Somebody at work keeps adjusting one of the perimeter cameras to have this beautiful artistic angle on the museum in a historical building across the way. The sun sets just behind it and the whole sky turns golden-blue, clouds streaked across the sky above. The lush tree line beneath the museum is perfectly lined up along the rule of thirds and the building itself towers above, almost mythical in its evening glory. Like damn, take a still from this camera and send it to the museum to frame and hang on their wall. I do need the camera to be pointing at the parking lot. Tho
The setting sun bounces off the skyscrapers downtown and hits the museum's windows and every one of them turns the same golden hue as the sky behind, reflected in the trees just starting to turn golden-orange beneath. The bottoms of the clouds take on the slightest tinge of purple and birds circle above, speckling the evening sky as they call autumn's last farewell. Someone's car got broken into in the parking lot last week, Tammy, point the damn camera at the cars
the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.
btw this is maybe the single most key distinguishing feature of the terfy strains of radical feminism, the seed all the rest of it springs out of: they have absolutely no faith in the ability of feminism to actually destroy patriarchy. they do not think feminism can truly build a better world. they cannot really even imagine that possibility. they think patriarchy is an inevitable natural consequence of unchangeable biological facts, and therefore the goal of feminism can only be to mitigate the worst effects of patriarchy, not to get rid of it.
they can imagine a society where women get some designated safe spaces without men around. they cannot imagine a society where the presence of men is not inherently a danger to women.
This is a compilation from all POVs. As such, if you are someone who wants to keep information from a particular POV secret for yourself, do not read it.
Detailed in this post: Everyone's powers that they actually showed, what backstories I managed to glean, who seems to be allying with each other, who voted for who to fight, and who gave who a favor in the fight
MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW
Powers
Note: Multiple people did not use all of their cooldown powers, or used them and did not show what they did. Everyone has three cooldown abilities, one with a short cool down, one with a longer cooldown, and one ultimate that they can only use once per session. I only specified for most when they used an ability and didn't show what it did rather than specifying everyone who didn't use their ult, which was most people.
Abolish: Can stand on magma. Did not use any of his abilities.
Apo: Drops her feathers which heal people when they use them, can transform people into other people, can turn invisible
Cleo: Does not get attacked any mobs. Animals follow her. Has songs on her panflute for healing, resistance, swiftness, and slowness. Turns into a goat when she panics.
Drift: Can play a song that heals and applies the absorption, and resistances effects. Ability to make people experience the hunger effect when they look at her. Gets two extra hearts in the sunshine. Got a special bow. She can also inflict pain with her abilities, did not specify how but mentioned poison. Used her second ability at some point but didn't show the effects.
Legundo (Nikos Legundos): Can use his lighting bolt like an ender pearl, seems to shock people in the water with him, has a rage meter that may correlate to his first ability which he did not use.
Martyn (Nobody): Can summon a "boar", can shoot arrows that teleport him to them, arrow rain, if he shoots with his offhand it destroys blocks, passively spawns arrows into his inventory.
Owen: Slows down projectiles and creeper explosions, can rewind time for where blocks were placed or broken, furnaces stop when he's around, sees a vision of where he was and can take that version's place
Pearl: Creates a kind of darkness effect that also makes people hear whispers, turns invisible when she crouches during this effect, spreads pure darkness that slows and blinds the people on it, gets an extra heart at night, teleports to beds that she selects around the world
Pyro: Ability to send an owl out of him whose eyes he can see from, can throw a spear like a smoke bomb, helmet and shield. Can see how far everyone is, the cooldown timer on their abilities, their hearts, hunger, and armor. Used but did not show his ult.
