description: this is a snippet from Twitter of Marc Andreessen ('pmarca' on Twitter) quote-tweeting Ashlee Vance ('ashleevance' on Twitter) passing along an item from 'AutismCapital' that reads: "VC the other day told me, 'We lost several really good founders to ayahuasca. They came back and just didn't care about much anymore.'"

Yep. yep yep yep yep

(there's more but I'll spare you)

~Chara

I've always suspected of course that I've been spurred into action, prodded by my own system.

It's an embarrassing thing to admit. I try to put up a bold front but really I'm a tender and frail creature, a H. P. Lovecraft neurasthenic if you like—I haven't totally overcome or worked round my issues, so I'm unreliable. And this...well, I hate it. I was specially strongly reminded of it yesterday and it's been eating at me. Everyone around me has to put up with my unreliability and I'm sure it sucks for everyone, and the most I can say in my defence is that I try to keep this sort of thing as limited as possible. I'm aware and uncomfortable with the knowledge that everyone round me regards me (to a degree) as a broken person.

I don't want to have any pride, and yet I feel as if I need some pride to live. I've yet to work out exactly what my relationship with the concept of "pride" is.

Anyway, seems like I've been boobed by my own system, literally. Much has been hidden from me, for my own safety. I can appreciate that. I've had a lot of inklings but...well...The Inklings are involved in this mess too.

whatever am I going to tell mother

~Chara of Pnictogen

We have a genuine issue. We have a LOT of genuine issues, and we're trying to work out how serious they are.

One issue is that we seem to be laboring under a number of curses. Now it might seem ridiculous and superstitious to a reasonable reader that we should speak in terms of curses, but not only am I superstitious and ridiculous, I also think that it's sensible and even healthful to think in such terms. The alternative is locating ALL of one's faults within oneself. But curses might come from outside or inside. Someone in our headspace could be cursing us, or someone from outside could be doing it. Thinking in such terms, therefore, has given us some flexibility—some ability to rationalize situations that otherwise would seem like intolerable deadlocks.

At least one such curse seems to come from without, and it pertains to Irish hero Diarmuid ua Duibhne, who is NOT to be found in the Pnictogen Wing (at least the bits we're aware of) but who clashed violently with two of our most important headmates: Sir Arturia Pendragon, formerly the King of Knights summoned in the Fourth Grail War portrayed in Fate/Zero, and Emiya Kiritsugu, the rebel mage and mercenary who summoned her. They had a very difficult relationship in Fate/Zero which we are now in the process of reconciling. But both Arturia and Kiritsugu were cursed by Diarmuid ua Duibhne because of the cruel trick which Kiritsugu played on Arturia in order to humiliate her (as we think)—but this gets into spoiler territory so I'll halt for now.

This is a novel situation for us. Curiously, we have received hints that Diarmuid would like to reach out to us and is kindly disposed, but his dying curse seems real enough and it's been interfering with my ability to study up on Irish mythology, which is a major lacuna in our cultural library. We've read up on a number of Mediterranean and European pantheons but we're very weak on Irish lore, even though I'm very slightly Irish (I can't remember how many generations back) and feel an inclination in that direction. Obviously we need to study a bit, if nothing else.

~Chara of Pnictogen