Reblogged adventuresandshopping
“They have a cave troll.”
rowantheexplorer
They’re also shooting for 100% renewable plastic sources by 2030! All of the soft plant/leaf elements in sets right now and going forward are made out of bioplastic made from sugarcane, and they’re working on getting the regular hard plastic bricks out of that, too.
They’ve done it, actually! The full bricks are in the prototype stage now, and are expected to be 100% biodegradable without the need for a commercial compost facility. It’s very cool. Right now they’re testing the durability and playability of the bricks and seeing what needs to be revised/reworked on their final model.
apurplefriend
So its that easy huh
Of course it is
Actually, this isn’t “easy” and is huge news. You see, Lego is absolutely meticulous about their quality control. Their standards for manufacturing are stupidly high, as are their safety requirements. You know that distinctive “click” when you pop two Lego bricks apart? They engineered that. That sound is so distinctive that it can be used to tell genuine Lego bricks from counterfeits and it’s a sound that would be based on shape and material.
Furthermore, one of the hard requirements for a Lego brick is that it must be compatible with any other Lego brick. If I buy a set today and pull a set from the 1980s? Those bricks would fit together perfectly. This requires a huge amount of precision engineering and controls on manufacturing quality. (I can’t remember the source, but I’ve at least heard that once the brick molds wear to a certain point, they’re pulled from the line and either melted down or turned into construction material for Lego HQ. Point being, no one is getting their hands on a worn Lego mold)
Recycled and non-petroleum plastics are different from other plastic. The chemistry is different. The timing and process to use them is different. This has been a reason why more companies haven’t moved to them, because there’s a drop in quality for material (so they claim).
What Lego just did is completely obliterate that argument. The corporation with some of the strictest quality control requirements for plastic just kicked the basic foundation of the “bad quality” argument out from under it, because if they feel confident enough to guarantee the same experience as using a brick from over 40 years ago, if they are confident enough that they can meet their own metrics at a huge industrial scale….
Nobody else has any excuse.
GLORIOUS NERDERY Lego edition
Reblogged springbeemaya
i had the primal urge to draw them being a family also nimona totally bites
Reblogged broken-roses-
Xenk tries his best to answer Ed’s question 😌🪱💕
Reblogged
My Brain, for no goddamn reason: You know what would be funny? Me, up too early to drop my car off for maintainence: what? Brain: What if Wookiees and Kaminoans shared a recent common ancestor? Me: ... Me: *rapid mental theoretical xenobiology montage* Me: LOL. LMAO.
Some of us biologists would like an artist’s interpretation please.
How fortunate :)
My degree is in Scientific Illustration :)
Now I'm currently high off my tits on allergy medicine and Star Wars has only a passing relationship with Scientific Rigor, but let's have a little fun with HIGHLY SPECULATIVE EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE!!
Anyway, for those of you that aren't neck deep into the world's most deranged Space Opera, these are Wookiees and Kaminoans:
Wookiees are about 6-7 ft tall on average, Kaminoans about 7-9 ft.
Wookiees are from the Planet Kashyyk, which, in the style of single-biome planets in Star Wars, a temperate rain forest, not unlike the north pacific coast of the US and Canada, (and are also the ancestors of Ewoks according to this article I just read). Kaminoans are from an entirely flooded ocean-world called Kamino, and have been genetically modifying themselves for ages. I genuinely cannot remember if it's one of SW's 20-odd canons or a really good fic I read, but IIRC: 1. Kamino used to have solid land before the Bougies flooded it for ethnic genocide reasons. 2. Wookiees are not native to Kashyyk either- their ancestors crash-landed or were abandoned on the planet over a million years ago.
So, perhaps neither species is Native to their respective homeworld, what would the theoretical ancestor look like? Let's start with some features of the descendant species! Some notable features I'm deriving from half-remembered canon and a GREAT exhibit on costuming I saw:
- Wookiees have tons of hair, but no undercoat. I'm basing this off the fact that Chewbacca's original costume was made from wigs, not animal fur, but it makes a sort of sense- Long hair would act as an insulator by keeping air close to the skin, and is oily enough to keep them from getting soaked in the rain, or waterlogged when they need to take to occasional swim to get from one tree-city to another.
- The designers took some significant inspiration from Baikil Seals when it came to the eyes, nose and texture of Kaminoans- they're officially bald, but the velvety texture suggests they might have fine fur like humans do. This makes a sort of sense if the Kaminoans modified themselves to fit their watery new world.
- Kaminoan males have a crest on the tops of their heads- while they may have added something later, but bauplan genes, esp hair patterns are hard to fuck with, so the genetic potential for a crest was probably present in the Wookiee-Kaminoan Common Ancestor (or WKCA). Similarly, the Wookiee costumes I saw had notably longer fur along the neck and spine than the rest of the body. This suggests that the WKCA had a mane like a horse or zebra.
