Notes from the Neon Underground

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
icyday
yourlocalxenomorph

FINALLY making an actual post about this guy! This is Azurion the dragon. He's an ~8 foot long puppet controlled entirely by my left arm and hand, including the blinking mechanism! I also made a fake arm, and I think it really adds to the illusion that Azurion is 'real'.

The project took roughly 6 months to complete (including planning, slacking, and lots of trial and error), and he was finished just in time for the last 2022 weekend of the Colorado Renaissance Festival. I plan on adding more to him and refining the details quite a bit, but I'm pretty pleased with the current results!

A short blonde person with a long dragon puppet draped around their shoulders and puppeted by their left arm. There is a fake arm attached to their body below their left arm. The puppet has bright blue fur, a white leathery underbelly, two straight grey horns, and bright yellow eyes.ALT
bakafox
sylveondreams

image
image

i was very excited during class when i suddenly realized this comic translates beautifully into chinese

sylveondreams

the explanation here being:

allo? - hello?
a l'eau - water?

谁呀？- shei ya? who is it?
水呀？- shui ya? water?

shirubie

It’s even funnier if you know that in french that type of showerhead is called a “Telephone shower”. ^_^

ofmdtereomaori

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After I reblogged this I realised that it works in te reo Māori too.

Ko wai tēnei = Who is this but also This is water

Please add to this, I want it to turn out that this works for every language on earth except English.

icyday
cd-covington

A writer's guide to linguistic worldbuilding

I'm getting ready to launch a kickstarter for a how-to guide to linguistic worldbuilding.

If you've read my column on tor.com, the content will be similar to that, except with more SCIENCE! behind it (because I'm not limited to 1000 words or so ;))

What are some topics you might like to see covered? I've got universal translators, language change on a generation ship, and Sapir-Whorf, to name a few, plus half a semester of graduate-level phonetics compressed into about 35 pages.

icyday

Hello, this is extremely relevant to my interests!

Topics that I would love to see in a linguistic world-building book, specifically one that seems geared towards sci-fi/fantasy content:

  • Ways language can be used to mark social status within a group, especially when looking at cross-status communication.
  • Ways speech can vary within a language, in general, the creation of dialects or possibly even idiolects, if taking language to an individual level.
  • Language borrowing and the development of pidgins in port-type communities.
  • Language development as it might apply to non-human-like intelligences (hive-minds or mechanical sapients)
  • Phonetically, how biology might affect what phonemes are available to a given species, especially where there's not a resemblance to humans.
  • Non-spoken languages in general. Things like writing systems or signed language.

I'm sure there's more I could think of later, and some of these might already be covered by the topics above, but that's what's coming to mind now. :)

writing language worldbuilding
fadeverb
prokopetz

Recipe: spice (optional)

Me: Now, see, what we have here is a disagreement regarding the purpose of this undertaking.

dukeofriven

You can show your dish a photograph of black pepper if you really want to kick the flavour up a notch.

prokopetz

Standing over the pan, brow furrowed with the memory of garlic.

hurricaneforcefan

plato's allegory of the clove

fadeverb

next up on Cooking With La Croix

resumbrarum

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image

[source]

food cooking
jadelapis
headspace-hotel: “dyke-terra: “magicalpaz: “prismatic-bell: “paddysnuffles: “robphoton7: “lotrlocked: “ weaselle: “ There was an arrest across the street from my place in Oakland one day – three cop cars with a bullhorn and guns out – and before I...
weaselle

There was an arrest across the street from my place in Oakland one day – three cop cars with a bullhorn and guns out – and before I could even get out the gate there were a couple people posted up and one of them was filming and another one was narrating in a calm but very loud voice, just

“HE IS COOPERATING! HIS HANDS ARE EMPTY! HE IS DOING WHAT HE IS TOLD TO DO! HE IS HOLDING STILL! HIS HANDS ARE EMPTY! HE IS NOT BEING THREATENING! HE HAS PUT HIS HANDS BEHIND HIS HEAD AS ASKED! HE IS NOT RESISTING!”

and that was something I hadn’t thought to do before. It certainly let the cops know what the narrative of eye witnesses was going to be. 

