Tag: Text

I JUST HEARD THE BEST THING

gallusrostromegalus:

coherent-paradox-blog:

gallusrostromegalus:

gallusrostromegalus:

So I’m watching a Sir David Attenborough (Natural Curiousities on Netflix), to cope withe the crushing lonliness of solo housesitting, and he’s on about Really Weird animals and talks about the origins of the pheonix- a bird that people travelling though Africa only rarely saw shrouded in the streamy mists of volcanic soda lakes (which are literally boiling hot and also extremely caustic).

And all they’d see is the occasional bit of bright red plumage and see these things bobbing in and out of the horrible death clouds coming off the lake, and naturally came up with the myth of a firebird what the fuck ELSE would be living IN A GODDAMN VOLCANO??

The Central Africans told this to the Egyptians who told the Greeks* about this mysterious animal, and they ran hog-wild with it to create the now-famous Pheonix, but-

The bird they were seeing in those volcanic lakes?

image

FLAMINGOES.

FLAMINGOES ARE THE ORIGIN OF THE PHEONIX MYTH.

MAJESTIC

(Image Source: Chris Kotze)

*There is significant academic debate about who told who what when (esp as the firebird myth has cropped up multiple times and been culturally exchanged many, MANY times) but the Flamingo>Egyptian Bennu>Greek Pheonix>European Pheonix chain is fairly well agreed upon.

Some of my favorite tags so far:

@asleepinawell “Natural Curiousities” is on netflix and I think the PBS streaming app.  BBC streaming keeps crashing on me but probably there too.  It’s very much like his usual work, but with 500% more “Look at these funky specimens and the frantic scribbles of early scientific illustrators confronted with a fucking kangaroo” and “I’m Sir David Fucking Attenborough And I’m Going To Snuggle This Cheetah”

@heedra  You are correct! According to Wikipedia: “The nameflamingo” comes from Portuguese or Spanish flamengo, “flame-colored”, in turn coming from Provençal flamenc from flama “flame” and Germanic-like suffix -ing, with a possible influence of words like “Fleming” THEY WERE TRYING TO TELL US ALL ALONG!

@melifair  You’re in good company- I used to call them “Pimentos” until I was three and finally got the hang of the Letter “F”

Also, Apologies about the spelling. I have a reading disorder and it causes me to mis-read and by turn misspell certain words, especially ones with two nonidentical vowels in the middle of the word like Their and Becuase. Good thing we all know what I’m talking about anyway!

But how could you not tell us WHAT THE FLAMINGOS ARE DOING IN A VOLCANO?????

So Flamingoes are pretty badass.

They’re hyperspecialized filter-feeders, not unlike krill-feeding whales, and thier heads are shaped Like That, so they can dangle thier heads in the water, suck up water full of algae and brine shrimp and other goodies, and filter them out with thier Spiny Tongues.

(Image Source Apparently, according to the Ancient Romans, Flamingo Tounge has a “Superb” flavor. You Wacky Roman Bastards)

But the lakes with the tastiest and most dense algae and arthropods are not Normal lakes.  African Lesser Flamingoes (lesser becuase they have a smaller range, but probably our phoenix given how people were travelling at the time) like to hang out in extremely Alkaline Lakes where thier favorite algae grow, and those lakes are mostly in the volcanic Great Rift Valley.  Where the lava and occasional venting of hot toxic gasses happen.

In addition to the wierd diet, and caustic water, Flamingoes can also cope with some pretty intense climate.  The Alkaline Lakes Lesser Flamigoes like are also VERY HIGH in the mountains, where they cope with low oxygen, Intense UV radiation, and rapid and extreme temperature fluctuations- below freezing at night and heatstroke hot in the day.

You can tell how well a Flamigo is Flamingoing by it’s color! The lovely red-pink color comes from the algae and arthopods they eat: the better-fed and healthier a flamingo is, the more intense thier colors will be! Zoo famingoes can thrive on a wide variety of diets, but thier colors will fade, and it will cause everyone to lose romantic interest, so they have to be fed a special color-intensive diet to keep breeding programs going.

So while Flamingoes probably weren’t the bird you were picturing when you thought of a Phoenix , they’re Pretty Badass and worthy of the mythic lore.

M A J E S T I C

archiemcphee:

Today we step into the Archie McPhee Library to explore a macabre and fascinating book entitled The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death [Buy on Amazon] by Corinne May Botz, whose outstanding photos reveal one of the strangest and most significant tools in the development of modern forensic analysis: eighteen miniature, exhaustively detailed crime scene models built in the 1940s and 50s by pioneering criminologist Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962). She called her models “Nutshell Studies” because, “the purpose of a forensic investigation is said to be to ‘convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell.’”

