ELODIEUNDERGLASS

I love it when farm animals in strategy games have their own little pockets of visibility in the fog of war, because the fog of war is ostensibly a visual abstraction of military intelligence-gathering, which implies that the goat is submitting intel reports.

“I will rebleat all calls from posts more distant from the guardhouse than my own”

See, that's even more ridiculous, because it doesn't just have a zone of visibility – terrain it's passed through stays revealed. If we accept the abstraction that revealed terrain represents knowledge possessed by your side's commanders as a result of intel reports, this frames an implicit narrative in which the sheep drew a map.

okay absolutely obsessed with this part of emily wilson’s interview about her translation of the odyssey

Translation is never unbiased. Many versions of ancient stories and poems that we know, in the western world, were translated by English men more than 100 years ago, who carried their own preconceptions. It is always worth reconsidering, and looking at other possibilities.

what day is it

always fucking some day or another around here

i think as adults it’s our responsibility to be nice to kids and treat them with the respect we wish we got at that age and im not kidding or exaggerating in the least

coelacanth my truest friend <3

Panic! At the dragon. The red section title above this image reads: "On the birth of elephants - an elephant gives birth in water because of the insidious dragon." Contents: bestiary (book of beasts) Materials: parchment, ink, and paint Date: c. 1236-1250 Origin: Made for Dominican Friars, somwhere in England Now London, British Library, Harley MS 3244, f. 39v

still reading frankenstein and i completely forgot that theres a part where victors wrapping up doing devious deeds on a sparsely inhabited island off the shore of england and he loads all his mad scientist shit into a rowboat and pushes off into the water and then fucking falls asleep with no navigational tools and when he wakes up hes like, adrift with no land in sight and hes like ‘FUCK my creation!!!!!’ even though the monster had absolutely nothing to do with getting him lost in the middle of the fucking english channel and he starts lamenting about how hes going to die and his family is never going to see him again and hes going to go to davey jones locker or whatever because hes been without potable water in a rowboat for like 4 hours and then he sees land and hes like ‘oh thank god im saved!!!’ and he gets to shore and is met with an angry mob who thinks he murdered someone and hes like ‘but where is english hospitality?????’ and theyre like ‘this is ireland you dumb slut’ and as theyre marching him to the magistrate hes like ‘i was still thirsty but did not want to show my weakness……’ like could you even imagine

Frankenstein is an unflinchingly realistic portrayal of the highly specialized form of stupid that comes from being told for your entire childhood that you’re a world-changing genius who can solve every problem because you’re so smart, but now you’re in college and you have depression and you keep fucking everything up because being good at reading science books when you were 12 doesn’t actually translate into making smart life choices and you’re constantly beating yourself up about your horrible failures but you couldn’t possibly ask anyone for help, and in fact the idea doesn’t even cross your mind because obviously you will be able to handle it this time because you’re a world-changing genius who can solve every problem, and consequently you keep right on catastrophically fucking everything up, and I don’t think it gets enough credit for that.

Byron: Where did you find the inspiration to create such a wretched man?

Mary, who has been stuck in a house with him for weeks: No idea, mate 😑

"you hate capitalism because you're jealous of rich people" well I wouldn't mind having an in-ground pool but there's also other reasons to hate capitalism such as the fact that owning a chocolate company that doesn't use fucking child slavery earns you praise because it's so uncommon, or the fact that it by design results in repeat economic collapses when the average consumer can't afford to stimulate the economy, or the fact that our future (and current) existence on planet earth is full of detrimental environmental disasters because pursuing fossil fuels was more profitable in the short-term, or the fact that entire wars are started specifically to make money, or...yeah the list goes on

also like, yeah, i AM jealous of rich people. i DO think about how cool and fun it would be to have a billion dollars. i could build my own food forest. i could open up a zillion homeless shelters. i could save the last red wolves, my favorite subspecies, who are in their very last days and will be extinct by the end of the decade. i could buy ALL the fabric i want. i could hire artists to inlay my floors with roman mosaics of hunky gladiators fighting godzilla. i could hire the magic chocolate guy to make me a different random item for desert every week. i could get alexander mcqueen to do more menswear lines and have a backyard full of beautifully dressed sexy space elves pretend to like my fanfiction. i could make sure all my friends are safe and healthy. i could recarve mt rushmore into my little ponies or hand it back to the native people who revered it in the first place. i could hire a guy with a bullhorn to follow elon musk around and recite the obituaries of everyone who dies in a tesla factory. if i was rich i would have fun forever. instead these lame ass nervous wrecks are going around with the net worth of entire nations and they're on twitter begging for love from strangers who can't afford to go to the dentist. how does that not make you crazy!!!

they are like beautiful tropical birds to me

Literally..

@guooey ya

Chalk is squids road.

(via Facebook)

We've had strap ons since at least 400 BC, and people still have the nerve to go on gay hook up apps and ask "how can an FTM be a top?"

