5tephe

Same guy from LJ, Twitter, and all the rest.

[omgthatdress]

Butterfly Fancy Dress Costume

Worth, 1912

Whitaker Auctions

Happy Purim!

[5tephe]

solarpunk

fashion

mistress auriel

[5tephe]

Look what I just found, going through an old box of my ancient writings and mementos. I kept it from 1994, because I had a crush on the girl who wrote it and played Grace. The girl who I ENDED UP MARRYING 10 years later. #love

[5tephe]

#Yabun festival going off to aunty Marlene Cummins. #alwayswasalwayswillbe (at Victoria Park - The University Of Sydney)

[5tephe]

Let's all take this as a good augury for 2017, shall we? (at Bellingen River)

[5tephe]

Elizabeth I and her fleet, sailing out to meet the Spanish Armada. (Costume made by Kitty.)

[rejectedprincesses]

This is a proof-of-concept teaser trailer/pitch for an animated feature film called Kariba. It was made by Blue Forest Collective, a South African animation group.

And it looks fucking awesome.

From Cartoon Brew, which has more info: 

Kariba was conceived as a modern African fairy tale, combining the historical events surrounding the building of the Zambezi river dam wall and the local legend of the river spirit that caused its destruction. “We are using the rich history and mythology around this event,” Snaddon said. “Our aim is to make something that stands out as being uniquely African, a film that respects both its source material, and its audience, while being hugely fun and entertaining.”

And here’s some concept art:

This looks really fucking good

[5tephe]

My daughter is back from Europe! SHE'S BACK! (at Sydney Airport - International Terminal)

[dnd-5e-homebrew]

Princess Class by by impersonater

[5tephe]

Can’t ... like this ... HARD ENOUGH ...

This will absolutely be my character class, the very next time I play D&D. Hands down. Will be interesting, considering my GM goes in for unsettling eldritch Gothic horror as his thematic baseline. Stuff him. She’ll be worth it.

[5tephe]

This computer will grow your food in the future

What if we could grow delicious, nutrient-dense food, indoors anywhere in the world? Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, wants to change the food system by connecting growers with technology. Get to know Harper's "food computers" and catch a glimpse of what the future of farming might look like.

Holy urban farming, Spudgirl!

Caleb Harper just got a standing ovation at TED, and for good reason. This thing is open source, it’s real and available today, it’s inspiring, and I want to make one!

[anglaisvoyeurafricaine-deactiva]

[hypernaturalism]

😍😍😍

[5tephe]

OMG it’s Professor Lisa Bradley (aka Paladin) from Strong Female Protagonist!

http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/page-16-4/

[thebeautyofbecoming]

[wilwheaton]

Wow. Every one of these could be a writing prompt.

[5tephe]

ALTRUIS designer wearable technology by VINAYA - filter your smartphone notifications and improve your digital balance. Stay connected, not distracted.

This looks very nice. Also very expensive, and very trendy. But there are definite Solarpunk angles here....

[octopocalyptic]

What do solarpunk games look like?

As I’ve mentioned before once or twice, I have a very slow, ongoing project that’s a sort of/not really/tangentially solarpunk fantasy story. In my main char’s culture, ecology/the dynamics of relationships are much more central than the individual’s relationship to the not-self (which is more or less how I’d summarize Western culture’s take on the individual).

So when I wanted to talk about the games my characters might play, I ran into some issues. The most common games in our culture (many of which have been around forever) are games of zero-sum competition. Whether it’s games of chance (dice, cards) or games of skill (chess, the whacky pre/early-modern game arithmomachia), a game often pits you against a single opponent, setting you a goal of defeating that opponent. It’s the same in group sports. We gamify conquest and domination.

 This preoccupation with zero-sum games speaks volumes about our culture, I think. These games are born out of and encourage the idea that success comes at another’s expense, that competition is necessary to succeed. And to be fair, competitive games aren’t inherently bad or ill-natured, and competition is a part of ecology (although there’s a lot more collaboration in “nature” than most people think).

