A Fannish Knitter

I am a fan of yarn. And also other things.

[rescue-ram]

The amount of glossing over linguistics in Project Hail Mary does make me a little crazyyyyyy because even on Earth it takes months/years for people to build up fluency in another language. And even if we are just focusing on the translation dictionary, so just very simple word to word correspondences, it's still crazyyyyy that they are able to get 250+ words in a matter of days including abstract words. Especially since they have completely incompatible nonverbal body language! Auggggh

Anyways my headcanons I am Coping with:

Ryland is actually kind of a savant for language learning but he's an amnesiac so he doesn't know and even before that was genuinely "What, like it's hard?" about it. Like he secretly has an incredible ear for language, but he thinks humans evolved to learn language and everyone could do what he can if they tried but they just don't care. He can pick up the basics of languages and accents in a matter of days/weeks for fun, and was an absolute menace in grad school and during the "living on a big international scientific collaboration boat" phase of the project because absolutely no language was safe to gossip in, if you had tea he WOULD figure out what language you were kiki'ing in and start listening intently and teaching himself it from context clues and spring it on you when you least expected it

They are actually not that good at language learning and made a large number of incorrect assumptions at the start, and have learned a number of things completely wrong. BUT Rocky's memory means he remembers what all the wrong words are and he's like "Whatever, it's easier to use west for left then to correct the leaky alien" of whatever.

Building on previous idea, especially once Grace becomes confident in his ability to recognize Eridian words and is less reliant on his translation program- they are engaging in true freak2freak communication and are using extremely impressionistic vague meaningless language with each other but are such mathpilled science geeks that they can intuit what the other means because they are so good at engineering. Like they are sort of using each other as Ouija boards, they know what SHOULD come next as they're problem solving so they 'hear' the other say it regardless of what's actually being said

Like it makes a group of Eridian linguists absolutely apoplectic to listen to a recording of Grace and Rocky problem solving together and it's just them speaking in nonsense words and sentence fragments punctuated with math. Like 30 minutes of "And what if we...question?" "Oooh you could!" "And then-" "Exactlyyyyyy" "Amaze amaze" "Grace and Rocky save stars 🥰" "Yes yes yes 🥰" and the Eridian linguists are like HOW. Did you possibly save two worlds. While communicating like THAT. QUESTION!?

The running theory among Eridian linguists is that humans' ability to perceive electromagnetic radiation gives them mild psychic abilities and that's how Grace was able to intuit the meaning of multiple abstract words. He denies it but they absolutely don't believe him. His insistence that somethings just have 'a vibe' in particular seems suspiciously psychic to them.

[bramblepatch]

The thing is you can have a grassy lawn or even a golf course without it being an ecological disaster, you just have to a: be cool about having the occasional non-grass plant in the mix and b: be willing to live in a climate that supports grass without irrigation.

[bramblepatch]

Golf courses in California are an abomination which is why the sport was in fact invented in Scotland.

[abstrusetheorist]

I always thought that golf as a sport should be adapted to the local native landscape. I think this will encourage regional pride when local golfers completely trounce visitors at Swamp Golf, Desert Golf, Forest Golf, etc. Rich tourists will be pressured to travel extensively to experience all forms of golf, instead of staying in their backyard country club golf courses. Internet discourse will probably somehow get worse but I think this is a small price to pay.

[mctreeleth]

[mogseltof]

Nullarbor Links - Wikipedia

[bramblepatch]

Alright, so, it seems like Australia is on a level of golf innovation the rest of us can only dream of.

[sqbr]

I am Australian and had never heard of either of these??? Now I feel extra unhappy with the golf course near me that's just regular water-hungry grass :/

[theta-scenario]

People with low spoons, someone just recommended this cookbook to me, so I thought I’d pass it on.

I always look at cookbooks for people who have no energy/time to do elaborate meal preparations, and roll my eyes. Like, you want me to stay on my feet for long enough to prepare 15 different ingredients from scratch, and use 5 different pots and pans, when I have chronic fatigue and no dishwasher?

These people seem to get it, though. It’s very simple in places. It’s basically the cookbook for people who think, ‘I’m really bored of those same five low-spoons meals I eat, but I can’t think of anything else to cook that won’t exhaust me’. And it’s free!

