Aliya Smyth

I don't know how, but you found me. This is where I stick things about history, quotes, writing, and lately, Marvel and Star Wars stuff. I write longer things at https://medium.com/@AliyaSmyth

[dracofidus-deactivated20200523]

Needless to say, I am HORRIFIED.

[thecottageinthedark]

‘All that you need to know about boars can be summed up in the fact that if you wish to hunt them, you must have a specially made boar spear. This spear has a crosspiece on it to prevent the boar from charging the length of the spear, driving it all the way through his own body, to savage the human holding the other end.’

-Boar and Apples, T. Kingfisher

[dracofidus-deactivated20200523]

fuck OFF

[palindromordnilap-deactivated20]

Note that pigs are also HUGE. So, yes, they ARE slightly larger pigs.

[dracofidus-deactivated20200523]

So I grew up in the city and have never seen a pig in real life and I just googled it and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

I thought they were like labrador sized, like, fat labradors, not mini-cows.

[tokensouthernbelle]

every time I see this post there are more people discovering how fuck off huge pigs actually are and I love it I thought this was a thing everyone knew but clearly not and I’m laughing 

[stillwaterseas]

This is me with our Tamworth boar, a heritage breed closer to their wild cousins than the Yorkshire above. I am a fully grown, average sized human. He was a gentle sweetie who, sadly, is no longer with us. His name was Mr. Big. 

[dracofidus-deactivated20200523]

FUCK OFF

[coelasquid]

Forever laffin’ at people who don’t understand how enormous, terrifying, and tenacious wild boar are. 

They’re like if bears had knives protruding from their closed mouths and Didn’t Know When To Quit. Their survival instincts when they’re wounded aren’t “run away and minimize injury” it’s “take the thing that hurt you down with you” They also make sounds like someone crossed a pig with an alligator.

Their head and neck alone can be like the size of an entire human torso.

Also forever laffin’ at people who think pigs are tiny, ‘cause we designed those things can get in the neighbourhood of a thousand pounds in ideal circumstances. 

It’s like when people assume Tuna must be small because they’ve only ever experienced them in hockey puck form.

[obstinate-nocturna]

Like seriously why the fuck y'all think everyone FREAKED THE HELL OUT when Dorothy fell into the pig pen in Wizard of Oz? It’s because pigs are HUGE and weigh a shitton and would crush her in an instant.

[proserpine-in-phases]

also dont they eat like, basically anything?

[justabrowncoatedwench]

YUP. Pigs will eat people, if given the chance. They dgaf.

[wolverinequeen]

That’s why boar hunters use a team of very tenacious dogs to hold the boar so they can be speared without fucking you up. The dogs wear body armour. 

I’ve heard stories of people shooting boars, and if it didn’t kill them, it just pissed them off. 

[andthentheywilleatthestars]

how the hell did we ever domesticate these things?

[petermorwood]

…“how the hell did we ever domesticate these things?”

Very carefully, I would imagine.

WIld boar babies are rather cute, like living humbugs…

…but the adults and their ferocity have been associated with warriors for thousands of years, from Mycenaean Greece (a helmet made from sections of boar tusk)…

…through Celtic Europe (reconstructed carnyx war-horns and standards)…

…Ancient Rome (the crest of Legion 20 “Valeria Victrix”). A couple more legions also used a boar as their crest - I wonder did they squabble over which was the “right” one the way a couple of Swiss cantons had a little war over whose bear was best…?

…then Anglo-Saxon and pre-Viking helmet crests…

…right up to the late Middle Ages (here the white boar badge of Richard Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III of England)…

…and the blue boar badge of the Earl of Oxford, more usually represented by the De Vere arms, quarterly gules and or, in the first a molet argent.

After Richard was defeated at Bosworth in 1485, there was a run on blue paint as inn-signs were changed to reflect new loyalties since Oxford was on the winning side…

And pigs will definitely eat people.

It gets mentioned in the movie “Snatch”, the book/movie “Hannibal” and the webcomic “Lackadaisy Cats”, among numerous other fictional sources, and IRL it’s suspected to be the reason why numerous missing persons have stayed missing.

More here (another comment to this same OP) and here (slightly different).

Here’s some boar-hunting armour for dogs, ancient…

…and modern…

…and the modern one looks very like a simple style of ancient…

[dduane]

So when Odysseus’s old nurse recognizes him by the scar he got from the boar-tusk slash that almost killed him… now you get the resonance.

[bookoisseur]

This post…it just really went places on me.

[wilwheaton]

I hope you read this entire post, and that it made your entire day so much better, even if just for a few moments, like it did mine.

[basinke]

giant fuckoff alligator wolves

[aliyasmyth]

Respect the boar. RESPECT!

[history-and-stuff-and-things]

[retrogasm-deactivated20161109]

When they realized women were using their sacks to make clothes for their children, flour mills started using flowered fabric for their sacks. The label was designed to wash out.

[redjeep]

1939 Kansas Wheat…

[roachpatrol]

holy fuck that’s the cutest marketing scheme i’ve ever heard of 

‘buy our flour it’s going to make the nicest bread and the sweetest dress!’ 

yes thank you ok sold

[professorsparklepants]

There was also a chicken feed company that did this. My great-grandmother used to recycle the chicken feed bags to make dresses for my grandmother. That was also a pretty common practice; you can read about it in the Kit series of the American Girl books.

