good stop posting strangers on the internet. this should be a rule everywhere

every person can feel freddie’s presence in their souls when they sing MAMAAAAAA UUHHHH, I DONT WANNA DIE, I SOMETIMES I WISH I’VE NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALL with all the air in their lungs i’m not joking

it’s fucking crazy to think about the amount of people who have sung bohemian rhapsody? like it’s such a unifying song, by nature of the fact that so many people know it. it holds so many good memories for me and other people. it’s a song you scream in the car with your friends while you drive around your boring hometown, it’s a song you drunkenly sing with your arm around your best friend, or a song you sing along to with strangers when it’s on in public. it’s bittersweet to think about freddie’s legacy carrying on like that through his masterpiece. freddie carries on because he’s a part of so many people’s good memories and bohemian rhapsody is a huge part of that.

Reblog if you have sung bohemian rhapsody with your friends

every time i see this post i’m reminded of the video of 65,000 people singing bohemian rhapsody in near-perfect harmony

like, what other song can make that claim?

Some of the highlights of that video include:

Only days before my state went into lockdown, “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on in the restaurant kitchen I’d just been hired at and, no shit, every single worker in that little diner started singing along. Me (the only queer afaik), the manager, all the other kitchen workers, the dishwasher up front, the two people on the counter, all but two of the men over 30. Just belting out Freddie Mercury at the top of their lungs. And you can bet when “sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all” came around, we every single one of us ramped up the intensity and basically made sure Freddie could hear us in the afterlife.

One of the things that struck me, listening to the video, is that you cannot distinguish the original vocals from the crowd, and sometimes you can barely hear the music. And the POV is on the stage the speakers are playing the song from!

There’s good reason why, nearly fifty years after the height of their career, Queen is still considered one of the best bands of all time ever.

(And how albums left lying about in cars will eventually metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.)

Something else that’s rather incredible about this is, Bohemian Rhapsody is a very difficult song from a technical standpoint. Like–humor me, okay, go flip it on and try to sing the whole thing at the top of your voice without falling off-key, out of breath, or cracking at least once. Then come back.

Okay. You’re back? Welcome back. Unless you’re a trained singer, you probably can’t do it. There are too many long notes, too many key changes, and too many places where–if you’re singing all the parts–you’re just up and down the scale too damned fast. I’m saying this as a trained singer and I can’t do it. I always crack on “magnifico” and “leave me to die,” and I have a pretty decent range, but I know I sound ugly as hell on that final coda.

Okay. Now that we’ve established that, I want to talk a little about singing as a chorus. One of the things a lot of people learned during the pandemic is how hard it is to take twenty people, all in different places, and stitch them together to make a single coherent song with perfect pitch and timing. You’re all practicing on slightly your own tempo, slightly your own key, even if you’re all working from the same base track. (You can see this in a lot of the Wellerman compilations from Tiktok, where someone always says “Soon” a moment before everyone else on “soon may the Wellerman come.”) When you have a chorus comprised of many smaller choruses that are all traveling to be together, this is what dress rehearsal is for–to get all of you onto the same tempo so you’re starting and finishing at exactly the same time. This is a thing that normally only happens after at least several days of practice, and it is an important skill that must be taught. You’re not just born knowing how to do this.

I do not know how many people at that Green Day concert were trained singers. But I do know there is no way in hell all few thousand of them were a single group–they showed up a few at a time, maybe even flying solo for the night. Now go and listen to the video again. Listen to the ends of verses and the pickups. They’re fucking crisp as hell. Everyone is starting and ending at the same place. Not even a single note off. (And yes, you can hear when it’s a single note off, even in a crowd that big. A handful of people would be enough to throw it off.) And while a few in the crowd may be off-key, so many more are on-key that the cumulative effect is of the song being on-key. This isn’t even the band they’re there to see.

They don’t just know this song, this technically-difficult song, this long and complex song by a completely different band. They know it perfectly. They know it down to the fucking note. They know it so well that they did it in perfect synchrony, without a single chance to practice.

Do you know how insane that is?

well I was trying to just message you the link but here @thesylverlining happy birthday!!

I know that Peter’s Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy technically has flaws but also….it doesn’t. It’s perfect.

‘Are these magic cloaks?’ asked Pippin, looking at them. with wonder.

‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”

- Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 8: Farewell to Lorien

This is how I think of Jackson’s movies. Yes, there are serious flaws - Gandalf’s de-powering, Gimli as comic relief, and Faramir, namely - but come on.

Remember when the guys making their chain mail invented a new method for quickly producing large amounts of it by hand? Remember Miranda Otto walking down the street, practicing sword positions? The guys who forged all of the swords - for leads and for extras? The men and women riders who volunteered to be riders of Rohan? The costume designers who designed the inside of Theoden’s armor (which no one would ever see) so beautifully that Bernard Hill said he felt like a king? The friendships between the cast, and their size doubles, and the stuntmen?

