There’s another story that I like about a Chinese general who had to defend a city with only a handful of soldiers from a huge enemy horde that was in all likelihood going to steamroll the place flat within hours of showing up.
So when said horde did arrive, they saw the general sitting outside the city’s open gates, drinking tea. The horde sent a couple of emissaries over to see what was what, and the general greeted them cheerfully and invited them all to come and take tea with him.
The horde decided that this was a scenario that had “MASSIVE FUCKING TRAP” written all over it in beautiful calligraphy and promptly fucked off.
Whoever that general was, he was clearly the Ancient Chinese equivalent of Sam Vimes.
did he just invite us over for tea nah man i’m out
This just keeps getting better
I fucking love history.
ok but tbh that story misses a lot of the subtlety of the situation like ok
so this story is the Romance of Three Kingdoms, and essentially takes place between Zhuge Liang, resident tactician extraordinaire, and Sima Yi… OTHER resident tactician extraordinaire.
The two were both regarded as tactical geniuses and recognized the other as their rival. Zhuge Liang had a reputation for ambushing the SHIT out of his opponents and using the environment to his advantage, thus destroying large armies with a small number of men. Sima Yi (who kind of entered the picture later) was a cautious person whose speciality was unravelling his opponent’s plans before they began. So it was natural that the two would butt heads; however, since Sima Yi tended to have more men and resources, he started winning battles against the former. Which, y’know, kinda sucked.
On to the actual story: Zhuge Liang is all like “shit i gotta defend this city with like 10 men.” Literally if he fights ANY kind of battle here, he WILL lose; his only option for survival is not to fight. And that’s looking more and more impossible until he hears that his rival is leading the opposing army. And then he gets this brilliant idea. He basically opens all the gates, sends his men out in civilian clothes to sweep the streets, and sits on top of the gate drinking tea and chilling out and basically makes the whole thing out to be a trap
When Sima Yi comes he’s all like “yo come on in bro”
and Sima Yi is like “yeah he’s never been that obvious about his traps before. this is definitely a bluff” and he’s about to head in when he realizes
wait. he knows that i think he’s bluffing.
and so he gets it in his head that maybe, just MAYBE, Zhuge Liang has this cunning plan that will wipe out his army – recall that he has a pretty good handle on what his rival is capable of. And after a long period of deliberation (which is just like “he know that I know that he knows that etc.”), being the cautious man he is, SIma Yi eventually decides to turn his entire army around and leave.
Zhuge Liang later points out that the plan was based specifically on the fact that he was facing his rival; if it had been anyone else, there’s no way it would have worked. A dumber or less cautious person would have simply charged in and won without breaking a sweat.
and that’s the real genius here: it was a plan formed entirely just to deceive one man, and it worked.
Zhuge Liang is the most brilliant, sneaky-ass bastard in history. One time his side’s army was out of arrows, which pretty much meant they were screwed. So Zhuge Liang goes and does the logical thing, which is build a fuck ton of scarecrows and put them all on boats. Then he makes the men hide in the boats and sail them out on the river.
Well, that day was super foggy (which Zhuge Liang had predicted. Did I mention he was also a freakishly accurate meteorologist?). So the enemy across the river sees a fleet of boats armed to the teeth with what appears to be half an army of men. They panic! and start firing arrows like crazy.
Zhuge Liang lets this play out for a while, then he’s like, ”Ok guys that’s enough.” They calmly turn the boats around and go back to base, where they dismantle the scarecrows and pull out all the enemy’s arrows.
Zhuge Liang is legend.
I love this post. It just keeps getting better. Like seriously, I would have adored learning about this in World History.
If you want to see this in cinematic glory, watch Red Cliff.
Especially since it makes Zhuge Liang look like this:
Red Cliff is 50% bloody battles and 50% eye candy and about half of that eye-candy is due to Zhuge Liang
I fully support watching Red Cliff; it’s gloriously silly entertainment during the battle scenes.