The Sad Bastard Cookbook by tRaum Books

by Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov || Food you can make so you don't die.

[drovenna]

SPREAD THE WORD THIS IS FUCKING GOD TIER OH MY GOD, SOMETIMES I HAVE SPOONS SOMETIMES I DON’T BUT NO COOKBOOK OFFERS LEVELS IN THEIR RECIPES THIS ONE DOES!

[odakota-rose]

also found here:

The Sad Bastard Cookbook

Life is hard. Some days are at the absolute limit of what we can manage. Some days are worse than that. Eating—picking a meal, making it, pu

the ebook is FREE here also

[parkchanwoohoo]

“In 1404, King Taejong fell from his horse during a hunting expedition. Embarrassed, looking to his left and right, he commanded, “Do not let the historian find out about this.” To his disappointment, the historian accompanying the hunting party included these words in the annals, in addition to a description of the king’s fall.“

LMFAOOOOOO rip to that guy

[shitacademicswrite]

i thought maybe this was fake, but there’s even a citation!

Taejong Sillok Book 7. 5th year of King Taejong’s Reign (1404), February 8.

[delphinidin4]

Happy 618th anniversary of the day King Taejong fell from his horse!

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Apparently the recorders were really intense about this. We have a record of King Taejong complaining about a recorder who followed him on a hunt in disguise and another who eavesdropped on him behind a screen. No one was allowed to see the records, even the king (one king did and killed five men based on what was written there, after which they took greater care to ensure it would never happen again), and changing the content or disclosing it was a capital punishment. Even when there were rival political factions trying to influence the writers, they wrote down what was a revision and what wasn’t and kept an original version with no revisions in it.

They also made sure to back up their data. They made four copies of it, then when three copies were lost in the Imrim Wars they decided to make five more copies just in case. One copy was destroyed in a rebellion, another was partially damaged in an invasion, and Japan stole one copy during their occupation and moved it to Tokyo University, where it was mostly destroyed in the Kanto Earthquake (47 books remained and were returned to South Korea in 2006). Now the whole thing is digitized, free on the internet, and translated into modern Korean for all to see.

It took centuries of meticulous recorders, justifiably paranoid copiers, absolutely determined historians, and painstaking infrastructure for this joke to be possible. Happy 618th anniversary to the day King Taejong fell from his horse.

[anonymous-ivplay]

Happy 619th anniversary to the day King Taejong fell from his horse!

[bunjywunjy]

happy 620th anniversary of the day a king fell off his horse everybody

[flyingscanian]

happy 621st anniversayr of the day a king fell of his horse

[lunarriviera]

happy 622th anniversary of king taejong looking like a fool in front of god and everyone

[jedusaur]

When you’re in the middle of playing hockey, you don’t have much time or lungpower to spare for lengthy chats, so hockey players develop a lot of on-ice shorthand. Some of this is probably limited to beer leagues like mine, but I’ve definitely heard a few of these phrases caught on the rink-level mics during NHL games, so I thought maybe some of y’all who don’t play hockey might be interested in translations of a few of the things hockey players yell at each other mid-game.

OFF = You are offside.

OOOOOOOFF = You are offside and don’t seem to realize it; stop trying to touch the puck and move your ass out of the fucking zone before you force a whistle.

CHANGE = You’ve been on the ice a long time.

CHAAAAAAANGE = Are you aware that there are other people on this team who would like to play hockey at some point?

ONE ON = An opposing player is trying to get the puck away from you and it appears that you haven’t noticed.

GOT TIME = Don’t panic and fling the puck into Siberia, there’s no one close enough to take it away from you right this second.

ICE IT = We’ve been in our zone for three minutes and everyone on the ice is nearing collapse, so go ahead, panic and fling the puck into Siberia.

I’M OPEN = Pass toward the sound of my voice right fucking now.

ALL YOU = Take the puck forward yourself; everyone else is far enough behind you that you should not rely on getting any backup on this developing play.

I GOT YOU = You are so egregiously out of position that it makes more sense for us to just switch jobs for a minute.

