A collection of [useless] knowledge

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

“ “[DEADNAME] Again" “ 

japanese creatures

greek creatures

creatures organised by type

creatures listed by letter

humanoid creatures

filipino creatures

chinese creatures

cryptids

‘fearsome critters’

angels

beings referred to as fairies

creatures that pretend to be human

a page on therianthropic creatures

shapeshifters

hybrid creatures

extraterrestrial creatures

deities

a page of mythology page links

a section of folklore page links

flying creatures

theological demons

fictional species lists

mythology related lists

http://tinyurl.com/mq3okay

That’s a super short informal article but the most important part is this:

This is also a pretty rad website if you’re interested in finding out more (and you can be a huge nerd like me hell yeah): 

http://tinyurl.com/y8zw3w8

So are pterosaurs dinosaurs? No they aren’t. If you want to think they are because of the power rangers or whatever you were told as a kid that’s fine but you’ll still be wrong.

Also for anyone wondering, this is a Mastodon:

Films That Feel Like Bad Dreams

The Nightmare Artist

Fear of Big Things Underwater

Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House

House of Leaves: The Horror Of Fiction

Monsters in the Closet: A History of LGBT Representation in Horror Cinema

The History of Insane Asylums and Horror Movies

The Saddest Horror Movie You’ve Never Seen

Fear of Forgetting

Slender Man: Misunderstanding Ten Years Of The Internet

The Real Reason The Thing (1982) is Better than The Thing (2011)

The Bizarre Clown Painting No One Fully Understands

The Little Book of Cosmic Horrors

The Disturbing Art of A.I.

Fear of Depths

Goya’s Witches

David Lynch: The Treachery of Language

The True History That Created Folk Horror

The Existential Horror of David Cronenberg’s Camera

why are your legs so long?

just look at it

look at this

one of the animals for sure

Paleontologists completed a life-sized replica of Sue, the most complete T. Rex ever found.

And she is freaking GORGEOUS!

As I read more about this beauty, I found out some new details regarding things I thought I previously knew about the beast that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I’m going to share them with you.

First, and most obvious, her size:

This is nothing new, we all figured T. Rex was big, but I for one never stopped to consider exactly how big it was. Nobody ever really knows what to imagine when they read about something the size of a whale that walked around and ate everything it could kill. 

Speaking of eating things, I just want to remind you all that T. Rex had–by miles–the strongest bite of any terrestrial animal living or dead, somewhere around six and a half tons of force. That’s over six times greater than the current estimate of what Allosaurus was capable of, and three times what was delivered by the highest measured reading of the living title holder–the estuarine crocodile. It didn’t have to waste time swinging its head open-mouthed like Saurophaganax for a little extra oomph, or grow fancy serrated teeth like Carcharodontosaurus to cut pieces out of its prey. It opted for the simplest approach: get its mouth around something and crush it to death; imagine the full weight of an elephant on whatever was between this thing’s jaws.

“How did it find something to eat?” I hear you asking. “It can’t see something if it doesn’t move, right?”

Listen, I love Jurassic Park too, but that’s a big crock of shit.

Notice how both her eyes face forward. That gives her binocular vision (the ability to focus both eyes on one target, like you and I). More importantly it means she has impeccable depth perception due to overlapping fields of vision from each, large, eyeball. Researchers agree that T. Rex not only had incredible vision, but that it was probably better than most modern animals–including eagles, hawks, and owls–and that she could likely spot something three and a half miles away. If something that big can see that well, it doesn’t matter if you move or not, she’d be able to tell if it was an animal trying to hide or a piece of vegetation. So pray she isn’t hungry if she lays eyes on you. And even if by some miracle she didn’t see you, she’d still smell you. 

If she decided you looked tasty, you probably wouldn’t hear her coming as much as you’d feel her. Modern science indicates that T. Rex didn’t roar like in Jurassic Park, but rather bellowed or maybe even hissed like crocodilians. If she were on to you, you’d most likely feel this sense of unease creep up your spine as a low-pitched rumble in the air permeated through you. You wouldn’t know what it was or where it was coming from until you hear her footfalls. By then it’s too late–you could try to run but she’d probably catch you. There’s plenty on YouTube that reconstructs what T. Rex may have sounded like, and it’s legitimately haunting.  

To wrap all of this up, the one bit of good that came out of the cursed year that is 2020 is that this wonderful child of science and art came into the world, and reaffirmed my respect and admiration for the eight ton slab of muscle and teeth that is this magnificent creature.

