It’s only neutral until someone has to pick up the check. 
I somehow misread this the first three times as ‘always open to baking’, and I know Sami doesn’t cook. wtf, brain?
Gonna go get me a bagel, I think.
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Clearly, neither of you have heard of the 5-sided triangle.
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I’m pretty sure I can give exact answers! And do so most of the time.
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That doesn’t seem very exact.
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Nobody’s perfect… I’d expect nothing less.
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I greatly doubt Ms. Priano thought she lied to you at all, Isha. Even if you see it as obvious, it might not be to others. Including some who know a great deal more about it.
Which brings us into your first question.
Maybe. Weird answer, right?
So, here’s the problem. Yes, I’m coming into this with some prejudices, some maybe visible, some not so much. But, critically and also inevitably, so are you, and so’s Melisma, and I’m not the only one who gets defensive and/or aggressive, Isha. More troublesomely, you have a little tendency to accuse me of doing that when, subjectively, I’m doing no such thing.
I don’t lose my temper easily, but it’s much easier to get me to trade in sharp words. Even at my best I’m eventually going to get tired or irritable and someone is going to say something that I won’t ignore.
So at some point, I’m going to say something you won’t like. And while it’ll probably look fair, if sharp, to me, there’s no guarantee you’ll see it the same. Probably closer to the opposite.
This will break down. It’ll probably happen repeatedly. I don’t lie much, but my idea of truth isn’t always very comforting and won’t always match your view of how the world is or should be. Sometimes it’ll probably seem like I’m being disingenuous.
Arrendis and I have a kind of detente of sorts, but that’s partly because we’ve repeatedly really gotten into it. She actually understands me pretty well by now, and vice versa. We’re actually not so different in a lot of ways, although Arrendis will cheerfully go zipping off on flights of abstract semantics while I’ll at most dabble, and also she’ll experiment freely with ideas while I rarely say anything I don’t actually believe, at least in the moment.
(The difference is less than it sounds like-- my philosophical outlook encourages me to try to model other people’s ways of thinking, so “what I believe” can include extensive notions about what other people believe.)
We both kind of understand the rules.
Mizhara, now, her, I mostly won’t talk to, listen seriously to, or accept judgment from, and aside from her abrasive personality the core reason for that is actually that she thinks I’m a liar, I think she’s a fool (and probably not quite so honest as she lets on), and basically neither of us will take the other’s perspective seriously. There’s a probably-irreparable gap of trust, and while it has its roots in politics it’s also deeply personal: I don’t trust her and think no one should, she doesn’t trust me and thinks no one should.
But that’s a pretty rare case for me, really. Mostly, I’ll talk and/or listen to anybody, even if I can’t guarantee it’ll be all that friendly all the time. Teinyhr thinks I’m absolute scum, and I still enjoy talking to her.
I’m not a celestial or sefrim, Isha, and neither are you. There will be problems. The question is, do we do it anyway?
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Fine, I give exact answers 99.7% of the time.
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Little more accurate. Not gonna deny that when I start doing that, I really do get a perverse joy out of exploring the form of written language. It’s… it’s like exploring the minute meanings in a piece of music, really. Which isn’t surprising—or shouldn’t be—music is, after all, a language. It’s a fairly common one, too. Minor keys convey the same emotional context regardless of culture, almost universally, for example.
For me, words are a form of expression that—again, when I let myself get into that mindset—have infinitely variable flavors and textures, that can be colored and shaded by one another in complex and beautifully detailed ways. And yet, in a lot of ways, to do so, to really bring the artistry of words to the fore… in some ways it seems to obscure the clear communication, while in others… it’s the only way to communicate on the really pure, clearest levels that you’d like.
Finding that balance, finding that clear, precise construction that allows you to convey exactly what you want in text, without the richness and sublime harmonies that tone and body language convey… that can be a really monumental achievement, and it’s one that’s so often completely dismissed by people with ‘oh, you know what I mean’.
We don’t. We can’t know. We get a vague, general impression and then fill in the gaps with a guess. Sure, it’s an educated guess, an informed guess, but… it’s a guess, nonetheless. And I’m sure for a lot of folks that’s more than adequate, but… often enough, not for me. I want to know. I want people reading my words to know what I’m saying, to know… me, really. And to appreciate the effort.
Maybe someday. 
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Are you really expecting anything else at this point? You lot tried to steal away over thirty thousand of my people, refused to give even the slightest confirmation that they even could be safe, and haven’t kept up a deal since. The fact that I don’t trust slaver loyalists to deal honestly with slaves without verification by people who can actually be trusted is not an unreasonable one, I’d say. Especially when both as a corporation and as individual members, SFRIM has consistently broken multiple deals. Just one is sufficient. It’s all it takes to damage trust. Several? How exactly can you ever expect any kind of trust at all after that? When you follow these things up by putting over a million of my people in peril _by outright lying your ass off publicly, mockingly, and the rest of us have to clean up your fuckin’ mess and you still think it’s unreasonable that your word isn’t considered gospel… well that’s just beyond the pale.
