I can't tell whether seahorses or pipefish are weirder, I think objectively seahorses are more weird but we've just been desensitized by seeing them everywhere in media whereas you're taken aback seeing this thing for the first time
#Just saw both seahorses and pipefish in person this weekend #100% seahorses are weirder #The pipe fish is just a little dude floating around like a regular fish but long #The seahorse uses its tail like a hand and really does rock back and forth through the water #Like a HORSE #However most perplexing creacher to observe goes to jellyfish #Keep it up you funky friends
Howdy, folks! With all the terrible events unfolding in Ukraine right now, I figured everyone would like a little bit of a break from doomscrolling. Not wanting to add anymore negativity to the timelines, I'm going to share something on-topic but decidedly more cheery than the McMansions of rich people who suck.
As some of you may know, I recently visited Oman as a cycling journalist covering the eponymous Tour of Oman. (You can follow all seven days of my travels via my cycling newsletter derailleur beginning here.) While I was there, I came across some of the most fantastic houses I've ever seen and had to take photos. Admittedly, I'm not a great photographer. I just bought a camera (a Panasonic Lumix) last year. Still, I tried to do these houses justice with my limited talent, a difficult task considering I was photographing from a moving car chasing bike racers around. These photos were taken during the Tour of Oman stages one and two, which traveled along routes from Al Rastaq to Muscat and from Barka to Suhar, respectively.
Each of these examples mixes Western luxury with Islamic architectural motifs, and they make use of elements like reflective glass and condensation capture tanks in order to mitigate some of the challenges of the desert climate. All are made from painted concrete, as there is little wood to be found in such an arid ecosystem and an abundance of rock and energy to beat it into submission.
These homes are decidedly an Omani phenomenon, their size and ostentatiousness perhaps owing to the country's newfound wealth via oil exploration. However, while many would be keen to point the finger and shout "McMansion!", as a good ex-graduate student, I'm wary of applying Western aesthetic standards to Eastern architectural examples. Besides, I have to say, these houses are way more fun than literally anything I've ever seen stateside. They're playful and colorful, openly celebratory and, to be honest, kind of wild. I hope you enjoy them.
pink step-like house with central corridor
Note the explicit symmetry and two-toned reflective glass.
pastel foyer house
I found many examples of a stained glass technique wherein scenes or photographs are silkscreened onto glass and mounted as the most central window on the home. Note also the house's classical composition as well as the obscured crenelated water collection tank on the roof, another common feature.
green house with arched door
Tripartite entryway consisting of a pediment, an oriel, and an ornate arched door surrounded by decorative script. Kermit the frog green.
house of the nine hoods
Note the Mario Botta-esque striped wall, the fort-like composition, the many cornices, and the fact that each window is screen-printed with a different pattern.
mullion house
Glass need not be a boring feature of the common home! Extremely ornate mullion patterns and fun purple columns.
little sunshine house
Note the subtle three-part mutifoil arch and the use of interior tile as exterior decoration to augment the entryway, something that's common in these houses, perhaps because there is less worry of wear and tear by water. Another common element to one-story houses is a central roof-access tower for accessing the water tower and HVAC units.
imprint house
If foam is the material language of the Western McMansion, the Omani show-house speaks in concrete. Note the embossing of the cornices, windows, and wall panels to resemble zellij-pattern tilework. The exaggerated cornices are a nice touch of absurdity.
triple dome house
An absolutely chaotic house featuring extensive use of decorative tile, colonnaded windows, and subtle asymmetry. Love whatever's going on with the garage doors.
oblique house
A house organized at an oblique angle, with complex wings and a heavily obscured front door. Pistachio green with mixed architectural elements.
gold window house
What happens if a house was made entirely of turrets? The answer is, it's pretty glorious.
Anyway, I hope these houses brightened at least one person's day and that everyone enjoyed this little reprieve from all that's terrible.
best moment in ofmd is “what’s her name?” “ed. his name is ed.” and mary just smiles and hugs stede so tight. there is no sadness or surprise. instead, there’s happiness, relief, and realization.
a lot of people love this moment because it’s when stede realizes he’s in love. i love this moment because for mary, everything makes sense now. from her perspective, she was trying everything she could do to make the relationship work. she was sentimental, she gave him gifts that represented their devotion, she wanted him to spend more time with his kids, and she wanted to be close to him. but stede was always distant, holding back, and wanted to uproot the life they had for something different. mary must have thought there was something wrong with her. for years, she was slowly falling apart trying to save their relationship, only for stede to withdraw even more, and eventually abandon everything she tried to build with him.
but “his name is ed” changes her perspective on all of that. everything makes sense now. stede could never love her romantically. not because there’s something wrong with her, not because she isn’t enough, not because he hates her or the children or the life they had together, but because he’s gay. she realizes that they were both trapped and unhappy. and she also realizes they can be free now, and they can love each other another way. i can’t imagine how healing that must have been for her.