Image ID: Text "Fourteen inches and seventeen pounds of cast iron penis. My late husband found this in the walls of an early 1900s farmhouse that he helped a friend demolish. He wanted to throw it in with his scrap pile and I wouldn't let him. I mean seriously...who would scrap this?!?" Under this are three pics of a dildo plus balls made out of cast iron. The member is placed on a work table and 2 of the pics also show licence plats and things hung on the wall behind it. The penis it's self shows the signs aged cast iron does, slight rusting and tarnishing. It has a rounded end with a little ring at the tip end, and has a sligh curve to it making it look quite fallic indead. It looks as though, with the balls, it could have been used with a harness, or for personal use. End ID

I hope this helps whomever had a burning desire for a description, and that they now feel satisfied ;)

I remembers reading about how women in Nantucket and New Bedford and what not, would keep "he's-at-homes" (scrimshaw dildos) for use while their husbands were out whaling (which was like a multiple years at sea job)

I love that it's not just that they had dildos while their husbands were away, but that presumably their husbands gave them to them. And not just gave them to them – scrimshaw is the art of the whaler, carving sculptures from the bones and baleen on their catches. So the husbands probably carved them for their wives. The 'think of me' on the one above seems like confirmation. That's love, that is.

Here's an article about them: https://lithub.com/there-once-was-a-dildo-in-nantucket/

Ok but why was an iron dick IN THE WALLS of a house? How did it get there? Did they put it there when the house was built? Was someone hiding it? What blacksmith accepted a commission to make an iron dick? What was THAT conversation like? There is a rich history here.

SEVENTEEN POUNDS

It being seventeen pounds and hidden in a wall makes me think it was used as a murder weapon.

Cats painting studies by Paul Rabaud

no offense but you guys need to learn the difference between someone implying their experience is universal and a post simply just not being about you

The Ruin, Anonymous Old English Poem, trans R.M. Liuzza

This poem is commonly thought to be about the city of Bath in England! Bath is famous for its natural hot springs and waters said to have healing properties; the hot springs have been in use since pre-Roman times. During the Roman occupation of Britain, the Romans built a huge bathhouse around the natural heated water source dedicated to Minerva—the site was called Aquae Sulis.

Once the Romans withdrew from Britain, sites like Aquae Sulis were left to decay and crumble. The ruins of the bathhouse would have been incredibly impressive for an Old English poet to look upon; remember that these were the Dark Ages for Britain because so so much knowledge was lost, gone with the leaving of the Romans and the slow degradation of craftsmanship, of architecture, as development fell into a rut. They did not know how to build things like the Roman bathhouse any more. That knowledge was gone.

So when the poet looks up to that “bright capital of a broad kingdom”, he is not only seeing the loss of a civilisation but the loss of knowledge. He is looking back at what he would have seen as a golden past—ruins of buildings built as if by giants—knowing these were his ancestors. Knowing he could not replicate what they had made.

I went searching in the notes for this explanation so I wouldn’t have to write one out for myself! we have a different translation in a book. Today, bath is a famed and characterful city and a UNESCO World Heritage site; you can visit the remains of the Roman bath and have a spa day at the still-boiling hot springs. It makes you realize how history is so big. Empires rise and fall; this poet, in Old English, grappled with that in his time as we will grapple with ours. The hot springs remain. The earth continues. The stones are so golden.

Just so everyone is aware:

An international group of qualified mushroom identifiers who do worldwide identification in emergency cases have identified the Shroomers App as a potentially very dangerous system that could kill you if you try to use it to identify edible mushrooms. They use AI to generate almost all of their content, including their identification profiles on their app as well as their books and other materials. Not only is this unethical from a content creation standpoint, it is also extremely dangerous.

DO NOT USE APPS FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES BEYOND SIMPLE CURIOSITY. A MISTAKE WHEN IDENTIFYING AN EDIBLE COULD COST YOU YOUR LIFE. DO NOT EAT ANY FORAGED MUSHROOM YOU CANNOT IDENTIFY YOURSELF BY SIGHT OR HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED IN PERSON BY SOMEONE WHO CAN.

ONLY BUY BOOKS FROM REPUTABLE SOURCES AND AT THIS POINT THAT MEANS ASKING EXPERIENCED PEOPLE WHAT BOOKS THEY USE.

Mushrooms are fun, amazing organisms. Enjoy safely.

the funniest part of night watch is vetinari's off screen adventure

#ah vimes i see you're retroactively becoming a formative moment in my life

and because of how continuity works (or doesn't) on the Disc, it is simultaneously true that Vetinari is the way he is because of Vimes' influence and that he was already like that before Vimes ever time-traveled

because the Vimes who time-traveled is a product of a universe where John Keel was the actual John Keel and Vetinari was who Vetinari is, without John Keel having been Vimes, and yet the Vetinari who is clearly has the John Keel who was Vimes as a formative influence

which serves to 1) be really existentially distressing if you think about it too hard and 2) reinforce the theme of how all the little details of history matter so much but even the ones that 'make a difference' don't necessarily actually make any difference.

Present Vetinari, observing a hijink: this better not have awakened anything in me

I forgot making this comment, post crossed my dash, and I was like “oh hooo hoo what if someone made a joke about grammar tenses”

Found some of my old tags about Scarlet Pimpernel

tags from coloredcompulsion:

“Could you be the chosen one?”

“I am very much the guy who’s here.”

I feel like a lot of conflict could be avoided if there was a way to go "shit sorry my bad" over the internet without coming off as completely insincere.

I feel like online presents a layer of distance between people who would be friends if they had a 2 minute conversation in person.