When they made that movie, they put all that they loved into all that they made.

#just hundreds of people who went ‘sure let me try this’ #and they made something breathtaking #and then they made it 12 more times in different sizes ( @byjoveimbeinghumble​ )

Wait tell me more about that chainmail thing

“Kaynemaile has worked tirelessly to perfect the material science behind beautiful architectural mesh, collaborating with architects and designers on projects that embolden urban environments with positive buildings. The company’s patented polycarbonate mesh, inspired by 2,000-year-old medieval chainmail, was initially created for the armor and weapons seen in the The Lord of The Rings movie trilogy and is now used on major architectural projects around the world.

“The film’s art director and Kaynemaile’s founder Kayne Horsham worked with his team to construct each garment from plastic plumbing tubes, coating them in pure silver. Once filming wrapped, Horsham dedicated himself to creating a change to the liquid state assembly process to mass produce the polycarbonate chainmail for architectural applications — products that were light, but strong enough to protect the interior or exterior of a building. Now an industry-leading manufacturer, Kaynemaile produces mesh for everything from small interior screens to large scale exterior façades. Their mesh is easy to install and can be custom created for specialized applications.”

https://architizer.com/blog/practice/materials/kaynemaile-mesh-facade-systems/

YOU GUYS

they took forced perspective and scaled sets to a new level by adding moving set pieces to create the illusion that the hobbits and dwarves were much smaller than everyone else even when the camera moved.

every scene you see in the 11+ hours of glory that is the LOTR masterpiece is most like ridiculously elaborate or expensive–from model towers to the all-new motion capture technology used for gollum to the costumes and sets to the aerial on location shots of mother-fracking new zealand and the big impressive battle scenes and horse charges.

but then the story and the screenplay too–there is just SO much lore that is there in the background lurking if you want to look for it, yet it still remains simplified for the average viewer. Crazy impressive feat.

And the acting is heartfelt and real and makes you love the characters.

ALSO DON’T GET ME STARTED ON FREAKING HOWARD SHORE AND HIS 100+ HEARTSHATTERINGLY BEAUTIFUL LIETMOTIFS AND BRILLIANT SUBTLE VARIATIONS IN THE FLIPPING 13 HOUR SOUNDTRACK. AND ENYA SINGING IN REAL ELVISH.

Oddly specific. Got a deposit for 6,837 today

fuck it, i never ever do those “reblog for X, this one really works!” posts, but this one doesn’t have any of that BS, this is just straight up wishing us good things; and then the comment doesn’t even say any of that either. Zero claims on this post, all positive vibes

May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love

when there’s an old photograph, AND the guy in it is really old, it’s like, wow, that guy is super old

Conrad Heyer, photographed in 1852 at the age of 103. He was born in 1749 and is thought to be the earliest-born person ever photographed.

i am experiencing Emotions about locking photographic gaze with a man who was born in the middle of the 18th century

this dude was an adult already during the american revolutionary war (ish)? he was getting real time news of the unfolding of France's emperors? what

whaaat

he is looking at me

This man was born before the invention of:

The sextant (1757), which allowed precise calculation of your position in the ocean

Lightning rods (1752)

The first English dictionary (1755)

Carbonated water (1767)

Sewing machines (1790)

The cotton gin (1794)

Flush toilets (1775)

And he's looking at you

skill issue but okay

Star Trek is so funny. All of starfleet is so aggressively Neutral Good. Every time they're up against something they Always do the noble thing. Every one of these motherfuckers is so ready to jump on the grenade. It's so cute I love them

Starfleet officers come out of the academy with 2 things: a passion for science bordering on sexual and an incomprehensible desire for self-sacrifice

I love how this is like, acknowledged in lore, too. Like, the reason Starfleet is so full of these bozos is because it's a big non-profit where you get to Do Science and Be Noble. So only people who want to Do Science and Be Noble join up. The organization has a reputation for producing the most moralistic greater-good-loving yuppies in the galaxy. It's a straight-up hero factory. You love to see it

I bet vulcan ships gossip about how starfleet officers can't go a day without volunteering for a life-threatening mission before they start climbing the walls looking for enrichment

sending them on dangerous missions is actually a safety measure, otherwise they start tinkering with the warp drive, and you end up as salamanders

Or start tampering with subspace rifts and end becoming a galaxy-shattering vocal ensemble

It's a post scarcity society! At least, for the core Federation planets.

So what happens when your healthy, happy citizens (numbered in the trillions) runs out of things to do? You can only learn so many obscure skills, study so much art & philosophy, consume so much media before boredom sets in.

Time to explore!

Send those obnoxious grown-ass "I'm bored, mom" kiddos off to Starfleet to see the galaxy!

And the really super-intense ones end up on starships.