One of the funniest things about Bram Stoker’s Dracula is that it’s mentioned in passing that most of Dracula’s powers don’t even have anything to do with the fact that he’s a vampire; he can do all that stuff because – and I swear I’m not making this up – in his youth he attended a magic school whose headmaster was the actual Devil. This is never followed up on.
Basically, what I mean to say is that you can picture a scenario where any fictional devil you care to name is a teacher at a magic school where one of the students is kid Dracula, and this would be a totally canon-compliant crossover.
Was… he a student at the Scholomance? Is this why the Western world is familiar with solomonari even though in Romania it’s such an obscure mythological reference??
That’s pretty much exactly what happened. Bram Stoker read one (1) book on Eastern European folklore that had a bit on the Scholomance in it, threw a passing reference to it into Dracula’s backstory, and English-speaking audiences have been going “hey, what the fuck?” ever since!
(Incidentally, this means that if you’re doing one of those classic crossovers where Victor Frankenstein ends up fighting and/or working for Dracula, Dracula absolutely gets to talk shit, because at least he finished his degree!)
I’m not aware that there’s any universally accepted rule for the situation.
Outside of formal, your-name-is-your-biography introductions, the general rule is that you can have both a prenomial and a postnomial, but not two prenomials or two postnomials. There’s no postnomial for being a Count, so – assuming for the sake of argument that being instructed in blasphemous sorcery by Satan himself is a doctorate of philosophy rather than of law or medicine – that leaves “Count Dracula, PhD” as the only obvious form that would incorporate both titles.
However, academic postnomials are not used in everyday speech, so in practice he’d probably have to choose between being addressed as “Count Dracula” or “Dr. Dracula”. The rule there is to use whichever title is most immediately pertinent – e.g., “Dr.” when serving on a university’s board of directors – and otherwise to go with the individual’s stated preference, if any.
So the real question is: would Dracula prefer to be addressed as “Count Dracula” or “Dr. Dracula” in contexts where no other rule of precedence applies?
Actually, German does permit the doubling of Doktor (as in a doctorate, not necessarily a physician) and combining it with other honorifics. So in formal situations, you might introduce someone as Frau Doktor Doktor [Name] and in conversation refer to them as Herr Doktor.
Apocryphally this can go on for as many honorifics as you want to include, but there’s no reason Dracula in Berlin couldn’t be Graf Doktor Dracula
Or a very inspiring way for a popular Black British actress many people look up to to reveal she cut off all her damaged, processed, hair (the part many of us fear the most) and decided to start her natural hair journey, at the age of 40 (yes y'all she's 42. I don't see it either).
But then again if you don't get that, the post wasn't for you anyway, so that's fair. That's fair.
I know a lot of people don't get it whenever they see posts about Black hair. It's just wild to me when I remember there are people who've never had any significant thoughts or cultural concerns about their hair.
My hair doesn't grow in the back of my head. I keep it shaved because it doesn't grow, not to be on trend like some tend to think. My hair/scalp was damaged when I was 13 because an aunt put a strong perm in my head. For years I had sores on my scalp from chemical burns.
It's a big deal. We're in a beautiful era of Black women in all walks of life embracing their natural hair and it should be celebrated and encouraged.
The soul suck is so real and I wish more people were honest about the fact that most of our depression and mental illness isn’t an individual ailment but a collective stare down of a future that seems increasingly pointless… Like actually it is very hard to live without family traditions and a purpose/Gods/something greater/collective vision and to design your life around individual accomplishment. For some reason we aren’t allowed to say this… the only acceptable causation is personal trauma and a “chemical imbalance”.
it is actually quite easy to live without family traditions and Gods. plenty of people do it every single day without even thinking about it. plenty of us have personal trauma caused by- you guessed it- family traditions and A Collective Vision ™.
you may be suffering because you don’t have those things, and I’m sorry you don’t live in a place where you can have them. but for the love of whatever the fuck you believe in, don’t try to impose those things for the rest of us.
plenty of people have died for the right to a pointless life designed around individual accomplishment. don’t you dare fucking take that away from us.
Gretchen: we need to blaze another linguistics fact
Lauren: has the power of getting people to say Eeyore to their screens gone to your head?
Gretchen: …maybe
Gretchen: yes
Gretchen: okay no but seriously I bet I can get them to make faces to their screens this time
Lauren: how do you propose to do that?
