#Byron Patrick

[radiantrookie]

Y'know if we can revive the Lab Rats fandom, then we can revive this fandom too

[newyorkthegoldenage]

St. Patrick's Cathedral, looking oddly forlorn, in 1923. Saks Fifth Avenue wasn't built (on the right) until the following year.

Photo: Byron Company via MCNY

[number1spongebobfan]

Jack and the Pack members in their animal forms

No concept art for now, just brainstorming what the pack would be as animals in my Thomas & Friends AU.

Jack - floppy-eared goat with front loader wheels on his legs

Nelson - Tuxedo Cat with ballast tractor wheels on his legs

Byron - Texas longhorn with bulldozer wheels (obviously)

Isobella - dairy sheep with steam lorry wheels on her legs

Kelly - Friesian Horse with crane wheels on his legs

Alfie - British Shorthair cat with excavator wheels on his legs

Ned - Gyspy Horse with steam shovel wheels on his legs

Patrick - St. Bernard with cement mixer wheels

Max and Monty - bulls with dump truck wheels on legs

Oliver - large billy goat with excavator wheels

Now, since they are construction vehicles, I'm thinking whether it's necessary to keep the mechanical parts on them as animals. Jack's horns could be implemented as his plow, f.e, so no parts necessary for him . . . . . . I'll think about it.

[cinemaquiles]

Faltou verba: "A ilha misteriosa" (Mysterious Island, 2005)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Peter Montgomery at RWW:

After a rough year of scandal, electoral defeats, and effective counter-organizing, the anti-LGBTQ, book-banning Moms for Liberty put on a show of force at the Republican National Convention. A Moms for Liberty town hall Tuesday afternoon drew two governors, three members of Congress, and three state attorneys general. Also addressing the crowd were former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who now runs the Young America’s Foundation; Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts; anti-abortion activist and “Stop the Steal” leader Ed Martin; and Michael Seifert, who heads Public Square, a fast-growing network of “anti-woke” businesses.

The event started with a promotional video including footage of Donald Trump calling Moms for Liberty “the best thing that’s ever happened to America.” Martin, who was on the leadership team of the Trump-controlled RNC platform process, delivered an opening prayer and told the crowd that the Trump platform’s chapter on education—which denounces “gender indoctrination,” critical race theory, and “left-wing propaganda” while endorsing “universal school choice” and the abolition of the federal Department of Education—reflects the “fingerprints” and “extraordinary influence” of M4L.

[...] The first panel featured Sen. Ron Johnson and Reps. Byron Donalds and Harriett Hageman. Justice began with a question that teed up one of the gaslighting themes of the convention, asking about Trump critics “labeling anyone who stands for freedom” as “a threat to democracy.” Hageman denounced Democrats for demonizing conservatives and Donalds denounced “venom” from the left, both ignoring the brutally divisive and literally demonizing rhetoric that is a hallmark of Trump and the MAGA movement. [...]

The state attorneys general panel—featuring Lousiana’s Liz Murrill, West Virginia’s Patrick Morrisey, and Missouri’s Andrew Bailey—talked about legal challenges to Biden administration rules interpreting Title IX. In a discussion of limiting access to library materials, Bailey claimed that “the left wants to groom children” and “sexualize children.” Murrill called it an “attack on faith” for librarians to allow children to access books their parents don’t approve. The AGs also talked more broadly about right-wing Republican priorities like eliminating “Chevron deference”—which the Supreme Court majority recently did—to weaken the regulatory power of federal agencies. [...] Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas took turns bragging about their states’ attacks on “gender ideology,” diversity, equity, and inclusion, and more. DeSantis talked about how the state is expanding its control over what is taught in public universities.

Anti-LGBTQ+ “parental rights” extremist organization Moms For Liberty held a town hall at the RNC in Milwaukee Tuesday afternoon, and various speakers lobbed unhinged attacks against the LGBTQ+ community and oppose academic freedom by supporting book bans and curriculum censorship.

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: Ron DeSantis & Sarah Huckabee Sanders appear on extremist group Moms for Liberty’s panel

[ladychandraofthemoone]

Who are the members of the Pack in this universe?

Alrighty, in no particular order.

Nelson

Jack

Alfie

Oliver

Max

Monty

Kelly

Byron

Ned

Isobella

Patrick

Brenda

Buster

Darcy

Honorary members include Thumper, Elizabeth, Madge, and Cleo while former are Nigel.

[autumncottageattic]

North & South 1975  is a British television historical drama

The serial is based on the 1855 Victorian novel North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and takes place in the years surrounding the Great Exhibition of 1851.

