In light of the sheer grimness of that last post, there has been a request for a “kittens, puppies, bonbons and rainbows thread.” So here you go. Discussion does not have to be confined to kittens, puppies, bonbons and rainbows, but keep it positive! This is a thread for uplifting stuff only. No trolls, MRAs, Hitlers.
Have a cute Ford from something I’m working on.
http://i.imgur.com/MSam73r.gif
Since there seem to be some other animation fans here, I’ll just quickly note that absolutely everyone should watch the animated documentary Nuts if you have the chance. It’s about the life of John Brinkley, a “doctor” from 1930s Kansas who invented a cure for impotence by implanting goat testicles into his patient’s scrotum, which he spun into a huge radio empire and nearly successful run for governor of Kansas. It’s fucking hilarious, and sadly still relevant with another two bit con artist that’s been in the news lately.
NoSkybison – haven’t seen it, but I’ve known about Brinkley for years*. Thanks for the info!
Our younger son is doing really well. His class counselor told me today that he is a pleasure to have in class, although sometimes stubborn. I assured her that it is a family trait; high intelligence and extreme stubbornness. Curious, given that none of us are related by blood.
Older son is still schizophrenic, but retains his phenomenal people skills. Reminds me of my mother that way; she could sit on a bench with a stranger and twenty minutes later they’d be the best of friends. My dad always marveled at that. I’m going to take him to the movies on Saturday (thanks, SSI!).
Husband is still working ridiculous hours, building his baking business. He’s even more hail-fellow-well-met than Eldest. Have you ever known someone EVERYONE liked? I’m married to him.
And me? I’m still alive at fifty five. When I think of all my friends who never got to be this old, I’m ridiculously grateful. I’m living – very literally – the life I used to dream of.
Thanks for the opportunity to express my gratitude to the universe.
*I’ve long had a fascination with the fringes of science, et cetera, and he was a most successful fringer.
The official anthem of the POGTOW (Pipe Organs Going Their Own Way) movement….
@Ktoryx
I have become much enamoured of foxes now that I live in a place where foxes come and sleep on our deck. 🙂
re: stage fighting! 🙂 I have to admit, I’m more into the real steel fighting. I def agree with you on the German longsword thing. 🙂 *looks over at sword* :):)
Here’s a vid of our group fighting:
@Hu’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqDaoMtIujs
For counterbalance 😀
I just finished watching the first season of Steven Universe, and I can not get enough of Garnet’s song “Stronger than You.” (I’ve been constantly listen to it for the past couple days.) I also realized that Estelle voices Garnet. Here’s a link to the video:
https://youtu.be/6JARVfb-FBg
I’m glad most mammotheers are doing well with school, work, and health.
I don’t comment much and mostly lurk (I kinda do this in real life too since I’m pretty quiet), so I don’t expect people to know or remember me.
Anyway, I thought I would share too. I recently ended an 11 year relationship, and I really still care for my former partner, so it’s been confusing as I’ve been trying to figure stuff out.
I work as teacher, and I got a non re-elect (i.e. my contract was not renewed; kinda like being fired, plus I can’t work in the district indefinitely) from my school district after a really tough school year. I’m a new teacher on probation, meaning my position was kinda vulnerable. I don’t get any reason given for why it happens since I was probationary, but it seems it’s because the district would rather hire on new teachers (that they can pay less) than make probationary teachers non-probationary (and have to pay more). There has been a lot of changes this summer for me. But there were good things too. A few of my friends got married and I got to spend fun times with friends. I’m also planning on teaching overseas for a year, so that’s kind of exciting.
So much cool stuff! I have to take my cat for her walk (shutupit’stotallynormal), so will actually interact with everyone else when we get back, but here is one of my favorite distractions, discovered through Making Light (yes, I know that the Nielsen-Haydens can be problematic, but they can also be awesome):
http://www.earslap.com/page/otomata.html
Not sure what the crowd likes, but in honor of pissing off the right people, here is a video I stumbled upon a few months ago while looking for the sea shanty with a similar name:
And, semper toujours, the talking boat:
As for me, that faint, echoing squeal you just heard continents away was me finding out one of my favorite artists, Alexander James Adams (deadname Heather Alexander: you may know his “March of Cambreadth”) will be at the con I just moved heaven and earth to attend. So excited!