[saladofdoubt]

Okay but think about being a little girl wearing flour-sack dresses because your family can’t afford dress fabrics, and you’re always embarrassed because everyone else knows. And then one day you get to saunter into school showing off your cute little flowery dress. Because a company decided to add something to its product for a reason other than just making money for itself. Isn’t that great?

[squeeful]

They made pretty nice clothes, too, as flour sack fabric has to be fine and tightly woven to prevent the flour from working its way through.

When WWII hit, it amped up and it wasn’t just children wearing them.  Apparel fabrics were rationed, but flour sack fabric wasn’t.  Flour companies started competing to see who can make the prettiest, most appealing flour sack flower print.  If you look at some 40s war-era patterns, they have interesting seam lines designed to utilize the narrower fabric widths of sacks instead of bolt yardage.

[lordmogatron]

Exactly two people on the planet are allowed to wear a wifebeater tucked into jeans

That will be all; I won’t be taking questions.

[maxximoffed]

[gemma-antiqua]

Ancient Egyptian frog ring, dated to the eighteenth to nineteenth dynasties of the New Kingdom, or c. 1543-1187 BCE. The ring is made of Egyptian blue, which, according to the source, was a “vibrant blue pigment, considered to be the first synthetically-produced pigment, composed of quartz sand, a copper compound, and calcium carbonate. The colour blue was highly prized in ancient Egypt and the creation of a synthetic pigment allowed artists to produce imitations of the precious stones lapis lazuli and turquoise, which were expensive and not always readily accessible.” Egyptian blue fell out of favor sometime during the Roman period.

[ishtargates]

Explains why Rome gets more time in the spotlight than the ancient Near East (x).

~Hasmonean

[aliyasmyth]

This made my day. And now I must write a story about the Goth Jocks of Kush.

[somethoughtseeds]

[stand-up-gifs]

[spideyytorch]

I

[yellowbloods-deactivated2021051]

why do character in movies have such a hard time keeping AIs from turning evil oh my god

[yellowbloods-deactivated2021051]

if(GoingToTurnEvil)

{ dont(); }

[aliyasmyth]

😂

[amarshmallownamedo]

Movie 1: lose the hammer

Movie 2: use the hammer

Movie 3: BECOME the hammer

[aliyasmyth]

Forged in the heart of a dying star. Thor — stormbringer and stormbreaker.

[archaeologicalnews]

Update: Headless Pompeii Victim Wasn't Crushed to Death, After All

He was an unlucky person in an ill-fated place: A man whose head was seemingly crushed by a massive boulder as he fled Pompeii during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Now, his head has been found, along with the reason for his death, officials from the Pompeii Archaeological Park in Italy report.

Archaeologists located the open-mouthed skull near the unfortunate man’s body, which was unearthed in May. The find negates their previous theory that the man was crushed by the stone block (thought to be a door jamb) while trying to flee the second phase of the eruption that preserved much of the ancient Roman city beneath rock and ash.

“Now we know that the death was not due to the impact of the block, but presumably from probable asphyxiation due to the pyroclastic flow,” wrote the Pompeii Archaeological Park on its Facebook page. Read more.

[micdotcom]

Watch: This revolutionary technology is changing the world for kids born without limbs 

[krystallkitty]

That’s awesome and I’m sure its way cheaper than a prosthetic, but seriously it cannot be cheap to 3d print something that big…

[unofficialasha-deactivated20161]

this one 17 year old guy 3d printed an entire arm and shoulder for himself and it cost him $250

this seven year old girl got half an arm (just like lusie in the gifs) 3d printed and it only cost $50

can we just compare that with the average price of buying a prosthetic

3d printing is gonna help so many people holy crap 

[geekghoulsmash]

No no no, guys, this gif set leaves out the literal best stuff from the video.

So a few years back, this guy who accidentally cut off his fingers, teamed up with a special effects artist/puppeteer and created a 3D printable prosthetic hand, that used the movement of the wearer to be able to grab things. The guys who did this said they were just going to post the schematics online, which in turn lead to creating a network of people with 3D printers, who were willing to print prosthetics for people. The network of volunteers, turned into an organization that gives prosthetic arms/hands to kids who need them. They have science types improving the designs and creating new ones, they got a grant from Google, classrooms and scout troops are getting involved and making prosthetic hands for people.

Everything about this is amazing.

[aliyasmyth]

“Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.”

—Madeline Miller (Circe)

[lousysharkbutt]

screencap redraw

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[p0p-vulture]

[ninjapancake314]

Aaaaaaaaaaaa @the-unforgiven-scone

[quotemadness]

“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”

— Lao Tzu

[finrays]

This is the humanities version of that spoof about scientists reminding the world that clean energy is ready to go whenever.

[archaeologicalnews]

Italy's oldest olive oil discovered in peculiar pot

Olive oil is a staple of Italian cuisine. It’s been that way for thousands of years. And new chemical analysis conducted on ancient pottery proves the liquid gold has existed in Italy hundreds of years longer than what anthropologists have previously recorded.

A team of researchers lead by Davide Tanasi, PhD, assistant professor of history at the University of South Florida, carried out chemical analyses to identify the content of a large jar, found in the 90s by Giuseppe Voza during the excavations at the site of Castelluccio. Conservators at the Archaeological Museum of Siracusa restored and reassembled 400 ceramic fragments, resulting in an egg-shaped 3 ½ foot storage container adorned with rope bands and three vertical handles on each side. At the same architectural site in Castelluccio in Sicily, researchers found two fragmented basins with an internal septum, indicating it was used to keep multiple substances together, but separate, along with a large terracotta cooking plate. Read more.