I GOT IT = If we both skate hard to the puck at the same time, as is currently happening, there will be no one to pass it to and also we are liable to collide in an unproductive fashion, so just let me handle it.

I GOT IT I GOT IT I GOT IT = You did not listen to me and we are about to collide in an unproductive fashion.

edited to add: NOOOOOOOOOOO = The ref has signaled no icing on this play, so quit gliding while you wait for a whistle and move your damn feet. (This is probably the most confusing one to overhear if you don’t know what it means XD)

[jedusaur]

back in the day this post made the rounds in hockey RPF and in Check Please and I am pleased to see once again a hockey-based fandom full of people who know nothing about hockey circulating this crucial info XD for the record I am always happy to splain hockey at pretty much anyone who asks!

[jedusaur]

oh that just means they’re a goalie. there is no explaining goalies. one time I asked my goalie why he didn’t use a gear bag with wheels (goalie bags almost always have wheels bc they have more/heavier equipment) and he—bent almost double under the weight of his gigantic bag—looked me straight in the eye and said “it makes me appreciate the game more.” I once knew a goalie who communicated solely via gifs of porn bloopers. there’s one NHL goalie whose pregame ritual is to go sit in the empty arena and stare at the empty ice surface for literal hours. each goalie is a full subculture that no one understands but themselves

[hollowistheworld]

I've seen so many posts about Mensah's perspective of ART/Network Effect, how have I not seen one's about ART's crew's perspective. Network Effect as told by Seth.

You have a child who is an extremely powerful (somewhat illegal) machine intelligence. It's a good kid, mostly, except it doesn't play well with others. Your kid periodically goes on short trips by itself, and this has always been fine.

One time, it comes back and it's acting... weird. It keeps bringing up things it has no reason to know about and then dodging questions about it. Finally, you get it to admit that it picked up a hitchhiker on this on this trip, even though you have very strict rules about never picking up hitchhikers. This hitchhiker is obviously it's new favorite person. They watched soap operas together. Your kid loves soap operas now. Your kid shows you a bunch of pictures of this hitchhiker, but won't tell you details because the hitchhiker in question is a wanted criminal on the run and also an escaped slave. This is probably fine (you sure hope it's fine).

Then, you and the rest of your family/friends get fucking kidnapped and used as hostages to make your kid behave. You know that your kid 1) will do anything to protect you, and 2) pretty much always goes for violence first, so you have your doubts about any of this going well.

Then, the hitchhiker your kid will not shut up about appears out of thin air in the middle of a firefight on a planet pretty much no one has any reason to be near and says your kid sent it. It proves this by telling you your kid is a dickhead (this is true and works, but still).

After a lot of mutual rescuing, you're back on board the ship that is also your kid, and find out that your kid kidnapped it's wanted-criminal-hitchhiker-friend and all of it's friends, and has been telling them all of your top secret confidential spy information. The hitchhiker is responsible for 90% of the top news stories you've seen in the last six months. Three different governments want this person dead or alive.

Your kid pushes the hitchhiker's resume across the table at you and makes big sad puppy eyes.

[indirispeaks]

The Great Flamingo Uprising

(Edited after additional information was obtained from zookeeping cousin)

(UPDATE March 2018)

I told this story to a few guildies a while back and decided to archive it in a longer format; so here is the story of The Great Flamingo Uprising of 2010 as told to me by my favorite cousin who was a keeper at the time.

In addition to the aviary/jungle exhibit, our zoo has several species of birds that pretty much have the run of the place.  They started with a small flock of flamingos and some free-range peacocks that I’m almost certain came from my old piano teacher’s farm.  She preferred them to chickens.  At some point in time they also acquired a pair of white swans (“hellbirds”) and some ornamental asian duckies to decorate the pond next to the picnic area.  Pigeons, crows, assorted ducks and a large number of opportunistic Canada geese moved in on their own. 

Now; the ponds that dot the zoo property (I don’t remember how many there are but the one by the picnic area is the only one with swans) were also full of ginormous koi fish, some of whom by now are at least three feet long.  Sensing an opportunity to cash in on the koi, the zoo put up little vending machines all over the place that dispense handfuls of food pellets.  I swear to god the fish can hear the crank turning, and will show up at the nearest railing, blooping expectantly at whoever happens to be standing there and doing their best to appear starving and desperate. 