I especially liked “his hands are empty” because this statement would still be true and a witnessed reason the police should not become violent even if it turned out he had a weapon on his person somewhere.

lotrlocked

I see people in NYC stop and record a lot. Even if they are just being nosey, that’s still witnesses if shit goes down.

robphoton7

We must be vigilant.  The New Solidarity.  You might just save a fellow human being.

paddysnuffles

If you don’t feel comfortable with doing the narrating thing (which really is quite clever), even just standing around and blatantly staring actually legit helps immensely.

There are studies that show that even an image of someone looking can be effective to change people’s behaviours.

Sidenote: If you see a cop stopping an Indigenous person, the same protocol applies.

prismatic-bell

I did this in a parking lot when I saw a group of Black men and teens being harassed by a cop. Stayed in my car, but whipped out my phone and started to record, pointing out via narrative when I could hear the cop contradicting himself and changing his story. At the eight-minute mark, when I knew he was past the reasonable-stop guideline time (thanks, legal tips side of tumblr!), I flipped on my dome light.


Fam, what happened next was INCREDIBLE.


The cop had been gesturing in a wild way, almost flailing, like he was actively trying to get these guys agitated. He saw my dome light, saw a white face with a phone, and suddenly his hands came to rest on his vest. Within 90 seconds he’d packed his shit up and gone.

The most outspoken gentleman in the group came up to me and went “whatchu doing in there?” So I straight-up told him “it looked like you were being harassed, so I was recording.” The whole group recognized someone who was on their side, and started venting about the shit that had just gone down.


Turns out the asshole had had them stopped for a good five minutes before I pulled in. That means they were stopped, with no probable cause and a cop changing his story no fewer than three times, for AT LEAST THIRTEEN MINUTES. While chatting in a parking lot. One car had pulled in next to another that turned out to belong to one of his buddies and they were just shooting the shit when Officer Bacon came by.

Want to know the kicker here? One of the cop’s stories was that a group “matching their description” had been reported by the grocery store security guy for shoplifting. Black man, red shirt with a sports logo, jeans. Know what this convenient report didn’t mention?


HIS HEIGHT.


This guy was, without exaggeration, at least 6’10”. I assure you any report of him would have mentioned his height FIRST. And you’d best believe I pointed that out in my narration.


Cops WILL try shit. You CAN stop them. I did it and it was as simple as having some patience and a camera.

magicalpaz

Same for muslims!

Look out for your fellow marginalized people!

dyke-terra

Honestly, this applies to everyone. It’s a higher priority for the aforementioned groups, but nobody is safe around the police. The police are the enemy.

headspace-hotel

We Take Care of Each Other.

dduane
nasa

This image shows an image of Earth from space. It was taken by the crew of the final Apollo mission as the crew made its way to the Moon. The Earth is round. At the bottom, while clouds surround the continent of Antarctica. As you move up, the landmass appears in the land is brown in color. The ocean appears in dark blue colors. Credit: NASAALT

Ways NASA Studies the Ocean

We live on a water planet. The ocean covers a huge part of the Earth's surface – earning it the name Blue Marble.

The ocean is one of Earth’s largest ecosystems and helps moderate Earth’s climate. NASA scientists spend a lot of time studying the ocean and how it is changing as Earth’s climate changes.

In the last few years, NASA has launched an array of missions dedicated to studying this precious part of our planet, with more to come. For World Oceans Month, which starts in June, here are new ways NASA studies the ocean.

Keep reading

jadelapis
natalieironside

Acting like a selfish motivation negates a good deed seems very silly to me. There's something wonderful about the fact that you can help yourself by helping others. I'm pretty sure that's just what ecological mutualism is.

anarchistmemecollective

#doing good things for bad reasons is still doing good things #remember thatALT
the-home-kvetch

There's a story in the Talmud about this. (I think it's the Talmud. Might be a midrash.)

A rich man decides he wants his legacy to live on forever. He decides that he is going to build an orphanage. He gives a lot of money to the local synagogue to build it.

Then he realizes that he doesn't really care about the children; he just wants his name on a building. Ashamed, he tells the rabbi to stop the project.

The rabbi says, "yes, you choose to build this for yourself. But will it matter to the children? Will they be angry that you only did it to look good, or will they be happy to have a home?"