Anything Phantom

Phantom of the Opera obsessed. Among other things.

[infpconfessionsoflife]

This Speaks to me on a spiritual level

[nudityandnerdery]

Neuroscience Says Holiday Music Is Mentally Draining

New studies say holiday music can be mentally draining.

As every retail worker says “No duh.”

[m--ood-deactivated20181217]

This steampunk clock writes the time every minute, and erases it before writing again.

[avatarthelastzed-deactivated202]

This is the most ridiculous, inefficient, and needlessly complicated thing…..

[no-mere-mortals]

I know. It seems almost completely unwieldy and useless.

I want it.

[drneverland]

okay, but this is really what a Steampunk watch should be. Not just a dial watch with a cover made of bits of brass and copper.

[rowdy-revenant]

Galavant is just a game of D&D where everyone chose to multiclass as a bard

[schizoauthoress]

Today I learned that Van Halen have that rider in their contract about “a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed” in order to know at a glance if the promoter read the entire contract.  And the reason they do THAT is because they once had a stage collapse because a promoter hadn’t read the proper way to set up all the specific technical stuff.

So if the band goes in the dressing room or catering and sees brown M&Ms, they know they have to double-check the stage setup for safety.

[darkfrog24]

I heard about this on Freakonomics Radio.  Turns out the bit about no brown M&Ms is HUGE, in BIG font, bold, underlined and quotated like they’re on the Group W Bench.

The band was all, “We have fifty-pound lights hanging over our heads and fire being shot out of cannons.  We had to know whether they read our safety regs so we didn’t flamebroil any roadies.”

[gobbochune-deactivated20241018]

interesting how this has become a meme in the music industry about divas. i’ve always heard jokes that amount to “this stuck up celebrity hates the green gummy bears!! they’re refusing to perform just for that???” and its reading stuff like this that i realise how that joke might have come about. people get grumpy that the band refuses to play but cant admit its because THEY’RE incompetent, so they make it all about the M&Ms. another example of artists using a creative method to ensure they have a perfectly reasonable request fulfilled that is then bastardised by lazy people who wanna make money off them. 

[cynema]

[phantomlvr5]

[did-you-know]

Source

[dat-soldier]

back the fuck up

[sonnetscrewdriver]

There’s another story that I like about a Chinese general who had to defend a city with only a handful of soldiers from a huge enemy horde that was in all likelihood going to steamroll the place flat within hours of showing up.

So when said horde did arrive, they saw the general sitting outside the city’s open gates, drinking tea. The horde sent a couple of emissaries over to see what was what, and the general greeted them cheerfully and invited them all to come and take tea with him.

The horde decided that this was a scenario that had “MASSIVE FUCKING TRAP” written all over it in beautiful calligraphy and promptly fucked off.

Whoever that general was, he was clearly the Ancient Chinese equivalent of Sam Vimes.

[dat-soldier]

did he just invite us over for tea nah man i’m out

[catgoblinchelly]

This just keeps getting better

[sleepyferret]

I fucking love history.

[konec0]

ok but tbh that story misses a lot of the subtlety of the situation like ok

so this story is the Romance of Three Kingdoms, and essentially takes place between Zhuge Liang, resident tactician extraordinaire, and Sima Yi… OTHER resident tactician extraordinaire.

The two were both regarded as tactical geniuses and recognized the other as their rival. Zhuge Liang had a reputation for ambushing the SHIT out of his opponents and using the environment to his advantage, thus destroying large armies with a small number of men. Sima Yi (who kind of entered the picture later) was a cautious person whose speciality was unravelling his opponent’s plans before they began. So it was natural that the two would butt heads; however, since Sima Yi tended to have more men and resources, he started winning battles against the former. Which, y’know, kinda sucked.

On to the actual story: Zhuge Liang is all like “shit i gotta defend this city with like 10 men.” Literally if he fights ANY kind of battle here, he WILL lose; his only option for survival is not to fight. And that’s looking more and more impossible until he hears that his rival is leading the opposing army. And then he gets this brilliant idea. He basically opens all the gates, sends his men out in civilian clothes to sweep the streets, and sits on top of the gate drinking tea and chilling out and basically makes the whole thing out to be a trap

When Sima Yi comes he’s all like “yo come on in bro”

and Sima Yi is like “yeah he’s never been that obvious about his traps before. this is definitely a bluff” and he’s about to head in when he realizes

wait. he knows that i think he’s bluffing.

and so he gets it in his head that maybe, just MAYBE, Zhuge Liang has this cunning plan that will wipe out his army - recall that he has a pretty good handle on what his rival is capable of. And after a long period of deliberation (which is just like “he know that I know that he knows that etc.”), being the cautious man he is, SIma Yi eventually decides to turn his entire army around and leave.

Zhuge Liang later points out that the plan was based specifically on the fact that he was facing his rival; if it had been anyone else, there’s no way it would have worked. A dumber or less cautious person would have simply charged in and won without breaking a sweat. 

and that’s the real genius here: it was a plan formed entirely just to deceive one man, and it worked.

[uovoc]

Zhuge Liang is the most brilliant, sneaky-ass bastard in history. One time his side’s army was out of arrows, which pretty much meant they were screwed. So Zhuge Liang goes and does the logical thing, which is build a fuck ton of scarecrows and put them all on boats. Then he makes the men hide in the boats and sail them out on the river.

