im sorry i just found out that all steel made post-ww2 has like subtly higher levels of radioactivity….. bc the nuclear bombs increased the background radiation in the air slightly all across the world and so atmospheric air used in the production of steel contaminates it….. and it’s completely negligible in everyday life and not at all dangerous (really, truly do not worry about it) but apparently it also means that whenever we need Special No Radiation Steel (like for scientific/medical equipment, ex. geiger counters or xray machines) we have to use scavenged steel made before ww2. and apparently shipwrecks are a great source of such steel. so a lot of such equipment is made from recycled shipwreck metal. what the fuck. what the fuck

for anyone who like me was worried we will one day run out of shipwreck steel: thankfully the background radiation levels in the atmosphere have been dropping ever since nuclear testing was moved underground, so this will become less and less of an issue with time. and now for another radioactive metal from shipwrecks fan fact:

apparently lead is really good for radiation shielding, which is why it’s important to many physics experiments, especially those concerned with studying dark matter and rare particles. unfortunately, lead is also inherently A Little Bit Radioactive (unrelated to nuclear bombs, it’s just a feature of the metal), but the radioactive element decays over time, so the older the lead, the less radioactive, and hence better for Physics Stuff. which is why ancient Roman lead is Ideal for this. so a lot of ancient bars of lead from Roman shipwrecks - tons of cargo that would’ve ended up as weapons or coins and stuff, if it didn’t sick to the bottom of the sea - are sold to physicists. it’s like a whole “preservation of cultural heritage vs revolutionary scientific research” thing. like a whole fucking feud btwn the archaeologists and physicists

this is also a reason why silicon and copper has to come from certain areas for delicate chips, it was intel i believe that built an early facility near some kind of uranium mine that eventually lead to bit flip errors and instability, dont quote me, was one of the big manufacturers

the most insane double casting i’ve heard of is ophelia and horatio being played by the same actress. the implications of that drive me crazy

you guys are doing things in the tags of this post

#to this day my favorite performance of hamlet i’ve seen is one where there were two hamlets#one was the dutiful son and the other was his vengeful id#and they split all the lines in the play depending on which hamlet was speaking#all the soliloquies became arguments between the two and it was SO good#the second hamlet doesn’t appear until hamlet’s father appears and tells him Claudius is to blame for his death#he opens to curtains and his first line is ‘Murder?’#and the other characters can’t see that second hamlet at first - just the initial one#until slowly throughout the play the second hamlet is the one they look at and interact with#until finally the first hamlet - the dutiful prince - is the one who’s ignored#anyway it was metal as fuck holy shit#i wish i could watch it again but i have no idea if it was recorded (via rythyme)

the most insane double casting i’ve heard of is ophelia and horatio being played by the same actress. the implications of that drive me crazy

you guys are doing things in the tags of this post

#to this day my favorite performance of hamlet i’ve seen is one where there were two hamlets#one was the dutiful son and the other was his vengeful id#and they split all the lines in the play depending on which hamlet was speaking#all the soliloquies became arguments between the two and it was SO good#the second hamlet doesn’t appear until hamlet’s father appears and tells him Claudius is to blame for his death#he opens to curtains and his first line is ‘Murder?’#and the other characters can’t see that second hamlet at first - just the initial one#until slowly throughout the play the second hamlet is the one they look at and interact with#until finally the first hamlet - the dutiful prince - is the one who’s ignored#anyway it was metal as fuck holy shit#i wish i could watch it again but i have no idea if it was recorded (via rythyme)

So a couple days ago, some folks braved my long-dormant social media accounts to make sure I’d seen this tweet:

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

(Oh, and for anyone wondering: yes, I’m over 40 now, and yes, I’m still making costumes. And that armor is still in great shape after 17 years in a hot attic!)  

what if there was a show where every character was gay and you had the token straight guy character who acted really stereotypical and was into cars beers and women and everyone was like OH STRAIGHT LARRY YOU’RE SO FUNNY AND STRAIGHT

#it’s been done

Thanks for this addition omfg that is hilarious

not providing the scene in question is a crime

the problem with horror now is there is no men in little tank tops and booty shorts

I am screaming lmao also this reminds me of @rosewater1997

@kingofthewilderwest

I really do love that people have legitimately always just been people. Like how many angry breakup texts have their been that end with “Come get your stuff or I’m donating it to goodwill”? People never change.

The concubine after reading this:

This is my new breakup format

Fuck him and his harem. I hope Nisaba made you #1 wife, baby

screaaaming me

“pick up your flax shawls and sandals or else I will donate them to the temple of the moon god” idk why but this bit in particular is SENDING me humans have literally always been the same

Alright since Disney staff and employees are staging a walking from March 15th to the 22nd and are encouraging viewers not to watch legally(since that would benefit Disney), here's some sites you can go to to watch new episodes of TGAMM, The Owl House, Big City Greens, and Amphibia.