Glessner Lee was a grandmother in her 60s when she painstakingly created these dollhouse models, each of which is based on an actual homicide, suicide or accidental death. To help ensure accuracy she attended autopsies and made sure that even the smallest details of her models were correct. Clothing is appropriately worn out, pencils write, locks, windows, and lights all function, whistles blow, and mice inhabit the walls. These astonishing models were (and still are!) used to train detectives on how to asses visual evidence.

Corinne May Botz’s lush color photographs lure viewers into every crevice of Frances Lee’s models and breathe life into these deadly miniatures, which present the dark side of domestic life, unveiling tales of prostitution, alcoholism, and adultery. The accompanying line drawings, specially prepared for this volume, highlight the noteworthy forensic evidence in each case. Botz’s introductory essay, which draws on archival research and interviews with Lee’s family and police colleagues, presents a captivating portrait of Lee.

Frances Glessner Lee was also an heiress who used her considerable fortune to found Harvard’s department of legal medicine, the first forensic pathology program in the nation. In 1943 she was appointed an honorary Captain in the New Hampshire State Police. She was the first woman in the United States to hold that rank.

It’s a dark topic, to be sure, but this beautiful book is an intimate and utterly captivating look at the work of a truly remarkable woman and one of the most important figures in the development of modern forensic analysis.

[Images via the New York Times and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death]

brighteyedbadwolf:

thebibliosphere:

thebibliosphere:

Do you ever read a piece of writing advice so awful you’re not entirely sure if it’s satire or not.

If your character is an evil assassin, you might want to refer to his fingernails as daggers or stabbers.

Stabbers. Stabbers. Yep.

A jealous ex-girlfriend might have witch hooks or tentacles. Sugar- or flour-coated hands could be clues that a protagonist is a baker. Or a serial killer with a fetish.

Well this has taken an odd turn.

Use ‘hands’ too often, and the word will annoy readers. English offers a multitude of options.

Oh no.

Analyze what the hands are doing and assign a noun that suits them. In addition to the following, check the Movement section for verbs you could convert into nouns. For example, ‘boo-boo soothers’.

Get the fuck out of here.

prestidigitators

No.

shadow puppeteers

???

stranglers

WHY DOES IT KEEP COMING BACK TO MURDER

See also 300+ Words to Describe Human Skin.

I was looking for something else in my blog and found this post and absolutely lost my shit all over again lmao

If your jealous ex has tentacles you might have other problems.

How anarchist organizers in rural Puerto Rico rebooted their power grid after the privatized power company abandoned them

mostlysignssomeportents:

After being hammered by hurricane Maria, the residents of the rural
Puerto Rican mountain town of Mariana got tired of waiting for the
bumbling, privatized, cash-starved power authority to reconnect them to
the grid, so the anarchist organizer Christine Nieves founded Proyecto
de Apoyo Mutuo, one of a dozen-odd cooperatives across the island to
create their own solar grid; by the time the The Puerto Rico Electric
Power Authority finally put in appearance, Mariana had had power for two
whole months.

After Maria, Puerto Rico suffered the second-longest blackout in world
history, ignored by both the federal government and the gutted, heavily
privatized local government. So community organizers like Nieves took
matters into their own hands.

Nieves’s group formed an alliance with the Katrina-inspired Mutual Aid
Disaster Relief, which fundraised to send gear to Puerto Rico.

The island-wide efforts are rare bright spots in a year-long crisis with
no end in sight. Naturally, they’ve faced police harassment and raids
looking for “antifa.”

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/13/better-than-bounty.html

President Trump falsely claims 3000 death toll in Puerto Rico is a lie

mostlysignssomeportents:

The Republican president speaks for the Republican Party.

3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit
Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had
anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much.
Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers,
like 3000…. [twitter]

….This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as
possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help
rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just
add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico! [twitter]

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017. The 2,975 count
comes from a George Washington University study, published in July,
which included people who died of thist, starvation, disease or neglect
as a direct result of the storm. 64 (not “6 to 18”) were reportedly
killed outright by drowning, falling debris, in collapsing buildings,
etc.

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/13/president-trump-falsely-claims.html

charlesoberonn:

catsandbreadandbikes:

keeperofthetongatooth:

charlesoberonn:

Yes, Avril Lavigne, you can make it more obvious. You literally told me nothing about these two people except their genders and presumingly their young age. They could both be gay, or not even into each other. They could be two complete strangers. They could be living on different continents, or in different time periods. You gotta be more specific.