@Jaygee:
That sounds like a lot of changes to have all at once. I’m sorry to hear that you needed to end the relationship but I hope it’s for the best. I wish you the very best with teaching abroad and hope things settle down at home too.
If you want to talk about it, I’d love to hear.
@Viscaria:
@PoM:
Congrats! You’re both cool people and I’m glad you both have good things in your lives.
As for music, I’ve been on an orchestral music kick lately. Brahms’s German Requiem is an amazing piece.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yg7sU5B_ibM
Tomorrow morning I go down to the courthouse to get my legal name change finalized, and then down to the DMV for accurate ID.
@ Jaygee
*hugs* and best wishes
@ ktoryx & fishy goat
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a discussion about swords on the internet where everyone hasn’t suddenly turned into an expert metallurgist. 🙂
(I like ‘bastard’ swords myself; don’t know much about them but it’s a cool name)
There’s a new little iPhone/GooglePlay game called jrump that’s been made by some Kiwi guys. It’s 2017, Trump has destroyed the world and there’s “hell toupee” (hehe). You build walls (Surprise surprise) to help Trump (dressed as Wonder Woman is my preference) jump up the walls to escape the mess he’s made of the world.
After the earlier post I’ve become quite addicted to the game, partly because I’m feeling a sick pleasure in letting him fall…
If you’re feeling so inclined I recommend it for a welcome injection of some silliness STAT.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, a bastard sword was initially a term for a sword of nonstandard design or uncertain origin (which makes sense) and somewhere along the line came to mean “a longsword of above-average length that isn’t quite big enough to be two-handed”.
For some extremely singable songs, check out Matt Fishel if you don’t already know him.
Radio-Friendly Pop Song, When Boy Meets Boy , Football Song and Behind Closed Doors (all from “Not Thinking Straight” · 2013) are some of my favourites; they’re a bit too readily mashable, but very catchy with some great lyrics. Also Football Song has got a cute video (featuring a few seconds of football ballet, among other things).
@ nequam
There’s probably a Betteridge’s Law of Headlines equivalent for that; but cheers for the info.
The only thing I know about them is that they generally weren’t intended to be sharp. They were more for whacking people with and putting dents in armour. There is (a real) one on the wall of my local. It is fun to swing around*. Probably just as well it isn’t that sharp.
(* You also have to yell “There can be only one!”; it’s the law)
Bastard swords are hand-and-a-half that can be wielded one-handed or two, and they do 2D4 slashing damage. Minimum STR to wield is 11, and their speed factor is 8.
Hello everyone! I’ve been lurking a lot lately since I’m finishing up my PhD thesis. I’m going to submit it next week. Eek!
I’ve also been offered some lecturing for the next term, which means I will be working while I wait for my viva, so that’s good. It’s a bit hectic with everything going on, but I’m so close to finishing. So, so close!
@ ej
People who manage to do PHDs are like super humans to me; so congratulations!
Okay, open thread, so gonna share something cool.
I think I mentioned before that I have friends who are anti-anti-vax activists – trying to spread actual evidence-supported information about vaccines and other medical stuff, to counter all the misinformation (and disinformation) out there. Impressive stuff, mainly because they tend to do it in a very calm and friendly and patient way, explaining things as many times as they need to, shutting down unnecessarily snarky commenters, calming down parents who are worried about upcoming vaccinations because they “heard bad things” or who had the vaccinations and are wondering if something is a normal side effect, etc. Really great to read them.
