god i’m not even through one episode of paranormal home inspectors and it rules, this lady thought she was being haunted by the wails of the restless dead but she was just listening to raccoons fuck in her attic

psychic: these are hieroglyphics… the spirits are trying to communicate…

home inspector: you put new paint over old paint and now the old paint is bleeding through, that’s why you’re not supposed to do that

homeowner: my daughter’s room is always cold… cold like the dead…

home inspector: you put furniture on top of her heating vent

business owner: i got locked in the bathroom even though the door has no lock

home inspector: it has a lock. the lock is right there. on the knob.

Fun fact a scientist who is very not spiritual or superstitious began seeing corner eye hallucinations and feeling intense fear and a presence in his lab around the same time that everyone else in the building was suddenly reporting it haunted.

Determined, he found that the “hauntings” stopped when the industrial air conditioning unit, that had just recently been installed, was turned off. We’ve found that measurable micro vibrations in a structure cause immense fear, and a feeling of a presence and corner eye hallucinations – just like when you watch a scary movie alone at night and you see things move in the corner of your eye or are afraid to go in the cellar because you’re convinced someone’s in there.

Why?

Because many members of our species built homes in and around cliffs and caves for tens of thousands of years. And it’s likely that these certain shaky vibrations give us intense fear and a need to move far away because that would have saved our lives if the cave were collapsing or unstable.

You’ll notice it’s always falling apart, dilapidated homes that are “haunted” - or very very old restored homes. These places might just be slightly structurally unsound. That’s all.

That’s infrasound, sounds that are below 20hz, or the limit of normal human hearing. Things that produce infrasound in nature include severe weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, tigers, alligators, rhinoceros; also known as things that can kill people. We developed an evolutionary sense of dread when our brains perceive sounds we cannot hear. The vibrations from infrasound can also vibrate the eye causing visual hallucinations. 

You know what also causes infrasound? A LOT of machines, especially large industrial ones. There’s a reason haunted house stories started popping up in post industrialization. That scientist was Vic Tandy and he wrote about it in a the paper Ghosts in the Machines

“Vic Tandy, experimental officer and part-time lecturer in the school of international studies and law at Coventry University, along with Dr. Tony Lawrence of the University’s psychology department, wrote in 1998 a paper called “Ghosts in the Machine” for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Their research suggested that an infrasonic signal of 19 Hz might be responsible for some ghost sightings. Tandy was working late one night alone in a supposedly haunted laboratory at Warwick, when he felt very anxious and could detect a grey blob out of the corner of his eye. When Tandy turned to face the grey blob, there was nothing.The following day, Tandy was working on his fencing foil, with the handle held in a vice. Although there was nothing touching it, the blade started to vibrate wildly. Further investigation led Tandy to discover that the extractor fan in the lab was emitting a frequency of 18.98 Hz, very close to the resonant frequency of the eye given as 18 Hz by NASA. This, Tandy conjectured, was why he had seen a ghostly figure—it was, he believed, an optical illusion caused by his eyeballs resonating. The room was exactly half a wavelength in length, and the desk was in the centre, thus causing a standing wave which caused the vibration of the foil.“

Okay I didn’t need my eyes to have a resonation frequency but thanks for that, science

This is why she’s my favorite author.

Check out “Barry Lyndon”, a film whose period interiors were famously shot by period lamp-and-candle lighting (director Stanley Kubrick had to source special lenses with which to do it).

More recently, some scenes in “Wolf Hall” were also shot with period live-flame lighting and IIRC until they got used to it, actors had to be careful how they moved across the sets. However, it’s very atmospheric: there’s one scene where Cromwell is sitting by the fire, brooding about his association with Henry VIII while the candles in the room are put out around him. The effect is more than just visual.

As someone (I think it was Terry Pratchett) once said: “You always need enough light to see how dark it is.”

A demonstration of getting that out of balance happened in later seasons of “Game of Thrones”, most infamously in the complaint-heavy “Battle of Winterfell” episode, whose cinematographer claimed the poor visibility was because “a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly”.

So it was nothing to do with him at all, oh dear me no. Wottapillock. Needing to retune a TV to watch one programme but not others shows where the fault lies, and it’s not in the TV.

*****

We live in rural West Wicklow, Ireland, and it’s 80% certain that when we have a storm, a branch or even an entire tree will fall onto a power line and our lights will go out.