[moviesandmania]

DARK ASSET (2023) Sci-fi action vengeance thriller - trailer and release date

‘Programmed for vengeance’ Dark Asset is a 2023 American sci-fi action thriller film about a charming guy who attempts to pick up a woman in a bar by spinning a tale involving spies, implanted microchips and the dangerous military scientist hunting him. Written and directed by Michael Winnick (Disquiet; Malicious; Code of Honor; The Better Half; Guns, Girls and Gambling; Shadow Puppets; Deuces)…

[laylaspence]

Black through the mountains

[otakunoculture]

Sometimes Being a "Dark Asset" is Problematical When Wanting Freedom from What Once Was

Michael Winnick's Dark Asset may well recall other #scifi cum #conspiracy type tv series or movies, but as for wondering who'll gain their freedom requires checking out this film! #moveireview @saban_films

Saban Films Playing at Select theatres and on VOD I can recognise shades of the cult movie Universal Soldier in Michael Winnick‘s Dark Asset, a science fiction cum conspiracy film about an ordinary soldier who gives up his life in order to be turned into a programmed killing machine. It’s almost like Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. But instead of making humanoid clones with biochip…

[the1920sinpictures]

1920 Photographer James Byron Clayton and friends took what might have been the very first group selfie! Taken at the Marceau Photo Studio on Fifth Avenue opposite St. Patrick's Cathedral. From Andra Roth Ruscin, FB.

[poemaseletras]

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[fatehbaz]

In February 2024, creature enthusiasts and popular media outlets celebrated what has been described as the 200-year anniversary of the formal naming of the "first" dinosaur, Megalosaurus.

There are political implications of Megalosaurus and the creature's presentation to the public.

In 1824, the creature was named (Megalosaurus bucklandii, for Buckland, whose work had also helped popularize knowledge of the "Ice Ages"). In 1842, the creature was used as a reference when Owen first formally coined the term "Dinosauria". And in 1854, models of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon were famously displayed in exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London. (The Crystal Palace was regarded as a sort of central focal point to celebrate the power of the Empire by displaying industrial technology and environmental and cultural "riches" acquired from the colonies. It was built to house the spectacle of the "Great Exhibition" in 1851, attended by millions.)

The fame of Megalosaurus and the popularization of dinosaurs coincided at a time when Europe was contemplating new revelations and understandings of geological "deep time" and the vast scale of the distant past, learning that both humans and the planet were much older than previously known, which influenced narrativizing and historicity. (Is time linear, progressing until the Empire is at this current pinnacle, implying justified dominance over other more "primitive" people? Will Britain fall like Rome? What are the limits of the Empire in the face of vast time scales and environmental forces?) The formal disciplines of geology, paleontology, anthropology, and other sciences were being professionalized and institutionalized at this time (as Britain cemented global power, surveyed and catalogued ecosystems for administration, and interacted with perceived "primitive" peoples of India, Africa, and Australia; the mutiny against British rule in India would happen in 1857). Simultaneously, media periodicals and printed texts were becoming widely available to popular audiences. For Victorian-era Britain, stories and press reflected this anxiety about extinction, the intimidating scale of time, interaction with people of the colonies, and encounters with "beasts" and "monsters" at both the spatial and temporal edges of Empire.

---

Some stuff:

"Shaping the beast: the nineteenth-century poetics of palaeontology" (Laurence Talairach-Vielmas in European Journal of English Studies, 2013).

Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture (Laurence Talairach-Vielmas, 2014).

"Literary Megatheriums and Loose Baggy Monsters: Paleontology and the Victorian Novel" (Gowan Dawson in Victorian Studies, 2011).

Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Martin J.S. Rudwick, 2010).

Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle (Lukas Rieppel, 2019).

Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity (Pratik Chakrabarti, 2020).

"Making Historicity: Paleontology and the Proximity of the Past in Germany, 1775-1825" (Patrick Anthony in Journal of the History of Ideas, 2021).

'"A Dim World, Where Monsters Dwell": The Spatial Time of the Sydenham Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park' (Nancy Rose Marshall in Victorian Studies, 2007).

Articulating Dinosaurs: A Political Anthropology (Brian Noble, 2016).

The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856 (Ralph O'Connor, 2007).

"Victorian Saurians: The Linguistic Prehistory of the Modern Dinosaur" (O'Connor in Journal of Victorian Culture, 2012).

"Hyena-Hunting and Byron-Bashing in the Old North: William Buckland, Geological Verse and the Radical Threat" (O'Connor in Uncommon Contexts: Encounters between Science and Literature, 1800-1914, 2013).