"So how'd you get your culture so noble and driven toward general improvement of society?"

"For generations, since the advent of warp travel, we've let our libertarians dirt farm on whatever otherwise worthless rock they find on the frontier."

I NEED TO LOOK MORE FEM SO I CAN LOOK MORE MASC

HUH?

I NEED TO LOOK MORE FEM SO I CAN LOOK MORE MASC

no this is literally what im talking abt

Does the schrodinger's box experiment account for the fact that a cat in a box is most likely gonna yowl its lungs out

I’ve been having a lot of feelings about the downfall of quality lately.

I ordered a pair of Dickies pants because pants are hard and workwear is usually reliable. When they arrived they were the scratchiest, most papery material–I can’t actually call it fabric in good faith–and fit a full three sizes too small. A week later I found the same pair in a thrift store, dated 2017. These are actual pants. They fit, they’re not made of asbestos. They’re only separated by time.

There’s no wood used in interior design unless it’s a custom build. I have a set of wealthy relatives who live in a condo. The downpayment for it was likely more money than I will see in my lifetime. The floors and the cabinets are all still laminate. I know I will never see real wood in a building constructed after 2000. Every “apartment hack” I see online has this very conspicuous, flat appearance because of all the paint and contact paper required to make these builds look personal in any way. The only natural materials are in the furnishings.

I’ve been harping on this for years, but everything is shit, nothing is designed to work, and “growth” and “profit” are just euphemisms for cutting corners until things are unworkable.

everything is more expensive, and everything is getting shittier.

Yesterday my friend told me that the majority of the world's population was straight and I had to process that for a second

This happened to me in real life

British government put radioactive salt on chapati that they fed to Punjabi mothers in Oxfordshire in the 1970s

What in the fuck

[Image ID: A series of tweets from Dr Louise Raw @LouiseRawAuthor. The tweets read, 'You can't believe how kind the British are. Every morning, a van pulls up outside your house in Coventry. A friendly man brings you a freshly-baked flatbread to eat. It's just for you, not anyone else in your family. Every afternoon he comes back to make sure you've eaten it.

It's to improve your health, because you went to your GP with migraines. He said it could be anaemia, & these special chapatis will help you. You're grateful: you haven't been here long, & really appreciate your new country looking after you. Eventually another van comes.

It takes you, young Punjabi mum Pritam Kour, to what you're told is a hospital, supposedly to see if this new health food is helping. They never tell you the strange building is actually the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire. There they put you in a machine 'like a box'. You hear a clicking noise. Then they take you home. You don't speak much English but you express your gratitude again. All this just to help you. It's wonderful. That was in 1969. In the 1990s, local reporter Sukhbender Singh, gets wind of a story.

Filmmaker @John Brownlow can't believe what he uncovers. It has to be exposed. Pritam & 20 other Punjabi women had been fed RADIOACTIVE SALTS in those chapatis: never told, let alone asked. The illegal experiment was conducted by the MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (MRC).' Four images are included: a picture of chapatis, a picture of a woman who is presumably Pritam Kour, a black and white picture of three scientists using some sort of equipment, and an illustration of a hand reaching towards a chapati. /End ID]

requested by anonymous:

RATING: PARTIALLY RELIABLE

Firstly, a quick assessment of the sources available here. The article above is from India Today, which is rated as Mixed for factual reporting according to MBFC due to multiple failed fact checks. Furthermore, the India Today article mostly cites a documentary (Deadly Experiments), which you can watch here on youtube.

Documentaries are not a reliable source, as there is no code of ethics, and they are not obligated to keep things factual.

Source: 'It’s not just that the definition of “documentary” itself is mutable: unlike other journalistic and quasi-journalistic forms, no code of ethics has ever been agreed upon by practitioners of the art, and what rules of thumb there are tend to be temporary, controversial and broken as soon as they are made.'

As this research happened in 1969 (according to the India Times article and the documentary - the caption to the tweets claim the 1970's), it has not been easy to find a lot of reliable information on this. However, after much searching, I did find the published paper in question!

The paper is entitled Absorption of Iron from Chapatti Made from Wheat Flour. It is not about the study of radiation, as implied by the tweets, but in fact was studying anaemia and whether supplementing food with iron salts could help iron absorption in South-Asian diets.

Source: 'In many countries in which iron deficiency is a serious problem, cereals are eaten as foods such as chapatti or tortillas, which are made from an unfermented dough. The following study was conducted, therefore, to estimate the availability of naturally occurring wheat iron and of an iron salt added as a supplement to flour from chapatti made from white flour, and from chapatti made from wholemeal flour.'

The chapatis were supplemented with small amounts of iron salt (ferric ammonium citrate), to see whether this could help with low blood iron levels/iron deficiency anaemia. Radioactive isotopes were used - however, this is not as alarming as the tweets suggest. It is common practice to use radioactive isotopes in medicine as a tracer, and this practice is not considered harmful or dangerous.

