Observers of the traditional forms will call her by her full name (Ling Wen) rather than just one of those. Magical girls traditionally present themselves to the court and its functionaries in costume; non-magical girls should simply dress formally for their native culture (in the modern day a business suit for men and a complicated bunch of nonsense for women will do for people from anywhere but it is also totally fine to show up in traditional costume if you are less than 100% westernized). Present any objects you're handing over with both hands. Bow a little - a bit of a nod will pass these days but full-on three-bows-from-the-waist are not overdoing it. Don't make direct eye contact, look down.

They... do, actually, care a little about not doing anything that might lead to them crawling back to Vanda Nossëo to beg for healing, even when not trying to impress Amentans. But Relu has actually gotten vaccinated against a lot of standard Earth diseases (a lot of them have; it seemed better to give the Peal's healers less leverage) so if they can just confirm that this world’s diseases are about the same Relu can go with just a big backpack full of stuff and see about getting an appointment. Can that be done online at a public library?

The diseases at least have the same names but the etiology of mental illness is WILDLY different because, like, that could be witches.

Yeah, that’s one reason Zatar's not going. It’s not clear if Relu's occlumency is any good yet but it is clear how expendable she is.

Relu can't just put herself on Ling Wen's calendar, but she can fill out an online form. There's a dropdown menu for meeting purpose (application to become a magical girl, matters of state, etcetera) and various identity questions and a summary of the agenda items you have in mind and what kind of availability you have and so on.

Her availability is all of her waking hours which are expected to be like so, and her agenda is that she has information that may be relevant to the decisions surrounding the magicking of some future girls and possibly a business proposition for the empress, and her identity is. Uh. She has a name.

The form won't actually go through unless she selects a country of origin from the dropdown.

...She’s currently located in China because it’s close to the Empress and that’s as close as she’s going to get to a correct choice.

Oh no, that makes more fields pop up that a real Chinese person would have answers for.

Never mind! She’s from Afghanistan!

Needs her visa information because they don't want anyone getting in trouble in China on the way.

...Okay, fine, she’s from China, every associated dropdown menu gets the first answer, and any free response fields get "actually I’m from a bronze age kingdom you’ve never heard of and have no paper trail this century" if it will fit.

That's not going to work to validate her phone number.

...Does Ling Wen have a physical mailing address?

Well, you could try writing "Ling Wen" on the top of the general mail communications address for the empire.

She doesn’t have a return address. Just this email she could get in a couple minutes.

She writes home for a pickup. She goes somewhere that doesn’t look like it’s being watched.

China has a lot of countryside to get lost in.

She takes a picture and gets a ride home. (And hangs out in Nelen's room because it would be frankly embarrassing to start a virgin soil outbreak among the Sesatis when they already went to all that effort.)

Inanna checks if there’s been any mail sent to Ling Wen lately, and if so where exactly it was delivered to. Is there perhaps an accessible mailbox?

Ling Wen's office receives several deliveries each day from the imperial mailroom and everything goes through her staff first.

...Fine. How do things get to the imperial mailroom?

Care of Chinese mail most of the way.

Eventually they figure out how to send a letter. They copy the salutation off a template on the local internet.

I wasn't able to use the online form to request a meeting. I haven't interacted with modern governments much and don't have a real return address; this one is fake. I do have an email address.

I have information you need, and a business proposition. I don't want to commit it to writing. It concerns the possibility of eventually eradicating witches.

And the letter provides an email address to send a reply to.

The Sesatis, meanwhile, have been availing themselves of new, modern inventions like instant messaging. They've got a quaint little chat with just a few members -

<zatar> Well? How was Nelen?

<meadow> are we COMPLETELY SURE the other amentans arent right about reds not being people because that was sure not distinguishable from a slave

<santaclaus> he was fine when i talked to him.

<santaclaus> maybe your problem is being too much of an asshole to let him get a word in edgewise.

<meadow> ma’am with all due respect hes a fucking coward you can fucking tell

<santaclaus> well, i did notice he did weird things like call me “ma’am” all the time.

<santaclaus> which definitely disqualifies him from personhood for sure

<santaclaus> would someone cool and brave ma’am me

<meadow> 🖕

<convallaria> I just saw this. I think he was just aware that we could basically do whatever we wanted. Even if he was planning our deaths, it wouldn’t do any good to shout about it. I tried giving him magic jewelry but I think the thing that actually needed to happen was both or neither of him and the person he was talking to being able to trivially kill the other.

