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’ve repeatedly seen British people make fun of American food for apparently always being either “too sweet or too salty” but our cuisine is still pretty mild compared to a lot of other countries, and having repeatedly tried British food, I’m pretty sure the term you’re looking for is “having any flavor at all.”
Britain invaded over half the world for spices and then decided they didn’t like any of them
you know what’s always bugged me? when a character is faced with some magical two headed being or some shit and one always lies while the other tells the truth and to figure out which is which the character’s like “which one of you is the liar” or something like bruh literally all you gotta do is be like “what’s two plus two” one of them’s gonna say four and the other one is gonna say 83 or some shit. there you go. answered. go on with your magical quest to defeat david bowie.
this has forty notes. that’s forty more notes than expected.
THIS IS A VERY GOOD POINT and deserves more notes
LISTEN i don’t normally engage in Discourse but this information is DANGEROUSLY MISLEADING!
the point of the riddle isn’t to figure out which one is lying, in fact, knowing which one lies and which one tells the truth is irrelevant. What you want is the correct answer from the magical beast/two guards/etc. Usually this means knowing which path to take. For that, you HAVE to ask it “if i ask the other head/guard/etc which is the safe way to go, what will they tell me?”
if you asked the truth-telling one, they’ll tell you the wrong way, because the liar will always mislead you. if you ask the liar, they’ll tell you the wrong way, because they’re misleading you, so
ALWAYS do the opposite of whatever answer you get.
“who cares this is a stupid tumblr post this doesn’t matter irl–”
WRONG AGAIN! story time:
A few years ago a friend threw a halloween party, and since he dressed as the Riddler, he decided to have a riddle contest.
now, i’ve been preparing for a riddle contest my entire life, since i first read the hobbit and it got bilbo out of trouble. for some reason, i assumed riddle contests were as inevitable as quicksand.
I answered the first riddle easily (it was one of the ones from the hobbit) and then i had to answer the next one to win a bottle of top-shelf rum. it was a variation on the two-guard riddle, only i had to choose one of two paper bags. one had crappy cheap vodka, the other the nice rum.
the host and his friend did the classic one lies one tells the truth thing, and of course before i asked everyone started shouting “ask him what color your hair is!” and stuff like that, but i already knew what to ask, so i shushed them and won the rum
remember, kids, it doesn’t matter which one is lying and which one is telling the truth. all that matters is you get the correct knowledge to move you forward, win your rum, and make you seem like a superhuman riddle-solver to a crowd of drunken party guests.
always be ready for a riddle contest
Here’s a thing that usually doesn’t come up when people try to criticise this riddle as well. One of the conditions of the riddle is typically that you only get to ask one question. You arrive at the liar and the truth teller and you need to find out which bridge is safe and which one will collapse when you’re halfway across.
They tell you that one of them always lies and that one of them always tells the truth. And they tell you you can ask them one question.
If you ask “What’s two plus two?” than great. You know which one lies but you also still don’t know which bridge you can cross and can’t find out.
You played yourself.
i can get the answer in zero questions. block all the other exits, light them on fire, and see which way they run.
^ Look at Alexander the Great up here, cutting the knot and all.
first you have to know that antony and cleopatra had known each other at this point for like…. shit almost 15 years? and had had a correspondence on and off throughout that time. they’d known each other through her exile, through his campaigns, through her first child, through his (failed) interim consulship. it’s conjectural to say they were on good terms but… i don’t know why they wouldn’t be.
so when antony found out that cleopatra had funded cassius and brutus during the civil war? he was like, what the fuck. what theFUCK! (yells out window) OCTAVIAN DID YOU HEAR THIS! WHAT THE FUCK!
so antony issues a summons: cleopatra is to come to him so she can Explain Her Self. to this cleopatra replies: what the fuck did you just say to me?