So, yesterday I was looking at their Facebook page and got into an argument with an antivaxxer (or into part of the argument, at least, I wasn’t the only one answering). He had commented on an HPV-related post, which included a sad personal story about a patient with cervical cancer, by “just asking” if it’s sponsored by med companies, and after being answered continued some more “just asking” of various sorts. At some point I thought I should address his claim about how he’s not making any accusations (because he’s, let’s hear it, Just Asking Questions) with a bit of a linguistic explanation about how that’s actually a meaningless saying. Because language is a complex thing, and a question is simply one syntactical element, so it’s absolutely possible for questions to actually be accusations as well. For those who are familiar, I did a little explanation about semantics and syntax as opposed to pragmatics, and said how the pragmatics of his questions showed the premises he was working from (e.g. that a post supporting vaccines must have some sort of ulterior motive).
And all that was nice, because it’s fun to get to use what I’m actually good at (language) in these arguments.
But the really cool thing is that people seem to be pretty excited about this comment. A couple of science-related pages have quoted it and it got shared a bunch of times, and last I was told had thousands of views(!), and there is so much positive reaction to it, it’s incredible.
I really didn’t expect it to have such an impact, so it’s very cool and even a little awkward to me to see that it had.
[Also, if anyone here wants to use the explanation on any occasional JAQers, I can try and make a tidier English version of it for ya (although I suspect other blog regulars with linguistic background could do just as good a job).]
Here’s some awesome artwork i have bookmarked on pixiv:
http://i1.pixiv.net/img-original/img/2016/05/05/00/06/23/56710272_p0.jpg
http://i1.pixiv.net/c/1200×1200/img-master/img/2015/04/20/00/07/07/49932368_p0_master1200.jpg
http://i4.pixiv.net/img-original/img/2014/07/17/03/17/09/44755047_p0.jpg
http://i1.pixiv.net/img-original/img/2014/12/16/00/07/03/47580308_p0.jpg
http://i2.pixiv.net/img-original/img/2016/03/06/13/28/14/55652917_p0.png
http://i1.pixiv.net/img-original/img/2013/01/07/10/22/13/32702976_p0.jpg
http://i3.pixiv.net/c/1200×1200/img-master/img/2016/06/06/04/01/13/57253466_p1_master1200.jpg
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=56710272
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=55652917
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=44755047
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=47580308
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=49932368
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=34013200
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=52845451
So. I have my job orientation on Monday. (They wanted me to come in today but I don’t know what my roommate’s schedule is like, and I still don’t know my way around as well as I would like, so I still kind of need him to drive me around.)
I played with my dolls a bit yesterday. I even (finally) got my first Monster High doll her proper clothes.
I also bought another doll that I’m going to make into a mannequin that arrived with the clothes, and I’m currently making plans to duplicate these shelves
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/489836896954777474/
with command hooks so I don’t make holes in my bedroom wall (since I’m in an apartment, and if we make holes we have to fix them later and I don’t trust myself to do it properly).
I’m going to put my toys and dolls on them, so it should be fine. That way the bookshelf can be for, you know, books.
My computer’s cables should also be coming in the mail in the next three days, so I’ll be able to clean out my tower and finally get my own computer set up, but I still don’t have a desk yet. (I’ll be using a small entertainment center for the moment.)
All in all, things are going pretty good.
I always enjoy this kind of thread and getting to see the changes going on in the lives of the posters here. I lurk more than I comment, and I don’t usually have anything amazing to add to the discourse, so I mostly read and think about the things I’ve read. I am grateful for the wide range of personalities and identities of the commenters here, as it gives me much better perspective on people who aren’t necessarily in the same ol’ homogeneous box.
@Paradoxy:
That sounds exhausting but really fun. Getting to take control of your environment is immensely satisfying. Good luck for orientation!
@ej:
If you’ve gotten this far, then submitting and being viva’d is only the last step. You have my immense admiration. Best of luck for the teaching! I hope that goes well. May you have excellent students.
@Penny Psmith:
That sounds very cool. I’d love to read that, and I’d love to be able to quote it at JAQers.
Linguistics is an awesome field and it’s always nice to see it being used for good.