music makes the world go 'round @thereismusicinmysoul - Tumblr Blog

My friend @vyther15 (writing blog @vyther16) has been on a Now You See Me kick and both unwittingly and unknowingly dragged me along for the ride via tumblr feed, which means when I saw that he'd written a fic for the fandom, the first thing I did after reading it was decide it would be fun to get up to shenanigans and bind her a copy of it as a surprise. (With the added bonus of completing a project for Binderary 2026 with @renegadeguild!)

streetlight eyes wide by vyther15

On the fifth day of Olivia hiding in her room, Henley knocks outside of mealtimes. "I, uh, I wanted to talk to you about something a little more important than food."

Olivia slinks over to the door. "I know you're Henley Reeves," she says. "And I know you killed my brother."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," Henley says, voice wry.

(or, Henley Reeves adopts Jack Wilder's little sister. It's only mostly on accident.)

Once I started typesetting it, I realized that it was the perfect length to make into a sextidecimo (2 1/8 x 2 3/4 inch pages), and wouldn't you know but a deck of cards is 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches which isn't too far off, and what would The Horsemen's magic tricks be without a deck of cards, and we all know I love a fun lil theme... so I committed very hard to the bit. I found a horrible quality promo photo from NYSM2 that featured a deck of The Eye cards which I then spent an entire day recreating out of shapes and color alteration of existing images in Canva. Was it the easiest way to go about it? Certainly not. But if we have learned anything about me, it's that I love to recreate a thing so I can manipulate it to my will in a typeset, and it worked out! With minimal swearing even! My initial plan was to use that for the title page, but then I decided it was simply too chaotic and difficult to read the text, so Ace Of Spades card for the title! Complete with a playing card font for the title and page numbers to cinch the legitimacy. And then to further embrace the Deck Of Cards theme, each scene break (since there are no title pages) is a different card suit and it somehow magically worked out perfectly to finish the cycle from beginning to end.

At first, I had grand plans of doing a full cloth case and foiling the card back design onto it, but uh. Were you aware that 2.5x3 inches is rather small? And there's a lot of detail in that design? I abandoned that idea pretty quickly and decided to use some lovely marbled paper from a friend (who also gifted me the paper I used for end pages!) and instead committed somehow EVEN HARDER to the idea of a deck of cards. By making a box for the lil guy to live inside. And you best believe I sat there with two different brands of cards to compare while designing to make sure I got everything as close to legit as possible. (Spot the text going up AND down the sides, plus copyright text on the bottom and flap -- or in my case, gift note and book curse, and a little tab cutout and hinge fold so the box doesn't bust apart when you reach in to pull out your cards book)

I'm not sure I'm fully converted to the Tiny Book Crew but I'm very pleased with how the lil guy turned out and how quickly it all came together. And how much less painful it is to have to reprint the entire thing. Multiple times. After mis-cutting. And realizing I'd borked the page numbers somewhere along the way of strategically adding blank pages to remove from each signature rather than have to procure 12 additional pages of text.

Binding details below the cut!

#purplephloxpress #adventures in bookbinding #comma blogs

questions-about-blorbos

???? Are you proship??

I am a normal person who understands thought crimes are not real, fiction is not reality, and people can read/write/enjoy whatever they want as long as it’s fiction and no one in real life is harmed. I don’t have to like it, because I know how to mute, block and scroll past what I don’t want to see. Overall I think labels are childish, but by definition I am proship and profic. I am also against censorship.

And if you (general you) shame or harass real people over fiction, you’re a bully and this blog is not a safe place for you.

stuckinapril

They weren’t lying when they said that as an adult you have to fight for your life to practice your hobbies

stuckinapril

They also weren’t lying when they said that when you fail to do so your soul shrivels up inside your body and dies

fake-married-my-dead-fiance

One prince has his father's will written in blood saying he's the heir of the throne, the other brother is like, "Well I had a dream about being the lord of heaven and earth so obviously I should keep on being king."

Insert that meme from Mounty Python

runawaymarbles

Permanent DST is a CONSPIRACY it is PRO BUSINESS NONSENSE waking up in the dark SUCKS it is MEDICALLY BAD FOR YOU I will DIE ON THIS HILL

runawaymarbles

Do you think I could successfully start discourse about how year-round DST is only good for pro-business bootlickers who work indoor jobs with flexible start times, because they just get to move the daylight to a time more convenient to them and can start late to compensate, whereas people who have rigid morning jobs--especially outdoor ones--and children self-transporting to school will be the ones to actually suffer mentally and be in increased physical danger from having to commute in the dark (for more of the year than they may have been already?)