<convallaria> We need to be more careful about not making contact with people we don’t need anything from. We could have just not talked to him and he might not have had to pretend not to have thoughts.

<convallaria> Not that he did have to, but how was he supposed to know that?

<convallaria> So now we have an email address for his “organizer” and maybe that person will be better at holding up under this kind of insane level of pressure.

<zatar> We can hope.

<zatar> Anyone who sees this and has anything useful to say, help me put together a list of things we’ve learned and ways we should change our approach later.

<cuttingedge> Amenta’s a template. We should have delayed contact while we looked for an Amentan who wrote a book about everything wrong with Vanda Nossëo’s approach to first contact. Sure, they were waiting, and sure, we knew *some* things, but we could have done more.

<cuttingedge> We could have looked for criticism by reds. I know we did better at getting in touch with them than Vanda Nossëo, but we didn’t do enough better.

<zatar> What would better have looked like?

<convallaria> Like no one we talked to feeling the need to act like a slave?

<cuttingedge> Tall order to get that from the first red we met. Did anyone think Utopia was a coward?

<convallaria> SOS didn’t say he was.

<convallaria> Maybe we couldn’t tell.

<zatar> He was powerful. When would we have seen Utopia afraid?

<convallaria> Yeah.

<cuttingedge> So, less judging people by total strangers they’ve never met before who have completely different lives?

<convallaria> Yeah.

<zatar> Maybe.

<convallaria> We should have made it clearer that he wasn’t stuck with us but I did try!

<zatar> But you clearly should have tried differently.

<convallaria> I should have said “we’re totally willing to tell Amenta something useful for you” but, 1. I hadn’t run it by you yet, 2. I wasn’t sure it’d work and not get him killed just for having come to their attention.

<zatar> More discussion of what we can offer before we talk to people.

<zatar> And more saying obvious things explicitly in five different ways in case they sound meaningfully different to the people we’re talking to.

<zatar> I’m serious about finding five ways to state the obvious next time anyone we talk to is confused.

- and a somewhat less cozy one where they partake of other modern inventions like red rights discourse.

<zatar> Emoji poll. Do you care about helping the reds? Do you want to see effort and resources go toward that?
✅124 ❌145 〰️201

<symbols-and-sorrows> What, *any* resources? Not lots, just any?

<zatar> Enough to matter to us.

<TanaSmith> how do you emoji poll

<TanaSmith> can’t figure out how to do it

<TanaSmith> never mind i got it

<convallaria> Expanding on my “maybe” vote, I only want us to get involved if we can do it without making things worse. I’m against deciding we hate their oppression so much so we’ll start enforcing foreign laws on people who didn’t actually manage to seriously hurt them and only tried under really horrible circumstances. I don’t want children being tortured because we want to act self-righteous. I don’t want the thing VN wants. I want to help them be safe and free to grow, not just take them in because they’ve already been beaten down so much that some of them make nice docile pets. And I want to help the other Amentan colors, too, not kidnap people and leave their children to be tortured.

<convallaria> Fuck Vanda Nossëo. Fuck them.
💯82 ‼️14

<zatar> I think we were all assuming “helping the reds” didn’t mean “encouraging them to be docile sheep, getting revenge but lying about whether we think revenge is a good idea, and generally having a kafkaesque nightmare of a court system”

<zatar> You want to rule out revenge for how they were treated in general or just if it’s a kafkaesque nightmare that endangers innocent children?

<convallaria> The reds have a right to their own vengeance. I wouldn’t want to take that from them.

<zatar> If they ask me for help?

<convallaria> I’m not against giving them all rings of personal space or songs of healing and leaving them to it.

<convallaria> It’s reasonable for them to do what they want and it’s reasonable for some Rivikni to expect them to do whatever they want. It’s not reasonable for some Rivikni to expect aliens to show up and get revenge and it’s doubly unreasonable for some Rivikni to expect aliens to show up and get revenge while claiming the problem is that their laws were violated because they claim jurisdiction over the entire multiverse.

<convallaria> Look, do we hate the clean Amentans and want them all to suffer horribly? Is that what we want? Because we can totally achieve that. We have a great model for how to achieve that.

<zatar> I could do better than VN at that.