It’s the fact she then carries on to describe them as “he was a punk, she did ballet” and then says “what more can I say?” and it’s like you still haven’t actually told us anything ffs Avril. 

He was a 17th century english prostitute, she danced in the Perm Theater Ballet in Russia in 1893

Wow way to use an archaic meaning of the word ‘punk’ for historical accuracy.

Okay I need to ask. Why do YOU write?

thebibliosphere:

thebibliosphere:

I grew up surrounded by words in quite very
literal sense. By the time I was six months old my parents had taped words
to every surface in the house. So the walls said “wall” the window said
“window” and so on so forth. I still don’t know how they managed to get
the cat involved (she had a sign that said Cat) but some things in life are meant to be wondered at.

But for the next six years the world was covered in words, as first I learned to read, and then my brother. I dare say if you move some furniture in my parents house to this day you will find a faded piece of paper that says “shelf” or “bookcase” on it. It was a sad day when they were taken down, they were like old friends. But by then the magic had already worked. I was able to look at the world and see words, whether they were printed there or not.

I
was four when I sat down to consciously write my first story. I remember
it vividly because I had my bright yellow Cadburys Caramel mug, that
had the purple flowing font on the side with the bunny rabbit lady
on it. It was filled with “baby tea”— which is mostly hot milk with a splash
of tea from the pot to give it color— and I was holding it in both hands, sitting at the
little “art” table dad had built for me in the corner so I had a place
to sit and scribble that wasn’t the walls. Contemplating my next masterpiece I looked around the room for inspiration. Would it be an exploration of color through pinky finger painting only? Or would it be the greatest macaroni interpretation of a dog we’d ever seen? Sadly we’ll never know how this might have worked out, as at that very moment, mum came in holding a crystal mobile and hung it up on the window sill. This in turn had the effect of creating a living, dancing rainbow in the living room, and something in my brain short fused.

That was the day I learned the word “iridescent”. It was like learning the language of angels.

After that I was always scribbling something. My school books were a mess of words, crammed into margins and on back pages. I was always in trouble for letting my mind “wander into whimsy.” Once I got a report card that said “fantastical leanings towards flights of fancy.” It was meant as criticism, but dad still has it framed in the office.

Then there came the time a few years later when I was reading the Hobbit with dad, and I turned to him quite seriously and asked “where are all the girl hobbits?” and dad hemmed and hawed before eventually telling me “they’re in another book, darling…having their own adventure…” and I accepted this and settled back down to let him finish the chapter. He probably thought I forgot about it until that weekend I marched up to the Librarian and asked for “the girl hobbit book please”, which was met with much confusion and my dad rushing over to tell me they probably wouldn’t have it yet because it was very rare. A few weeks later, dad handed me something. It was sheaves of paper bound together by string. It was, he told me, a very exclusive copy of the girl hobbit book.

I still have it somewhere, back home. Probably on a shelf somewhere that still says “shelf”.

And sweet, naive thing that I was, I believed him. It wasn’t until later on and someone else popped my bubble, that I realized dad, not Tolkien, had written it. And oh I was furious, furious because the story had been so good and because dad had lied about not writing it himself. But that small bubbling anger was nothing compared to the heat inside my brain when my dad confessed he’d tried without much success to find books I might like with girls in them. All the heroes were boys, you see. It made me quite tearful actually, that no one had ever thought that someone like me could go off on an adventure and save the world, when I knew it to be a blatant lie. Old Mrs McDougall across the street had been a land girl and saved a man shot down from his spitfire. Mrs Mitchell had been the emergency coordinator and saved people from burning buildings when the Nazis bombed the shipyards, and her skin was all bubbled and tightly pulled across the left side of her face because of it and her hands didn’t quite work because she’d gripped burning metal to try and free the men inside. Those, were heroes. But we never learned about them at school. We only learned about kings and tyrants and the kind of heavily filtered history that lead you to believe that women were in there somewhere, but only in the same sense that a wall has paint on it.

And now my books, my lovely wonderful books, where you could travel through space and time or climb up volcanoes to throw rings inside and save the world…those wonderful colorful worlds that spoke the language of angels, were just the same.

I was ready to cry and be defeated about it until dad, raising his eyebrows at me and offering me a notebook, said, “well, maybe someone ought to write one.”

And you likely know the rest by now. But in short I write because there are stories to be told. I write because it’s the closest I’ll ever be to how the word iridescent feels. I look at the world and I see words, dancing like rainbows, singing like angels.

There’s words everywhere. I’m just scribbling them down as fast as I can.

For the person who saw this on Pinterest and wanted to reblog from the source, here you go <3