Do you think that would work

thewellofastarael

It actually screws over the privileged flexible-hour workers too. Most places you'd go to do errands at close at 5pm, so a later sunrise = later work start time = later work end time = everything but the grocery store and the pharmacy are closed when you leave work.

DST's late sunrises make the morning unsafe for everyone who's on the road. It screws with your sleep schedule because the late sunsets push bedtimes back, but you still have to get up early to align with the world's business hours. Your teens are even more miserable than without DST, with their biology pushing them one way and the world shoving even harder back.

It'll hit strict-schedule workers and kids harder, but everyone will suffer. And our misery will put more money into the hands of the businesses pushing these stupid, stupid bills.

runawaymarbles

it drives me crazy because the science is not ambigious about this. DST just has better business support (if it's light out later you stay out shopping and at restaurants later) and better branding.

veryluckyclovers

madddscience

An interesting sci-fi short story from 4chan.

[Imgur]

the-real-seebs

That is some fine writing.

space-australians

The Imgur link is broken so:

[Series of posts on 09/16/11]

About twelve years ago, a man died in high orbit over Tau Ceti V.

His name was Drake McDougal, and aside from a few snapshots and vague anecdotes from his drinking buddies, that’s probably all we’ll ever know about him. Another colony-born man with little records and little documentation, working whatever asteroid field the Dracs deigned to allow them. Every now and then a Drac gunship would strut on through the system, Pax Draconia and all that. But that was it.

One fine day, one of those gunships had a misjump. A bad one. It arrived only ninety clicks above atmo, with all its impellers blown out by the gravatic feedback of Tau Ceti V’s gravity well. The Dracs scraped enough power together for a good system-wide broadbeam and were already beginning the Death Chant when they hit atmo.

People laughed at the recording of sixty Dracs going from mysterious chanting to “’what-the-fuck’ing” for years after they forgot the name Drake McDougal. The deafening “CLANG” and split second of stunned silence afterwards never failed to entertain. Drake had performed a hasty re-entry seconds after the gunship and partially slagged his heatshield diving after it. Experts later calculated he suffered 11Gs when he leaned on the retro to match velocities with the Dracs long enough to engage the mag-grapples on his little mining tug.

Even the massively overpowered drive of a tug has its limits, and Drake’s little ship hit hers about one and a half minutes later. Pushed too far, the tug’s fusion plant lost containment just as he finished slingshotting the gunship into low orbit. (It was unharmed, of course; the Drac opinion of fusion power best translated as “quaint,” kind of how we view butter churns.)

It was on the local news within hours, on newsnets across human space within days. It was discussed, memorialized, marveled upon, chewed over by daytime talk-show hosts, and I think somebody even bought a plaque or some shit like that. Then there was a freighter accident, and a mass-shooting on Orbital 5, and of course, the first Vandal attacks in the periphery.

The galaxy moved on.

Twelve years is a long time, especially during war, so twelve years later, as the Vandal’s main fleet was jumping in near Jupiter and we were strapping into the crash couches of what wee enthusiastically called “warships,” I guaran-fucking-tee you not one man in the entire Defense Force could remember who Drake McDougal was.

Well, the Dracs sure as hell did.

Dracs do not fuck around. Dozens of two-kilometer long Drac supercaps jumped in barely 90K klicks away, and then we just stood around staring at our displays like the slack-jawed apes we were as we watched what a real can of galactic whoop-ass looked like. You could actually see the atmosphere of Jupiter roil occasionally when a Vandal ship happened to cross between it and the Drac fleet. There’s still lightning storms on Jupiter now, something about residual heavy ions and massive static charges or something.

Fifty-eight hours later, with every Vandal ship reduced to slagged debris and nine wounded Drac ships spinning about as they vented atmosphere, they started with the broad-band chanting again. And then the communiqué that confused the hell out of us all.

“Do you hold out debt fulfilled?”

After the sixth or seventh comms officer told them “we don’t know what the hell you’re talking about” as politely as possible, the Drac fleet commander got on the horn and asked to speak to a human Admiral in roughly the same tone as a telemarketer telling a kid to give the phone to Daddy. When the Admiral didn’t know either, the Drac went silent for a minute, and when he came back on his translator was using much smaller words, and talking slower.