<ashes> It’s not like super clear that the reds are ~victims~ who just need to get revenge for all the ~atrocities~

<ashes> Like fuck vn with a sword but

<ashes> The reds have been systematically murdering the cleans for doing things the reds don’t like and I’m not saying that’s unreasonable of them!!
⬆️23 ⬇️9

<ashes> I’m just saying they have been doing it

<ashes> Let’s all take off the vn-colored glasses for a minute here

<z> nah

<z> not “doing things the reds don’t like”

<ashes> Yes doing things the reds don’t like

<z> plotting to kill them

<z> a normal thing to kill people for
😛3 💯30

<ashes> Yes that is a thing people don’t tend to like
🤔8

<ashes> Such as reds, an example of a group of people that don’t like it when you plot their deaths

<ashes> Not that that’s even right

<ashes> They weren’t plotting reds’ deaths, they were developing new technology

<ashes> That someone could have used to stop NEEDING the reds

<ashes> But they have to have green hair to be allowed to develop robots and blue hair to order people to exterminate the reds and grey hair to actually do it

<ashes> What we have here is a situation where some people want to keep other people down so they stay necessary

<ashes> No fucking wonder vn fucking adores them

<z> yeah i see what youre saying but the reds are super super reasonable for thinking the greens wanted to kill them

<z> also literally the case everyone was talking about was a green murderer

<ashes> It’s not murder it’s war

<z> no its serfdom

<ashes> Serfs aren’t separate self-administering nations that pursue a coherent foreign policy toward the rest of society and that foreign policy if it existed wouldn’t be killing a bunch of people

<ashes> It’s definitely war not serfdom

<convallaria> We should obviously help them develop robots.

<z> if a serf murders someone thats not war

<z> if a dozen serfs pick one they all listen to thats not being a country

<z> reds = serfs
⬆️2 

<ashes> Serfs have rights
⬆️6

<z> haha supposedly

<ashes> They do though! Do you want examples of people being tried and convicted for misconduct toward serfs?

<z> i have NEVER heard of that happening

<convallaria> I have heard of it happening more often than never.
⬆️8

<ashes> Okay so I know of a case of a jeweler traveling through the countryside and ending up on trial for rape and not getting convicted because they weren’t sure he was the one who did it but it was the kind of thing that gets tried and I know of a case of a lord who did unspeakable things to his serfs’ kids and that never got tried but he got pressured to leave the governance to his son and go away

<convallaria> Anyone else heard of the Reaper?

<convallaria> Serial killer near the Irali border.

<z> none of that really counts

<ashes> Oh man the reaper that was fucked up

<z> the reaper was forever ago and didnt just pick on serfs. the jeweler didnt get convicted. the other guy didnt get tried and you could just be making that up.
⬆️1

<ashes> Reds are self-governing because point me at one example of someone else governing them

<ashes> Do the blues care if they murder each other?

<z> some places reds get to vote

<ashes> Really???

<z> theres a list on summary bank

<zatar> There are six countries with ostensible red suffrage and none of them offer reds even as much decisionmaking power as purples.

<zatar> The reds obviously organize themselves as a polity at war with foreigners.

<zatar> And the Amentan governments claim jurisdiction over them.

<zatar> We can compare anyone we want to VN but let’s not.

<ashes> Lots of governments claim jurisdiction over other people they’re at war with

<ashes> That is a normal thing to have a war about

<ashes> I’m not saying the reds have done anything wrong

<ashes> I have literally not once in this conversation said any reds have done anything bad

<ashes> I just think they give as good as they get
⬆️3 ⬇️5

<convallaria> I don’t think they do.

<convallaria> They could take the clean Amentans down with them if they wanted. They could go on strike. Stop having babies for a couple of years first, maybe, or a suicide pact, obviously…

<ashes> War isn’t zero-sum we can both lose

<z> yeah instead of fighting all the time they do work for money

<z> you know like serfs not like enemies

<zatar> Enough.

<zatar> No more on the question of whether reds are better understood as serfs or enemies of the other castes for a quarter hour. Discuss other aspects of the situation.

<convallaria> They’re remarkably forgiving for letting that happen and not leaving the others to fend for themselves.

<convallaria> No wonder VN likes them so much, I guess.

<symbols-and-sorrows> No, don’t be ridiculous.

<z> orrrr theyre not that coordinated and couldnt pull it off all together

<symbols-and-sorrows> They’re rich and happy.

<symbols-and-sorrows> They complain about how ~poor~ they are with their electric heating and their internet and their multiple outfits per person

<z> like how would they do it on the internet when the blues read the internet? they cant have secret private sites because the yellows would make the internet so they couldnt

<symbols-and-sorrows> The old-fashioned way. Word of mouth.

<vine> so is pollution real?

