They really went there huh.

@acelacealex i thought people should see this

The best part of this: 

“Should I risk my life?”

Then, Slavically, “Yeah, I will do it for you.”

I hope she knows how much we all adore her

Who is this woman I must tell her that she has restored my awe for physics at the (my) age of 35 years in the span of one 2 minute video

Her name is Tatiana Erukhimova, and she works for Texas A&M University.

A Blue Angels C-121J Super Constellation in flight, 1968.  The aircraft served as the support plane for the 1968-1970 seasons

im obsessed with the idea that gothamites 100% know who all the batkids are, like “ for sure Dick Grayson is nightwing #thebuttsmatch” and they figured out all their identities and who it correlates to, “ofc the newest robin with all the swords is Damian Wayne!!” but they refuse to even consider Bruce and The Batman being the same guy. it just doesn’t make sense?? Brucie Wayne, dressing up as a bat and calling himself vengeance???? as if???? also he’s from bristol???? can’t possibly be Brucie. Like they genuinely believe that Bruce is the father to a whole gaggle of themed vigilantes and just doesn’t know it. Anytime his kids disappear during a gala, he gets a bunch of pitiful looks and he can’t leave bc everyone’s looking at him now??

This actually works into a lot of ppls theories that Brucie is The Batman’s sugar daddy, bc clearly they’re together and co parenting the batkids??

Do people know this is the husband of the prime minister of New Zealand

And who is the guy burying him in the sand

Walton Goggins as Cooper "The Ghoul" Howard in Fallout — Season One

Today in niche genres of joke that I can never get enough of and will probably still be secretly thinking about four years later

Matthew Lillard’s William Afton from the Fnaf movie

[Here comes the Specialist! I swear like in whole Prototype verse Robet Cross is my favourite guy so I decided to draw him!]

[ALEX MERCER PROPAGANDA! 🤬]

First || Previous || Next || Latest

It's worm time!

art comic

I vote we stop calling it inflation at all. Seize the language. It's price gouging, not inflation. Inflation is a nebulous concept that invokes feeling of being too complex for the layman, a struggle as old as economy itself against a beast no one has ever truly slain.

Price gouging is the truth of it. And it makes it very clear who is to blame, and what must be done to end it.

Can confirm this works wonders. Australia is in a cost of living crisis rn and the two major supermarkets are a big part of it, as they pretty much have a duopoly on not just the grocery shopping market, but a bunch of others considered to be essential (things like fuel). They are trying to blame their price rises on inflation, but the media recently started reporting it as price gouging (which it is), and it got the average person pretty worked up, better than blaming inflation did.

A group of friends and I did a one shot recently in 5e. The catch is that they play something called “Dude Squad” where the only play “dudes” (not exclusively male people, just dude mentality) and they hate all magic and magic users. They think true strength is muscles and only muscles, and have in the past encountered magic users who they then convince to give up magic.

We got told to build a level 17 character for this one shot, most of the other folks had previous Dude Squad characters to resurrect. But I didn’t really want to play a straight martial class. In my heart, spellcasters are my true class, and I didn’t really have a strong idea of what kind of character to make.

So I approached the DM and said, “Hey, I have this idea to play a character that pretends to be a martial class but is actually a magic caster?” My girlfriends character is an aasimar who thinks he’s Thor and my backstory was that after meeting him and falling for him she decided to invest heavily in deceptive magic so as not to alienate him.

And my DM. Loved it. So he helped me build an extremely custom character. Two levels in Hexblade warlock gave her a good weapon and the ability to cast disguise self pretty much nonstop to appear buffer than she actually was.

Then there was four levels in Stone sorcerer in order to get 4 sorcery points, the ability to use those points to cast using Subtle Spell and no one could tell she’s casting, and to buff her AC.

Finally there was 11 Bladesong wizard levels in order to get some attack bonuses, even more AC, extra attacks, and the ability to burn spells to take less damage.

So the whole time I was burning spell slots to recharge my sorcery points every time I cast things like Haste and Spider Climb and use my Bladesong powers. We busted through walls and smashed our way through puzzles. We lied and said my character was a Barbarian/Monk so they didn’t bat and eye when she ran on walls with spider climb, but no one noticed when even after dashing she “held onto the stone wall” without any kind of check.

The final battle: the goblin wizard boss we were fighting had cast invulnerability on himself and had our friend mind controlled. So I’m trying to cover for not attacking as I try to dispel his invulnerability. I can no longer run on walls, or make the jumps my party is making on floating platforms over a spike pit so I try to use my actions on other helpful things like tying ropes for friends in the pit. I manage to dispel the magic on our friend but I burned almost all my spells trying to secretly dispel the boss’ spell and finally we just ended up grappling and suffocating him then pummeling him to death.