Usually the engineers have things fixed in an hour or two, but that can be a long dark time in the evenings or nights of October through February, so we always know where the candles and matches are and the oil lamp is always full.

We also know from experience how much reading can be done by candle-light, and it’s more than you’d think, once there’s a candle right behind you with its light falling on the pages.

You get more light than you’d expect from both candles and lamps, because for one thing, eyes adapt to dim light. @dduane​ says she can sometimes hear my irises dilating. Yeah, sure…

For another thing lamps can have accessories. Here’s an example: reflectors to direct light out from the wall into the room. I’ve tried this with a shiny foil pie-dish behind our own Very Modern Swedish Design oil lamp, and it works.

Smooth or parabolic reflectors concentrate their light (for a given value of concentrate, which is a pretty low value at that) while flatter fluted ones like these scatter the light over a wider area, though it’s less bright as a result:

This candle-holder has both a reflector and a magnifying lens, almost certainly to illuminate close or even medical work of some sort rather than light a room.

And then there’s this, which a lot of people saw and didn’t recognise, because it’s often described in tones of librarian horror as a beverage in the rare documents collection.

There IS a beverage, that’s in the beaker, but the spherical bottle is a light magnifier, and Gandalf would arrange a candle behind it for close study.

Here’s one being used - with a lightbulb - by a woodblock carver.

And here’s the effect it produces.

Here’s a four-sphere version used with a candle (all the fittings can be screwed up and down to get the candle and magnifiers properly lined up) and another one in use by a lacemaker.

Finally, here’s something I tried last night in our own kitchen, using a water-filled decanter. It’s not perfectly spherical so didn’t create the full effect, but it certainly impressed me, especially since I’d locked the camera so its automatic settings didn’t change to match light levels.

This is the effect with candles placed “normally”.

But when one candle is behind the sphere, this happens.

 It also threw a long teardrop of concentrated light across the worktop; the photos of the woodcarver show that much better.

Poor-people lighting involved things like rushlights or tallow dips. They were awkward things, because they didn’t last long, needed constant adjustment, didn’t give much light and were smelly. But they were cheap, and that’s what mattered most.

They’re often mentioned in historical and fantasy fiction but seldom explained: a rushlight is a length of spongy pith from inside a rush plant, dried then dipped in tallow (or lard, or mutton-fat), hence both its names.

Here’s Jason Kingsley making one.

BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS

"WILD GEESE" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

How does a fart sound in different European languages?

by @Atlasova_world

Whoops~

Sometimes I’m looking for something online - often “how to” articles - and I want to filter for - like - a website that was clearly built in 2010 at the latest, which may or may not have been updated since then, but contains a vast wealth of information on one topic, painstakingly organized by an unknown legend in the field with decades’ worth of experience. I don’t want a listicle with a nice stolen picture in a slideshow format written by a content aggregator that God forgot. I want hand-drawn diagrams by some genius professor who doesn’t understand SEO at all, but understands making stir-fries or raising stick insects better than anyone else on this earth. I don’t know what search settings to put into Google to get this.

thank you for articulating this cri de coeur for me

ngl these days i’m just happy when it’s not a video

search.marginalia.nu is the search engine you want!

“It is a search engine, designed to help you find what you didn’t even know you were looking for. If you search for “Plato”, you might for example end up at the Canterbury Tales. Go looking for the Canterbury Tales, and you may stumble upon Neil Gaiman’s blog.

If you are looking for fact, this is almost certainly the wrong tool. If you are looking for serendipity, you’re on the right track. When was the last time you just stumbled onto something interesting, by the way?

I don’t expect this will be the next “big” search engine. This is and will remain a niche tool for a niche audience.“

i clicked around for a few minutes searching various things and I now have two fourteenth century pie crust recipes and an apple filling recipe i want to try, so thanks!

it has been twenty minutes and I am deeply in love with this search engine.

INCREDIBLE. I *do* want to know how to test Windows 95 for Y2K Compliance and I am glad that someone is still hosting step by step instructions for that.

tl;dr: search.marginalia.nu for the old or old looking and just plain serendipitous stuff that google or Duck duck go are gonna not find/bury on the 20th page. For perfectly good reasons, but …

My absolute favorite part of having made this post - other than causing people to be introduced to this site - are the people in the tags/comments talking about their interests and stuff they found about their hobbies.

