[YOUR ATTEMPT TO HEX ME BOUNCES HARMLESSLY OFF THE FULL GAMBESON I MADE OUT OF CRYSTALS AND HOTGLUE AND WORE TO THE DMV FOR THIS SPECIFIC REASON]

Cover design for 'Grand Rituals'

Mark Jarrell

markjarrellart.com

crowd of the damned

Pamplona Bible, Navarre 1197

Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 108, fol. 254r

happy winona ryder season to those who celebrate it

Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology cover (1973) by Bruce Pennington. Image from Ultraterranium: The Paintings of Bruce Pennington (1991)

19 Sep 24

"Israel escalates amid escalation fears"

"Where do I stand on the -- on the WHAT? The "Transgender Question"? Well for one thing, sir, I recall the last few usages of that particular phraseology. A group of millions is not a question -- I have not yet finished speaking -- not a question, but a demographic."

"The Romans had their castrated priestesses, the Hindus their Hijras, but my god, let us take to the barricades because Uncle Al came to Thanksgiving in a skirt and pantyhose! It's the province of rubes. Hayseed reactionaries and the worst effluvia of America's suburban colon."

"And Chapelle! My god, Chapelle. Embarrassing as only a true great can become in his declining years -- I speak here with complete self-awareness; kindly hold your barbs -- as he tires of innovation and falls back into the soporific cushion of the lowest common denominator!"

"One joke stretched until you can hear its joints popping like some poor bastard broken on the rack. "Oh my car has pronouns, I identify as a bird, I'm trans-Chinese." The laziness of it -- shameful. You should see the transgendered roast themselves; there's true scorched earth."

“Why’d you do that?” Please remember that I am using what I’ve seen in humans to mimic them

its been p common knowledge for decades that light pollution can be massively reduced by just putting shades on streetlamps, and that doing that would save energy, help wildlife, and let us see the stars better, but are society says if u wanna change any minor little tiny thing u gotta dedicate ur whole life to campaigning for it and this is a good ways down the list of priorities for most ppl, so instead i gotta walk past newly-installed streetlamps that are just dumb glass globes that use half their electricity to blast half their light directly into the sky where it does only bad things for no reason and think "we should overthrow the government"

But also consider joining DarkSky international , which can educate you on what you can do locally, and where you can also check to see if you have a nearby chapter.

darksky international has put out graphics about this, one of which i took note of because it got shared widely (it went around on tumblr, reddit, got reproduced in different forms on various blogs and websites), even though it is unfortunately incorrect. darksky intl themselves realized that, so for the folowing year's dark sky week they shared a corrected version, which i haven't seen shared quite as often as the previous one.

here is the first (incorrect!!) version:

and here is the corrected version they used the following year:

because yes, the one that was initially labeled "better" does in fact deserve the label "bad" – any kind of convex surface that is not completely shielded will scatter light above the horizontal line (despite the graphic using a horizontal line, making it incorrect in that sense still), which is what you want to avoid!

a ray of light shining straight into the sky at a 90° angle will travel 10km and then exit the troposphere. a ray of light emitted at 1° above the horizontal line will, if unimpeded, travel more than 250km before exiting the troposphere.

I was telling my dad about how there are always hermits in Arthurian stories, just, you're out on a quest and you need directions or to recover from a wound so you look for the nearest hermit because there's usually one around. My Dad said "Like gas stations" and I have not been the same since

Under my new initiative, we will install an anchorite cell at every gas station in the country.

catching a whiff of my own perfume and being like “oh that smells nice!!!” small joys every day baby

Official nature post

palestinian families to support

hello everyone, i’m sharing a list of families that have reached out to me in the past week. if you're in a position to help, your support through a donation would mean so much. please pass this along and help these campaigns reach their goals soon!

Dr. Mohammad Al-Deeb - €40,076 / €55,000 | vetted (#212) | donate here

Osama Al-Anqar - £2,555 / £50,000 | unvetted | donate here

Muhammad - €187 / €25,000 | unvetted | donate here

Ezz El-Din Salem - €1,909 / €20,000 | vetted by association | donate here

Hashem Al-Shawish - €8,367 / €45,000 | vetted | donate here

Adham Ayyad - €35 / €50,000 | unvetted | donate here

Hazem Shawish - €6,192 / €50,000 | vetted by association | donate here

Mohammad Taysir - €13,238 / €50,000 | vetted | donate here

Eslam Gheelan - $5,678 / $50,000 | vetted | donate here

Ahmad Al-Sir - €5,486 / €50,000 | vetted | donate here

Eman Al-Madhoun - €16,301 / €20,000 | vetted | donate here

Ashraf Hassan Al-Sir - €1,271 / €50,000 | unvetted | donate here

i will try to keep this list updated regularly, thank you!

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2609/

theres ALWAYS a relevant XKCD for everything huh

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.