But at the last moment as we’re running out of this horrible goblin mansion I’m running down a wall and my friends are climbing down. The building says there’s 6 seconds left and my very injured love interest is not gonna make it so my character shouted “Fuckfuckfuck!” Ran over and cast dimension door to bring them both to safety. (Two people got left in the blast but both survived cause Dude Power). Then I critically failed my deception about how I had used magic and came clean and everyone lost their shit when they heard what we’d done. Her final confession, after dropping her buff disguise self, was, “When I met Kathor I really liked him and he freakin’ hates magic so I just kinda figured out how to hide that I was castin’ magic cause I though we might go to pound town.”

Kathor then declared, “I’ve never had someone try so hard to get in my pants!” And swept her up and they messily made out. It was deeply satisfying the wonders that DnD can create, like making a whole class based on the lie that you’re not spellcasting.

Not all heroes wear capes

If folks want to read more about this, but also want to avoid giving site visits to the screenshotted fearmongering rag of a news website

If the link fails, relevant information: Squatting is not, strictly speaking, illegal in Australia. If the doors are locked and they break it it's breaking and entering, and if the owner asks them to leave and they don't it's trespassing, but if the property looks abandoned, the doors are unlocked, and the owner hasn't shown up to say no, you can move in. And if you manage to stay there for 12 years (or 15 in Victoria), adverse possession, or squatters' rights, kicks in and you can file claim to the house.

Basically, what he's doing is completely legal because squatting laws were specifically put in place to avoid people making empty houses for profit, and rich people are upset and calling him a far-left criminal activist for telling people things they don't want them to know.

Leverage Did It Well

I didn’t notice this the first time I watched Leverage (or the sixth), but when I posted a GIF of Hardison last week I noticed something…

The line is adorable, the writing fantastic, but the big thing I noticed is YOU CAN SEE HARDISON. Aldis Hodge is lit up so you can see his face easily.

Here’s another GIF.

And another…

So, here’s the thing. In most shows black actors fade in the background. They’re lit incorrectly and the dark background combined with the dark skin means the character vanishes. Especially on shows with cops and a lot of white people. 

Poor David Sinclair (Alimi Ballard) of Numb3rs is invisible in every night scene because he’s not lit up correctly. 

Before the advent of colored TV there were more black actors. They were common almost. But with color came the problem that a dark background makes a fair skinned person stand out while making a darker skinned person vanish. The Hollywood solution was to stop hiring darker skinned people. (Not a good idea).

In the first GIF Hardison is in a darker room. He should have vanished, they back-lit him, had ground lights, and framed him well. 

Same with the second on, notice the light on his head. He’s glowing like an angel.

Third GIF… notice the lamp placement? The light almost washes out the color of the green towel behind Hardison, but it means the viewers see him perfectly. And isn’t that really the goal? 

this is obviously about racism but also some part of you looks at this gorgeous human and thinks “OF COURSE THEY WANTED HIM BATHED IN SOFT LIGHT SO THAT WE COULD ALL GAZE UPON HIM AND BASK”

There’s a bit in one of the DVD commentaries where they talked about working with the lighting and not shooting until everyone is lit.

To be honest, yes to the above but also the real skill is when Hardison and Parker share a scene. Because they’re about as polar opposite as can be in terms of ideal lighting … But if a cable show produced on the smell of an empty rag can pull it off, no one has any excuse.

Leverage used a lot of the same crew that Star Trek:TNG and DS9 had used. The lighting techs were equally adept on those series. TNG was typically lit very bright, DS9 typically lit very dark, but you could always see what was happening. (And they both aired long before High Def televisions, so no excuse there!) You could hang out in Engineering with dark skinned Geordi and pale skinned Data and clearly see what they were both doing. You could hang out at the bar with a gray Cardassian, an orange-ish Ferengi, a brown Klingon, a black human, and a white Trill without losing focus on anyone. You could take in all those lovely makeup and costume details the various aliens had, whether it was a night shot or a bright morning, without having to squint.

I especially appreciate that kind of talent when I think about the last season of Game of Thrones, where they chose to do a huge night battle with a thousand extras, dressed them all in stylized costumes and intricate battle makeup, spent millions of dollars on fancy special effects, and then decided to light the whole episode so darkly that most viewers could barely see any of it.