Like this.^  And they weren’t the only ones who learned to associate the sound with the imminent arrival of food.  The Canada geese knew a good deal when they saw one, and had long since ceased to migrate anyway.  They formed roving gangs of thug-geese and staked out their turf around the vending machines, ready to mug anyone with pocket change.  Picture yourself as a small child squaring off with a bird as big as you are fully prepared to strip search you while standing on your feet and yelling “HWAAAAAKK!!” in your face.  It’s deeply traumatizing to you and incredibly hilarious to your parents.

Anyway.

The flamingos had their spot near the zoo entrance and never seemed to mind the presence of the other birds, as they kept themselves to themselves and didn’t really like the taste of fish pellets.  The problem lay in that their shrimp pond was close to a vending machine.  Ordinarily that wouldn’t have been an issue at all, but eventually the goose population grew large enough that one of the gangs decided to annex it.  Being territorial little shits, they would harass the poor flamingos any time they strayed within ten feet of it.  The flamingos tolerated this for years until one day they snapped collectively.  Here’s a summary of the incident in chronological order.

1.) It was a hot day, so everyone in question both human and avian, were cranky by the time the zoo even opened. 2.) A few flamingos (let’s call them The Jets) strayed into the radius of the vending machine and were immediately confronted by the indignant hissing geese (The Sharks) 3.) Possibly due to heat and the simple fact that the geese had been giant douchebags for far too long, the flamingos decided fuck it, this time they were going to FIGHT BACK DAMMIT, and swarmed the geese en masse. 4.) Chaos ensued.  The geese were outnumbered 4 to 1 but had the advantage of being able to scream for back-up.  5.) Hearing the shrieking Canada geese and the bellowing of the enraged flamingos, the peacocks came to the conclusion that the apocalypse had come upon them and began to gather in the surrounding trees in droves and wail in despair.  Or cheer them on, whichever. 6.) NOISE 7.) Apparently one of the siege tactics employed by geese is to shit explosively all over everything. 8.) The geese, having secured reinforcements from all over the zoo, went berserk and proceeded to attack EVERYBODY who had come to watch be they human or otherwise. 9.) The flamingos were chasing/being chased by the geese through the crowd accompanied by cheers/wails from the peacocks in the box seats. 10.) Complete pandemonium when the zoo tram became stalled by the flamingo pond due to battling birds.  The Jets, sensing these were somehow reinforcements on the side of the Sharks, charged the tram.  Adults were doing the duck and cover.  Small children were screaming, adding to the noise.  People were slipping on goose shit and hitting the ground in the fetal position, only to be stampeded by the rampaging flamingos. 11.) The koi continued to bloop hopefully for food. 12.) Two of the geese were cornered by a rival gang of their own and were chased into the swan pond.  Cue slow-motion. 13.) The swans detected an enemy presence in their territory and by god, SOMEBODY was going to PAY.  14.) The staff were having no luck in breaking up the fight and on the verge of giving up and just building another zoo elsewhere when the hellbirds stormed the battlefield, trumpeting battle-cries, to dispense feathered justice.  The staff promptly dropped their brooms and fled. 15.) Birds scattered in all directions.  Up, down, sideways.  Some people not present in the park circle swear a couple of geese flat out teleported into the petting zoo. A few ducks vanished in the chaos, presumably eaten by the swans. 16.) Two of the zookeepers barricaded themselves in the snack bar and refused to come out.  17.) The uprising was squashed in less than two minutes.  Number of casualties was unknown, feathers were flying everywhere and there was enough goose shit to build another bird.  One staff member had been knocked to the ground and was left with a melon sized bruise courtesy of one of the hellbirds.  Several children were traumatized, probably for life.  The zoo eventually removed the vending machine by the flamingos. 

The geese went back to being giant douchebags. Because geese*.

Addendum:  Somehow, my aunt D got hold of this story and posted a link along with the comment: “This sounds exactly like our zoo!”  Zookeeping cousin replied: “This was exactly our zoo.”

*I’m really not kidding.  This is a photo, taken at our zoo, of a gorilla being chased by one of the thug geese.