Good luck out there surfing the cyberweb, you crazy cats. I love the shoelace website too - Ian’s Shoelace Site [link], unless there’s another. My personal favorite old-school site is Alysion’s string figure collection [link].

Anne Magill.

the thing about venom I can’t get over is that eddie is like…a recognizable celebrity? like sure, his show got canceled but like people still know who he is??? there’s gotta be security footage or news clips of him turning into venom, or like of the motorcycle chase like….that’s so fucking funny. could you imagine if the top trending news story is a guy turned into an alien monster and ate some guys and everything and you click on the video to see and it’s like….fucking john oliver or someone

Men DNI unless you are willing to carve me an intricate whalebone busk, delicately inscribed with images of tall ships and portraits of myself, that I will wear against my heart to remember you by when you are inevitably lost at sea

Yes

YES

YEEEEESSSSSS

Busks go in a specific front pocket that some stays have, creating that fashionable long clean 1700s line.

and it is very sexy and romantic to have this token from your sweetheart/lover tucked into your undergarments like that.

…Okay, I’m feeling mischievous today. I don’t do this very often, Gods know… :)

Of The Time There Was Only One Bed

Saw @disasterbipippin do this fun tag (also, I've been reading your name as disasterbippin this whole time), and thought I'd get in on it (use this Picrew to make a personification of your blog)

SUPER fun, and I had a great time doing it ^_^

I tag @biromantic-nerd @radellama @nitghowl1600 @mossterious @moodyvoid @professional-gay-hermit @liveandletrain @grelleswife and a free tag to anyone else who would like to do it. Have fun, you're it!

🐾 (boop)

@future-dregs thanks for the tag!! ☺️

Had to go heavy with the hand/gaming imagery for my boy Tomura. The rest is me being a tired ass gremlin

Tag: @mettywiththenotes @transhawks @helga-grinduil @haleigh-sloth @looniecartooni and anyone else who would like to do this! 💕

Thank you for the tag @moodyvoid !! 😊

Obsessed with the mouth btw. I couldn't leave it behind

Tagging @loganelfreeces @frappyflop @cardboxshelter @haleigh-sloth @theteapotofdoom and anyone else who wants to do this

Thank you! This was a pretty picrew too (I liked the variety and the inclusion of cats ^-^)

I'm tagging: @bacchianas @samambaiababaia @zapatism @80ramiens @thealiveshadow @pigusartisticus @dullahunt @mikithewooloo

this one was fun and i liked thr gimmick of being your blogsona i think the eyes came really close to my avatar so uuuh

@humanaaa @corrupted-willy @notgwene @hholandies you guys wanna but no presh c:

TEACHING THE FROGS HOW TO READ

Very fun picrew :D

Tagging (but no pressure!) @mizuski-broken @idkmansmth @frogxxam

thanks for the tag !! :DD

no pressure tags : @art-emis99 @lylia9000 @gangsteri-aine

ty for the tag <3

i will never be this cool but whatever

no pressure tags @splatattackz @flyingnightmouse @darkshadowtiger

thanks for the tag :D very fun picrew

im not sure what always possesses me to make such smug creatures tbh

some tags if one might be interested :3 @strigineserpent @semifontos @sfiltron @wooltoesocks

The shadow guy is scared of spider :]

Thank you for the tag! I was interested indeed :P

Tags: @femininelookingmale @dialtone-town @xadeone @discrunkled-twog @nerdytacollama and whoever is interested!!

Thanks for the tag @sfiltron! It was a cool picrew to mess around with :D

No pressure tags: @coloursofhappiness @miniaturestarlightdelight @theaistired @ominous-birdwatcher @miladypotaty @the-stars-that-line-the-sky @princeoflearning @dante-transceratops and whoever else would like to do it!

Thank you so much for the tag! @nerdytacollama This was so fun!

Have fun with it if you'd like! No pressure! @aces-and-anime @brainmatterdump @genderfluidasexualmess @candyandoats @heckin-hecuba @thecommunityoftrustworthysinks @captaintrio @wxngxian @biherbalwitch @klopptoberfest

Thank you @coloursofhappiness! This was alot of fun.

No pressure but uhmmm you should try this. @dashoulinas-fandom-dump @galaxgay @justbeenana @millytherat @justjaymi

Not sure how accurate this is, but it was fun.

... It doesn't feel wrong. But it's not right either.