Well, that day was super foggy (which Zhuge Liang had predicted. Did I mention he was also a freakishly accurate meteorologist?). So the enemy across the river sees a fleet of boats armed to the teeth with what appears to be half an army of men. They panic! and start firing arrows like crazy. 

Zhuge Liang lets this play out for a while, then he’s like, ”Ok guys that’s enough.” They calmly turn the boats around and go back to base, where they dismantle the scarecrows and pull out all the enemy’s arrows.

Zhuge Liang is legend.

[optimysticals]

I love this post. It just keeps getting better. Like seriously, I would have adored learning about this in World History.

[futureevilscientist]

If you want to see this in cinematic glory, watch Red Cliff.

Especially since it makes Zhuge Liang look like this:

Red Cliff is 50% bloody battles and 50% eye candy and about half of that eye-candy is due to Zhuge Liang

[burntcopper]

I fully support watching Red Cliff; it’s gloriously silly entertainment during the battle scenes.

[inquisitorhotpants]

Guess what just got moved to the top of my watch list?? :D

[yiddishfisting]

don’t forget the ROTK story of Zhang Fei standing alone and yelling so fiercely at Cao Cao’s oncoming army he scared them away AND scared their leader to death: 

“Zhang Fei bellows a challenge at the enemy and shocks Xiahou Jie to death. Cao Cao’s soldiers also observe that the woods behind Zhang Fei are clouded in dust and believe that there is an ambush, so they retreat without a fight and Zhang Fei destroys the bridge and retreats as well. Zhang Fei had earlier ordered his men to tie tree branches to the tails of their horses and ride around in the woods, churning up dust to create an illusion of an ambush.” ( x )

[pantmonger]

DIY Wound markers I kept accidentally picking up the dice I used as wound markers in my Age of Sigmar games, so I made some blood splatter holders/markers for them. They are super easy to make, so here is a micro tute. ————– Physical Product/PDF - DrivethruRPG Digital - Roll20  Posters and Merch -  RedBubble I’m also available for commissions.

[effervescentbi]

Thor + some of his under-appreciated intelligence

[camf825]

[nudityandnerdery]

Remember that time Gandalf convinced the whole party to flee so that he could take out the Balrog and not have to share any of the XP? Shows up the next session with fancy new robes and everything. What a jerk.

[brainstatic]

Best literary analysis ever.

[gif87a-com]

[klubbhead]

[brightcoat]

According to the actual rules of Jenga, this is not a legal move and is equivalent to causing a collapse.

[wackd-archive]

[mayflame15]

[buckynasty-blog]

shuri : what if “It’s Raining Men” and “Let the Bodies Hit The Floor” are both about the same events but from different perspectives

t’challa : I’m literally begging you to stop

[raviposting]

Peter Parker: no let her finish 

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

Illuminated Print Link Masterpost

gonna try this format again, because it allows for individual linking instead of everything slapped together into one bigass photo album that you can only vaguely see

aaaanyways, press j to skip the full gallery of buyable shit i’m about to drop here

1) My Immortal, aka the worst best fanfiction of all time

2) Spiders Georg, OG post by @reallyreallyreallytrying

3) Bog Mummies, OG post by @glumshoe

4) Historical Kinkshaming (originally about Victor Hugo but really can be any historical figure you’d like, misspelled on purpose dont @ me about it)

5) Political Discourse Mood, Tumblr Edition OG post by @redmensch

6) REALLY FUCKIN LOVE COFFEE, OG post by @m4ge

7) The Original Your Mom Joke, OG post by shakespeare

8) A fireball is addressed to…. 

9) PHUCKING BEESECHURGER, OG post by @hustlerose

10) General Life Advice RE: Hell, OG post by @hirilelfwraith

11) limerick rolled, OG post by @worddevourer

12) ronald reagan’s grave is a gender neutral bathroom, OG post by @a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy

[sodomymcscurvylegs]

The reason most millennials don’t make a scene when an establishment doesn’t treat them right is because we function more on positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement. For Boomers, they can make a scene because they know negative reinforcement gets them what they want; they want to PUNISH these establishments or workers, but Millennial purchasing patterns are very different.

Growing up in the computer age, we’ve become masterful at filtering junk information, and that includes advertising. It doesn’t matter how much a politician or restaurant or whatever memes, we’ll find them funny, but we’re still not going to shop there or give them our money of we dislike them. The way brands become successful with Millennials is actually just word of mouth.

So when an establishment treats us poorly, we don’t make a scene. We simply never go back and don’t tell our friends about it. Conversely, places that treat us well we immediately go tell others about.

[sodomymcscurvylegs]

The simplest ways to get Millennials to support your business is to give them good economic value for what you sell (Boomers can think we’re irresponsible, but we’re actually quite thrifty), you have to treat us with dignity, but ALSO, you have to treat your WORKERS with dignity. Unlike Boomers who get off on laughing at someone working at McDonald’s, we’ve all had to work shitty, underpaying jobs and we don’t like when we go to an establishment and see workers mistreated and poorly paid, because WE’VE BEEN THERE, and we don’t want to contribute to that gross abuse of the working class.

These rich CEOs can complain that Millennials have “no brand loyalty” or that we’re “killing XYZ industry,” but the truth is that selling to us consistently requires ethical business practices that most of these companies are unwilling to partake in.

[saturdaynightmovie]

Danny Kaye and Angela Lansbury in

The Court Jester (1955)

Directors: Norman Panama and Melvin Frank

[nudityandnerdery]