(and you might be like, wait, why is that an issue? and i’ll tell you why, it’s because cleopatra, despite essentially being a (very tenuous) client king to rome at this point, vulnerable to invasion and just barely out of the woods re her connection with caesar, was a macedonian through and through: from language to looks to, you guessed it, ego. and she was fucking. insulted. HOW DARE HE! she probably yelled to charmian. I AM BLOOD! OF! PTOLEMY! NOBODY SUMMONS ME! charmian: i understand that your majesty can you please eat your dinner now)
antony summons her twice more. finally cleopatra, personification of the upside down smile emoji, says, okay! i’ll come. see you soon!! (:
now. cleopatra knew two things:
One: that she was richer than antony, and antony wouldn’t be able to afford a reciprocal feast if she went all out, which would be hugely embarrassing for him
and Two: that a lot of people liked to say antony was a dumb hoe, impressed only by material goods and lavishness, and that he didn’t like when people said this.
so naturally cleopatra proceeds to sail up the river to tarsus in an huge fuck-off ship, plus her entire waitstaff, 12 dining tables, a feast that was lavish beyond belief, entertainment, probably some peacocks or whatever, all decked out in pearls and jewels.
antony: wtf! why are you being so mean rn! cleopatra: mocking baby voice: why are you being so mean rn??? (normal voice) FUCK you
antony didn’t ask her why she had supported cassius ever again. and that was the beginning of the most famous love affair in history
have i ever told y’all about the greatest moment of my academic career
i was a freshman in college and i had this history teacher who was ~edgy~ and his hotness level on ratemyprofessor was off the charts and he was the first teacher i ever heard use the word “fuck.” anyway he would do this thing every so often where we’d have a “quiz” and the first two questions were always really easy and the last one was hard – they were all similar questions, and the point was to show what you learn about history and what you don’t.
so one day he’s like okay kids time for a quiz and the first question was who killed abraham lincoln. the second question was who killed JFK. third question was who killed william mckinley.
we all take a few minutes and write down our answers, and then the teacher asks the questions again so we can shout out the answers. everybody answered the first two with really no problem.
now, keep in mind that this class was at 9 a.m. and i was exhausted All The Time during my freshman year of college so i sat in the back in my sweats and never said a word and the teacher definitely had no clue who i was.
so you can imagine his surprise when he asked the class who shot william mckinley and without missing a beat i said, “czolgosz,” pronounced correctly and everything.
my teacher froze and in a very stern voice asked, “what was that? what did someone just say?”
i repeated: czolgosz.
my teacher: “who said that?”
i raised my hand, and my super cool history teacher glared at me. he then asked me how the hell i knew the answer. he said that in the TWENTY YEARS he’d been teaching this stupid class, nobody, not A SINGLE PERSON, had ever known the answer to that question.
i then had to quietly explain to a room full of people that there’s a musical called assassins and there’s a song about czolgosz shooting william mckinley at the great pan american exposition in buffaloooooooo (in buffaloooooooo)
“My grandmother wove in me a tapestry that was impossible to unwind,” Vigo said. “Since then, I’ve dedicated my life to the sea, just as those who have come before me.”
Like the 23 women before her, Vigo has never made a penny from her work. She is bound by a sacred ‘Sea Oath’ that maintains that byssus should never be bought or sold.
Instead, Vigo explained that the only way to receive byssus is as a gift. […]
“Byssus doesn’t belong to me, but to everyone,” Vigo asserted. “Selling it would be like trying to profit from the sun or the tides.”
More recently, a Japanese businessman approached Vigo with an offer to purchase her most famous piece, ‘The Lion of Women’, for €2.5 million. It took Vigo four years to stitch the glimmering 45x45cm design with her fingernails, and she dedicated it to women everywhere.
“I told him, ‘Absolutely not’,” she declared. “The women of the world are not for sale.”
The government is trying to evict her after shutting down her free museum to showcase her work because she refuses their demands she tell her secret.
She needs to raise €85,000 by November 2018 or the town will evict her. She’s only raised €6,472. The page says that there is no goal bc anything they raise is a success but the article says she needs the €85,000 in order to own her home and not be evicted. Chiara Vigo is an amazingly talented Jewish women who deserves to stay in her town close to the ocean !!
andtheytoldustotellyouhello 