughters: “And our first meal together was … this.”

The cupcake was chocolate, deep and dark, almost the same colour as Tera’s hair. The red frosting in the middle made a tail that looked quite similar to Tera’s as well. The two pieces of candy made a pair of horns that completed the look. It was a cupcake that looked, in a way, a bit devilish.

Both Rianna and Branwyn giggled as they realized that what their father had made. Rianna touched the cupcake that Keith held: “Yeah. I can see how mom would love this.” Branwyn laughed and touched it as well: “I can imagine the giggling fit mom had, too.”

“Oh I giggled. But I also smooched him … and hugged him.”

They all turned to see Tera standing in the hallway, watching them all, a warm smile on her lips.

Keith chuckled: “How long?”

Tera crossed the kitchen and tapped Rianna and Branwyn on their noses: “Long enough to know that these two were being silly.”

Rianna blushed: “Um … we’ll clean up, Mom.”

Tera hugged them both tightly: “Thank you, sweetheart. Your father and I have … things to do.”

Keith’s smile was as warm as Tera’s: “Important things.”

Branwyn shoved the almost empty tin of frosting at Rianna to keep her busy before she got them into doing more chores, like cleaning the house.

“Yeah, well, you two have fun!”

Rianna and Branwyn snuck one cupcake each for themselves and then bampfed away to leave their parents to their fun.

After they had left, Keith walked over to Tera and gave her the cupcake he had made.

“Happy Anniversary, Love. Thank you for …”

Tera kissed him, stopping his words, and then, when they broke for air, she purred: “Happy Anniversary, Love … and I know. I always know.”

It was the one thing that they both knew with certainty. They always knew … always.

The post Everything is comparable if you have context. appeared first on Indexed.

The post The bigger the data set, the easier it is to “prove” your point. appeared first on Indexed.

The post Sorry, not sorry. appeared first on Indexed.

The post Here, have a sprinkle of weirdness. appeared first on Indexed.

Sleepy foods.

Turns out a bunch of substances have the power to make you sleepy - tryptophan, vitamin B6, calcium, glycine, lactucarium and carbohydrates are some of the major ones. Some even interact with each other for maximum sleepiness. A few common foods with these compounds in good measure include:

turkey, walnuts - tryptophan
tuna, pistachios - vitamin B6
dairy - calcium
chamomile - glycine
lettuce - lactucarium

So an evening turkey or tuna, walnut, cheese and lettuce sandwich with a glass of milk and a side of pistachios or walnuts and you’ll be set for a good night.

Howdy comic lovers! Today is the first installment of the next segment of Dungeon Divers! I’ll be running them for at least the next couple of weeks, so sit down, relax, crack open a dungeon turkey and enjoy.

I’ll be posting the rest of the segment early over at Patreon as I complete them, so if you want to get in on that, you know what to do.

nevver:

Total eclipse

Hovertext:

Monocles are here!

The importance/urgency matrix.

Also known as the Eisenhower matrix, though I learned it, as I suspect most people have, from Stephen Covey. It’s a simple way of prioritizing your tasks and planning.

The three main takeaways for me are:

1. Spend your time on those in the important boxes, generally starting with the urgent ones.
2. The important not urgent tasks are the easiest to kick down the line, like starting on that book project, or applying for things. Force yourself to make time to progress on these using whatever tricks necessary.
3. Try not to be led astray by the tyranny of the urgent not importants. They’re so hard to ignore. James Clear (Jamesclear.com) has a host of ways to help make sure you focus on the importants like starting every day with the most important activities, and ruthless focus.

I spent a year organising my to-do list in these boxes and it was striking just how long the important not urgents keep getting moved on to the next list. Part of the secret there is to break them down to startable tasks rather than big projects. FWIW I don’t actually recommend the really concrete action of organising the to-do list in the quadrants. More being cognizant of what type each task is. But it may help for a while.

For the 4th year, who asked. 

For how the Muses are used in Literature, see Divine Inspiration.

For more information about the Muses, go to Theoi.com, an invaluable resource.

Hopefully you will have noticed by now that most of the clothing and adornment shown in the comix are inspired by and copied from Greek pottery, and that different styles loosely represent different time periods. If you’d like to know more about this, go to The Classical Art Research Centre, Oxford University.

Prices written smaller seem more affordable.

Unfortunately, there are studies to show that this is generally true. What with decoy prices, anchoring, the age-old susceptibility to 99s and a host of other biases, we’re at the mercy of many factors when it comes to trying to make vaguely rational pricing decisions.

For plenty more see William Poundstone’s, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and how to Take Advantage of It), Scribe, 2010.

Hat tip: Avraham Byers once again.

saltycornchip:

best-of-memes:

Someone took a candid photo of a fight in Ukranian Parliament that is as well-composed as the best renaissance art

this is currently my favorite thing on the entire internet

The decoy price.

The technique of adding a significantly more expensive option in order to instantly make the other options look reasonable by comparison. These kinds of manipulations have been shown to be scarily effective.

For example:

Pricing decoys are another way retailers get you to part with more money than you planned on. In his book Predictably Irrational, behavioural economist and professor Dan Ariely demonstrates how a large magazine successfully employed a strategy called the “decoy effect” to increase revenue from subscription sales. Prospective subscribers were given three choices:

1.       Web-only subscription for $59
2.       Print-only subscription for $125
3.       Web + print subscription for $125

At first glance, the middle price point appears to be superfluous. Why would anyone buy a print-only subscription for $125 if they could get a web and print for the same price? Ariely tested the price points with MIT students and found that 16% of students chose option 1 and 84% chose option 3; not surprisingly, none chose option 2.

Then Ariely did something really interesting; on the assumption that having a decoy price (option 2) was influencing people’s choices, he removed the decoy and retested the price points. This time, the subscription choices were as follows:

1.       Web-only subscription for $59
2.       Web + print subscription for $125

With the decoy removed, the option that had previously been the most popular – the more expensive print + online access subscription – suddenly became the least popular choice. Only 32% of those surveyed chose the more expensive option, with 68% selecting the online-only subscription. Clearly the middle price point wasn’t superfluous; it was smart marketing that made option 3 look more attractive to subscribers.

Avraham Byers, Here’s why you should always pay full retail price, Financial Post,  April 22nd 2014

mapsontheweb:

Evolution of the delta of the Po river, Italy, 1604-1985.