@just-mushroom-thoughts @abisexualfrog @eldritchcorvus @e-icreator23 @fluffytimearts

/np

I like it, idk if it’s a good representation but I think yes

If @lucian-evander @sleepinginmygrave @lillyofthewoods @shynerdywitch you want to do it?

Thanks for the tag !!!

My blog got twinkified like those human tumblr/reddit comics 😂

Tagging @love-has-a-way-ofgrowingbackward @juliawithay @architectofimagination @fromthemouthofkings @youcandalekmyballs @dysphoria-things @anaklusmos-stuff @alastaircarstairsismybff no pressure ofc

:3

@tyrannuspitch @a-nerdy-shade-of-purple @ghost4ghosts @imtrouble @the-phoenix-heart no pressure

Is it too much? Maybe so. But I tried to encapsulate the three things that I feel define my blog-space, nature, and a loose definition of phoenix.

tagging @thistlecatfics @wisteria-lodge @s-e-v-e-n-24 @halcyonlauren @teagrammy @apersonwholikeslotus no pressure ofc

Probably the best picrew generator I've played around with. If you see this, consider yourself tagged!

Humans can just walk something to death, how would aliens wrap their head around that space orc and death worlds feature.

“How will we catch up with the marauders, friend human?”

“Easy. They’ll get tired. Eventually.”

“Friend human, you may have died of old age twice over by then!”

“It’s okay. One of my kids can take over for me.”

“You… What? Your children would continue the hunt?”

“Probably. And their kids after them. Please make sure they don’t get too obsessed, though. We humans can get weirdly caught up in our blood feuds.”

*horrified silence*

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a blood feud.”

*alien hyperventilating*

other species watching “the princess bride” as a horror movie, and Inigo is the monster

So, if I had to point out the best confluence of space-orc traits we have, it would be:

I imagine many species have a few of those things, particularly the ones that make it to space. But all of them?

I think the thing that should be particularly unnerving for others is an intuition for ballistic/parabolic motion. The ability to plot gravity-affected/assisted courses without relying completely on computers, or to “eyeball” weapons trajectories, is a skill that would never occur to or evolve in species that live in more turbulent fluids or for whom buoyancy is a major predictor of motion. The fact that we use projectiles is an artifact of the musculature inherited from our arboreal ancestors. Throwing things is likely rare, among the space-faring.

Our language, likewise, should frighten our star-spanning friends. We don’t “admit and remember unimportance” for an unresolved conflict of opinion, we “let it go.” (“What are you allowing to escape?” “Oh, that’s an intuitive metaphor for anything that we want, but decide not to devote ourselves permanently to obtaining.” “You, uh, you needed a word for that?”) We don’t avail ourselves of opportunities, we “pursue” them. Tracking is what we do.

The non-apex thing is also great because apex predators don’t have a concept of fighting for their lives with no restraint or compassion. They may ambush something and kill it, but the idea of an adrenaline hazed threat-assessment, or of self-sacrifice to destroy something dangerous to our fellows, should be deeply counterintuitive. The notion of a suicide mission/kamikaze strategy should haunt our star-friends. That is not how apex predators think. (“If you have predators, how did you develop the time to devote to leisure and invention?” “Oh, our predators aren’t really a problem. We either barricaded or oxidized every environment they could easily inhabit, and now we mostly pity them. We have to take special care not to accidentally drive them extinct. Nothing that hunted us is still doing okay, except for wolves, whom we befriended. So, uh, are we still gonna trade star-maps, or what? We’d love to know where you guys come from.”)

Even words like “drive” which we use interchangeably with “pilot (verb),” derive from making something afraid of you in order to strategically maneuver it where you want it. Neither herbivores nor ambush predators think that way.

And our persistence-hunting absolutely shines through in our physique. It’s not just a rare, risky strategy in nature, it’s what we’re deeply specialized for. We jettisoned any protective covering, any insulation that didn’t double as calorie-storage, spinal alignment, and safe reproduction, all so that we could become these water-cooled, absurdly overclocked, unshakable guarantors of death. We’re the thing from It Follows. I cannot stress enough how rare that strategy is because of how risky it is, unless it’s the only thing you double down on.

Anyway, that’s my list of traits I think would be rare with in combination that it could justify the basis of a space-orc story.

My first glitchy project. I love the use of bright colors to confuse the eyes! by Helpful-Living-9107