Source: 'Nuclear medicine uses radioactive isotopes in a variety of ways. One of the more common uses is as a tracer in which a radioisotope, such as technetium-99m, is taken orally or is injected or is inhaled into the body. The radioisotope then circulates through the body or is taken up only by certain tissues. Its distribution can be tracked according to the radiation it gives off. [...] Radioisotopes typically have short half-lives and typically decay before their emitted radioactivity can cause damage to the patient’s body.'

Whether the participants of the study gave informed consent is not something I am able to fully assess. One of the participants, Pritam Kaur, claimed that she was not told about the iron salts/radioactive tracer, whilst a spokesperson for the MRC has denied this, and claimed that a translator was always present to ensure informed consent was given.

Overall, it does not seem that this research was definitely 'illegal' as the tweets claim. The major concern is whether the study was properly explained to the participants, allowing them to give informed consent.

The actual methodology and purpose of the study are common and considered to meet ethics standards, unlike other historical medical experiments. (For example, the British Military of Defence's unethical testing of nerve gas, or the infamous Tuskegee Syphillis Study, which secretly prevented African American men with syphillis from accessing treatment so that they could study untreated syphillis.)

In summary, the tweets do not accurately portray the study. Whilst there is a real concern regarding whether the participants fully understood what they were consenting to, and therefore able to give informed consent, the study was researching iron absorption, not the effects of radioactivity. Radioactive isotopes are not considered dangerous when used as tracers. Whilst unethical and harmful experimentation on racial minorities has historically occurred, this specific instance was not likely to have caused the participants any physical harm.

I Love you, @is-the-post-reliable.

I doubt Dr Louise Raw cares about the accuracy of her claims, given she’s just regurgitating the documentary and doesn’t seem to have done any further investigations.

There were responses in the BMJ, by the way, to claims made in the documentary. They are free to read. ‘“Deadly Experiments”: UK’s programme was open and ethical’ (1995) and ‘no evidence of harm from tracer studies’ (literally the next letter on the page) This is important contextual information. I simply can’t imagine why Raw would neglect to mention it.

Thank you so much for adding this, @aristoteliancomplacency - I didn't see this during my research, and it adds some excellent context, including a clear explanation of how the documentary was misleading.

He's got the power of LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And stubbornness.

{Check out my comics below}

> namesakecomic.com

> crow-time.com

One of the great comceits of superhero media is this idea, though, of "sometimes you have to work outside of the system to enact change" but so many of them interpret that as "we need cops who are willing to break the law." Theres this odd philosophical no-mans-land in much of it. Where the hero simply cannot trust the police to get things done. But at the end of the day batman is still going to drop the joker into the hands of a punitive system that only makes the barest pretense of wanting to rehabilitate. Spiderman is all too happy to leave purse snatchers and supervillains alike tied up in webs at the front of the police station. This is considered the ultimate end goal of vigilante work, is to deliver these "criminals" to "justice" even as they acknowledge that justice cannot be carried out by the police.

it’ll never fail to amaze me that chessex, the game dice company - like if you bought your first dice set from a game store/comic shop/card shop you most certainly bought a chessex set - has such an ugly and poorly designed website. it looks like they went out of business 15 years ago.

i don’t know what’s better, the fact that they only sell five different things and felt like they needed a site map, the single uk location with the giant union jack, or simply the times new roman header which reads:

“The coolest dice on the planet.”  ™

THEY HAVEN’T UPDATED THEIR WEBSITE IN TEN YEARS????

my mistake, literally every single page you click on has a different copyright date. so far I’ve seen 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, and most recently 2012. amazing. well done chessex.

BUT LANA HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO ORDER DICE?????

you….you have to email them your order form. oh, gods. you…have to type your credit card information. into an email. so they can charge you seven dollars in shipping or 7% of the total order cost if it’s over $100. fuck. if you have questions about the cost of air shipping, you can fax them anytime. jesus christ. oh gods. fuck. fuck me up. chessex. the coolest dice on the planet.  ™

this is another reason why I let my friendly local store make my chessex orders for me

Me: The Chessex website isn’t real and can’t hurt me:

The Chessex website:

The best part is that this is literally by design

amazing

oh my god

taking a class on sex this semester which has resulted in many fun things like "sex activity" and "sex final" being added to my planner. being very mature and serious about this .

obsessed

I had a class called "What is Evil?" The professor called us his "evil students" and I got to say things like: "I have evil class later." and "I have readings in evil to do." and "Well my evil professor said..."

I miss having that class

[ID: tumblr reply on this post reading "my partner did a sociology degree and one of the modules was on organised crime. very funny to see stuff like "anyone doing organised crime this afternoon" in a uni groupchat"]