Illusions-in-octarine

[illusions-in-octarine]

@amarguerite @currentlycryingaboutlancelot, you wouldn't happen to be working for the same trope propaganda apartment?

[byjove]

at least now we know why he has yet to return when Britain is in peril

[kitkatmoose]

We need a flick where King Arthur wakes in modern Jamaica and is very confused.

[byjove]

I think that would be so much funny. He wakes up on a remote beach in Jamaica and he only speaks/understands Brythonic and Medieval Latin. Locals assume he was a tourist who fell from a cruise ship or received a head injury and floated away from a resort. The authorities cannot match his description to any missing persons reports and his fingerprints and DNA produce no hits on INTERPOL. They suspect he may be Welsh or French because the language he speaks resembles Welsh or Breton but France and the UK both state he is not a citizen of their country. Stateless and deeply confused, he is taken in by the community near the beach where he was found, being cared for by a number of local families and doing odd jobs. He slowly learns English and adjusts to the contemporary world, uncertain if his belief that he is the legendary King Arthur was formed by whatever traumatic event caused him to end up Jamaica or if he is actually King Arthur and Prydain is in eminent peril. Mysterious letters from Morgan begin to reaffirm his belief he is King Arthur. He must choose between staying in Jamaica and continuing the happy life he has made for himself or finding a way to get back to Britain without any documentation.

[a-daks]

ancient king white boy stuns locals by ordering in perfect Jamaican Patois

[byjove]

He gets to Britain and everyone expects him to sound like a posh noble Englishman because that is the picture Malory painted but he prefers to speak Welsh and when he has to speak English, he speaks with a thick Jamaican accent.

[caluanthes]

Is this Jack Robinson speaking, or are you still incognito? You want me to ride shotgun over Hugh.

MISS FISHER’S MURDER MYSTERIES 2x11 - Dead Air

[littlestpersimmon]

Free Ornamentation IV. This work is dedicated to the public domain 🐌

[4nimal]

I turned them into individual transparent pngs if anyone wants those premade!

(Op lmk if you want me to take this down, I'd totally understand—on the other hand, I'd love to do it for the other public domain pieces you've done if that's ok!)

[medievalreligiousfanatic]

[ursus-arctos-horribilis-chadder]

Foul beast ate that adventurer whole, RIP

[parkayquarts]

hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS

[parkayquarts]

somewhere out there is a guy who meticulously takes screenshots of every individual frame of his favorite tv shows and then painstakingly etches each one onto a roll of film which he puts into his old timey projector and recreates the footage as a silent film with his own lavishly hand-lettered dialogue cards and original score that he plays on his upright piano and charges audiences one shiny penny a play. at last, big media has finally outsmarted ol' Zachary Zoetrope

[theheroheart]

PSA for everyone who doesn't know, explained simply

this is NOT because of blocking screenshots, it's because of HOW streaming sites use your computer's hardware to optimise performance, which means the thing rendering the video and the thing capturing your screen aren't the SAME thing. so they can't talk together.

you can fix this by going to your browser settings, searching for "hardware acceleration", and turning that off.

[team-thickness12]

This also fixes screen sharing to other screens. It has been GODSEND

[lucarleigho]

type this in the toolbar to find this setting in firefox: about:preferences#searchResults

[didanagy]

THE ILLUSIONIST (2006)

dir. neil burger

[monkleya]

a study in mon mothma throughout andor, featuring king by florence and the machine

@kleyamaarki put this in my head and i couldn't stop thinking about it until this happened. also thank you to @vidathomir for assisting with the tay screencaps !

loneliness || choreomania

[askebos]

“Stop thinking about saving your fragile face. Tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp. We will not blame you if your words go down in flames and nothing is left but the raw-scald. We will not blame you if, with the reticence of a surgeon’s hands, your words suture only the red places where blood might flow. We will not blame you because we know you can never do it properly: once and for all. Passion is never enough. Talent is never enough. Skill is never enough. But try. For our sake and yours. So. Forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul. You, so blessed with occasional blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

— Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Levels of understanding other slavic languages

oh we also have X and it means the same!

that looks like X but misspelled

that's just the archaic variant of X

this sounds a lot like Y from another slavic language I know which means X in mine so this almost 100% also means X

this word is completely different but I can kinda tell the meaning from the morphology

what

okay right now I'm gonna have to dissect the entirety of this language's history to figure out how the FUCK did y'all get to the point of calling X that and not something more normal

I wanted to ask for X and accidentally called someone a whore

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

I don't even have to look at the blog and I just know this is from a Pole about Czechs

suffering

[byrons]

KAKAOVY CHLEBICEK???!!!???

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

hissing growling scratching you etc etc

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

for example

(Polish: are you looking for a squirrel?, Slovak: excuse me, he is doing what to the squirrel?)