Sausage: Can double jump, generally higher jumping, can rush/teleport to other people, temporary flight, special sword
Scott (Scott Antonas Mateos Pagona Pavolas III): Leap (jumps backwards from the direction he's looking in), smoke screen, passively gathers wind with kills and achievements that create wind charges in his inventory, can spend a wind charge to use his abilities even during their cooldown
Shelby: She can pick two "fates" from a list that give her and others different effects, then flip a coin to see which goes into effect. She can only choose each of them once a session. Has the ability to summon what looks like some kind of spirit guardians (when she used it three floating heads surrounded her and it was said she had garnered fortune)
Shelby's Fates:
Rising Tide: Everyone floats for 15 seconds
Fleet Footed: Speed II for 60 seconds
Blink: Teleport to a random player
Untouchable: Invulnerable but harmless for 60 seconds
Sleight of Hand: Shuffle nearby players' inventories
Wildflowers: Fill nearby players' empty slots with flowers
Golden Gift: Receive a golden apple
Mender: Repair everything in your hotbar
Keen Eyes: Night vision for 5 minutes
Vanish: Invisible for 1 minute
Spotlight: Everyone else glows for 2 minutes
Overclock: Haste II for 5 minutes
Full Restore: Fully heal yourself
Shrink: Shrink a random nearby player for 2 minutes
Backstories
Abolish: Gladiator who was backstabbed (literally)
Apo: Grew up poor in a city, started an uprising against the rich but her fellow revolutionaries turned on her after her friend made a deal with the people they were meant to fight
Drift: Some kind of herbal healer. Drift says that she was seen as a prophet "in some ways". Doesn't want to think about the day she died. There's a "she" in her backstory. Her video ended with mysterious text saying "nice to see you again drift"
Cleo: Satyr who may have been killed by a human(?)
Legundo: Some kind of fighter. Seems to have some trauma to do with the gods because of course.
Martyn: "A nobody who did nothing is from nowhere and was known by no one. "Dies 10 years and 6 months ago by his memory. Has a woman or girl named Selenis who he remembers with fondness. His mother may have been a hunter or a devotee of Artemis as well. Seems to have done some hand wood carving in life.
Owen: A blind beggar who was driven mad by being given the knowledge of the cosmos by Chronos
Pearl: She survived alone in the woods for a while before she died. Says the last thing she remembers is wandering around the woods "not feeling all that great". Says her death was complicated. (Said what may have been a joke in Owen's pov about an animal jumping in front of her car. I genuinely can't tell if it's a joke but it's only in his pov and no one else's) She died in the middle of the night.
Pyro: A soldier from Athens who was in training at the frontier. Also a shop keep at some points
Sausage: Sausage was a poor man who vowed to protect his little brother, Nikki, after their parents died. He became a thief to provide for them. At some point, the people of the city rose up against their tyrannical king. He took advantage of the chaos to try and steal from the king's palace. His brother followed him and ended up being killed. Sausage was arrested and executed publicly as a warning against the rebellion. He told Hermes he would do anything if he found his brother and took him from the afterlife, which may have been why he was chosen.
Scott: Actor who died on stage when everyone thought he was acting because a prop weapon was swapped for a real one by his jealous understudy
Shelby: A privileged individual who died after her partner blindfolded her and was about to propose when lighting struck and she fell off the cliff.
Day 1 Alliances
Feather Holders: Apo, Pearl, Sausage, Owen, Pyro
Cleo, Shelby, Drift, Abolish have an agreement
Cleo and Abolish getting along
Shelby and Drift are really close.
Martyn and Scott might be allied
Pearl and Legundo seem somewhat aligned
Legundo is also somewhat aligned with everyone.
Scott and Abolish agreed not to vote for each other.
Votes
Abolish voted for Martyn and Pearl
Apo voted for Martyn and Legundo
Cleo voted for Legundo and Pearl
Drift voted for Martyn and Pearl
Legundo voted for Martyn and Pearl
Martyn voted for Pearl and Sausage
Owen voted for Martyn and Legundo
Pearl voted for Martyn and Scott
Pyro votes for Martyn and Legundo
Sausage voted for Martyn and Legundo
Scott voted for Martyn and Pearl
Shelby voted for Martyn and Pearl
Favors
Apo gave hers to Pearl
Legundo gave his to Pearl
Owen gave hers to Pearl
Sausage gave his to Pearl
Shelby gave hers to Martyn
Cleo, Scott, Pyro, and Abolish declined to give their favor
Drift didn't show but it seems to be Martyn from his pov
Lives
Cleo, Legundo, Sausage are weakened
Martyn is on 2 lives
Additional notes: I can't tell who Owen meant by "the man who will eventually reveal himself as Thekon", but I think it's Sausage?
