Three Goblin Art
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Product Placement
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
YOU ARE THE REASON
No title available
Claire Keane
occasionally subtle
h
Janaina Medeiros
we're not kids anymore.
Origami Around
Xuebing Du
pixel skylines
Today's Document
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Game of Thrones Daily
DEAR READER
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
taylor price
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@narcinidae
Bruce: Why is Tim crying over something so insignificant?
Dick: He’s twelve. This is probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.
Bruce: I never thought of that.
~later~
Bruce: Tim, I understand that this is the most traumatic thing that has happened in your very short life. It’s okay to cry about it.
Tim: Thanks, Bruce.
Bruce: Just remember that life is long and it’s going to get so, so much worse, that this will be nothing in comparison.
Tim: …
Dick: …
Bruce: Nailed it.
Concept: a planet-hopping sci fi RPG where the plot’s precipitating crisis is that three different interstellar empires have recently discovered that they’ve all historically claimed exactly the same region of space; they simply hadn’t noticed up until now because, you know, space is big, and they never managed to run into each other in spite of operating in the same area for thousands of years.
(Each faction’s respective leadership would very much like to resolve the problem the old-fashioned way, but their planets and systems are randomly mixed together throughout the claimed region, rendering it impossible to draw borders or establish protected supply lines, and nobody’s established military doctrine covers a situation like this.)
#a region referred to in three different official languages as ‘The Clusterfuck’ (via @azzandra)
I’m adopting #the clusterfuck as the official tag for this setting.
A ftl system that has such fiberously tangled channels and routs that they just loop around eachother like mad.
In my head, the mechanics of FTL travel are actually a key factor in making the setting work:
1. I’m picturing a universe with FTL travel, but no long range FTL communication. If you want to send a message to another star system without waiting decades or centuries for it to get there, you need to load it onto a courier drone that physically travels to the destination. Such courier networks are common for all three empires - but because they don’t transit the intervening normal space (see point 2, below), they never crossed paths.
2. The way FTL travel works means that ships in transit are undetectable in normal space. Their entries and exits from FTL travel are detectable in normal space, but the relevant indicators propagate at light speed, so any entry/exit events you randomly manage to detect almost certainly happened decades or centuries ago in your frame of reference.
The upshot is that if you happen to pick up the signature of a ship entering or exiting FTL-space, you have to cross-check it against literally centuries worth of records to figure out whether it’s one of yours or not; owing to a combination of poor internal communication and shoddy record-keeping, none of the three empires realised they were seeing more FTL events than could be accounted for by their own ships - until just a few months prior to the start of play.
As an FYI, Tumblr doesn’t make your inline images blurry randomly or for no reason. It’s a predictable outcome of two conflicting rules fighting each other (because Tumblr is a well designed site).
1. If you try to post an inline image that’s more than 810 pixels tall, Tumblr will resizie it so that it’s 810 pixels tall, adjusting the width proportionately. On the face of it this is reasonable; if this rule didn’t exist, assholes could bork your dash by posting an image that’s one pixel wide and a million pixels tall, forcing you to scroll forever.
e.g., if you post an inline image that’s 600 pixels wide and 2000 pixels tall, it will be resized to 243 pixels wide and 810 pixels tall, enforcing a maximum height of 810 pixels while retaining the same relative dimensions.
2. If you post an image that’s at least 300 pixels wide, Tumblr stretches it to be exactly as wide as the main column (currently 540 pixels), adjusting the height proportionately. This rule seems to exist in order to give Tumblr the freedom to tinker with the width of the main column without creating weird gaps at the sides of historical posts; whether this is a reasonable solution to that problem or not is… debateable.
e.g., if you post an inline image that’s 350 pixels wide and 500 pixels tall, it will be stretched to 540 pixels wide and 771 pixels tall, setting the width exactly equal to the main column width while retaining the same relative dimensions.
