No-one in history has ever taken advice.

1. Teach by example. Bavarian fire drills and moral panics. The mind-buggering juxtapositions found in the detail of everyday life. Walk calmly. They will pick it up from you unconsciously by modelling you. Never explain.
2. Lead with controversial statements, but perfectly formed.
3. Humans reason mostly by analogy, because they are educated stupid and evil. The key is finding the right analogy and letting them reason themselves into truly blithering idiocy. You don’t even need to assert the two models are related, just put them in the same vicinity and they will kill the infidel.
4. Praise the desired behaviour in anyone who exhibits it. The others will mindlessly model the surface behaviour and produce imitation discourse spectacularly free of depth.
5. Don’t bother with the reasons why you want humans to do something. See 3. Mess with their heads. They'd do the same to you. Just make it win-win.
6. Reward people with attention when they seem to be moving in the right direction.
7. In debate, tell your opponent to just kill you. But not in those words.
8. Mr Common Sense is not your friend.
9. Troll like a bastard.
10. Express your own doubts about anything you say when you are certain. Assert like a bastard when you don't know or care.
11. You will get neither the chicks, the money nor the fame. Get a day job and quit your whining.
12. They'll never get it. There aren't the words.
13. Your sense of humour is far more refined on the far side of abject disgust.
14. No-one in history has ever taken advice.
15. Viewers are geniuses. Every sentence an allusion, except this one.
16. Too much is always better than not enough. Clarity is the first refuge of the tone-deaf.
17. When abusing logical fallacies in debate, play them for laughs.
18. When you finally hear your own words echoed, prepare to be appalled.
19. Logic doesn't fucking work. See 3., 14.
20. When someone seconds you, the seconder's version will be gospel. Yours will become well-meaning but inchoate.
21. Don't lie to yourself. Lie to me. Lie to me hard. The truth will out.
22. Ever so subtly, troll like a bastard.
23. Rap across the knuckles as needed. However, 14.
24. Truth is useless and stupidity leads to success. Therefore, kill me.
25. Call your opponent the cunt they are. The results remain of no consequence.
26. Quit mid-sentence.
27. Counter contrarians by leaving them to fester in your bile.
28. Smoothly shift gears from third to second person.
29. Sell your ideas far too slowly until it's disastrously too late.
30. The game is over when everyone forgets it's being played, years too early.

Trapped in the body of.

• All together now, kids: "WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?"

• NewsTechnica: Charity pays Tories not to breed; Pentagon: Wikileaks "has blood on its hands, unlike us"; Minister condemns Satanist fire fighters for causing credit crunch; Journalist pretending to be non-despicable decent human thrown under train; Time traveller spotted in 2010 YouTube video; Newspaper website "troll" punished.

Cryoburn is the latest Vorkosigan fluff and it's middling at best. Worst of the series. Reads like author-written fanfic. Particularly the drabbles. (Let's make the first two chapters exposition! Let's chuck random past characters at the plot as dei ex machina! Let's put some drabbles at the end! I'm almost surprised there weren't AU bonus chapters.)

Edit: "And I just started A Civil Campaign. I'm remembering A Civil Campaign now. Should I finish it again or take a needle-grenade to the chest? What's the better option?" — Peter da Silva

arkady is now the mother of a technical adult, which all agree is a frightening thought. Mother and daughter now have matching Dell Mini 10s.

Freda is 3 and is playing Second Life on Arkady's netbook. Actually controlling the avatar herself. She hasn't had a first one yet! Thursday I joked I was worried about her growing up to be the next Dark Lord; Friday she was hissing like a snake. She likes snakes.