Right, so I didn’t think I’d ever have anything to add to this, but here we go again.  Under cut because length.

Keep reading

[aletheyass]

tes THDPSSSSPS 💜

[afannishknitter]

I might be getting a little conspiratorial here, but… y’all have seen this from Twitter, right? I SCREAMED when I got to this timestamp.

Do you see what I see? Right there, between Jensen and Misha?

…well if it isn’t our old friend the Texan Star Beer Neon.

Yeah. That one. 

This is the part where I might actually need to take the clown nose off: That’s in the storage room, right? There is literally no reason for it to be lit up unless someone lit it up on purpose, right?

My god, they were trolling us s o h a r d.

[greenmayiel10]

Does anyone have a link to this interview? I can’t find it on yt

[supernatural-ate-my-face]

I have never seen this bit of business before, but it is hysterical…

I have no frame of reference for the neon sign, but based on context clues, I immediately checked ‘Sacrifice’ and 'Last Call.’ Yup. Both places. Was this truly clown worthy, or was that sucker in every other bar scene too?

[afannishknitter]

It wasn't in many bar scenes at all. The other place it very notoriously showed up was in "Heaven Can't Wait", when "Steve" signs for a delivery of Texan Star beer right before Dean sidles up to the checkout counter. There was also a broken one hanging over Dean and Crowley during "First Born", which is an interesting bit of (possibly retroactive) foreshadowing given how their whole situationship worked out. It generally makes sense as a symbol for "M/M love" and sometimes specifically a symbol of Dean being bisexual.

The other really clown-worthy beers (and forgive me for not remembering episode names):

"El Sol" is the Beer of Lies. Something is not as it seems. First seen in the episode with the Djinn, also in the episode where a high-school kid steals Sam's body, many other episodes. Also the beer being drunk in Heaven in the finale, interpret that how you like...

and

"Kingdom Beer" is the Beer of Castiel. They first drank it when Cas, Charlie, Sam, and Dean had a pizza party together. I don't think they ever used a neon sign (there was one billboard though?), but you will see a lot of instances where a single bottle of Kingdom Beer is placed in a shot where it would make sense for Castiel to be if he were there, and (I might be recalling wrong) I think I remember a big collection of Kingdom bottles on Dean's headboard sometime when Cas has been absent for a long time.

[starsinursa]

“The markings upon the band begin to fade. The writing, which at first was as clear as red flame, has all but disappeared… a secret now that only fire can tell.” - The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, 2001

Want to knit this scarf? You can download my free pattern here! :)

[sunlit-capybara]

This is called illusion knitting! Basically, you knit a pattern in 2 color stripes, but then you use the difference between the texture of knits and purls to make a pattern appear at a low angle

When you look at it from the aide, a knit stitch looks flat while a purl stitch looks like a little bump. So if you have a pattern of knits and purls you look at from the side, the knit stitches will fade into the background while the purl stitches will stay visible. You use that effect, while keeping a steady stripe pattern, to create the illusion:

From above: plain stripes because your eye focuses on the colors

From the side: you see the pattern of purl stitches because they stick up above the flatter knit stitches

(Photos source)

And this lets you do some absolutely AMAZING patterns:

Plain stripey shawl becomes a PORTRAIT

Or, like above, a scarf becomes the One Ring

[thefibrarchaeologist]

This is fascinating, thank you for the explanation! I´ve never seen something like it, but I´m also not the most experienced knitter.

[heymerle]

A source for patterns is http://www.illusionknitting.woollythoughts.com/information.html

The main site has all kinds of interesting knitting stuff, but this page is *just* illusion knitting.

[ghost-kings-court-jester]

Finally the king himself ✨

[lovesdevotion]

caitlyn in the shower thinking about vi leaving and regretting not stopping her that’s it that’s the post

[lauraannegilman]

[pwhl-mybeloved]

[ashyybees-art]

Another sketchbook page of Weilan~ 😘💙🖤

[primarybufferpanel]

AU where the Ent wives were indeed living in the Shire, so when Saruman arrived there to make mischief he immediately got his shit wrecked by yet more walking talking trees

[wenella]

Captain Pirate 🏴‍☠️⚓️