Now here’s the trick: rule 2 does not take any resizing performed due to rule 1 into account; it decides whether or not to stretch the image based on whether the original width was at least 300 pixels wide.
So let’s take that first example a step further. First, it takes your 600x2000 image and resizes it to 243x810 to achieve a maximum height of 810 pixels. Then, because the original width was at least 300 pixels, it takes the resized 243x810 image and stretches it to 540x1800, an effective “zoom” of over 220% - hence the blurriness.
This rules conflict can lead to some entertainingly stupid results in certain edge cases. For example, suppose that you posted an inline image 350 pixels wide by 10000 pixels tall - a real dash-buster! Tumblr would resize it to 28x810 - but since the original image was at least 300 pixels wide, it would promptly stretch that 28x810 image to 540x15621, resulting in an even more obnoxious image than you started out with, while also rendering its contents almost entirely indecipherable due to the effective 1900% zoom.
Of course, you can avoid all this simply by keeping any inline images that are taller than they are wide under 810 pixels in height and either under 300 pixels or at least 540 pixels in width, which is probably the best way to go unless you enjoy doing math. (With the caveat that it could all break hilarious the next time @staff dinks with how undersize and oversize images are handled, of course, but that would have been true anyway.)
Technology is fun!
After reading the Orc biology post, I was wondering how significantly different in size or shape do noses or ears need to be, in a humanoid creature, to have noticeably better sense of smell or hearing?
It’s not just the shape of the ears or nose that will improve those senses, but also their position on the head, size, and the size of the relevant area of the brain dedicated to interpreting those senses. So you’re going to be really renovating the skull and brain cavity if you’re enhancing any senses.
Consider this basic model of the human brain and the relative areas where we process each input. We have vision at the very back, in the occipital lobe. Hearing, taste and touch (and movement) are in the middle on either side, and smell is at the very front, so little in a human we can barely see it.
Now, I wont show pictures of the real animal brains, just link them, but consider the following comparative anatomy.
The polar bear, which has a much better sense of smell, has additional prominences at the front (rostral) part of the brain to accommodate the extra nerves.
The rabbit has these same sort of prominences, and packed on a little extra lateral tissue, probably for hearing.
The bat requires excellent smell, hearing and fine movement in order to function.
And the elephant has just got so much going on, notice all that extra space for movement and touch, and think about what that trunk can do.
There’s a bunch of other species here if you want to look around. Remember that the depth of sulci and gyri on the surface of the brain is widely believed to be associated with intelligence because it increases the surface area of the brain. Comparative anatomy is fascinating.
So you need both the hardware and the software to enhance a sense in any given fantasy or sci-fi species. Sticking cat ears or a pig snout on someone wont grant them an enhanced sense alone, you need the brain tissue to go along with it.
Playbuzz Quiz, Which Robin are You?
https://www.playbuzz.com/item/b93aebc4-65b3-4b1f-8a6b-83105813bfce
it's been months since you've made that post and i still think about it every single day. please tell us more about Brad, Bruce Wayne's illegitimate son.
Brad gets the impression that Tim is the sort of dweeby nerd that probably gets bullied a lot, and chalks his emotionally-repressed angst and weird bruises up to the effects of getting beaten up at school.
So he decides to teach him how to fight.
Kuzu wanted me to mention that Brad assumes Damian is Like That because he’s going through a middle school ninja phase and is just really into Sasuke or something. He buys him Naruto merchandise.
THANK U
it's been months since you've made that post and i still think about it every single day. please tell us more about Brad, Bruce Wayne's illegitimate son.
Brad gets the impression that Tim is the sort of dweeby nerd that probably gets bullied a lot, and chalks his emotionally-repressed angst and weird bruises up to the effects of getting beaten up at school.
So he decides to teach him how to fight.
thank u
SQUIRMING MOMMY MUNCHERS
hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s installment of Weird Biology! today, we’re going to talk about the secret basement-child of the Amphibian family. put your surprised face on and get ready to be a little uncomfortable, because it’s-
CAECILIAN, YOU’RE BREAKING MY HEART! YOU’RE SHAKING MY CONFIDENCE DAILYYY!
