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almost home
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Misplaced Lens Cap
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official daine visual archive
Jules of Nature
Love Begins
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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Monterey Bay Aquarium
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@cuprohastes
Everyone: "We built bunker busting bombs costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions. We launch them from state of the art bombers. Nowhere is safe."
Ukraine: (Strapping C4 to a fencepost with a lawn dart on one end) Oh yeah, those are great.
Russians: ā¦ Fucking whatā½
Ukraine: A little to the leftā¦
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Uhuh. OK.
So if you're a Russian, conscripted to the Ukraine Invasion, your average lifespan from signing up is between 10 and 21 days.
In an actual confrontation, it'sā¦ 20-35 minutes.
Someone pointed out that this is lower than the lifespan of the Guard in Warhammer 40K, which is a heavy-handed parody.
OP: Why couldnāt traditional Chinese Yinpiaoé¶ē„Ø/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大ęå®éļ¼ęøč¶)
Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960ā1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.
Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.
This mechanism is known as qifengéŖē¼ (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046ā771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.
During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770ā221 BC), this idea evolved into hufučē¬¦/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.
The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618ā907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetongåå" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960ā1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368ā1912).
Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaoziäŗ¤å) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohaoē„Øč” (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.
Split-joint seals (éŖē¼ē« qifengzhang)are still widely used on important paper documents in modern China, an anti-tampering technique passed down from ancient times. They are applied across the edge of multi-page contracts, bidding documents and official archives. If any page is removed or replaced, the broken seal pattern can prove the file has been altered.
OMG I got so excited about this because they used a really similar (though far less refined) version of this for contracts in the European medieval period!
First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!
(Charter of the ClerecĆa de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)
Delights me when human beings find similar ways to solve the same problem at two different ends of the world. <3
This was also used for Taxes in England - A hazel stick was used. It was notched to show the amount of taxes then split. The two splits had to match up perfectly to prove tax had been paid.
Remarkably, this ran from the 12th century to 1826.
Famously, there were so many tax record sticks that they were burned for fuel in a practical but slightly upsetting display of historical record autodestruction.
That said, apparently, while they were being burned in 1836, the fire overheated the furnace and set fire to the Palace of Westminster: The one that's there today is the New One.
I'm sure upon hearing that the Tax offices burned themselves down, the citizens of Albion commented "shame," and went back to eating cheese.
About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.
It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.
So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.
So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.
Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.
The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.
... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.
Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.
Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.
And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.
OP did it hurt when Apollo's dodgeball hit you and made you write that story?
The Max Headroom episode with the Blipverts needs to be required viewing. (IIRC, it's the pilot even, but it's been 30 years, so who knows.)
40 years even!
For anyone who didn't watch it: An evil corporation has figured out how to stream subliminal adverts to people. Downside, sometimes they explode.
A journalist (Edison Carter) investigates and uh, ends up dead. However, he's partially uploaded to a computer. He can't recall his name, but one of the last things he remembers is the MAX HEADROOM warning on a parking garage.
The character of Max Headroom was played by Matt Frewer.
Because CGI wasn't up to the task at the time, Frewer was made up in a vinyl suit and fake plastic skin so he'd look computer-generated.
In 1987 someone took over two TV stations, while dressed as Max Headroom: The perpetrators were never caught (DUN DUNN!).
Max went on to host two actual TV shows, one of which was a music show.
It can be considered some of the founding media for Cyberpunk, and the irony is that it would be trivial to actually render Max Headroom now, but if anyone tried rebooting him, there would be cannibalism.
What now?
OK this is some straight-up hostile user interaction:
I went to the local hole-in-the-wall fast-food place because I was craving the greasy luxury of hot food served in paper bags.
Opened the website. All is fine.
Clicked for the menu and I get this fuccen thing!
It wants me to enable third-party cookies? I mean OK? That's almost legit. But then local storage and cross-site tracking?
And there are links to 'update' my settings. Plausibly, they're instructions, but I wasn't gonna click and find out it's a script.
I closed the window, walked across the road, ordered.
The audacity of this site!
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About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.
It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.
So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.
So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.
Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.
The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.
... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.
Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.
Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.
And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.
OP did it hurt when Apollo's dodgeball hit you and made you write that story?
Or was it a sort of third eye opening kind of thing? Did that hurt?
I spat out a tooth.
the way aragorn runs is so chaotic
@tathrin's tags have been vetted and approved
#that is a man who A: has tripped over his sword before and been laughed at by EVERY ELF IN RIVENDELL and is NOT going to do it again#and B: knows that he has more leg than anyone else in the room and is GOING TO USE IT BY GODS#he is COVERING GROUND with every step#he got that moniker of strider through HARD HONEST WORK (and very very big steps)#aragorn#lotr movies#viggo mortensen
#So basically. He runs like an actual real person would over uneven ground š#The Hollywood Run is pretty to watch sure but also takes place on a paved surface usually#There is no way to look dignified whilst running across lumpy bumpy ground down across a hill. Unless one is an actual gazelle#thankyou Mr. Viggo for that Real Human rep (saving @jonairadreaming's excellent tags because everyone who has ever tried running down an incline over uneven, possibly shifting, ground knows you try to get down there as fast as possible with the least amount of time of foot actually touching the ground and constantly being prepared to shift your weight to keep your balance. By the time the stones actually shift from your weight you already want to be two steps away)
Heās so leg
This is an actual person trying not to snap their ankle while moving at speed in a cloak.
I have nothing but admiration for his technique and skill.
You'd think "don't use a fictional creature as an allegory for oppressed minorities and as a horde of vile automatons that it's always okay to kill in the same work at the same time" would be a no brainer, but roughly 70% of all works featuring goblins and/or robots demonstrate otherwise.
