what is this I don't e--

The giant lives in a huge castle full of treasure and literally looks down on everyone. Jack's family is in the kind of financial situation where selling their one cow for some beans, while usually a very bad deal, is at least conceivable

Moral or not, can we think of any demographics that would have related to Jack and been cheering him on?

Maybe a demographic that made up the vast majority of pre-industrial Europe's population?

buy first editions of books while they are still cheap.

look at historical characters from afar and later look what portrait of them was the most accurate to their physique.

prevent art, photos and documents to be lost to time or accidents by rescuing them.

(discreetly) take photos of long extinct species to make accurate illustrations about them.

note how the night sky looked like pre-industrial era.

write down curious and forgotten idioms people used to talk.

go to plays when the playwrights were still alive.

take notes on how people from different social statuses dressed.

6 minutes on screen, forever in our hearts on AO3

i have been fortunate enough to live a life in the arts, creating things and following hallowed footsteps. its something many buckaroos dream of, and as someone who has done it, THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS i received are the moments in between. if you generate with AI, THAT is what you rob yourself of

anyone who has done theater will know this, because it lives in the energy backstage. anyone who has played in a band will know this, because it lives in the late night diner afterwards. anyone who has written a book will know this, because it lives the coffee shop where your plot point locked in

in other words IT IS NOT THE PRODUCT. yes, it is cool to see your name on a marquee or your book in a store or your face on a poster, but the REASON this is cool is because it tethers you to the BETWEEN TIMES. the between times are everything. the PROCESS of creation is a gift to yourself

i think this is REALLY difficult for these ai goofballs to understand, and why the things they make dont resonate. anything you create without the in between is just a hollow shell, a movie poster without small talk at crafty or an album without eating burritos on the studio rooftop

we have ALWAYS had the ability to NOT make something and pretend that we did. the difference now is theres an algorithm built for convincing people whove never stepped outside the theater door for a smoke break on opening night that they actually have. they have not. there is no ai for that.

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

I'm not sure if I ever shared this story before here, but in Curacao, when I was allowed to assist in a guest interaction programme, there was suddenly consternation in the pool behind us. A guest had entered the water and the dolphins were going crazy, paying no heed to the trainers anymore. The lead trainer that was with me gave the dolphins to me to watch over while she went to help. When she came back she told me what had happened. The guest that had caused so much uproar had left the water again and was asked if he had done anything to upset the dolphins. He hadn't, and he couldn't imagine what was wrong... until he mentioned he had a pacemaker. The younger dolphins in the pool had never seen someone with a pacemaker before and apparently it rocked their world.

Alt color version and the frankly more readable linework sketch under the cut

The world's first Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels concluded last week and was not only a big success by itself, but hopefully a first step into a new era of global progress on climate change.

From the video above:

"This was a breakthrough in international climate diplomacy, but how successful it was and how history will look back on its being historic, will determine on the next few chapters of the story. If all the COPs so far were Chapter One of how the world brought itself to net zero, then this might be the start of Chapter Two."

The countries in attendance represent roughly half of the world's GDP and a third of its energy usage, together making up a "coalition of the willing" who were frustrated at the slow progress at COP.

Rather than using the consensus rules used at COP--which unfortunately lent themselves to being hijacked by countries with pro-oil agendas--this conference was focused on developing science-based roadmaps for various countries to successfully transition away from fossil fuel use.

No fighting over basic issues like whether climate change is worth addressing or if we need to cut our fossil fuel use--just small, closed-door meetings of policymakers, experts, and stakeholders working on figuring out solutions.

You can read more about this historic event in this article from Carbon Brief:

Like, okay, take this header from a fic I loved in LotR fandom back in 2002, on the LotR forum/website I preferred:

That provides... essentially no info on what's actually in the fic, y'know? It's 6 chapters and appears to mostly be about Frodo and Pippin, and it's rated G, but other than that, take a risk, right?

Or take this header on Livejournal for a fic I posted in 2008:

This was actually an extremely in-depth fic header at the time. There were a lot of people who didn't bother adding notes, word counts, or even characters of focus. "Warnings" was an optional entry, and I only bothered adding it bc the fic had significant spoilers for an episode that had aired recently. There are other things I'd tag on it now, but those weren't "tagged" at the time by most people.

I'd show off an FF.net header but I can't actually get the site to load tonight.

Like, it was controversial that a fic challenge community I was in on LJ in '07 or so took down a fic someone submitted because they didn't warn for sexual assault. Because we had no rule about being required to warn.

And some of y'all bitch that AO3 allows thoroughly-tagged content that you can easily avoid and not accidentally read, and if you accidentally read it bc it's not tagged, you can REPORT it????

Nah. Fuck that and fuck you. AO3 should not censor content posted to it, but I have not seen a fic in YEARS that doesn't have more info about the content of a 100 word drabble than I would've ever given for a 4k word fic back in the day. Not because I specifically had bad habits, but because WE DID NOT PROVIDE THAT INFO AT THAT TIME.

Tons of pairings. Which ones? Read to find out I guess! (Dangerous in the days of ship wars)

Summary lists the main pairings, which is more than you'd often get.

Note that this one warns you for "Dark Zutara" but you have ZERO idea from this description what that dark could entail. You'd have to open the fic to find out, hoping that there was an authors note.