(i’ll stop, I’ll stop)
Caecilians (‘seh-SILL-yuns’) are a group of limbless top-secret wiggly-writhy-squirmy-wormy amphibians that live in tropical regions across the world. their name is Latin for “blind ones”, which is metal as hell but I’ll get more into that later.
there are nearly 200 species of Caecilians out there, but you’ll likely never see one in the wild because they’re so top secret. need to know only, sorry. seriously though, Caecilians are burrowers who spend their entire lives underground. in the dirt. like worms.
whiiiich they look almost exactly like.
unlike worms though, they don’t flop around on a sidewalk after a rainstorm only to get stomped on by rude children
though many Caecilians are the size and color of your regular humble dirt worms, some species can reach almost five feet long! BIG WORM.
(sorry.)
seriously though, there’s a lot of variation between Caecilian species. some are worm-tiny, some are the size of garter snakes, some look like someone dropped a rogue intestine and it wandered off.
sir, you forgot your, uhhhhhh…
they also come in a riot of colors and patterns, from pink to violent yellow stripes to blue! this is actually kind of weird, because most Caecilians don’t actually have eyeballs to see them with. (some have simple recessed eyes, but these only have simple vision that can tell light from dark)
while there’s a lot of very strange variations going on in the Caecilian household, they all share the same basic body plan. ( “worm, but a vertebrate?????” ) their long skinny body helps them to squirm around in the dirt!
and it is all body, as most Caecilians have short or entirely absent tails.
yup. that’s all torso, baby.
yes, there’s a butt on the end. stop asking.
Caecilians may look like worms at first, but you only have to see one grab a frog and swallow it headfirst once to realize that holy shit, what is that.
that’s right, Caecilians are voracious and effective predators! they may not look like much of a threat to you, but the very thought of these wiggly squirmlings gives every creature that lives underground screaming nightmares. the Caecilian, equipped with small but incredibly strong jaws lined with dozens of tiny needle teeth, thinks this is just fine.
jesus, this picture makes me want to end the article early and just go home.
the Caecilian uses its sense of smell and the small sensory tentacles (yes, tentacles. who designed these, Lovecraft?) on their face to locate prey, which is anything smaller than them. they eat toads, frogs, moles, actual real dirt worms, and a whole smorgasbord of underground bugs. all of which are swallowed whole.
but the Caecilian doesn’t worry too much about meeting a similar fate itself, (possibly at the metaphorical hands of a very large Early Bird) as many of them have toxic skin!
like a dart frog.
these guys really have all their goddam bases covered, huh?
another fun fact about Caecilians is that they eat their own mothers! (but only a little bit.)
Caecilians all reproduce using internal fertilization, and many of them bear live young. like some kind of filthy mammal, or something. but since amphibians don’t produce milk, this raises the question: how is babby fed?
well, the answer is pretty disturbing, so you small children in the audience should make sure to listen EXTRA CLOSE so that you can totally gross out your friends during recess.
they eat their mom’s skin.
awwwwww.
no seriously, the Caecilian mom feeds her children by producing an extra layer of fatty and highly-nutritious skin that replaces itself every three days on the clock. which is good, because that’s exactly how long her sweet little Caecilian children take to nibble it off with their many sharp teeth.
the babies will stay with mom until they’re big enough to make it on their own, at which point they kick they skin-eating habits and skeedaddle.
this way of life may disgust you, but you gotta admit it definitely works. while some Caecilians are in danger of extinction, many of them are doing pretty okay.
that said, I don’t recommend that you go home and nibble on Mom. some things are best left to the worms.
we look like worms! but we are not! we eat skin and we think that’s great! CAECILIANS!!