Gretchen: with the frown thing
Lauren: the FROWN THING
Gretchen: right so you know the two famous sayings about frowns?
Lauren: “turn that frown upside down” and…
Gretchen: yeah, and “it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile”
Lauren: okay, sure
Gretchen: has one of these sayings never quite made sense to you?
Lauren: yeah, actually! the “more muscles” one. I’m pretty sure just sorta drooping my lips doesn’t take more muscles than making a big grin
Gretchen: aha! this time we agree! but there are other English speakers who’d say the opposite, that the “upside down” one doesn’t make sense
Lauren: so there are secretly two different meanings of frown, and we’ve all just been pretending there’s only one
Gretchen: yup, two different gestures, one with just the lips like an upside down smile, and one with the whole forehead doing a creased, furrowed thing
Lauren: ah, that’s the one that takes so many muscles!
Gretchen: exactly! and if you’ve managed to get this far without making any faces you’re a stronger person than I am because I made at least eleven during this conversation
Lauren: okay if we’re really going to open up the podcast’s Blaze That Linguistics budget a second time can we at least point people to the episode where we talk more about the linguistics of gesture
You and your friends are dragged into a treacherous fantasy world made from your own fears, doubts and desires. There’s only one way to escape - but with limitless adventure within your grasp, would you even want to?
DIE is a tabletop roleplaying game about fantasy versus reality, and poses the question of why we play games at all. The comic it’s based upon is occasionally jokingly described as “goth Jumanji”; DIE the RPG is designed from the ground up to let a group of players make their own personal version of the comic.
We’re Rowan, Rook and Decard and we’re working together with Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans to bring the DIE RPG into the world, as an adaption of the Hugo-nominated Image Comic DIE.
In DIE you play a group of authentically flawed people from the real world who gather together to play an RPG and are dragged into a fantasy realm. They then have to find their way home… or not.
DIE begins on Earth, as the players create flawed, unique real-world Personas who gather together to play a roleplaying game. These obsessions are mined and externalised when on their involuntary adventure into the world of DIE. They’re not just going to a fantasy world - they’re going to their fantasy world, twisting their shame and frustration back at them. What do you do when the dragon speaks to you in the voice of your angry, long-dead father? What happens when the orcs taunt you with the same insults as your childhood bullies, now you’re armed with a greatsword? When your beloved ex-partner returns to you in the form of an emotion-draining vampire, will you resist them?
Make your version of the iconic characters of the comic, each of whom is a weird riff on the classic RPG classes:
Dictators are artistic diplomats who manipulate emotions with horrific magical words.
Fools are swashbucklers, rushing into danger and relying on their supernatural luck to survive.
Emotion Knights are warriors who feed one sacred emotion into their arcane, sentient weapons to devastating effect.
Neos are techno-magical rogues, stealing elusive Fair Gold to power their cybernetic gifts.
Godbinders are clerics who bargain with their pantheon of gods to get miracles at the best possible rate.
Masters (played by the GM) are reality-warping metatextual wizards who exert their control over space and time through the medium of dangerous magic or, if that fails, cheating.
Each of the six classes have ownership of one of the dice in the game. Only the Godbinder gets to touch the D12, the Neo gets the D10 and so on. Each is the heart of their classes’ ability.
Step-by-step processes to build a group of difficult, flawed Personas and a nightmare world from which they must attempt to escape.
Beautiful art from one of the most sought-after cover artists in comics, Stephanie Hans.
Rules and guidance on playing short punchy campaigns, long campaigns with political maneuvering and advanced character progression, and simple convention-ready one-shots.
Designed from scratch by the creator of the comic with support and advice from a wide team of experienced and award-winning RPG authors and editors.
Plus: every single game played with DIE is canon to the comic. This is quite literally your chance to be part of DIE’s universe.
Kickstarter campaign ends: Fri, June 10 2022 6:00 PM BST
Yes! Firefox mobile for Android supports ublock origin and you can have ad-free browsing on mobile. Saves your data and saves you time! Everyone using Android devices should install Firefox mobile and use the ublock origin extension to prevent this kind of bullshit on their phones and tablets.
It doesn't occur to a lot of people to install different browsers on their mobile devices because it's handy to use the installed options but Firefox mobile is a much better mobile browser option for Android devices than Chrome is!
ublock is not a standalone app in android, it is an extension that you add on to the browser, so install the firefox browser then click the three dot menu in the upper right corner, click the settings gear at the bottom, scroll down to "advanced" and click "add-ons" - there will be a list of supported add-ons (there are not as many supported add-ons in mobile as there are on the desktop browser, but they do have HTTPS everywhere, Bitwarden, and Ublock Origin, as well as some other anti-tracking and privacy-focused add-ons). Tap the plus-sign next to the extension you want to add and agree to various permissions as needed.
