Live, Laugh, Luigi

D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D

[transmortifried]

idk why people are still trying to do "hear me out"s on tumblr

you could talk about wanting to fuck the space needle on here and people would still call you a poser for insisting on fucking "conventionally attractive architecture" as if that's a coherent, easily-recognizable category

[charlesoberonn]

I want to fuck Antoni Gaudi's unbuilt Hotel Attraction skyscraper design

[anatomizer]

"hear me out" and it's a picture of the most fuckable building you've ever seen. c'mon now.

[thepersonalmossblog]

“hear me out” and it’s the fucking dildopolis

[moiraxrose]

one thing it is imperative to know about the television show Widow’s Bay is that it was created by katie dippold whose name you may not immediately recognize but whose tweet from 10 years ago you definitely do:

[pam3pr]

Two thousand year old Thracian chariot with horse skeletons - found in Karanovo, Bulgaria - 2008

[detectivehole]

unless its egregious, i'm not embarrassed to be fooled by ai. "oh i got lied to via something made by the Lying Machine the machine we made to Lie really well" like it's gonna happen it's no egg on your face. just be chill about it

[detectivehole]

don't get me wrong. it's always devastating always humbling. no one wants to fall for the lying machine it just sounds bad. but you can't dwell

[mikugenesisevangelion]

The Small World of Broken Things

Other chapters in this series: 1 | 2 | 3

[mosoli]

im still laughing at this

[supreme-leader-stoat]

reblog if you made it this far somehow

[supreme-leader-stoat]

made it this far somehow monday

[yuriartillery]

I hate being aware that my frenzy meter is filling

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[dogposts]

some dogs are smart and. well. others are happy

[mafuyuh]

witch hat atelier | manga vs. anime

[atlaculture]

Cultural Fashion: Sokka’s Fire Nation Shirt

Unlike the rest of the Gaang, Sokka’s Fire Nation outfit is almost entirely Chinese-inspired. The capelet he’s wearing is inspired by “cloud collars” or Yunjian (云肩).

The shirt he wears is a long, sleeveless Tangzhuang (唐装). Zuko also wears one in Season 1. As a side note, I just love frog clasps, they’re so elegant.

[atlaculture]

Fun fact, Sokka’s cloud collar is traditionally considered to be women’s fashion. Considering that Sokka would obviously be clueless about civilian clothing in the Fire Nation, the “inaccuracy” of the design choice can simply be written off as Sokka’s ignorance. That said, it is pretty funny that this is the second time Sokka has visited a new nation and ended up in traditionally female clothing.

I think Sokka would agree on my stance that women’s clothing tends to have more flair.

[atlaculture]

While we’re on the topic of the Gaang’s Fire Nation fits, I think it would be fun to highlight what their modern-equivalent outfit would be.

Aang

Aang’s outfit is canonically a school uniform and inspired by Thai male formalwear. He’s basically wearing a posh boarding school uniform.

Katara

Katara’s design is inspired by the female folk-dance costumes of the Dai people, so I’m assuming her outfit would be something like a street performer’s outfit in the modern day.

Sokka

As I implied earlier, the cloud collar was historically a popular accessory with Chinese noblewomen. Meanwhile, sleeveless tangzhuang tend to be associated with martial arts; I’ve seen quite a few listings online refer to them as “Kung Fu Vests”. So quite a contrast in clothing choices. The modern-day equivalent would be walking around in a tank while wearing a pearl necklace… Which is apparently a thing.

Toph

Toph’s shawl-cape thing is inspired by the sabai (สไบ) worn by female performers in Thai ballet renditions of the Ramayana. Basically, a very fancy piece of clothing. The hairband she’s wearing also resembles costume jewelry. In contrast, her pants are Thai fishermen pants, which are about as practical and unfancy as you can get. In short, she’s basically wearing the modern equivalent to sweatpants with a tutu and a tiara. I imagine Fire Nation locals assume she’s just a very whimsical 12-year-old.

[cooler-luckysandcat]

Projecting my dog's current issues onto brushbuddy

[o-craven-canto]

Forbidden phenotypes and the limits of evolution

Abstract. Evolution has produced an astonishing array of organisms, but does it have limits and, if so, how are these overcome and how have

An interesting paper (Vermeij, 2015) on the "empty phenotypic space", i.e. the forms and adaptations that we do not see in the living world, possibly relevant to the convergence vs. contingency debate.

Some examples:

Wheels: some curled-up arthropods can roll around, and bacterial flagella and some parts of weevil legs rotate on their axis, but macroscopic wheels with a free axle do not exist, probably because smooth surfaces on which they'd be useful are rare and it would be difficult to grow them through embryonal development.

Animal-provided pollination and dispersal do not exist in water, with the possible exception of one species of fish-pollinated seagrass (which is a descendant of terrestrial plants). Presumably water is already good enough at carrying gametes and propagules that buying the services of an animal is a useless expense.