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IMAGE SOURCES
img1- ThoughtCo img2- Wired img3- Joel Sartore img4- calphotos img5- featuredcreature img6- Science News for Students img7- Nature img8- oneplusnews
Did you know that most 8 year olds are in grades 2-3? They’re, on average, 3 ¾-4 feet tall. They weigh 50-60 pounds, about the same as a bulldog.
This is just a random set of facts, and is in no way connected to the fact that a lot of people think Dick started fighting crime at 8.
Okay, but now I’m picturing Bruce dealing with a very tiny child who insists on accompanying him in this bright costume and Bruce is like, okay. You can “fight crime” with me.
Cue Bruce running along rooftops, with lil’ Dickie on his heals keeping carefully curated coms with Alfred.
The streets are clear. Because Bruce made sure of it like, two hours ago. But Bruce has this “patrol” parkour route all figured out to give him a workout and Dick an outlet for all that energy.
Agent A occasionally spices things up by identifying cats “stuck” in trees (Thank you, Selina). And letting them know when there’s someone very elderly or otherwise vulnerable who could use a late-night escort from Leslie’s clinic.
Dick doesn’t catch on for years, because Bruce isn’t really lying. It is genuinely important to him that Dick learn that walking a lone drunk girl home or helping that old homeless guy stand and giving him a Wayne Enterprises reference card so he can apply for a job is every bit an act of fighting crime as punching a thug in the face.
Bruce taking 8-year-old Robin with him to domestic violence situations, because traumatized kids can relate better to a kid in a flashy costume than a cowled Manifestation Of The Night; Batman deals with abusive parents (or worse, abusive pack-of-friends of parents who’ve gone away for the week); Robin helps the kids sneak out of the house and calls for help for them.
Bruce taking very young Robin with him to go after pimps: Batman takes the pimps; Robin gives the women cards with info about the nearest shelters and and support services, and helps them figure out who to call to get started with life elsewhere. Batman is nothing but another threat to them, and Robin is too young to be a john - and since he grew up in the circus, he’s aware that sex happens; he’s not shocked or disgusted at their line of work, and that makes it easier for them to trust him.
Bruce taking Robin with him hours before a gang meeting in a warehouse - Robin can climb along the rafters and set camera and microphone lines; boards that won’t support 250+ lbs (Bruce + gear) will easily support a 75-lb Robin with gear (including a safety line that Bruce is holding; if Dick falls, he may get bruises from the wall but he’s not smashing to the floor).
Later, Batman crashes into the meeting; Robin picks the locks on their car trunks and frees the prisoners they’d kidnapped.
I can see this setup working for years: Batman takes on the criminals; Robin leads the victims to safety. And Dick has so much fun with that, it takes him a long time to notice that Bruce isn’t letting him do some things, and shifting from “help the victims” to “take out the bad guys” becomes one of their first actual fights.
im juste want to nap upon a sheep
comforte
Meet The Closest Living Relative To The Extinct Dodo Bird With Incredibly Colorful Iridescent Feathers
this bird looks like the villain from a Don Bluth movie
i do think sometimes about the core concept of batman being parental in nature. the thing is, batman is a child’s idea of what the world needs; bruce wayne at eight years old lost his parents, and that safety that parents provide, that protection. he lost that, and missed it so dearly that he resolved to do nothing for the rest of his life but give that protection to others. and if you think about his methods, they’re really 90% show - the cape, the cowl, the attitude, the voice, that’s all a carefully crafted act. it’s like how elephants will fan their ears to appear larger, or cats will fluff up their fur, or puffer fish will blow up like a balloon: it’s fear tactics. batman tries to scare criminals off, first, because his focus is the survival of the victim. it reads like an angry parent running off threats, because that’s exactly the thing bruce had wished he’d had. and you know what i never would’ve thought i’d be here making posts that boil down to, “batman is trying to be gotham’s dad,” but you know what here i am doing exactly this don’t judge me i’m doing my best
I made some ASMR ambient atmosphere mixes for your highly specific needs
1.) Haunted campout in a northern forest where strange beasts lurk in the distance and whispers of the unquiet dead keep you awake through the long dark night 2.) The Joker is probably getting ready to murder you horribly in an abandoned warehouse 3.) Killer Croc hunts you through the Gotham sewers, occasionally eating corpses 4.) Man has pleasant vanilla sex with a monster in cheap motel bed 5.) You’re the last gunslinger marching across a dreary wasteland after the world has moved on, pursuing the man in black across the desert while the machines of the old world still hum their death throes
gotham PD: have you seen anything unusual lately?