“Is our blood debt to Drake McDougal’s clan now satisfied?”

The Admiral said “Who?”

What the Drac commander said next would’ve caused a major diplomatic incident had he remembered to revert to the more complex translation protocols. He thought the Admiral must be an idiot, a coward, or both. Eventually, the diplomats were called out, and we were asked why the human race has largely forgotten the sacrifice of Drake McDougal.

Humans, we explained, sacrifice themselves all the time.

We trotted out every news clip from the space-wide Nets from the last twelve years. Some freighter cook that fell on a grenade during a pirate raid on Outreach. A ship engineer who locked himself into the reactor room and kept containment until the crew evacuated. Firefighter who died shielding a child from falling debris with his body, during an earthquake. Stuff like that.

That Dracs were utterly stunned. Their diplomats wandered out of the conference room in a daze. We’d just told them that the rarest, most selfless and honorable of acts - acts that incurred generations-long blood-debts and moved entire fleets - was so routine for our species that they were bumped off the news by the latest celebrity scandal.

Everything changed for humanity after that. And it was all thanks to a single tug pilot who taught the galaxy what truly defines Man.

fattyatomicmutant-deactivated20

This makes me cry

stephendann

It had been so many cycles since the Drac incident, and even more since the Drake McDougal event, and the the galaxy had sort of come to the conclusion that humans were, well, human about things, and that they regarded their lives in completely incomprehensible ways.

Yet for all of the witnessed sacrifices, few warriors had ever been taught to recognise the most terrifying of human deeds. In a forgettable corner of the galaxy, in an unremarked planet with a previously less than recorded history, a party of six human security escorts bringing their rescued survivors to a hive ship became a party of five,

A lone human, holding one of their handheld ‘melee’ weapons wordlessly tilted their head to their commander, and stopped, standing in plain sight in the middle of a field.

Waiting.

When asked, the lower ranked humans simply said “She knows what’s she’s doing”. The human captain’s inexplicable statement “She’s buying us some time” made it as if their companion had stepped into some form of marketplace.

Katherine of Rescue Group’s fate was never confirmed, but no pursuit came that night. On the next dawn, when the hive ship was able to leave, the humans insisted we departed immediately, and did not go back for their companion.

We do not know for sure what became of Katherine of Rescue Group. All we know is that when pressed, the human captain explained to our own that the one who stayed had communicated an ancient human tradition, the rite of self sacrifice. In words, the captain explained, the look and the nod would mean “Go on. I’ll hold them off. It was not, as we thought, that this one warrior had sought victory over many enemies, but that they had calculated a trade off of the minutes or hours it could take to defeat a human, against the time needed by their companions.

Humans, as humans say, do not go gentle into that good night.

Worse, they do not go gentle into bad nights, worse days, or terrifying sunsets. Dawn seems to fill them with potency and rage, as if to call upon the solar gods and tell the deities to come down here and say that to their human faces. We do not know how long she bought us, but we, the hive now called K’thrn, understand what it means to have someone expend their existence for the survival of others.

We find it terrifying.

jazzybot4

I love this one. Reblogging for something new.

bramblethekobold

Humans had been part of the intergalactic alliance now for longer than most could remember. New member systems were typically bemused by the Dracs semi-reverence of these fragile, hairless beings, and the Hives’ blend of respect and fear.

Until the moment when their ambassadors were shown The Film.

That’s all it was called, because the contents weren’t comprehensible.

Over time, the Vandals had reorganized and rebuilt; they’d formed alliances, created new weapons technologies, and were completely ready to take on the Drac galactic navy.

They were utterly unprepared for the humans.

The command ship of the Vandal fleet was unassailable. Ion weapons were turned aside, the most powerful laser arrays were useless. Physical projectiles did work, but the mass of even a missile next to the ship was insignificant.

When the human destroyer Athena began to accelerate towards it, all shields to front, full power to thrusters, the Dracs made contact immediately, demanding to know what they intended to do.

The comm channel came back with a medley of humans singing, chanting, praying, and the captain simply said, “Ending this damn war.”

And disconnected.

The Drac central command watched the remote readouts of the human ship as it soared past the Vandal fighter vanguard. The Athena wasn’t firing, and the Vandal command didn’t have a protocol to deal with this, so they directed no resources towards the destroyer.