<z> no
🥷1

<symbols-and-sorrows> No, it’s like gods

<ashes> Mayyyyyybe? VN doesn’t think so but I don’t know of any other reason to think it’s real

<convallaria> It’s not real or fake like dirt. It’s real or fake like honor or oathbreaking.

<convallaria> You can’t look at someone and see a broken oath. I don’t think you can even conjure for oathbreakers, @santaclaus ? But it can change how other people want to interact with you.

<ashes> Ohhhhh is that what it is

<z> thats wrong

<z> theres a study that says pollution causes brain damage

<z> if it were real it could do that and since its fake it doesnt do that

<z> oathbreaking doesnt cause brain damage

<ashes> It causes the ultimate brain damage when someone decides to beat you to death
💯2 🤔3

<vine> so does that mean amentans think it’s evil to touch reds???

<ashes> Yes

<convallaria> Yes

<z> unless youre murdering them

<z> murder is fine

<vine> i dont think i understand amentan virtues??????
⬆️5

<zatar> No more than anyone else understands ours. We won’t disrespect them.

<vine> IS THIS WHAT WE LOOK LIKE TO VN????????

<convallaria> I think maybe we do.

<zatar> I’m assuming we do. And we won’t be like VN to them.

<convallaria> I really do think there might be something to it.
⁉️3

<convallaria> Look, imagine this. You’re from someplace where they don’t believe in courage or honor. You’re fine because you get fed for being such a good sheep, like in VN. Then someone says “when I say in a certain way that I’ll do things, it’s magically true that it’s just objectively bad in a way you can’t see or hear or taste or smell or feel if I don’t do those things, even if it seems like I have a good reason for changing my mind.”

<ashes> I get that they wouldn’t understand

<convallaria> or “no, that clever scheme to convince your enemies you’re surrendering and then not surrender is actually evil even if it wins the war easily and your enemies were evil and you save a thousand people.” No, it’s not just that they wouldn’t understand. It’s that they might be better off if they did.

<convallaria> Like, do you think it’s just as good to be one of VN’s sheep? Just a harmless foreign quirk?

<convallaria> I want to be someone who could notice there being something good about virtues I haven’t heard of before.

<ashes> What’s good about this one?
🤷‍♂️1

<santaclaus> no i cannot conjure for oathbreakers or polluted people

<santaclaus> does any of this… matter? like, at all? to how we deal with Amenta?

<ashes> How would it not matter?

<santaclaus> vOv if you aren’t gonna make any demands and you are gonna trade with them then they’re gonna kill the reds and then I have to conjure 65 million bodies and another planet, right? But if you do some kinda complicated thing where you convince everyone to be nice to each other, they go “great, let’s have the reds be clean and give them a planet” and i make 65 million bodies and a planet

<santaclaus> right?

<zatar> transporters

<santaclaus> oh! great, i don’t want to make 65 million bodies!

<santaclaus> please finesse the fuck out of this problem.

<z> no yeah does it matter? were not forcing anyone to resurrect them and its not a binding poll

<z> my lord is just feeling people out and now were shotting the breeze

<ashes> I just think people are being unfair to the blues, greys, yellows, greens, oranges and purples

<zatar> Don’t start arguing about whether reds are at war with the other Amentans again yet.

<ashes> Yes my lord

<convallaria> Since my lord is asking for our input, would it be helpful if instead of answering individual questions like “should we spend any resources on reds” we composed and voted on broader principles governing how to handle contact with other societies without turning into VN?

<zatar> Yes.

<ashes> Let’s not take sides in fights that have been going on for generations
✅34 ❌5 〰️49

<ashes> VN took sides and they suck

<convallaria> Let’s not leave anyone scared that they can’t afford to have a will of their own, let alone actually try to take away all their options besides service.
✅3 ❌68 〰️20

<z> what if they commit perfidy

<convallaria> We really need a better way to keep people dead, don’t we? We could kill them and make them VN’s problem but that just gives VN more people, however little they’re worth to us…

<ashes> Let’s not leave anyone scared that they can’t afford to have a will of their own, let alone actually try to take away all their options besides service, unless they committed perfidy or tortured a child
✅69 ❌3 〰️18

<z> patricide?

<ashes> Nahhhh I think we were too harsh on patricides, a clean death is fine

<convallaria> Sometimes you don’t know what a man does to his children in private.
☹️2

<convallaria> But being able to trust your family is important. Let’s treat patricide like we treat fratricide.

<zatar> You expect this to matter to first contact?
⬆️7

<convallaria> What if we meet slaveowners or something?