(also "hladna pića" means "cold drinks" in Croatian. means "hungry cunt" in Slovak and Czech)

("you're weird" in Czech is the same as "you're amazing" in Croatian, while "you're amazing" in Czech is the same as "you're terrible" in Croatian)

[poetka]

My favourite recent-ish example of #8:

[visloka]

[czto-nebud-blog]

Don't forget this:

And of course pomoć (help) vs pomoč (ordering you to piss on something)

[czto-nebud-blog]

Also remembered this shop from my trip to Croatia (piko means meth in czech and slovak)

[kaazdalena]

przepraszam w CZYM ta restauracja????

[axolotl-anemonoides]

This reminds me of that time my (Czech) family went to Poland for my uncle's wedding (because my aunt - his wife - is Polish and they decided to get married in Poland).

The wedding afterparty was in full swing, everyone was drinking and partying.... and an elderly Polish lady approached my two aunts (who were also drinking a lot and partying hard) and commented something along the lines of "jesteście odporne". Which in Polish means "you're resilient" (as in they're handling the alcohol well) but in Czech it means "you're disgusting".

It took my aunts a bit to remember that it means something different in Polish. 😅

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

another beautiful case of n.8 from @someidioticurl

Czech vision: ah yes an emergency button to press in case of emergency

Polish vision:

[ta-bajna-cerna-okybaca]

Oh, I have a few!

'pozor' in Czech means 'watch out!', but means 'shame' in Russian

droga in czech means drug, in polish it means road

záchod in czech means toilet, zachód in polish means 'west'

odchod 'to depart' in Czech means very specifically 'to depart by foot', while in Slovak it has a bit wider meaning, and buses and trains also combine with 'odchod'. To a Czech speaker this gives the funny implication that departing trains grow legs and walk out of the train station

Croatian 'mrdati' = to wiggle, means 'to have sex' in Czech

'Čerstvý, voňavý chléb' is Czech for 'fresh, nicely smelling bread'. In means the opposite in some slavic languages 'stale, stinky bread'. This kind of 'good meaning in one but bad meaning in other' duality happens surprisingly often actually, see also úžas and odporný above

otrok in Czech means 'slave' but in Slovenian and perhaps other South slavic languages it means 'child'. Very funny when combined with bazaar, turns a perfectly fine baby bazar into a slave bazaar

My friend has a fun sentence from Slovenian - "Hitri otroci kuhali jed na Dunaji". Literally none of the words here mean what a Czech thinks they mean. No not even Dunaj. Czechs read it as 'smart slaves were disemboweling poison by the Donau river', original Slovenian meaning is 'fast children were cooking food in Vienna'

Edit: wait one more. "srpanj" in Croatian means July, "srpen" in Czech means August. Listopad in Croatian means 'October', in Czech means 'November'. rujan in Croatian means 'September', říjen in Czech means 'October'. kwiecień in Polish means 'April', kviteń in Ukrainian also means 'April', květen in Czech means 'May'. Months are fucked up.

[sententiola]

[Video of venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough standing amid vegetation.  On a near-horizontal branch above his head is a brown and yellow greater bird of paradise, about the size of a crow, with big floaty yellow plumage puffing out along its back.]

Bird:  Pwuk.  Pwuk. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  This, surely – Bird (hopping along the branch):  WUKWUKWUkwukwukwukoooh.  Oooh.  Oooh.

[Cut.  Same shot.]

Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  This, surely, is one – Bird:  Kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark kark. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  This, surely –

[Cut.  Same shot but the bird is on the other side now and venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough has his hand on the branch.]

Bird (hopping up and down on venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough’s fingers):  Eh-eh.  Eh-eh.  Eh-urrrr.  Eh-urrrr. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  Close up – Bird (hopping away from him):  Tiktiktiktik.  Tiktiktiktik. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – the plumes – Bird (hopping around):  Huek. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough: – are truly – Bird:  Huek. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – exquisite. Bird:  Huek.  Eh-eh. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  The gauzy – Bird (hopping and spinning on the spot):  HukWUKWUKWukwukoooh.  Oooh. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  …

[Cut.  Same shot but the bird is back on the original side of the branch.]

Bird:  Aark. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  Of course, by the eighteenth century – Bird:  Ehhh. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – naturalists realized that birds of paradise – Bird (hops across to the other side of the branch) Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – did have – Bird (hopping back again):  Krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – legs.  Even so – Bird:  WUKWUKWUKWukwukwukooh.

[Cut.  Same shot.] Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough (apparently trying to tickle the bird’s tummy):  – by about the eighteenth century – Bird (hops away and spins round) Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – and so – Bird:  AAAAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK AAAK aaak. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough (wearily):  …  Very well.

[Cut.  Same shot.]

Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – but Karl Linnaeus, the great – Bird (vibrating rapidly on the spot and then flapping its wings):  PWAAAAAAAK. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – classifier of the natural world – Bird:  AAAAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAAUUUH AAUUH. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – when he came to allocate a scientific name – Bird:  … Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – to this bird – Bird:  … Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – called it – Bird:  Wooo-ooo. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – wooo-ooo – Bird (surveys the surroundings with a dignified turn of the head) Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  ‘paradisia apoda’: the bird of paradise – Bird:  Hoooo. Venerable TV naturalist David Attenborough:  – without legs. Bird:  Eh-eh.

[Close-up of the bird.]