random citizen: ...unusual for normal cities or unusual for gotham?
gotham PD:
random citizen:
gotham PD: did you see a clown or not
Head too small for fat pumpkin body…… but still good
I still think it’s hilarious that the reason nobody ever figures out Superman’s secret identity or where he lives or what he does when he’s not saving the planet, is because he already told them all the Kryptonian stuff that can’t be tied to any of his human friends or family. I guarantee you the in-universe wikipedia article on Superman lists his name as Kal-El and the “personal life” section says that he lives full-time at his private fortress of solitude at the north pole. Nobody in the world looks at Clark Kent and thinks “oh my god, maybe he’s superman!” for the same reason nobody ever starts to suspect that their coworker who looks KINDA like Barack Obama is actually secretly Barack Obama – They know who Barack Obama is and know what he does and they know their coworker Greg is Greg and not Barack Obama. They have no reason to assume Barack Obama secretly moonlights as Greg The IT Guy at their workplace even though they’ve never seen Greg and Obama in the same place. At best, “Greg is secretly Obama” would be a running joke at the office, and the same is true at the Daily Planet. “Kal-El of Krypton, who lives in a CRYSTAL PALACE at the NORTH POLE and whose dayjob is SUPERMAN, sometimes puts on a suit and pretends to be a clumsy reporter and lives in a one-bedroom walkup in Metropolis” is a ridiculous concept to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s true
[From Max Landis’ amazing “American Alien” series about Superman.] SO GOOD
SCREAM 👏🏻 IT 👏🏻 TO 👏🏻 THE 👏🏻 BACK 👏🏻 SO EVERYONE 👏🏻 CAN 👏🏻 HEAR
His shit eating grin in the last one sells it
I love the idea of Clark Kent turning up to every office Halloween party in an ill-fitting Superman costume from Target.
Still one of my favorite clips from Superman: The Animated Series.
This has gotten bigger since I last saw it ant that’s FANTASTIC
Henry Cavill literally once stood in Time Square, in a superman t-shirt, under a giant poster of himself and no one recognised him, even though he was actively trying to be recognised.
I’ve never seen this post but it just became my favorite post on the internet
Wanna know the kicker?
In the first chapter of JLA’s “Divided We Fall Arc” both Clark and Bruce reveal their civilian identities to the rest of the League. This is post “Tower of Babel” where nobody but Clark still trusts Batman, and in order to start building trust again, Clark urges Bruce to unmask himself to the rest of the team because Bruce obviously knows who everyone else is. Bruce agrees on one condition, Clark has to “unmask” himself as well.
When the big reveal goes down, Kyle Rayner says it best re: Clark being Superman: “He doesn’t…wear a mask. I never even…thought he had a…day job…”
That’s right, the canon reason why nobody makes the connection between Superman and Clark Kent is because nobody thinks that Superman HAS a civilian identity.
Also, with a really good actor, Clark Kenting is entirely possible, as Christopher Reeve demonstrates in the 1978 Superman film.
There was actually a story where a scientist at Lexcorp developed a computer program to analyse all available evidence and work out who Superman is
It figured out he was Clark…and Lex fired the scientist for wasting company resources because he COULDN’T BELIEVE that Superman would ever “Pretend” to be human because it would mean pretending to be “Weak”
90% of Superman’s disguise is everyone else doing the work for him
the best secret identity of all.