The reactor on board the destroyer began to systematically overload. Command patched through directly to the engineering room, and were met with the chief engineer saying with a smile, “No time to explain, I’ve got to say my last words to my creator.”

And he disconnected.

The Athena was traveling at an unsafe speed when it collided with the Vandal command ship, tearing through the armor.

When the Athena’s reactors then went critical and destroyed the entire Vandal command, the human admiral aboard the Drac command vessel bowed his head and said, “May their memories be a blessing,” and proceeded to help plan the final assault on the remaining, disorganized Vandal fleet. The remaining human ships were heard chanting “For the Athena!” as they went into battle with little regard for their own safety, and less for the Vandals.

Ambassadors were always pale by the end of The Film, but none of them questioned humanity’s place in the alliance again.

fuckyeahchinesefashion

OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)

Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.

Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.

This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.

The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).

Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.

Split-joint seals (骑缝章qifengzhang)are still widely used on important paper documents in modern China, an anti-tampering technique passed down from ancient times. They are applied across the edge of multi-page contracts, bidding documents and official archives. If any page is removed or replaced, the broken seal pattern can prove the file has been altered.

ariaste

OMG I got so excited about this because they used a really similar (though far less refined) version of this for contracts in the European medieval period!

First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!

(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)

Delights me when human beings find similar ways to solve the same problem at two different ends of the world. <3

storywonker

They call me Johnny Six-Bowls. No, I don't smoke weed, it's - yeah, I know. It's cause when I cook I need a buncha those little bowls to put my stuff in. You know, cut up veggies and stuff. What's the word. Mise en place. Yeah. So I gotta have a bunch of em with stuff all prepped before I start. Elsewise it's all chaos. Anyway. You here to duel? Or should I give you head

doubleca5t

Hollywood truly does always take the wrong lesson from its success stories

femalegothic

men just love to run their fucking mouth about what women do or do not want without even once considering consulting any actual women on the matter

Nike’s viral track kit is just one part of the story.

(cnn) — When Olympian Tess Howard put on her new uniform for Great Britain’s women’s field hockey team in 2021, she

The Norwegian women’s beach handball team has been fined after players opted to wear shorts instead of bikini bottoms during a European cham

Female athletes are breaking with their sports' apparel conventions -- if not regulations -- to prioritize their comfort during competitions

Sports Commentary Historically, women in sports have not garnered the same respect as men, though they perform the same tasks and play the s

Pole vaulter Holly Bradshaw refused to wear the customary bikini bottoms and crop tops favored by the majority of female athletes.

According to Women in Sport, 78 percent of girls avoid participating in sports while on their period. 78 percent. CEO of Women in Sport, St

disabled-bug

Idk what person with chronic illness needs to hear this, but you can do things to make your responsibilities nicer for yourself. You can get an ice cream after a blood draw. You can sit down for tv time after an injection. You can pick out the bandaids that have cartoon characters on them instead of the plain ones. Being an adult doesn’t stop you from benefiting from encouragement. Go for whatever fits with your routine/abilities/budget and makes life a little better. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down etc etc

archivalhaven

Statement of Y/N, regarding their time in servitude to the entity formerly known as One Direction. Statement begins.

murray-wrathbard

a-silly-poll-side-blog-yay

the last food you ate is your nickname now how is it going

good

bad

great

awful

results

Remaining time: 1 day 3 hours

#popcorn

yesornopolls

do you have any friends that are 4x your age or more?

Do you have any friends that are 4x your age or more?

Yes

Remaining time: 2 days 3 hours

#am 30 so that's HEAVILY pushing common life expectancy in my area

derinthescarletpescatarian

Sam Handwich.

sufficientlylargen

If Pikiwedia says it it must be true.

zooperdoopers

I made Pikiwedia real. Works for any Wikipedia page. Use this wisely :)‌

sufficientlylargen

Oh, wary dell vone

zooperdoopers

Goodmorning to the Anthropic Claude AI training scraper that suddenly decided to request 660 thousand pages (exactly the number I had remaining on the starter plan) and brought Pikiwedia down.

Sudden switch from diverse user agents like chrome, safari, messenger preview to Just Claudebot. I'm not even mad though, this is maybe the funniest thing possible, because I've inadvertently poisoned their training data with thousands of fucked up articles with normal urls.

Pikiwedia perseveres, back up with a better robots.txt. I hope Anthropic has a gery vood time with Pikiwedia's data :))

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music makes the world go 'round