Mineral reef-building does not occur on land nor, more surprisingly, in freshwater. The reason for the latter is not clear, since there are enough mineral ions in freshwater to build shells. Boring of rock, shells, and wood in freshwater is also extremely rare though common in the sea.

Gelatinous plankton like salps or jellyfish (with few exceptions of the latter) is also not found in freshwater, probably because they can't survive dispersal between separate water bodies.

Endothermy ("warm blood") is generally not found in small aquatic animal, probably because water leeches away heat much faster than water, so aquatic endotherms (tunas, sharks, seals, whales) need to be bulky. On land, however, endothermy is found among tiny vertebrates and even insects.

There is no passive air-floating plankton, since air is not dense enough to support living tissue or dissolved organic matter by buoyancy. For that reason filter-feeding is also rare outside of water, while carnivorous plants are not found in the ocean (the water already carries enough nutrient). Aquatic plants do not produce wood as buoyancy is enough to keep them upright.

Large terrestrial animals do not specialize as scavengers (all mammals famous for scavenging also hunt actively); large carcasses are too spread out. All specialist scavengers on land are either very small, or flying.

Herbivory is rare among active fliers, because plant matter has a low energy density and takes a long time to digest. Herbivorous birds and insects are poor fliers or flightless, and the best fliers, like geese, are the ones that can take shelter in water.

Many more examples are only excluded from specific groups (e.g. live-bearing, despite being very common in reptiles, never appeared in birds, probably because the bird egg-shell is too mineralized to be retained in the womb as transition toward full live-bearing).

Even though the author calls them "forbidden phenotypes", only some of them are actually impossible (because they cannot evolve in the first place, or because they cost more energy than they're worth), and others simply never happened to evolve. At the end of the paper there is a list of phenotypes that would have been "forbidden" in the aftermath of the Cambrian Explosion and Ordovician diversification, but which appeared later, and they include

cutins, suberins, lignins, flavonoids, alkaloids, vascular systems, roots, leaves, rigid frameworks of stems and branches, nutrition complemented by animal matter, and basal growth in land plants; nitrogen-fixing symbiosis on land; animal-mediated dispersal/pollination; silk-producing, sound-emitting, flying, eusocial, terrestrial herbivorous, wood-boring, terrestrial shell-bearing and endothermic animals; embryos nourished within the body of an animal or plant parent; mineralized phytoplankton; and rock-excavating marine herbivores. [...] photosymbiotic and chemosymbiotic molluscs, the bivalved condition in gastropods, terrestrial life in gastropods and vertebrates, complex septa within the phragmocone of externally shelled cephalopods, internalization and loss of the shell in cephalopods, cementation to the substratum with a glue of calcium carbonate and organic matrix in several animal groups (gastropods, brachiopods, bivalves and barnacles), spines on shells of several groups (brachiopods, bivalves and brachiopods), mineralized tubes in polychaete annelids, mobility in bryozoans and pelmatozoan echinoderms, jaws and teeth in vertebrates, and vascular systems in brown and red algae. A vast diversity of potent venoms also lay in the future as part of the defensive and aggressive arsenal of many gastropods, cephalopods, aculeate Hymenoptera, vertebrates and land plants.

He also mentions phenotypes that were lost, but every listed adaptation seems to have survived in some group (e.g. complex spiny shells disappeared among cephalopods but survived in gastropods).

[anscathmarcach]

All this discourse over who does "painting with light"

Hiroshi Nagai's paintings need sunglasses to look at.

They look like how it feels to walk across a parking lot on a 98° summer day without a speck of shade in sight.

They look like heaven but also like you'd burn your bare feet on the ground.

Even when you can see shade you know it's not enough and the minute you step out you'll be burnt to a crisp like a vampire.

And it's BEAUTIFUL

[dbarenzu626]

I'll throw in the wonderful Eizin Suzuki into this ring too, a man whose work just breathes light without actually using dynamic lighting in the usual way. It's no surprise both Nagai and Suzuki are both considered prolific in art pertaining to the city pop genre because they're able to paint these kinds of scenes with a delicate touch.

This feels like I could trip on that radio and fall right into that water, feeling the crystal waves as I drop in.

And this, a nice stroll down a resort strip, where my sunscreened skin could literally feel cooked if I leaned too close to the tiling.

And then a nice stretch of summer street, wherein you could see your face in the flushed red of that car provided it didn't blind you from its sunny reflections.

I don't think I even need to say anything more, Suzuki's a massive influence in how he even places colours so warmly in such unorthodox manner. It's a naturally sunkissed talent~ 🌊

[coovieilledentelle]

Mon cadeau ce soir ...

Yuja Wang apporte sa virtuosité caractéristique à la « Rhapsody in Blue » de Gershwin, interprétée ici aux côtés de Mahler Chamber Orchestra

[couriers-mile]

y'all ain't even looking at the piano in those front rows

[scarymonsters-protectivespirits]