- Dark Sclera and lighter-colored Irises, and Vision in the UV and infrared spectra. Apparently, the stark-white walls of Tipoca city on Kamino are covered in UV-spectrum murals!
- A much broader ranger of hearing than humans. The uulating sound of a wookiee is well-known, and in one of the books, Kaminoan native language is described as high-pitched humming and trilling, which sounds like pitched-up Shryywook to me!
- Both species walk at a very long, smooth lope, despite being from Arboreal and Aquatic worlds respectively. Both Species are very capable of sprinting at great speed and have quite the jump, when needed.
- Both Species are Hypercarnivorous Apex predators that have a NASTY bite- Both species still retain prominent canine teeth.
So, the WKCA likely had:
- A lightly furred body with no undercoat
- A spinal mane, which is not a defensive feature, but a Heat-Dispersing one.
- Dark-pigmented eyes with light-colored irises and a broad range of vision- features commonly seen in animals that deal with highly variable levels of light, like something that hunts at dawn and dusk between bright sunlight and extreme darkness.
- Excellent hearing and a musical language that can be heard across great distances.
- Legs meant to walk very long distances and put on the occasional turn of speed, but not stalk.
- Was likely a social carnivore with BIG-ASS TEETH.
All these taken together suggest one thing: The Common Ancestor of Wookiees and Kaminoans evolved in a DESERT.
It's specifically a social sprinting predator- humans terminator-pursuit our prey down, leopards ambush, but the exceptionally long legs and short ankles (Those are short ankles on the Kaminoan compared to many terrestrial mammals) suggest a hybrid strategy more like that of African wild dogs- this is an animal that runs it's prey down with a lot of power, but it doesn't like to run for long, so it brought friends to corner the prey. We are looking at a very tall Mad Max Extra with the galaxy's Most Magnificent Mowhawk here.
LOL. LMAO.
You may note some Bonus features on the above Sketch- the larger ears and heavier legs- Wookiee ears and necks would have shrunk fairly fast to conserve body heat in such a wet environment, and the overall size decreased in order to be light enough to actually manage their new arboreal lifestyle. The Kaminoans were selecting for culturally desirable traits over all else, hence the lack of ears, dubious structural integrity in the neck and total absence of Ass. The WKCA is have been caked the fuck up on account of walking across huge amounts of desert, needs those big ears for thermal regulation and hearing each other and prey, and being purely terrestrial, probably outweighs both descendant species by a good amount.
I also gave it a Nubbin tail, because it's cute, and there's no evidence that Wookiees and Kaminoans DON'T have them.
Now I know I've been discussing carnivory, but mammals wander all over that spectrum of Omnivory all the time. Pandas are bears that are Vegan, Rodents love chicken.
So please consider, because it makes me laugh: The Common Ancestor is an Ungulate.
There have been Carnivorous ungulates before! Andrewsarchus comes to mind. I think they were social herbivores that developed a taste for meat as their planet dried out and these very large animals needed to get creative about calories and moisture in the encroaching desert ...Like if giraffes decided to start eating tourists.
Anyway, after doing some Lineart, giving her a BF (the Kaminoans made the crest a sex-indicative characteristic, which is HILARIOUS to the WKCA), omitting any gender-presenting nipples or sex organs to avoid the banhammer, Giving them toe-hooves like Eohippus and making them soft and velvety like a proper Desert Creachur:
Behold! The Common Ancestor of Wookiees and Kaminoans (and technically Ewoks too!). Truly, Speculative Evolutionary History is a fascinating subject...
...Except. It's a Big Galaxy. Much of it Unexplored.
The Common Ancestor might still be out there. Lurking. :)
Transphobia is so antithetical to genuine feminism it blows my mind there's such a wide overlap like you either believe in autonomy and self determination or you don't
bough-and-arrowx-deactivated202
This shouldn't be hidden in tags!
Image ID:
#you can't reconcile the feminist idea that men and women are equals with acting like they're different species
#the feminist idea that women are more than their reproductive systems with the one that womanhood is defined by a reproductive system
#the feminist idea that women don't need to adhere to arbitrary standards of femininity with the one that they do or they aren't women
#the feminist idea that women are allowed to have body hair and be tall or muscular with the one that they're to be scrutinized if they are
#the feminist idea that women as equals to men should be allowed to compete with them with the one that both must always be separated
#i can not consider terfism to be feminism in any fucking way
#and don't say 'no true scotsman' that's not it
#i don't consider feminists for the same reason i don't consider the democratic people's republic of korea a democracy #or nazism socialism. having feminist in their name does not mean their ideas are automatically feminist
#i've yet to meet a terf that actually cares about women more than about hating on trans folk
#there is no feminist belief that can come from someone who views women as vaginas with legs that are too frail to do anything men do
End Id
Reblogged
the cha cha slide in full metal armor
burplesnurf2
“sliiide to the left”
*indescribably loud screeching of metal against asphalt*
burplesnurf2
“one hop this time”
*clonk*
“two hops this time”
*clonk clonk*
burplesnurf2
“everybody clap your hands!”