It doesn’t matter whether or not it was intentional, malicious or simply accidental anymore. When it’s a repeated pattern, and when your arrogant pride won’t even let you acknowledge it, trusting anything you - individuals or corporation - say or do would be insane.
Here’s the thing though: You most certainly shouldn’t trust me either. Oh, I don’t play your nonsense games, but I’m not expecting any of you to trust me on that. You shouldn’t, because there’s one, maybe two capsuleers in New Eden that know me well enough to make that educated judgment call. I very much prefer it, in fact. If someone don’t trust me, they can safeguard themselves in any and all interaction they have with me. Be it trade, be it diplomacy, be it matters of gunfire and space violence, it doesn’t really matter. If they don’t trust me, they can put measures into place to safeguard and insure safety.
… and thus, they can trust me exactly as far as they need to, instead of putting blind trust in me which can fail for any number of reasons up to and including me being duplicitous or simply cockin’ something up. It genuinely surprises me that as someone with an even basic grasp of Caldari culture is so inept at such simple pragmatism and instead retreats into salty huffing about not being given the benefit of the doubt over multiple breaches of trust.
And this is another reason I don’t trust you much. You misrepresent me constantly. At a certain gala, you lied about both what I spoke of and my demeanor. Here on these boards, you make claims of what I do and don’t do with frankly very little to back it up. Of course I take your perspective seriously. I was one of the people who foresaw what you would become. We called it, years ago. We saw the path you went down and now you are exactly where we said it would lead.
Your perspective is now that of those who try desperately to justify their chosen position, while knowing that means sacrificing most morality, ethics and principle while making it out to be otherwise. It’s a sad thing of course, and as we’ve said before we’ve mourned the Aria that could have been. That grief doesn’t mean sitting idly by as you misrepresent both your chosen side, your now adopted enemies, and the rest of New Eden who dares call into question the Word of Aria.
Edit: Cussblockin’ unblocked.
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I asked my slaver hound for its opinion on this thread.
It farted.
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Miz, just to reiterate for the umpteenth time? I don’t care what you think. You’re not even worth arguing with. You’re like a hurricane bottled up in a person: noisy and destructive.
Go howl in someone else’s ear. There’s at least one luckless soul who still thinks well enough of you to listen to it.
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Depriving New Eden of the joys and wonders of my shitposts in the process? Don’t be silly, that’d be a crime against humanity. Don’t worry, at this point no one expects you to do anything but retreat and hide from criticism you can’t vague ineffectually at.
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I was wrong.
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Uh-huh.
Isha? This is what me being “not willing to listen” looks like. If I’m arguing back in a way that doesn’t make sense to you, I’m definitely still listening. I might be misunderstanding something, though.
I get frustrated with people. I even refused to talk to Arrendis for a few months, but that was because she’d gotten … really mean, at that time. Which I think she’d admit to.
But me, really not listening? It doesn’t sound like what you’ve been hearing from me, however opinionated or, from your point of view, benighted. I don’t do this for fun, or to “score points.” Both of those can play into it, but, mostly, I’m interested in learning, finding out new stuff.
Even if she might have some useful stuff to teach, Miz is someone I can’t learn from. So I don’t bother trying.
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Read: Miz keeps calling my bullcrap and won’t accept vague nonsense as justification, so I’m incredibly butthurt about it.
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I knew I should have locked my datapad.
‘Baking’ has an alternate meaning where I’m from.
I’m glad you’re coming into this with such a positive perspective.
Anyway, how do we get this big meetup thing rolling?
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I try to be a realist, Melisma. Our political loyalties are strongly opposed, and at least one side of the discussion has a tendency to be pretty passionate about its perspective. Quite possibly both.
We’re going to disagree a lot, and it probably won’t always be quietly. If that’s expected, it doesn’t need to do a lot of damage when it happens.
Current case in point: putting a “Like” on Miz when she’s summarily dismissing basically everything about me doesn’t suggest to me that you’re very open to this dialog. But I’m aware that she probably is reflecting some feelings you might share, even if you’re not quite as sure as she is. So I’ll just point out that your action could be read as concurring in her highly-personal, vicious assessment, and that yes, I did notice, and instead of assuming that you share her contempt for me I’ll leave it at that.
If we talk, and probably also if I visit, there are going to be clashes, including, probably, serious ones. I’m okay with that.
Well … I’m not sure Lord Avarr is available right now, but if you want it a little formal you declare a date, time, and place, and everyone shows up and has drinks and chats. If you want it a little less formal, maybe just invite everyone to come visit for a while at L’Amore or something. I doubt Lasa would be unhappy to see us.
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I’ll have to decline, then, if it’s there.
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Do you have other neutral ground to propose, Samira?
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I don’t frequent enough establishments to be able to say. I just know that an Angel locale that willingly served Nauplius is not one I will ever bring my business to. You all can do as you will.
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