mementō bellāre

Silver and lapis lazuli statuette of Horus, Egypt, 19th Dynasty, 1295-1213 BC

The process is actually quite sophisticated, and requires the presence of a full-grown goth to trigger it. A pupal-stage proto-goth, at this point completely indistinguishable from any other small human child, only needs to encounter a mature specimen once - and while the initial imprinting that ensues will only take seconds, the incubation period often takes more than a decade, even several.

The first visible step of the transformation is triggered when the dormant goth suddenly gains awareness that they have free will and can do whatever they want with their appearance. While the progress may be gradual, or seem like the transformation happened all at once overnight, the initial seed was planted years ago. And now, in full bloom, a fully-fledged mature adult goth may finally be happy.

Am I not rat-shaped? 😨

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

Some selections from the article:

"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

I just remembered that this was a thing that was HILARIOUS in 2006 and apparently that was ten years ago now.

Old people: join with me in remembering how funny we found this on LiveJournal.

Young people: look at this lolrus, it’s so happy, it has a bucket.

even better is the in-game blurb that goes with the painting, which is both great worldbuilding and also very funny:

I went outside this morning and saw five white ravens, each one singing a melody that uplifted my soul.

Then I walked down the street and four different people told me I was very beautiful and each one offered to give me a piece of jewelry they were wearing.

I went to the corner store and the cashier told me he was saving some discount tequila for the perfect person and that based on the radiance of my aura, he knew I was the chosen one, so I got free tequila and also he gave me $100 and a scratcher, and I won $50.

That $150 was exactly as much money as I needed to buy a 4th dimensional megacrystal from the wizard shop that is only visible to beautiful, powerful people. And they had the one crystal I needed for my spell in stock, but that cashier said my karmic record was one of ultimate justification and that everything I believe is right, and so I could have the crystal for free.

Then I went to the library to see if they had an ancient book of untold power checked in, and not only was I able to check it out, but twelve hot librarians presented themselves to me and told me they were each available for casual dating or maybe some long term commitment, whichever I wanted. Although I was very flattered I did have to turn them down, since I was already busy riding my own dick.