New quiz: what harsh truth do you need to hear based on your music tastes? (Warning for mean but generally lighthearted results.)

WAIT HELP

What I love most about Skyrim (and TES in general) is how, once the surface is at all scratched, you’re confronted with the most buckwild lore in the history of ever. Like, Skyrim’s baseline experience is: you are a person born with the soul of a dragon, which means you can absorb their souls and speak their language. Fair enough! There are two moons! And vampires! Giants herd mammoths across the plains!

But then! Dig a little deeper, and it’s all “yeah, there are two moons, but they aren’t really moons, they’re the corpse of the god who tricked all the other gods into creating the world, and mortals just interpret them as moons”, and “an entire race created technology that runs on souls, and they accidentally erased themselves from existence while trying to become gods, well at least that’s our best guess” and “some dudes replaced their hearts with plants and you can pickpocket the plant-heart right out of their chest” and “here’s a weapon that sometimes turns your enemies into pastries”. 

What a game, you guys. 

Cannot stress enough that Elder Scrolls is just like this and furthermore the older games are much more blatant with this kind of thing. One of the major plot points in Morrowind is that it’s possible for a mortal to achieve godhood through a process called Chim. This process has been described as a general sense of perfect enlightenment (i.e. Nirvanna Special Edition), but more specifically its strongly implied to be that the specific method is realizing that the entire universe is a dream held by some unknown godhead and not letting that knowledge just straight up zero-sum you, with the god powers coming from the equivalent of lucid dreaming.

But to go even further, some people believe that Chim is even more serious and comes from straight up realizing you’re a video game character.

They lived and laughed and loved and left.

Joanne Harris // Cecelia Ahern // Illustration by Cecile Richard // Rupi Kaur // Margarita Karapanou // Miranda July // Taylor Swift // T. R. Hummer // Richard Siken // James Joyce

2- Mikko Harvey / 3- @beetlejuices / 4- Ocean Vuong / 5- Sarah Kay and Philip Kaye / 6- Franz von Stuck / 7- Cortes Edouard Leon

The best Wikipedia lists

List of inventors killed by their own inventions

List of scandals with the -gate suffix

List of noodles

List of hoaxes

List of pirates

Response to sneezing - that is, what you say after someone sneezes

List of places in the U.S. named after places elsewhere

List of songs about bicycles

List of American advertising characters (e.g. the geico gecko. There is also an article for breakfast cereal mascots specifically.)

List of unusual deaths

List of superlative trees - its TREE APPRECIATION TIME

Recursive islands and lakes

List of Crayola crayon colors

List of individual birds. There is SO much going on here.

List of deep-fried foods (aaaaaaa)

List of words that are their own antonyms

List of genres (of...everything)

List of onomatopoeias - READ THIS PLEASE

List of Noah’s Ark replicas

List of people who have been pied

List of voids - This is meant in the astronomy sense but I think the name is funny.

List of animal sounds

List of cryptids

List of prison escapes

List of discredited substances - there’s a LOT going on here

List of methods of capital punishment

List of wartime cross-dressers

List of extinct dog breeds. this topic contains some of my favorite obscure facts

List of songs considered to be the worst - there is also an article about the worst books and one about the worst movies, if you’re interested

List of facial hair styles

List of clowns

List of sexually active popes - I just think it’s funny that this is an article

List of reportedly haunted locations

List of animals with fraudulent diplomas

List of people who died on the toilet

List of English language metaphors

List of bad luck signs

the onomatopoeias 😂😂

There's something extremely endearing but also fucking hilarious about my partner helping me kill these bosses and giving me huge swords and runes in Elden Ring and telling me it's payback for all the stuff I gave them in Animal Crossing

Mage brandishing an enormous crystal staff, eyes glimmering with sorcery: I grant you my strength and the broadsword of screeching death for the kindness you showed me in a previous life, in which you gave me a cool dress and several pumpkin seeds

the tale of despereaux is about despereaux the mouse falling in love with a human who is a princess who is to him a giant and a god-figure and an ideal and an undefined radiance more than the sun. and then her gently telling him she will never love him back the way he begs her to. but he will still be a hero for having helped her. it’s all about laying down your life and honour and valiance for something bigger than you and then that huge enormous thing looking back at you and telling you that you are sweet and silly and a good little creature if a bit funny and that you might as well take care of yourself instead of worrying too much about it

A mouth-watering fuck-ton of hand angle references.

By Shadowcross on DA.

BLESS YOU, YOU  WONDERFUL PERSON