April 15, 2022
"is there a loathly lady in the tale? well SORT OF"
"The Seven Daughters Of The Cailleach Foraoise" by Dyce (Sarah Blackwell) is tagged "new fairy tales / going old school with this one / threes and sevens and animals in danger and trick questions / the lot / enjoy": "Being kind of heart, he wrapped his hands in his cloak to protect them, and freed the young fox despite its attempts to bite him." Thematically related: Kate Clayborn writes a Twitter thread on the Canterbury Tales, the loathly lady, and 'a quest to find a true answer to the question "what do women most desire"' (nitter view, Threadreader view): "i really need to say a word on behalf of my old friend the wife of bath" [Content note for mention of rape in Twitter thread.]
A Oscar Screener Pirating Stats Compiler Looks at 20
Waxy.org, the slightly younger blog compatriat of actual elder websites like MetaFilter, turned 20 years old yesterday. Run by MetaFilter's own waxpancake aka Andy (absolutely no relation) Baio, Waxy has been a font of interesting links for longer than most of the people on TikTok have been alive, and remains a valuable and likable roundup of web and internet weirdness to this very day. (Hi, Andy.)
For music what vi was for text
From the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, the gold standard tool for computer-composed music was the tracker. With an origin in software piracy and digital counterculture, tracker-composed music defined new genres and has a legacy that continues today. Trackers: The Sound of 16-bit. (Warning: includes music that may transport geeks of a certain age back to their youth.)
Wherefore art though balcony?
Ask a random person on the street to describe the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and it is likely they will have an answer. Visitors to Verona can visit the famous balcony itself. This is bit surprising, since no balcony [time-walled Atlantic] appears anywhere in Shakespeare, at least in this universe. Juliet comes to a window in the play. The word seems to have been printed for the first time in English two years after Shakespeare's death. It was a common word in what is now Italy, but if Shakespear knew about it, he never wrote it down. A likely origin is Thomas Ottway's very popular play from 1680, The History and fall of Gaius Marius, which liberally borrows from Shakespeare and other sources and prominently features a balcony. (via You're Wrong About)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Raccoon astronaut with the cosmos reflected in his helmet dreams of the stars /
Jedi sloth /
Lego Mona Lisa /
Cute animals on rainbow grass /
Bulldog in coat and hat drives an old car /
Victorian rabbit reads the paper on a bench /
Macro shot of a kitten in glasses /
Cool panda skateboards in Santa Monica /
Propaganda poster of a Napoleon cat with cheese /
Plants in a lightbulb /
Proud raccoons pose with their art /
Studio Ghibli train stations /
Kid and dog stare at the stars /
Ukiyo-e teddy bears shop for groceries /
Soup bowl monster knit out of wool /
Astronaut on a horse, pencil sketch /
American Gothic, but it's dogs with pizzas /
Badass sheep in a science lab /
Mona Lisa in Twin Peaks /
Kitty donut shop /
Colorful gamerooms, Memphis Design /
HD photo of Pikachu in a cape /
Wooden art deco cat /
Fruit golem /
Codex Seraphinianus / Voynich Manuscript /
Variations on Vermeer, Klimt, Seurat, Ohara /
"Good morning" Post-It on the ISS cupola /
Cats in blue hats /
Writer ponders her next story, oil painting /
Timepieces, De Chirico style /
Cheshire Cat and Tinkerbell play poker /
Pieter Bruegel's Incredible Hulk /
A plum and perfume served in a hat /
Earth as chocolate cake /
The orange cat Otto von Garfield in a Prussian Pickelhaube eats lasagna /
A robot paints while playing piano,
draws itself,
paints itself,
shows another robot its art / Meet OpenAI's DALL·E 2, the extraordinary new AI that creates anything you can imagine in a matter of seconds. [more inside]
Blue Sky Studios Gives Scrat a Proper Sendoff in Final Farewell
It has somehow been 20 years since audiences first witnessed the adventures of Manny, Sid, Diego, and all the rest of the Ice Age crew. Throughout all that time, Scrat the saber-toothed squirrel has been searching across all of creation for a place to keep his acorn safe. Blue Sky Studios is the team behind Ice Age, but it has gone extinct thanks to the recent megamerger of Disney and 20th Century Fox. As a brief goodbye from the artists that brought this franchise to life, Blue Sky posted a brief animation of the popular squirrel finally securing the acorn and eating it. [more inside]
How much would you pay for nothing?
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Twenty-Three (and seven-ninths)
Clayton Kershaw was six outs away from pitching the first perfect game in nearly a decade on Wednesday afternoon vs. the Twins. But, after seven innings, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts decided to pull the All-Star pitcher based on his pitch count.
🎶Man-maru-chan🎶
Japan has a number of islands and locations called "Nekojima" or "Cat Island" because they are overrun by cats, which provide more of a tourist attraction than an inconvenience (one previously). On one such island, the cats are followed by the diligent, silent Youtubers Impressed cat video and 野郎が撮った猫動画. Examples: seaside cats of mixed emotions; pond tea tiger welcomes humans; a failed attempt at lewdness.
They are cared for by volunteers like the cheerful BIGMAMA, who feeds, grooms, and medicates the cats. She seems to have uncanny cat-obedience powers, possibly because she sings their names whenever she visits them. Commenters from around the world respond to the Google Translate descriptions in the same dreamlike English. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »