motd/motd/discordium.txt

When she is not at the Assembly on Committee business, she lives in her condo in Kingsland South with her pet snake Rufus and something that lives in the walls that she refuses to name, because to name it would be to acknowledge its presence.
Sixty years and seven academic positions later, he has not lost that early enthusiasm for rearranging humanity's knowledge into shapes that suit us better.
The work introduced an entry-level understanding of entropology to the general populace, which seemed like a good thing until it, inevitably, went to shit.
His seminal work The King Electric: The Influence of Electromagnetic Variance on Order and Revolution is widely considered by sociologists and physicists.
What do you think of that, you cretins! Thought you could get rid of me that easily?
The projected effects range from the edgelands dropping to absolute zero to the entire continent being converted to mass-energy to be sucked into the past. The implications of this for the Disarrangement Act are unclear.
The mild racism of these suggestions aside, answers have not been forthcoming, since the interns tasked with asking the King Eternal about this tend to receive ancient curses in an old and forgotten tongue instead of answers.
So they scrapped the whole field and replaced it with "biosphere fascism," which was lighter on the environmental science and heavier on making public examples of dissidents.
Now, the most important thing to know about going to a bloodmoot as a foreigner is that everyone there, with no exception, is out to get someone.
None of this, though, so faithfully captures the Flandrean spirit as the fact that every officially-sanctioned copy of the Book of Schemes is booby-trapped.
He can squeeze his body through any hole large enough to fit his bones, which are the only parts of him that aren't made of snakes — as far as we know.
The fact that the tension has yet to escalate either indicates that Shaster's diplomats are doing their job well, or that Santanna thinks planetary bombardment by an advanced alien vessel is nothing to worry about.
I mean "take heart" in the Kingslander sense, of course, i.e., "[fear for your life as if someone were trying to] take [your] heart [out of your chest with a rusty spoon]", because you never know when an unnoticed squid-tree grove might send us plunging into the sun.
Similarly, the colored flags in that old legend appear as different colors to each character. A variation on sociophysical chromatic aberration would explain this handily. Please fund my research.
Unfortunately for Selestei, while the Contagious Republic compelled Vigotski to sneeze on every door handle he encountered, the Selesteines could only prosecute the war by forcing Vigtoski to take antibiotics.
The scapegoat slot is naturally, therefore, filled by adjunct professors.
Many sovereigns rankle at the condescension displayed at times by the Secretary, but complaining means you lose your gold star for the week, and only those who kept their stars for the month get homemade cookies.
She's standing behind me right now, in fact. Hello, Secretary Tomas. Yes, I'm getting work done. No, I'm not writing anything bad about you.
Nevertheless, if you're not the sort to be bothered by benign, nigh-omnipresent florists, the Order are at best an inconvenience.
Every night I lock up the building to clean, and every morning I wake up to the place littered with flower petals. I've tried everything. Nothing works.
But Flan's mental might was too great, and as much as he schemed, he could not outsmart himself. Thus he had an aneurysm and died.
In fact, some researchers believe ancient Flandreans might have actually invented the concept of government in order to coordinate their contingency plans.
The success of the new Protocol, no doubt aided by the Killer Bus's longstanding rivalry with "Literally Made of Snakes" Johnson, served to revitalize the Flandrean heavy weapons and cryotechnology industries.
It's understood that this course of action is extremely high-risk, but it goes hand in hand with another piece of Flandrean wisdom, which is that sometimes a solvable crisis is better than an unsolvable inconvenience.
Sure they're at war all the time, but they've been in a pretty stable state of unrest since like a thousand years ago. Most so-called "organized" nations have collapsed, like, twice in that same time period.
Sadly, he became somewhat unhinged in his later years, advocating for such policies as helping Selestei destroy Zor Olo, or declaring war on horseball — not players of horseball, mind you, but the abstract concept of the sport.
The admission of the Hegemony caused a fundamental change in the politics of the Assembly, which was allowed to happen when the first Hegemon, Bueoueou the Great, threatened to roll over the opposition.
Devices designed by the illustrious Dr. Stafford can be found at the root of most modern technological innovations, and it seems the man could not order a sandwich without founding a revolutionary academic discipline.
Instead of players on horses passing around a ball, Selesteine horseball involves players passing around a horse rolled up into a ball.
Remember when the Disputatious Assembly of Sovereigns was good at their jobs? I don't.
As a result, the entire country collapsed into a giant sinkhole during the 974 Open Flame Festival, the inauspicious timing of which ignited the gas deposits, creating the still-burning conflagration we know today.
When he began to lose the defending case, he resorted to personal attacks against the plaintiff (i.e. himself), until the trial degenerated into a fistfight in which he put himself in a headlock and choked himself out.
• Several species of bird.
