Yoroiden Samurai Trooper

I was ALL ABOUT this show as a kid.

An Unknown Girl’s Grave

In 1995, builders were clearing the site for the construction of 30 St Mary Axe – these days better known as the Gherkin. An archaeological investigation unearthed the grave of a teenage girl, estimated to be between 13 and 17 years old. Carbon dating and pottery finds dated her death to between 350 and 400 C.E.. Whether she was Roman, Briton, or from elsewhere in the Empire is unknown.

Whilst construction of the skyscraper continued, the girl’s remains were removed to the Museum of London. When the Gherkin was finished in 2004, the developers requested that the girl be reburied at the site. In 2007, she was given a service at a nearby church, followed by a procession accompanied by an approximation of Roman music, and laid to rest (again).

Her new grave can be seen (somewhat appropriately) on Bury Street; the marble benches that are often occupied by bankers on lunch (or at after-work drinks) bear a small memorial. The inscription reads, in both English and Latin: “To the spirits of the dead, the unknown young girl from Roman London lies buried here.”

I come back to tumblr after a long hiatus and see this wild bullshit. I’m looking at you, tumblr, who put this on my dash! How dare you!!

Fantasia (1940)

pick-me-ups for writers

for the self-conscious beginner: No one makes great things until the world intimately knows their mediocrity. Don’t think of your writing as terrible; think of it as preparing to contribute something great.

for the self-conscious late bloomer: Look at old writing as how far you’ve come. You can’t get to where you are today without covering all that past ground. For that, be proud.

for the perfectionist: Think about how much you complain about things you love—the mistakes and retcons in all your favorite series—and how you still love them anyway. Give yourself that same space.

for the realist: There will be people who hate your story even if it’s considered a classic. But there will be people who love your story, even if it is strange and unpopular.

for the fanfic writer: Your work isn’t lesser for not following canon. When you write, you’ve created a new work on its own. It can be, but does not have to be, limited by the source material. Canon is not the end-all, be-all. 

for the writer’s blocked: It doesn’t need to be perfect. Sometimes you have to move on and commit a few writing sins if it means you can create better things out of it.

for the lost: You started writing for a reason; remember that reason. It’s ok to move on. You are more than your writing. It will be here if you want to come back.

Maria Kotchetkova in Giselle (San Francisco Ballet)

sound on you won’t regret it

the vibrato

The range, vibrato, control, the vocal agility? Wow.

The entirely unnecessary demise of Barnes & Noble

“Whether the Andrea Gail rolls, pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a position from which she cannot recover. Among marine architects this is known as the zero-moment point – the point of no return.” –Sebastian Junger, “The Perfect Storm”

Posts like this aren’t my usual fare, but there’s a lot of readers on Tumblr. So y’all might be interested – or, if not, you really should be.

On Monday, this went down:

That’s the bloodless, matter-of-fact, ho-hum business event way of describing it. Let me paint you a different picture.

On Monday morning, every single Barnes & Noble location – that’s 781 stores – told their full-time employees to pack up and leave. The eliminated positions were as follows: the head cashiers (those are the people responsible for handling the money), the receiving managers (the people responsible for bringing in product and making sure it goes where it should), the digital leads (the people responsible for solving Nook problems), the newsstand leads (the people responsible for distributing the magazines), and the bargain leads (the people responsible for keeping up the massive discount sections). A few of the larger stores were able to spare their head cashiers and their receiving managers, but not many.

Just about everyone lost between 3 and 7 employees. The unofficial numbers put the total around 1,800 people.

People.

We’re not talking post-holiday culling of seasonal workers. This was the Red Wedding. Every person laid off was a full-time employee. These were people for whom Barnes & Noble was a career. Most of them had given 5, 10, 20 years to the company. In most cases it was their sole source of income.

There was no warning.

But it gets worse.

Keep reading

Speaking vaguely from the inside of publishing: people have seen this coming, they’ve been trying to do something about it but it seems like B&N has been not super interested in help, it is bad for the book industry as a whole, no one is quite sure where we go from here.

BARUTO!!

BARUTO!!

KING OF THE UNIVERSE!! BARUTO!!!!

Happy black history month 🗣

Jose is invited to the barbecue for knowing these facts. 😂✊🏾

““You know, and for me, I don’t know that writer’s block is the same for everyone, but for me what I eventually realized was, what the block was really about was about fear, and it was about doubt. And it was about sort of a loss of faith of myself in myself as a writer. And, you know, the thing that actually really helped me was, and I know a lot of people love this book: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.” –Rahul Mehta

Writers block is real folks. It is not a fallacy. In the latest episode with author Rahul Mehta we discussed how he was able to push through this block as he wrote his new novel, No Other World.