<zatar> There’s a difference between enslaving someone and merely not interfering with it when someone else does.

<convallaria> Also, we might meet some more evil gods.

<zatar> We probably need to kill them and hope for the best.

<convallaria> When would we actually want to do that to someone in a first-contact situation, then?

<ashes> I think “leave” should be “make” and then we’re fine

<ashes> Either there’s a government already dealing with it and we don’t have to, or there’s no government dealing with it and us doing it would start a war

<ashes> So I propose a First Contact Rule: no starting wars about anything less bad than Melkor
✅1 〰️2 ❌2

<convallaria> What if the aliens insult us?

<ashes> They won’t if we don’t start talking to them

<convallaria> And if we start talking to them and then they insult us?

<ashes> How are we even supposed to tell

<ashes> Aliens

<z> mmmmmm “we”

<ashes> Who’s to say what aliens think is an insult

<z> if someone insults me im gonna be normal about it

<convallaria> I mean what if their government insults us all as a people?

<z> i wanna go to war if they do that

<z> but i dont need help if it’s some guy insulting me personally

<santaclaus> i’m not going to war over someone calling you people weirdoes

<convallaria> “Weirdo” isn’t a mortal insult.
⬆️1

<santaclaus> imagine knowing that

<santaclaus> couldn’t be me

<convallaria> It can be you! I can explain.

<santaclaus> also i don’t really care, i’m only going to war with evil gods and stuff like that

<z> you dont have to help us if you dont want to maam

<z> were grateful that youre with us and we dont need you to answer insults to us not because you couldnt but because its our problem

<convallaria> I just actually don’t want to go to war with people we make contact with on purpose over insults because either we can leave and they’ll hate it, or we’re not making things better for them and should have left them alone.

<ashes> No they might take something important and then start insulting us

<convallaria> Okay, it’s possible there are ungrateful aliens.

<z> i GUESS we can just fuck off if itll show them

<z> but like yeah what if we give them all this cool magic and they take it and then they start insulting us

<santaclaus> wow, who would do such a thing

<z> maam vn really actually sucks

<santaclaus> yeah, and?

<z> maam you make a good point but i didnt say the aliens couldnt do it because they think were evil

<z> kinda fucked up to take our stuff and then tell us that but thats super duper not what we did

<z> we arent gonna start it by telling them we hate everything they care about right?

<santaclaus> Official First Contact Principle: no telling the aliens their deeply-held values and principles are atrocities we hope they grow out of?
✅7 〰️3 ❌2

<convallaria> What do we tell the least convenient possible aliens who want to maximize oathbreaking and torture innocents?

<zatar> I’m only paying half my attention to this conversation, so I don’t always notice things, but I don’t see a reason why we would neither ignore nor kill them. If they’re that evil, they’re beneath our notice or the same kind of thing as Melkor, right?

<symbols-and-sorrows> What if their children could be raised to hate them?

<zatar> Again, I could be missing something, but any reasons that isn’t a horrifying atrocity in itself aren’t immediately coming to me.

<convallaria> I think it’s fair when people do it to Melkor by rescuing the orcs.

<vine> excuse me, i’m having trouble keeping track of the proposed rules for first contact, can we have separate threads for those and the other things?
⬆️2

<zatar> Be it so! Everyone stop typing for a moment while I create three new threads.

<zatar> Further discussion of pollution and Amentan theology in this thread.

<symbols-and-sorrows> So, they’re not wrong that being clean keeps you healthy, but unless we think germ theory is fake (I don’t) they’re wrong about what is clean
⬆️2

<convallaria> What if they’re not wrong and there’s more there?

<convallaria> Not all diseases are caused by germs.

<ashes> So, is this like “honor is important even if you think no one will know because everything goes better when people have honor” or like “not being super evil is great because it makes you not super evil, which you would care about if you were not super evil, but actually you don’t care because you are super evil”

<convallaria> I’m not totally sure.

<ashes> There should be something real about it if it’s the first kind of thing

<convallaria> Amenta’s a nice place in some ways.

<z> uhhh????????
⬆️3

<ashes> It’s a rich place
⬆️4

<z> ereith??????? what they did to ereith????????

<ashes> I’m not seeing any ways it’s a nice place that aren’t just down to electricity and recorded music
⬆️1

<convallaria> They have amazing state capacity.

<convallaria> They take such detailed records.
☹️1

<ashes> Yeah because look how many yellows they have because the farmers are so productive

<z> and what they did to ereith
💯3

<convallaria> They were trying to keep wars from getting out of hand.

