*Insert Pelican Sounds Here*

heh

[only-cat-memes]

[beardedmrbean]

[were--ralph]

Mario party ass minigame

[demigirlboss2girlrotboogaloo]

The wway she says "Gary fucked it all up" gives me life.

[pteren]

i didn't think to turn on the sound when i first reblogged😭

[bubblegum-magnesium]

[hanfugallery]

chinese hanfu in xianxia style by 不爱吃饭呀

[nondelphic]

writing is 10% storytelling and 90% rearranging three sentences for an hour like you're trying to solve an ancient curse

[discoursedrome]

monks debating whether vows of silence should still allow you to leave emoji reacts on the monastery groupchat

[teaboot]

I don't know enough about the spirit behind vows of silence but I *do* love the idea of a guy who's vowed himself to silence but still walks around reacting to shit with his facial expressions

like Brother Malcolm gets caught sneaking communion wine into the priory and he's watching shit go down like "👀 😬"

[userfrieren]

frieren | sousou no frieren 1.26 - “the height of magic”

[thegirlwiththemooglehat]

I follow this lady on instagram who rescues cats, and i have been thinking about this video for literal months. behold the transformation of this wretched little beast

(x)

[athingofvikings]

Years and years ago, I read a book on cryptography that I picked up because it looked interesting--and it was!

But there was a side anecdote in there that stayed with me for more general purposes.

The author was describing a cryptography class that they had taken back in college where the professor was demonstrating the process of "reversibility", which is a principle that most codes depend on. Specifically, it should be easy to encode, and very hard to decode without the key--it is hard to reverse the process.

So he had an example code that he used for his class to demonstrate this, a variation on the Book Code, where the encoded text would be a series of phone numbers.

The key to the code was that phone books are sorted alphabetically, so you could encode the text easily--picking phone numbers from the appropriate alphabetical sections to use ahead of time would be easy. But since phone books were sorted alphabetically, not numerically, it would be nearly impossible to reverse the code without exhaustively searching the phone book for each string of numbers and seeing what name it was tied to.

Nowadays, defeating this would be child's play, given computerized databases, but back in the 80s and 90s, this would have been a good code... at least, until one of the students raised their hand and asked, "Why not just call the phone numbers and ask who lives there?"

The professor apparently was dumbfounded.

He had never considered that question. As a result, his cipher, which seemed to be nearly unbreakable to him, had such an obvious flaw, because he was the sort of person who could never coldcall someone to ask that sort of thing!

In the crypto book, the author went on to use this story as an example of why security systems should not be tested by the designer (because of course the security system is ready for everything they thought of, by definition), but for me, as a writer, it stuck with me for a different reason.

It's worth talking out your story plot with other people just to see if there's a "Why not just call the phone numbers?" obvious plot hole that you've missed, because of your singular perspective as a person. Especially if you're writing the sort of plot where you have people trying to outsmart each other.

[athingofvikings]

#this has wrapped back around to reaching someone who cares about security more than writing#like this kind of thing is EVERYWHERE#anyways @op drop the title

@demo-ness, here you go:

The Code Book - Wikipedia

[great-and-small]

Do y’all wanna hear about some absolutely crazy shit going down in the birding world right now

[great-and-small]

Okay I warned y’all this would be a lot but here we go. As background you should know that for many birders, the hobby is a lot more than just going outside and watching birds. There is a competitive angle where the goal is to spot as many bird species as possible and record these sightings on your personal “life list”. As some bird species can only be spotted in remote locations across the globe, it takes a decent amount of time, dedication, skill, and money to fill out life lists that number in the thousands. As can be expected, many of the individuals with these mega life lists become quasi celebrities in the birding world. Chief among them is Peter Kaestner, a lifelong birder who has been meticulously recording his life list over decades as the de facto top birder. As he has added to his list bird by bird, thousands of interested avian enthusiasts have been following along and celebrating his milestones. Most exciting in recent months is his intrepid journey towards becoming the first birder to ever record seeing 10,000 different species. The entire birding community has been watching him creep towards 10k with growing excitement. Kaestner is deeply respected in the birding community and there is great trust for his well-documented list.

So now the twist. Just as Kaestner was getting closer and closer to 10k, a previously unknown birder named Jason Mann suddenly joined an app called iGoTerra (not the most common app for birding records) and all at once added observations of close to 10,000 birds. Suddenly, Kaestner being the first birder to reach this milestone isn’t such a sure thing, and both he and mysterious newcomer Mann seem to be scrambling to count as many birds as possible as the race narrows.

On February 9th Kaestner announces he’s hit the milestone and seen his ten thousandth bird, the Orange-tufted spider hunter. The birding world rejoices! As a ~crazy~ coincidence, Jason Mann just so happens to announce on the same day that he has also hit the milestone and he actually did it before Kaestner. He writes an article about himself that is somehow both shamelessly masturbatory and also has that weirdly impersonal AI generated article feel.

Well obviously the birding world is a little skeptical of this random ass dude suddenly swooping in to snag this milestone that has been years in making. Naturally, people started looking a little closer at Mann’s list, and it has some… let’s say interesting observations. It appears from his own reports that Mann has casually rediscovered several species of birds and not bothered to tell anyone. Some of the most ludicrous observations include:

New Caledonian Nightjar- has not been seen since 1939

Manipur Bush Quail- only one suspected sighting since 1932

Zapata rail- Unbelievably rare, and largely inaccessible due to environment

Taiga bean goose- Not the rarest goose in the world but Mann’s reported sighting was from North Korea. And it was apparently the only bird recorded there. So he just went to NK, saw this goose, and that’s it? Weird.