They also created this Quetzalcoatlus that made the rounds online (image credit goes to National Geographic)

As well as many more amazing sculptures and dioramas, so please check them out here on Tumblr and on Instagram

They are currently working on a new Tyrannosaurus again which will be on display in Europe (image credit goes to Blue Rhino Studio)

Below is a handful guide by Dr. Mark Witton who happens to be both a palaeontologist and an artist:

“(Please, do not body-shame our T. rex. SUE is perfect just the way they are. And, yes, “they” is correct there—scientists don’t know if SUE was male or female, so in the spirit of scientific accuracy and LGBTQ inclusivity, we’ve transitioned to singular “they/them” pronouns instead of calling SUE “she” or “her.”)”

Excalibur and Caliburn are two words for the same sword, both derived from the Welsh Caledfwlch. Caliburn (or Caliburnus) is the Latinization, and Excalibur is the Old French version. Sometimes this sword is the sword in the stone, and sometimes it’s given by the Lady in the Lake. Sometimes there is a sword in the stone, and sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes there is a Lady in the Lake and sometimes there isn’t. Arthurian myth, like all myths, doesn’t have a single definitive version. It’s a grab bag of many related stories told by many different people, that don’t fit together into any kind of cohesive whole, and that often contradict each other. Every one of us gets to pick the bits and pieces to stitch together into the version we like best.

I remember it being comforting and not at all weird as a very young child but now the pictures of the sets and screencaps elicit a visceral “nope” response.

I think Teletubbies is so creepy because it captures that state of being a very small and recent person so well. Teletubbies shares with many other small children’s shows a heavy reliance on routine activities the characters do, but the things that guide the Teletubbies through their weird daily lives don’t seem like analogs to…anything? There’s weird pipes with megaphones that ascend randomly out of the ground and have voices? The sun is a baby? There’s a magic windmill?

It is almost explicitly canon that the Teletubbies live under a Panopticon—all of their behavior is observed, by the above entities and by the Narrator, and compliance with rituals such as “Tubby Bye-Bye” is made inevitable by this fact. Teletubbyland is not a paradise where free will can roam as it pleases; it is characterized by an absence of choices and constant surveillance.

However, many people associate sailors, especially when it comes to pirates, with a very special companion. The Bird, mostly a parrot.

Already Columbus brought back five long-tailed macaws from his voyage in 1492 and sixty parrots from his next voyage. They were not only fabulous gifts for his patrons, but also tangible proof of his discoveries. As a result a real hype broke out. And many ships that were on their way to foreign worlds during the Age of Discovery brought back home beautiful and rare birds. But not only as companions during the voyage but rather to sell them. At home a sailor could get up to 10£ for a bird, a good profit. And they were easy to handle during the crossing, they hardly took up any space and feeding was possible with leftover food. The value of a bird could be increased by teaching it to talk and some tricks. This kept the birds busy on board and provided a fuller purse when the animal was sold.

Pirate with a Parrot by Thomas Blackshear ; Long John Silver and his Parrot by N. C. Wyeth 1911

Others tried to sell these animals, not only parrots, to faculties as research objects. This meant that researchers who could not travel themselves had a certain quota and, together with the travel reports, which the captains were also happy to sell, they had a basis for researching such exotics. But not only birds were brought home, monkeys were also very popular. Small anecdote from my own family, my great great grandfather, lieutenant of the German Imperial Navy, had taken a monkey home for his daughter, my great grandmother, when he was in Africa. But the animal didn’t live long, on the one hand he had problems with the North German weather and on the other, a power line he had climbed on was his end.

Signalman Tim Ryley with his beloved, but vexatious, parrot Mac, 1908; Woman at the Piano with Cockatoo by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, 1870

Some of them were not sold, but travelled with the captains as companions. Admiral Thomas Cochrane reports in his autobiography that when he sailed with his uncle Captain Alexander Cochrane on the HMS Thetis in 1794 (he served there as a midshipman) there was a parrot on board. This bird was even allowed to fly freely on deck. Much to everyone’s chagrin, however, this animal had learned to speak and liked to imitate orders, which caused great confusion. For example, the parrot made sure that a lady who was brought on board with a boatswain’s chair was pushed into the sea just because the bird shouted “Let go”. The Astrolabe, a French research vessel that sailed to Antarctica in 1837 under the command of Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville, had a cockatoo on board. This animal was probably much appreciated even though it had destroyed the captain’s barometer.

Nehemiah Slade, Able Seaman with his Parrot, Master and Commander

So because parkour is such a ridiculously male dominated sport, the "correct technique" for a lot of these movements that you're taught when you become an instructor plays to a male body's strengths: upper body strength, higher center of gravity, etc.

She demolishes this course by moving in ways that make sense for her body. She doesn't muscle her way up to her over a wall, she just throws a leg up over the wall. She doesn't use upper body strength to do the salmon ladder, she uses her hips!!! And it's fucking incredible.

So many girls and young women walk away from parkour because every movement caters to the strengths of men, because doing what makes sense for their bodies is seen as "bad technique" to be trained away.