Also what if someone’s language goals are wizard related? How are we supposed to seduce non English speaking wizards if we don’t learn the magic jargon?
A lot of these people are also the type to focus in on the top 1,000 words list but those are also slightly useless sometimes.
One of those lists I’ve looked at for Spanish has puerto (port) on it and be honest how often do ports come up in your daily conversations?
Doesn’t mean that puerto is a useless word to learn early on. It just means that min-maxing language learning makes people lose perspective on the point of learning a language in the first place. Exchanging information about port wizards.
tbf I don't think I've ever encountered a language min-maxxer, but it seems to me that prioritizing the top 1,000 words would lead to major difficulty in constructing coherent sentences
i hate how much ai has taken the joy out of seeing something cool. you used to see something cool, like a really intricate drawing or a video of someone doing an insane skill or two animals doing something cute, and because there were no mental gymnastics involved in discerning whether or not it was 'real' you could sit there and have the joy of like, "wow! how did they do that! how cool is it that they made that! what a wonderful moment to have captured!" and now every time i see something remarkable i hate that i have to sit there and be like okay let me go frame by frame to make sure everything lines up. let me double check the page this comes from. let me scroll through the comments to make sure no one called out something i missed. like i want the joy of being able to trust someone else's creation back, please
"Learn the fundamentals first" seems like really sound universal advice, and as a former classical musician, I can vouch for it. You will have a more solid foundation for increasing complexity if you put in the time to study in a structured way. If you don't, you'll have a lot of shit to fix later.
As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.
I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!
The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.
With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.
Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!
Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.
You have official permission from your local pretentious classical music snob: fuck the fundamentals. You can always unfuck them later (but only if you want to).
oh my goodness, one of dian fossey’s first close up observations with gorillas happened when she was trying to climb a tree to see them better, but so badly that by the time she’d gotten up the entire group had come out of hiding to look at her: “Nearly all members of the group had totally exposed themselves, forgetting about hiding coyly behind foliage screens because it was obvious to them that the observer had been distracted by tree-climbing problems, an activity they could understand.”
[Image transcript: porch. The group had been day-nesting and sunbathing when I contacted them, but upon my approach they nervously retreated to obscure themselves behind thick foliage. Frustrated but determined to see them better, I decided to climb a tree, not one of my better talents. The tree was particularly slithery and, try as I might, no amount of puffing, pulling, gripping, or clawing succeeded in getting me more than a few feet aboveground. Disgustedly, I was about to give up when Sanwekwe came to my aid by giving one mighty boost to my protruding rump; tears were running from his eyes as he was convulsed in silent laughter. I felt as inept as a baby taking its first step. Finally able to grab on to a conveniently placed branch, I hauled myself up into a respectful semislouch position in the tree about twenty feet from the ground. By this time I naturally assumed that the combined noises of panting, cursing, and branch-breaking made during the initial climbing attempts must have frightened the group on to the next mountain. I was amazed to look around and find that the entire group had returned and were sitting like front row spectators at a sideshow. All that was needed to make the image complete were a few gorilla-sized bags of popcorn and some cotton candy! This was the first live audience I had ever had in my life and certainly the least expected.]
imagine some freakish not-a-human alien THING has shown up out of nowhere and is trying to get into your office building to study you. but it has no idea how to get past a revolving door. it tries for three hours. by the time it finally understands the concept of a revolving door and squeeze into the building everyone in the office is crowded into the lobby to watch and call helpful suggestions. it’s conclusively determined that the alien is definitely not a threat, except maybe to itself.