 Still, in my fictional world, cooperation and coexistence are core values that help a civilization to account for and contain radical difference. This is something that’s common in solarpunk values and aesthetics, too, I think, and so my question is—are there games I’m overlook (especially games that span eras and cultures a la chess or backgammon) that are more cooperative? Are there works of fiction (especially genre fiction) that have sports or games with cooperative gameplay or goals? More generally, too, I’m interested in how solarpunk values might manifest in sports and games. 

[octopocalyptic]

I got an answer asking for a bit of clarification (ETA: whoops, you’re in the wrong shop for clarity, mate), so I thought I’d reblog the post and muddle through this some more.

I’m not sure exactly what kind of games I’m looking for, but I know that my question is also borne out of a personal frustration. My partner and both work from home (I’m a student, she’s self employed) and we like to play some sort of game (Carcassonne, backgammon, chess, MTG) every night before we Netflix it up. If. we’ve already been grinding each other’s nerves during the day, I find games less enjoyable because all the games we like force us into direct, one on one competition. (The solution may be just that we need friends, hahahaawww no now I’m sad.) I find myself wanting some quiet activity that focuses our attentions on a shared problem or goal which we work toward together.

The closest I’ve come creatively is, in my ongoing hobby-novel, a game (vaguely like Go and vaguely like mahjong and maybe a bit like dominos) in which players place double-sided tiles on a shared space. The glyph on a tile influences or changes the position and significance of neighbouring tiles based on shared or opposing attributes (colour, image, some equivalent of suite, etc). The end goal is to achieve some predetermined tile configuration (more red than blue glyphs, or maybe something more complex like a numerological component or visual pattern), and that goal could be shared by the players. (Maybe there’s an option for each player to have a competing end goal if they want to play competitively?) It’s like shared solitaire, I guess?

Eh, I feel like this made things more confusing. TL;DR– I just want more games that’re win/lose but in which you don’t lose because someone else defeated you. I want to be able to play a game with my partner that has an element of strategy and. challenge, but also a game in which the challenge doesn’t come from my partner and her strategy to defeat me. which she does. a lot.

[its-universolar]

Oh my gosh have you seen Forbidden Island? It’s a really great game that focuses on teamwork and strategy to save artifacts from an island that sinks more after every turn~ there’s another cooperative game I like called Pandemic that’s focused around stopping five plagues spreading across the world, and I feel like a game like that might be interesting for a solarpunk society because you know, you save the world! 

[5tephe]

Great question. The obvious answer to my mind would be old school role playing games. If you look into the hobby nowadays, you'll find there's a lot more to it than D&D.

Other ideas: cooperative games as its-universolar mentioned. One we LOVE playing with our kids is called Out Foxed! from a company called Gamewright. The four of us are detectives trying to find clues, and reveal and eliminate suspects before the fox who is the thief gets to their hole.

http://www.gamewright.com/gamewright/index.php?section=games&page=game&show=305

[solarpunks]

Coming Soon to France: Hundreds of Miles of Roads Paved with Solar Panels

Thin panels installed on existing roads could be used to power streetlights and homes within five years.

Read this, and just for a moment let your imagination wander. There’s plenty more fight to come, but reality is very much keeping pace with science fiction.

[solarpunkcatholic]

CLICK HERE to support GravityLight 2: Made in Africa

Everyone should have safe and clean light. Support us to create light - and jobs - from gravity! | Crowdfunding is a democratic way to support the fundraising needs of your community. Make a contribution today!

[5tephe]

I funded the first round, and use the Gravitylight I received from doing so in my shed. Everyone should go fund this.

[unexplained-events]

The Poison Garden

Established in 2005 by the Duchess of Northumberland. The garden contains over 100 deadly and hallucinogenic plants. 

’I wondered why so many gardens around the world focused on the healing power of plants rather than their ability to kill… I felt that most children I knew would be more interested in hearing how a plant killed, how long it would take you to die if you ate it and how gruesome and painful the death might be.’

-The Duchess of Northumberland 

[cladinscarlet]

The Duchess of Northumberland is metal af

[bluestalking-fox-deactivated201]

This attitude is what gave us british children’s books

[5tephe]

This is a nice, factual, detailed breakdown of the son to be released Tesla Powerwall - for Australian markets.