Bird:  WUKWUKWUKWUkwukwukwukwukoooh.  Ooh. Bird:  Ooh.

[Fade to black.]

[charminglyantiquated]

that story where you challenge the fairy queen to a match of wit and skill to win back your loved one. and it goes … fine, you think? probably.

adapted from this very short Elsewhere University piece, changed slightly to be a little more self-contained.

other comics//tapastic//patreon//ko-fi

[systlin]

"Sys how is your decent into fiber arts hell going"

Glad you asked. I have arrived at 'modern flax is Bullshit compared to what we had in historical textiles, the flax widely available for handspinning is basically the tow that would be discarded from textile creation and used with tar to caulk ships back in the day'

This naturally led me down a hole of 'why is the staple length of this stuff a bullshit 6 inches' and the answer is 'we have bred modern flax more for the oil than the fiber because cotton usurped the place of everyday textile thanks to slavery and the cotton gin'

Anyway, THIS led me to a rabbit hole that culminated in me finding flax seed bred for proper 30 inch tall plants for fiber, sold by some fellow minded nerds on a website that has not been updated since 1998 and you have to email them to buy anything.

Anyway how are all of you doing.

[systlin]

I FAILED YOU ALL here is the site. You can also buy flax fiber from them. The PROPER shit, not the hot garbage ass tow fiber sold as flax top for handspinners.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

And why did the value plummet, Marissa? Why did it plummet?

[red-mercer]

Would like to know how exactly she wouldn't fuck up Netflix or Hulu

[sreegs]

Yahoo thought Tumblr would be the next PDF

Yahoo’s grand plan for Tumblr was to turn it into a “next-generation PDF”

They didn't really get it.

[noctumsolis]

What does that even mean? PDF as in Portable Document Format?

[sreegs]

i cannot stress enough that i dont think yahoo even knew what a pdf was

[virdigrishammer]

you left out the best part of that article. the poor yahoo emplyees at those meetings were just as confused as the rest of us.

[ralfmaximus]

Everyone is right to dunk on Yahoo and "tumblr is the new PDF" because yeah, everything about that era was stupid.

But the PDF thing kinda makes sense. Bear with me.

But first, some context.

See, in the 1990s before PDF files there was almost no way to generate a document on a Mac and read it on a PC. Or vice versa. Businesses struggled with how to email important documents around and guarantee they looked the same on the other end, regardless of what computer & software the recipient had.

Adobe changed all that with PDF.

Since Acrobat Reader was available (and free!) for Windows & Mac, suddenly the problem went away. Everyone knew how to read a PDF. Adobe became a universally recognized brand overnight even if you'd never heard of Photoshop, because everyone had goddamn Adobe Reader installed.

Because of that, every tech company yearned to be just like Adobe: invent something universally desired, used by billions of people.

Fast forward to a Yahoo/tumblr meeting sometime in 2013/2014.

Tumblr development staff demonstrates how the back end of tumblr works, which (honestly) is revolutionary as compared with how any other social media site worked at the time. Each tumblr post is composed of blocks of data, any one of which can be text, sound, an image, a movie... anything. These blocks of data are threaded together into what looks to the user like one cohesive message (a single tumblr post) but under the hood it's magic.

Further, the mechanism for doing this can be standardized. In other words: tumblr could, if they wanted, publish the standard as a way for ANY social media site to manage its data.

If other sites did that, then they could trade messages with tumblr! Imagine posting a message on tumblr and reading it on Instagram. Or see twitter messages natively on your tumblr feed. I mean personally, that's a horror show. But the concept is interesting.

(In fact, that's how Mastodon and the Fediverse work in 2025. Each Mastodon post is a standard chunk of data that any website can read & display, assuming it understands the underlying ActivityPub protocol and plays by its rules.)

So the Yahoo executives attend this technology demonstration and one of them quite visibly has a light bulb wink into existence over their head. The light bulb is an old school incandescent, 300 watts at least, and glows furiously bright.

The Yahoo exec stands up. His chair knocks backwards.

"OH MY GOD," he stammers. "This tumblr thing could revolutionize social media. It'd be like the new PDF!"

Then blood shoots out of his nostrils and his head explodes, but all anyone ever remembers from that meeting is "PDF".

@sreegs or @cyle or @jv can probably explain it better, but that's what I remember hearing at the time. Please feel free to correct me.

[cyle]

the details here aren't correct, but as i've said many times, yeah, the PDF thing was in direct response to the Neue Post Format, which is how post and reply content is stored on tumblr. it's not as dumb as it sounds. (without that context, it does sound dumb.)

[hugtheteadrinkthekitten]

Can't believe over a decade later we're finally getting an explanation for the PDF thing.

[ckyo24]

Daenerys in Padme Amidala’s lake dress

[homo-trashcanicus]

it's been said but i'll say it again: top tier bit of this show is whenever changyu is being given the slightest offense and it pans to yan zheng VERY LOUDLY lefty-looseying the screws on his hinges in the background

[mashumaru]

Xie Zheng, a damsel in the tower, who occasionally climbs down his tower to murder his wife's enemies.