*clankclankclankclankclank*
Ask and ye shall receive ft. my drunk ass Any other requests? Send ‘em my way!
this is peak fucking comedy
momnar
The Paladin making a stealth check like
@petermorwood I can’t even
I can even… :->
Plate armour is lighter than many people believe, has more mobility than many people believe, and is easier to wear than many people believe, but nobody (except films and games) ever claimed it was good for stealthy sneaking around, as if a knight would ever do such a thing.
(And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you…)
Funny thing, though - really well-fitted Gothic-style armour is less noisy than equally well-fitted Milanese armour, because Milanese has more loose parts (loose from intention, not from bad attachment).
Here’s a Milanese armour - the “Avant” armour on display at the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, Scotland.
Here’s Dr Tobias Capwell, Curator of Arms and armour at the Wallace Collection, London, England, wearing a reproduction of the Avant, including two important pieces missing from the original; it only has their straps. Those pieces are the “tassets” - the two panels hanging over his upper thighs - which fit loosely so they can move as his legs do.
The tassets make a noise in the process, and so would all that mail.
(Writer Note, because each little ring is closely interlinked with four others and can’t reverberate, mail never chimes or jingles like lengths of chain being shaken or coins being poured from a bag. In contact with plate it makes a metallic rustling sound, but even loose-hanging mail only makes a self-muted staccato noise like patting a very, very crowded bunch of keys. Sound effects in games and films aren’t accurate; they’re providing what’s expected, like a sword going shhhinnngg when it’s drawn. Or when light hits it. Or a camera looks at it. Or whatever…)
Some designs of Gothic armour like this one, originally owned by Emperor Maximilian I and on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria, didn’t have tassets: instead the cuisses (thigh armour) extended almost to the wearer’s hips.
The extensions are constructed from half-a-dozen small plates on leather straps attached to his breastplate. They would compress like an accordion if he had to lean sideways, then be pulled back up by the straps as he straightened.
The metallic scraping sound this caused wouldn’t be anything like as loud as the clank of tassets bouncing up and down against armoured legs, but other styles of Gothic had “besagews”, round plates between arms and chest, like this one on display at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, England.
They’re fixed by a single strap or lace, so when the knight raises his arms they hang over his armpits as extra defence. As you can imagine, two saucepan lids hung on cords and banging against a breastplate are going to make a definite amount of noise.
Even without besagews, tassets, mail-shirts and all the rest, “plate armour” and “quiet” are mutually incompatible, so you might as well cha-cha-cha to your heart’s content - and if you get the rhythm just right, you can even provide your own percussion accompaniment…
:->
Reblogged chronivore
You BEHEAD Marie Antoinette?
you CHOP her head like the GUILLOTINE??
OH OH CHAOS FOR FRANCE! CHAOS FOR FRANCE FOR 1000 YEARS!!!!
Reblogged anarchistmemecollective
compilation
Reblogged anarchistmemecollective
There should totally be a movement called “Sleep in Public” where people defend their right to sleep on public property. Sleep in your cars. Sleep on benches. Sleep at the park. Just make it a mundane and regular part of life to see someone napping in the library. It would make it much harder to single out the homeless for harassment if everyone else is doing the same thing and much harder to argue that it’s a “threat to public safety” when it’s so clearly harmless.
“But homeless people commit crimes!” I have a very hard time believing they commit crimes while asleep.
armchair-factotum
You know who do commit crimes in their sleep? Billionaires
Reblogged perksofbeingace
No offense but a lot of you guys are fully supportive of ace people and aro people until one of us makes you feel a little bad about how the world literally revolves around sex and romance.
And like I want to make it clear that I'm not against sex positivity or romance. If you like/want that, good for you! But we as a society have to make room for those of us that don't, or at least don't prioritize it. We tend to put it on such a pedestal compared to other human experiences that it gets ridiculous. Little girls don't all dream about their wedding day. Boys don't all spend their teenage years experimenting with their sexuality. Like it's hailed as such a priority that even in LGBT+ spaces debate if we belong there. It's ridiculous!
And so many of you turn on us real fast as soon as any of us points that out or, Heaven forbid, pokes a little fun at it.
Reblogged antique-scarecrow
if you run up behind me while I’m working and hold a flash drive to my throat pretending it’s a knife and I instinctively seize your hand and bite you I don’t think you are allowed to be mad
anyway I bit one of the interns this morning