We will set sail for the glory / One last time, we raise our blades / Let the world tell them our story / History will know our names
Their beer is more massive by volume than concrete, and some of their condiments are also used in industrial manufacturing. It is an enduring mystery how the Selesteines are even alive.
Bullshit. If tenure isn't the only thing between you and a JUSTICE tribunal, you're wasting your career.
In what Kingslanders call "a good day", the screaming was brief.
I told that story to my grandchildren the other week, both because they're adorable when they're scared, and also because it's never to early to learn to fear Kingsland.
Those who know are few, and they cannot be trusted.
If there's one thing I like about Flandre, it's their good taste in vengeance.
I myself once heard the Sovereign of Incendia break down in tears after a particularly belittling conference, although to be fair he does that all the time, the poor dear.
Lepazzia has it out for all of us. It might be wise to look past the cultural differences between us and realize that they probably consider themselves, in their own way, to be at war with everyone else.
The participants for the experiments, run by the National Academy of Velskyavo, were chosen by a single-elimination endurance tournament in which bands were required to play music while undergoing astronaut training.
When his mother, Queen Titania the Immovable, had ruled, she had sponsored Disputatious Assembly dinner parties for the express purpose of drinking the other sovereigns under the table and laughing at them.
Since the crow was technically a citizen of the Contagious Republic, the extradition paperwork took a week to get straight, at which point it was summarily executed and the corpse burned.
One such mystery is a deceptively simple question: why are there fish? Or more precisely, why are there such fish, rather than others that could have been?
It must be said, however, that they are all Flandreans, and their arguments rely on speciesist assumptions that intelligent whales are a horrifying thing.
The Missing Sea is — or rather, isn't, in a sense — a gulf on the western coast of Iurezza.
This phenomenon, Chezmen insists, can only be due to divine intervention; hence the differential equations.
Chezmen has yet to respond to this through anything other than interpretive dance.
I have occasionally found it necessary at international research conferences to gently remind visiting Velskyavan professors that they are not permitted to assassinate fellow conference-goers to claim their presentation slots.
There is some controversy over whether to include Marvin Fitch among this number, as on the one hand, they awarded him degrees in both Thanatology and Imagineering, but on the other hand, so did everyone else.
My buddy Yasser was just a little boy at the time, but he tells me the sound of a thousand propellers sounded like dubstep on God's jukebox.
Having warp technology in the break room has been deemed a major workplace safety violation, but none of the office supervisors have been able to get its removal approved.
But sure, I'm the villain here for being polite to a coworker, and not the people who shot it down with surface-to-air missiles. Take a diversity seminar or something, you bigots.
As in, I just found the Secretor's grease menu, and it's got all sorts of grease in it. Wheel grease, elbow grease, you name it, it greases it. Honestly, I just want to see if this grease menu works.
I'm told it already has a cult in Kingsland.
The technomonks of Panark are widely regarded for their charitable acts and unmercenary IT work.
When it comes to Kingslanders, however, that rule doesn't hold true, mostly because their legends have an unfortunate tendency to slither through the walls at irregular intervals and eat them.
In reality, civilization's been going downhill since the invention of the nation-state.
He was a man for whom battles were a way to make history and history an excuse to brag about previous battles. 
Despite existing only on paper, Placeholden is at war with every other country on the planet.
Every now and then in Kingsland, someone just evaporates. This isn't usually a remarkable occurrence. 
The 20-meter pedestal up to his falling form is visible from almost any open area in Kingsland, providing a constant reminder to her citizens of the folly of hope.
On one hand, her brutal suppression of dissent is questionable in light of the university's honor code, and it sets a bad example, I'm told, for the other students.
There was even talk of turning Taurus Research Station on the monstrous vegetation, but the Hegemony quickly put an end to that line of discussion by threatening to capsize whatever nation voted in favor—not their fleet, mind you, the actual nation.
Other animals, like the death cow, simply evolved robust enough constitutions that they can eat whatever plants in the region they want, whether they be swords, on fire, or both.
Those who opt for mobility, like many of the criminal groups hiding out in the area, must remain on the move constantly in order to avoid roving murders of marionette crows or the death cow Moolossus, who is inexplicably ten meters tall and always furious.
Therefore, every day at sunrise, every Selesteine citizen wakes up and yells at the sun. There is often forceful pointing, and if the country is having a holiday, occasionally breaking things. Then everyone has a drink.
The two of them fought for a full lunar month until Sels finally grappled the older sun and ate it. The other sun, afraid of Sels' fearsome power, began running around the world, creating the diurnal cycle.
If the Principality of Shaster had a national motto, it would probably be "Hold my beer!"
There are academic institutions you do not wanna find yourself in a dark alley with, and the Stratsky Foundation for Economics and Insurrection is in the top five on that list.