Rick Riordan’s response to the racism and hatred directed at Leah after she was cast as Annabeth:
“Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase”
“This post is specifically for those who have a problem with the casting of Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase. It’s a shame such posts need to be written, but they do. First, let me be clear I am speaking here only for myself. These thoughts are mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect or represent the opinions of any part of Disney, the TV show, the production team, or the Jeffries family.
The response to the casting of Leah has been overwhelmingly positive and joyous, as it should be. Leah brings so much energy and enthusiasm to this role, so much of Annabeth’s strength. She will be a role model for new generations of girls who will see in her the kind hero they want to be.
If you have a problem with this casting, however, take it up with me. You have no one else to blame. Whatever else you take from this post, we should be able to agree that bullying and harassing a child online is inexcusably wrong. As strong as Leah is, as much as we have discussed the potential for this kind of reaction and the intense pressure this role will bring, the negative comments she has received online are out of line. They need to stop. Now.
I was quite clear a year ago, when we announced our first open casting, that we would be following Disney’s company policy on nondiscrimination: We are committed to diverse, inclusive casting. For every role, please submit qualified performers, without regard to disability, gender, race and ethnicity, age, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other basis prohibited by law. We did that. The casting process was long, intense, massive and exhaustive.
I have been clear, as the author, that I was looking for the best actors to inhabit and bring to life the personalities of these characters, and that physical appearance was secondary for me. We did that. We took a year to do this process thoroughly and find the best of the best. This trio is the best. Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase.
Some of you have apparently felt offended or exasperated when your objections are called out online as racist. “But I am not racist,” you say. “It is not racist to want an actor who is accurate to the book’s description of the character!”
Let’s examine that statement.
You are upset/disappointed/frustrated/angry because a Black actor has been cast to play a character who was described as white in the books. “She doesn’t look the way I always imagined.”
You either are not aware, or have dismissed, Leah’s years of hard work honing her craft, her talent, her tenacity, her focus, her screen presence. You refuse to believe her selection could have been based on merit. Without having seen her play the part, you have pre-judged her (pre + judge = prejudice) and decided she must have been hired simply to fill a quota or tick a diversity box. And by the way, these criticisms have come from across the political spectrum, right and left.
You have decided that I couldn’t possibly mean what I have always said: That the true nature of the character lies in their personality. You feel I must have been coerced, brainwashed, bribed, threatened, whatever, or I as a white male author never would have chosen a Black actor for the part of this canonically white girl.
You refuse to believe me, the guy who wrote the books and created these characters, when I say that these actors are perfect for the roles because of the talent they bring and the way they used their auditions to expand, improve and electrify the lines they were given. Once you see Leah as Annabeth, she will become exactly the way you imagine Annabeth, assuming you give her that chance, but you refuse to credit that this may be true.
You are judging her appropriateness for this role solely and exclusively on how she looks. She is a Black girl playing someone who was described in the books as white.
Friends, that is racism.
And before you resort to the old kneejerk reaction — “I am not racist!” — let’s examine that statement too.
If I may quote from an excellent recent article in the Boston Globe about Dr. Khama Ennis, who created a program on implicit bias for the Massachusetts Board of Registration for Medicine in Boston: “To say a person doesn’t have bias is to say that person isn’t human. It’s how we navigate the world … based on what we’re taught and our own personal histories.”
Racism/colorism isn’t something we have or don’t have. I have it. You have it. We all do. And not just white people like me. All people. It’s either something we recognize and try to work on, or it’s something we deny. Saying “I am not racist!” is simply declaring that you deny your own biases and refuse to work on them.
The core message of Percy Jackson has always been that difference is strength. There is power in plurality. The things that distinguish us from one another are often our marks of individual greatness. You should never judge someone by how well they fit your preconceived notions. That neurodivergent kid who has failed out of six schools, for instance, may well be the son of Poseidon. Anyone can be a hero.
If you don’t get that, if you’re still upset about the casting of this marvelous trio, then it doesn’t matter how many times you have read the books. You didn’t learn anything from them.
Watch the show or don’t. That’s your call. But this will be an adaptation that I am proud of, and which fully honors the spirit of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, taking the bedtime story I told my son twenty years ago to make him feel better about being neurodivergent, and improving on it so that kids all over the world can continue to see themselves as heroes at Camp Half-Blood.”
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