Star Wars using this exact formula with droids blows my mind to this day. Like, they really canāt decide whether theyāre actually an oppressed group or genuinely mindless automatons whose inner lives we donāt need to worry about.
Given that Solo: A Star Wars Story features a droid liberation activist who's very obviously characterised as a mean-spirited parody of a women's rights activist and whose concerns are consistently treated as misguided and laughable (before they blow her up and use her brain to repair a spaceship), I'm not sure it's that the writers can't decide so much as it that they don't want to say what they really think out loud.
Star Wars? The 'We cloned an entire race of humans to be cannon fodder with a drastically accelerated lifespan and no intention of giving them rights or a retirement' franchise?
The one where they picked a non-white person to be the clones?
incredibly bizarre and confusing seeing ppl call themselves "chuds" all the sudden b/c like
thats what we call neo nazis and shitty conservative bros? or at least its what we used to call them? why are ppl calling themselves "chuds" affectionately now
what is happening
yall know chud means fascist right like please tell me yall know that
im hoping this is a case of "younger folks on the internet adopting Silly Word b/c its Silly and not realizing it actually means something"
so here's me educating! you're calling yourselves fascists! thats what you're doing! maybe don't do that and use your head before you start using every goofy word you see!
let me be agonizingly clear
when you call yourself and your friends "chuds"
YOU
ARE
CALLING
YOURSELF
A
NAZI
When did that happen? It always used to mean the mythical people who lived in the sewers: The Cannibal Human Under-Dwellers.
No, yeah, the original chuds were also nazis. You can see all the same behaviours and ideological points. Dependant on a group of designated victims for the in-group to prey on, remain hidden unless in circumstances to feel emboldened, lack of or suppression of any sense of empathy and sympathy for the suffering of others, and completely unfuckable.
The 1984 horror movie C.H.U.D.?
Just try and tell me this guy doesn't have a red hat.
It fell off when he went to scare Fox Mulder.
come over
American diet and "healthy living" culture is insane and runs DEEP
who the heck is eating dice, cards, and pool
WHAT is the first one supposed to be? It looks like 'piecing between meals' to me, but that can't be what it says, right?
It does in fact say āpiecing between mealsā and it refers to snacking
I'm more struck by the fact that the progression set forth here implies that laudanum and cocaine are less concerning that spicing your food.
Coca: Less harmful than Ginger Ale.
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incredibly bizarre and confusing seeing ppl call themselves "chuds" all the sudden b/c like
thats what we call neo nazis and shitty conservative bros? or at least its what we used to call them? why are ppl calling themselves "chuds" affectionately now
what is happening
yall know chud means fascist right like please tell me yall know that
im hoping this is a case of "younger folks on the internet adopting Silly Word b/c its Silly and not realizing it actually means something"
so here's me educating! you're calling yourselves fascists! thats what you're doing! maybe don't do that and use your head before you start using every goofy word you see!
let me be agonizingly clear
when you call yourself and your friends "chuds"
YOU
ARE
CALLING
YOURSELF
A
NAZI
When did that happen? It always used to mean the mythical people who lived in the sewers: The Cannibal Human Under-Dwellers.
No, yeah, the original chuds were also nazis. You can see all the same behaviours and ideological points. Dependant on a group of designated victims for the in-group to prey on, remain hidden unless in circumstances to feel emboldened, lack of or suppression of any sense of empathy and sympathy for the suffering of others, and completely unfuckable.
The 1984 horror movie C.H.U.D.?
When you think of Pork products, Think SNOLTā¢, where the pigs are perfectly normal.
Seriously, we didn't have to do anything to these things; they're already just like that. I mean, we tried, but they seemed amused.
SNOLTā¢: Just eat the meat, please.
People often compare eggs. Have you noticed SNOLTā¢ Eggs are superior?
If you have not, please report to your nearest SNOLTā¢ Outreach Centre to make amends.
Our Happy and Contentā¢ chickens experience Cosmic Horror that makes them happy to stay in their warm, safe barn.
So safe.
Chickens who are not Happy and Contentā¢ go OutsideĀ®, into the Pasture.
The flock will watch what happens to those hens: They have to. SNOLTā¢ makes sure of it.
SNOLTā¢ Poultry Farms: Notice the superior eggs.
Our butter at SNOLTā¢ dairies is the creamiest, most luxurious butter you've ever had.
Because we care so much about being The BesrĀ® that we summoned an unholy alliance with Sharduk, the End of All Things to send our SNOLTā¢ team back through the flesh rending horrors of timeā¦ to destroy the knowledge of butter making, ninety eight million times, leaving only SNOLTā¢ brand butter as the best ā And only ā butter in human history.
SNOLTā¢: Because.
SNOLTā¢ Sheep Farms brings you: Sheep.
Don't worry, they get reincarnated as Goats. SNOLTā¢ likes goats. They get us.
SNOLTā¢: Giving you the Warm Fuzzies.
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Here at SNOLTā¢ farms, we believe in deep, psychological animal cruelty.
That's why our cows are exposed to soul crushing existentital dread every day until they voluntarily choose to end their lives.
SNOLTā¢ Farms: Because you wanted Beef.
Problems in computationally efficient fluid simulation which have stymied game designers for decades are being solved right now by artists on Patreon whose ability to afford groceries this month depends on whether they can render a video involving several gallons of jizz on a laptop from 2017.
this sure is a sentence
I've got more.
Context: A huge amount of advances in graphics and animation were the result of people trying to make porn of Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite.
This fed back into the mainstream industry.
Same way Photography, Film and comics all got a boost from people being industriously horny.