Scientists have discovered it is possible but rarely wise to deviate from Grimes's engine design, even though it is admittedly alarming to rely on a lightspeed engine composed entirely out of cardboard, duct tape, and rubber bands.
I just did the math, and I have concluded that they are absolutely right, and we should all fear for our lives. But life is so busy and we all have so much to do, so I recommend limiting your stupefying terror to no more than fifteen minutes per day.
To live in Kingsland is also eventually to be devoured by some unknowable monstrosity in Kingsland.
Is it really that much more outlandish when the hooded cultist on the nearest street corner demands your belief in Grislegrinder, the cosmic intestine-tentacled abomination who devours all upon death?
The sky has precious few resources beyond sunlight, water vapor, and the occasional bird. 
Culturally, the Ulgravians are of course known for their barely repressed rage, but they also possess strong communal values. This is likely a result of selection pressures, as anyone found guilty of egregious acts against the community is typically thrown off the airship.
Remember that we're a horse people with a rich sense of history who all live on zeppelins now.
The Very Definitely Independent States are the most visible embarrassment to the Disputatious Assembly of Sovereigns' global mandate.
Gristleton became enraged and told Durun that he was going to "kick [his] ass". Durun responded that he had a busy schedule, but that if he wanted to come to Benri in the summer and kick his ass then, he was welcome to visit.
When the two sovereigns finally stood face to face once again, Gristleton pointed out that Durun had invited him there, and then promptly, in the words of the contemporary historian Pentex Lannogaster, "beat the shit out of him".
If you wanna know what windstriding is, go catch a ride on the next Ulgrav ship that resupplies in your area, find one of the tourist-friendly companies, and go punch the clouds with your face.
Good clean family fun, except all those times when people slipped and dashed their head open on a passing rock or something. Whatever, it was harder to traumatize kids back then.
X-treme lecturing was incidentally outlawed in AES 960 by the passing of the I'll Legislate It, I Swear, Don't Think I Won't Act, due to a clause that banned pedagogy involving hyphens.
But no sooner had Hegemon Aouwouou unveiled the first fully-grown forest of Ravenous Squid-Trees on live television did they seize and devour her before disbelieving witnesses.
Reeling in shock, the Hegemony did the only thing they could, and blamed Flandre.
You're reading this article to find out why there's a giant fucking smiley face in the night sky, leering at you and scaring the snotty little bipedal consumerism batteries you call children.
Every night the tentacle-prints of some unspeakable horror play voyeur on your pathetic excuse for a sex life.
Nowhere else will you find the heights of power so entangled with the lows of maturity.
The cult, as usual, has yet to make an official statement about this, but it is unclear whether this is because of its patron deity or because being accosted by mutes for linguistic subversion is far from the worst thing that could happen to you in Kingsland.
What is truly remarkable, however, is the significance 🔇 holds for the Disarrangement Act. Because it
The Assembly will have some wiggle room to shuffle countries around if a few of them are put into space.
In some sense the Disarrangement will be a vindication of the unreasonable hope cultivated by some Kingslanders that something will eventually deliver us from Kingsland.
What if the Hegemony celebrates its victory and accidentally cuts off the Chorus Perpetual, and we plunge into the sun?
Here's a hint: What has an average cruising altitude of 2 miles, has already wiped one country off the map, and carries eight million descendants of the angriest fucking warriors this world has ever known? 
This argument is spurious for many, many reasons. First of all, we've already lost large chunk of the planet and been totally fine.
Not only is there the possibility of creating a second Kingsland, there is no air up there. The entire country would be dead in minutes. I confess I do not understand why I keep running into this suggestion.
In the interest of avoiding dimensional predators, the Assembly should endeavor to change the shape of the globe as little as possible.
Might this not cause people to regard the whole world as having become, in a sense, Barcu? Each of you Sovereigns should consider whether, having avoided your country being moved to Barcu, Barcu might yet move to your country.
This would be utterly disastrous.
I have no idea what an antihurricane would do, but I don't want to find out and neither should you.
The consequences will be unimaginably horrific.
I am honestly surprised that a thinking person could entertain this argument in good faith for more than a few moments. Even a brief examination of world history reveals the absurdity of the notion.
In light of the available evidence, I can see no other conclusion than that implementing the Act would essentially be a form of global suicide—if a world war does not erupt before we even get that far.
Consider how many problems are solved simply by being far away from them.
With global networking, anyone across the globe can feel threatened by anything going on anywhere.
Now, said Kingslander has to wake up each morning to the distressing fact that they haven't been annihilated from orbit. (They had to before, too, but this just makes it worse.)
Unfortunately, I will be unavailable for comment and/or arrest when this Committee's report is presented to the Assembly.
Though the loss of your academic career was tragic, I've always felt your work as a night janitor has been exceptional.