Guess what just got moved to the top of my watch list?? 😀
There’s been a lot of posts going around lately about Paypal and their policy on fees, and I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting you move to invoices. What you might not realise unless you have a closer look at these payments once you receive them, is that Paypal is expecting you to ship an item. This remains the same regardless of whether you use the default form, the ‘services’ form and charge by the hour, and whether you put 0.00 in the postage section.
After a call to customer service this morning, I have confirmed there is actually no option on invoices for a seller to indicate that postage is not required if you are invoicing from the main paypal website (ie. you don’t do paypal checkout through your website, there may be a work around if you have a purchase button on your website, which isn’t entirely practical for commissions as prices can often vary and most do payments through the site directly). This means that if you don’t provide shipping / tracking information on that payment, Paypal may freeze the funds and/or your account.
Apparently the way to avoid this is to include in the notes section of the invoice that the invoice is for goods and services, and that no shipping is required.
They also said that the buyer should indicate in the notes when they pay that they have received the goods/service, however this is going to cause issues with commissions as most are either paid upfront or partway through.
If anyone has any further solution to this, reblog and or message me, but otherwise this has been a PSA about Paypal invoicing. Seller beware.
Guys the struggle is real and I am learning this now. Make sure you write that your goods are digital in your invoices so your account does not freeze.
The way I manage my invoices isn’t just to specify under the note,
But also to choose this option when the payment has been sent and the commission has been completed
if a teenager is at your door and they are wearing a costume!! please give them candy!! they are still in it for the halloween spirit and it honestly no different from a little kid in a costume. they are just as excited and happy as all the other lil tykes and dont you dare tell them they are “too old for trick-or-treating” because that will literally break their hearts and that’s not cool.
Its getting close to Halloween again so I just thought I’d reblog this again
And if “don’t be rude to teenagers over a stupid jawbreaker” isn’t enough for you, consider
You can’t tell how old a kid is just by looking. I’ve known multiple 5th graders who were taller than I am, and I’m 25 years old. With their faces hidden by masks, you won’t be able to tell they’re elementary schoolers, but they still are.
Lots of older siblings are expected to take their younger siblings trick-or-treating, and they only get paid in candy.
You don’t know if that teenager is developmentally disabled.
You don’t know if that teenager spent most of their childhood in a hospital or sick and has never had the traditional trick-or-treat experience before.
You don’t know if this is that teenager’s first Halloween in America, and they just want to experience a piece of American culture.
You don’t know if that teenager ever gets candy any other day of the year.
You don’t know if that teenager has eaten anything at all today.
And those are just things I can think of off the top of my head.
and even if it is just a bored 16/17 year old out trying to see what free shit they can get. is it really gonna kill you to give them a fun sized milky way from the multipack you bought at poundland? That thing didn’t even cost you 5p, just give the kid the sugar, say “nice costume”, and let it go.
There are worse things a teenager could be doing on Halloween instead of trick-or-treating.
It’s been kind if an unspoken rule in my college town that if college students show up at your door in costume you give them candy because they’re also out to have fun and it’s way nicer for the students to trick or treat instead of going out and getting drunk. It’s also a way for the people who don’t want to party and don’t want to drink to have fun so like, we need to stop getting angry at people older than 6 wanting to dress up and get candy.
Heck, we even offer the parents a bit of candy too! It’s all good fun~!
If ya’ll are someone who is all “IT’S HALLOWEEN” since August and then complain about teenagers Trick or Treating then you don’t deserve Halloween at all.
My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.
I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”
I searched and searched for the post this graphic was from, and the OP deactivated, but I kept the graphic, because my BFF does the same thing, uses her imagination to come up with the worst pain she can imagine and pegs her “10″ there, and so is like, well, I’m conscious, so this must be a 5, and then the doctors don’t take her seriously. (And she then does things like driving herself to the hospital while in the process of giving birth. Probably should have called an ambulance for that one!)
So I found this and sent it to her. Because this is what they want to know: how badly is this pain affecting you? Not on a scale of “nothing” to “how I’d imagine it’d feel if bears were eating my still-living guts while I was on fire”.