These are just a few examples of many, many fishy recordings. The issue here is nobody knows who Mann actually is, and the only places providing information about him (such as his LinkedIn) are really bizarre in a way I don’t have time to dig into here. Mann (or someone claiming to be him) actually took to BirdForum.net to defend himself, where he offered a long-winded and somewhat fumbling explanation for his life list. He claims that all of these mythical bird sightings were erroneously counted by the iGoTerra app, and he hadn’t meant to include them at all. He assures us that the rest of the recordings are entirely legitimate. Mann said in his post that in light of these mistakes he is ceding his victory to Kaestner, but was quick to say he has still totally seen more than 10k birds- even if they’re not all recorded correctly. He sent Kaestner a vaguely condescending email that Kaestner responded to with, in my opinion, far too much grace.

So now the birding community is left trying to figure out this bizarre and unexpected outcome. Is Peter Kaestner in fact the first birder to record ten thousand birds? A shadow of doubt has been cast on a title that everyone has expected to be his for years. Some birders are sincerely congratulating Jason Mann for his accomplishment in the field, and others are suggesting he isn’t even a real person but in fact some kind of artificial intelligence birding psy op. It is absolute chaos, and nobody in my life wants to hear me rant about this

[badideainaglass]

The funniest sword fight scene in the history of cinema. 

[seanfmcguire]

BEST. SWORD FIGHT. EVER.

[musicalhell]

Let’s be honest, this is how I would sword fight.

[rozunderpressure]

@warmageragnar Lewis Vs Otranto, a realistic version.

[redscullyrevival]

#what on earth is this?

The Court Jester starring Danny Kaye, Basil Rathbone, and the amazing Glynis Johns, and Angela Lansbury and it is all around a fun time.

[spotweld]

All kidding aside, watch Basil Rathbone’s foot work. He knows fencing, and sets up the form even though he’s still playing up the stage blows for Danny Kaye to flail at for comedic effect.

[theimpossiblescheme]

Okay, but I need to talk about this because it’s even funnier if you know the context... Basil Rathbone was one of the greatest swordsmen in Hollywood history.  Which is why he almost never won any of his onscreen fights–he was good enough that he knew how to effectively make the other guy look even better.  That’s why the swordfight in The Adventures of Robin Hood looks so awesome even though Errol Flynn is nowhere near Rathbone’s level.

But this fight, right here?  Was one of the only fights where he needed a stunt double.  Because while he was able to keep Danny Kaye from being seriously injured, Rathbone himself nearly got skewered a few times by Kaye’s flailing around.  So in a bizarre way, this is probably the closest to an even match Rathbone had in his career… just not for the reasons you’d expect.

[hamelin-born]

“Don’t you know, there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to.”

-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)

The origin of a saying I’ve seen quoted in various works of fiction - “The best swordsman does not fear the second best, he fears the worst since there’s no telling what that idiot is going to do.”

[cosmonautroger]

[renaissanceousia]

one of the most intimate scenes i've ever read i'm so serious

[twelvetinypelicans]

I just can’t get over how easily Rick could have made this lead to a betrayal. But he didn’t! He used this moment to give them an intimate time together and then. Just didn’t use it again. AMAZING. Every other author I know would have sent Percy on a downward worry spiral wondering when Annabeth would betray him, or would have slowly had Annabeth reveal she was going to betray him, or even had Annabeth captured and tortured to reveal that information so Percy had to TRULY fight for his life. But no! Rick have them this moment to make them closer and it was pretty much never brought up again and I love him for that.

[xiaq]

Ok, so I use Em Carroll's His Face All Red to begin the horror unit in my graphic narrative course and today I had a student provide my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE TAKE on the comic.

They were like, "This isn't scary at all. It's a perfectly logical set of events."

And the class was like...what?

And they were like, "Clearly, the weaker younger brother didn't actually kill the stronger older brother. He bashed him in the head with a rock and, head wounds bleed a ton, so he thought he'd killed him, but he'd only stunned him. Older brother wakes up, climbs out of the hole, notices his coat is missing a giant chunk, and has a pretty good idea of what younger brother is going to do. SO he orders himself a new coat, has it delivered to a nearby village, waits two days for Amazon prime to show up with it, and then walks back to his home village on day 3 having decided to drive his brother absolutely insane in revenge. And then for the next several days he plays along with his brother's story and digs a hole next to his brother's house, except he doesn't stop there, he digs a tunnel that reaches back to the hole in the woods connecting the two. Because he knows that his brother is going to freak out at some point and go back to check if the body is still here. And when he sees his brother heading off into the woods one night, he hops into the farmhouse-hole and takes the short-cut tunnel to the forest-hole and puts on his old coat and rubs some sheep's blood on his face so that when his brother shows up he can roll over and be like 'whattup' so he'll lose his damn mind."

And then multiple other people in the class were like, "actually, yeah, if my sibling tried to kill me that's exactly how I'd handle it."

[xiaq]

In honor of Halloween, I'd like to bring back my favorite day of teaching Em Carrol's His Face All Red.

[vivi266-archive-deactivated2024]

some of you need to romanticise the fucking paragraph break

[guccifloralsuits]

I would fall into the pits of hell with you rather than face the thought you might suffer alone. A powerful goddess erased all my memories but she couldn’t make me forget the sound of your laugh. You are my tether to mortality and the hand that saved me from drowning. The first time you kissed me I caused a seismic volcanic earthquake. When I met Aphrodite I thought she looked like you. The divine rulers of this universe fear I might burn down the world if you asked. And I would. Without hesitation. Do you get it? Do you understand?

[hpandcarbs]

Things Percy Jackson remembers in Son of Neptune:

Annabeth exists

I met Annabeth at a camp

Annabeth and I kiss sometimes

Fuck Ares