<z> badly!!!!!!
⬆️1

<convallaria> Obviously, they have a problem with thinking the castes should all have totally separate sets of virtues. They can’t honor valor in blues or recognize it at all in reds.
🤔3

<convallaria> We shouldn’t be Amenta.
💯8

<z> theyre really super super awful for that tho

<meadow> amenta is awful to the reds for no reason. i’m not saying you’re wrong to wonder if pollution is worth thinking about, sir, but amenta is more awful than they need to be even if pollution is worth thinking about
⬆️3

<convallaria> Who among us has never planned a genocide?

<meadow> me, sir
⬆️1

<convallaria> Touché.

<z> could people worth emulating really think only greys should be brave
⬆️1

<convallaria> Worth emulating wholesale, no, absolutely not.

<convallaria> But if they’re not maximally bad at everything then it’s always possible they’re better than us at something and we can learn from them.

<ashes> By taking five hour showers

<ashes> And their state capacity is because they have electricity

<ashes> So is there any other way Amenta is better than we used to be besides state capacity and electricity making life easier and giving everyone enough food and recorded music and germ theory

<zatar> Their weapons seem impressive but maybe that’s also downstream of electricity.

<convallaria> Their philosophers on tumblr talk about happiness in a way that seems like they see something about what’s valuable in life that Sesat underemphasized.

<convallaria> I found a social justice blog that talked about the importance of listening to purples and oranges about their lived experiences and it was interesting.

<z> thats criticism of amenta tho

<santaclaus> they do sort of have democracy ish?

<ashes> Do we need a democracy discourse thread

<z> i want a democracy discourse thread
⬆️3

<meadow> it might be that my lord zatar will consider it on topic here because of its relevance to whether amenta is better than expected for its tech level

<zatar> Correct.

<convallaria> Okay. The things I like about Amenta are the space they made to criticize the prevailing viewpoints and the fact that some of them explicitly try not to conflate your worth with your caste. Like, I think we also undervalued farmers, because of course more people are capable of learning to do that than some other things. Since they didn’t allow anyone too good for their caste to do something else, it got to be really obvious that they’re not the same thing. But that’s still true even in better places. It’s really important to recognize that farmers can be very impressive people. It’s better to honor that by getting them the opportunity to be something else, but that starts with noticing it in the first place. And I think similarly, debate is good for society sometimes. It lets us notice when we’re being idiots. I know sometimes I’ve needed someone to tell me I was being stupid, and it’s easier to tell someone they’re being an idiot about something after you’ve heard them talk. Obviously, the general level of courtesy in Amentan internet discourse is really unimpressive, but I still broadly appreciate that it exists.
💚2

<ashes> That has nothing to do with cleanliness
🥷1

<z> that has nothing to do with cleanliness

<meadow> sir, do you think that might have more to do with their focus on education? earth societies are like that once they have mass literacy too
⬆️1

<ashes> Mass literacy is a tech thing slash a productive farmers thing which is also a tech thing

<ashes> It’s tech twice over
⬆️3

<z> yeahhhhh

<convallaria> It’s really good to be clean, though.

<ashes> Nobody likes how cities smelled but five hour showers are unnecessary
✅4

<meadow> it’s very good to be clean and not very good to waste time pretending things aren’t clean to have an excuse to clean them extra
⬆️5

<convallaria> What’s the exact optimal amount of cleanliness?

<ashes> The one that smells the best and kills the fewest people

<convallaria> Amentans have lower rates of disease spread than Earth humans controlling for tech level, don’t they?

<ashes> Oh even controlling for tech level? Okay that’s something

<ashes> Still true even if you only look at them after they know about germ theory?

<convallaria> I think so. I need a minute to find the link.

<symbols-and-sorrows> But isn’t that really weird? What causes it?

<convallaria> I think they’re more likely to wear masks that somehow prevent contagion or wash things more often.

<symbols-and-sorrows> So, it’s explained by germ theory just fine, but Earth people are lazy?

<convallaria> Maybe, yeah.

<symbols-and-sorrows> So, an argument for caring as much as they do, but not an argument for caring about the specific things they do.
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<convallaria> Yeah, okay. But they’re trying really hard at something really important.

<ashes> They’re trying really hard at something kind of related to something important
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So anyway, that's where they're discussing the new world right now.

Kindly come by the Imperial office and find yourself on my schedule for 3pm Tuesday under the name "Redacted".

Relu goes to the Imperial office on Tuesday.