I hate reposting stuff, but I’ll never find that post again and OP is deactivated, so, here’s a repost. I can delete this later, i just wanted to get it to you and I can’t embed images in a chat or an ask.
This is possibly why it took several weeks to diagnose my fractured spine.
Pain Scale transcription:
10 – I am in bed and I can’t move due to my pain. I need someone to take me to the emergency room because of my pain.
9 – My pain is all that I can think about. I can barely move or talk because of my pain.
8 – My pain is so severe that it is difficult to think of anything else. Talking and listening are difficult.
7 – I am in pain all the time. It keeps me from doing most activities.
6 – I think about my pain all of the time. I give up many activities because of my pain.
5 – I think about my pain most of the time. I cannot do some of the activities I need to do each day because of the pain.
4 – I am constantly aware of my pain but can continue most activities.
3 – My pain bothers me but I can ignore it most of the time.
2 – I have a low level of pain. I am aware of my pain only when I pay attention to it.
1 – My pain is hardly noticeable.
0 – I have no pain.
It’s also really important to get this kind of scale to people who have chronic pain, because chronic pain drastically lowers your perception of how “bad” any kind of pain actually is, and yet something like this pain scale is extremely user friendly.
For example, if someone asked me how much pain I’m in at any given time, I’d say hardly any, and yet I’m apparently at a chronic 2.5, and it only goes up from there depending on the day.
I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money.
“A scam” people are fucking wild.
This happened to me, too. A woman had used WIC for the majority of her stuff (which I say from personal experience is such a long and embarrassing process) and to buy the remainder of her groceries, which included diapers and wipes, she used a card, and it got declined. I bought the other $30 of her groceries because hey, I’ve been there, and now I’m not. She was extremely emotional and began to cry and even hugged me. My mom called me on the drive home and could tell I had been crying myself, asked what was wrong, and when I told her what happened, she berated me for being “duped.” I couldn’t believe she could be so disappointed in one of her children for doing something- nice? Is that the hill you want to die on? Getting mad about people needing groceries?
people who’ve never had to worry about money always think it’s a “scam” when other people desperately need money. it’s rly irritating and gross.
I used to work at a grocery store and let me tell you those places are fucking lawless and driven by chaos….but when someone decides to be kind, to do something like this?? You have no idea the impact it’ll have. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen in tears at my registers. How little acts like this turn a whole day around. And you know what? The minute you pay it forward, I GUARANTEE you’ve just inspired someone else to do the same. I used to give complimentary candy bars or bouquets of flowers to the people who took the time to show a little extra kindness like this. This world is hard enough. Scam or no scam, spread that love where you can.
Do what you have to do to sleep at night. Personally, if the choice comes down to either “you were scammed into buying someone $15-20 worth of groceries” or “you ignored someone in genuine need of help” I sleep much better with the possibility of having been scammed than the possibility that I turned my back on someone in need.
Story time because this was one of the most surreal experiences of my life and I need to talk about it
So when I was sixteen I worked in a Dairy Queen in a mall (which was as awful as it sounds) and during prom season we had people that’d walk around in prom attire to kill time before the dance started.
You also need to know that among those suits in boxes you can buy at Macy’s is a three-piece American flag suit. I’m not joking.
So imagine, if you will, six white guys who were fuck-you tall all walking around the mall in this exact suit and matching white cowboy hats. Hilarious in and of itself, my coworkers and I were all cackling.
BUT THEN
My mall also had these motorized animals you can ride, they were marketed towards kids but there’s no way they’re gonna say no to an adult willing to pay $14 to ride on an elephant for half an hour
So like ten minutes after we see them, all of them come
RIDING ALONG IN A FUCKING CONGA LINE
Just these six identical cowboys each on their own animal, each animal blaring it’s own rendition of B-I-N-G-O, and I basically nearly burst into tears.
I hope they went on to start their own boy band or something.
How did I spend my day? Making crappost edits of the Detroit Become Human logo. (All letters from the original logo, no letters are forged. It’s funner that way.)
Marshmellowmilktea 