And some excerpts:

---

When the Crystal Palace at Sydenham opened in 1854, the extinct animal models and geological strata exhibited in its park grounds offered Victorians access to a reconstructed past - modelled there for the first time - and drastically transformed how they understood and engaged with the history of the Earth. The geological section, developed by British naturalists and modelled after and with local resources was, like the rest of the Crystal Palace, governed by a historical perspective meant to communicate the glory of Victorian Britain. The guidebook authored by Richard Owen, Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World, illustrates how Victorian naturalists placed nature in the service of the nation - even if those elements of nature, like the Iguanodon or the Megalosaurus, lived and died long before such human categories were established. The geological section of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, which educated the public about the past while celebrating the scale and might of modernity, was a discursive site of exchange between past and present, but one that favoured the human present by intimating that deep time had been domesticated, corralled and commoditised by the nation’s naturalists.

Text by: Alison Laurence. "A discourse with deep time: the extinct animals of Crystal Palace Park as heritage artefacts". Science Museum Group Journal (Spring 2019). Published 1 May 2019. [All text from the article's abstract.]

---

[There was a] fundamental European 'time revolution' of the nineteenth century [...]. In the late 1850s and 1860s, Europeans are said to have experienced ‘the bottom falling out of history’, when geologists confirmed that humanity had existed for far, far longer than the approximately 6,000 years previously believed to represent the entire history [...]. ‘[S]ecular time’ became for many ‘just time, period’: the ‘empty time’ of Walter Benjamin. […] The European discovery of ‘deep time’ hastened this shift. [....] Historicism views the past as developments, trends, eras and epochs. [...] Victorians were intensely aware of ‘historical time’, experiencing themselves as inhabiting a new age of civilization. They were obsessed with history and its apparent power to explain the present […].

Text by: Laura Rademaker. “60,000 Years is not forever: ‘time revolutions’ and Indigenous pasts.” Postcolonial Studies. September 2021.

---

At the time when geology and paleontology emerged as new scientific disciplines, [...] [g]oing back to the 1802 exhibition of the first Mastodon exhibited in London’s Pall Mall, […] showmanship ruled geology and ensured its popularity and public appeal [...]. Throughout the Victorian period, [...] geology was as much - if not more - sensational than the popular romances and sensation novels of the time [...]. [T]he "rhetoric of spectacular display" (26) before the 1830s [was] developed by geological writers (James Parkinson, John Playfair, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, Robert Blakewell), "borrowing techniques from [...] commercial exhibition" [...]. The discovery of Kirkdale Cave in December 1821 where fossils of [extinct] hyena bones were discovered along with other species (elephant, mouse, hippopotamus) led Buckland to posit that the exotic animals [...] had lived in England [...]. Thus, the year 1822 was significant as Buckland’s hyena den theory gave a glimpse of the world before the Flood. [...] [G]eology became a market in its own right, in particular with the explosion of cheaper forms of printed science [...] in cheap miscellanies and fictional miscellanies, with geological romances [...] [...] or [fantastical] tropes pervading [...], "leading to a considerable degree of conservatism in the imagery of the ancient earth" (196). By 1846 the geological romances were often reminiscent of the narrative strategies found in Arabian Nights [...].

Text by: Laurence Talairach-Vielmas. A book review published as: “Ralph O’Connor, The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802 - 1856.” Review published by journal Miranda. Online since July 2010.

---

Dinosaurs, then, are malleable beasts. [...] [T]he constant reshaping of these popular animals has also been driven by cultural and political trends. [...] One of Britain’s first palaeontologists, Richard Owen, coined the term “Dinosauria” in 1842. The Victorians were relatively familiar with reptile fossils [...] [b]ut Owen's coinage brought a group of the most mysterious discoveries under one umbrella. [...] When attempting to rise to the top of British science, it helped to have the media on your side. Owen’s friendship with both Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray led to fond name-dropping by both novelists. Dickens’s Bleak House famously begins by imagining a Megalosaurus, one of Owen’s original dinosaurs. Both novelists even compared their own writing process to Owen’s palaeontological techniques. In the scientific community, Owen’s dinosaur research was first [criticized] by his [...] rival, Gideon Mantell, a surgeon and the describer of the Iguanodon. [...] Naming dinosaurs was a powerful way of claiming ownership [...]. Owen [...] knew the power of the press [...]. [M]useum exhibits [often] [...] flattered white patrons [...] by placing them at the apex of modernity. [...] Owen would not have been surprised to learn that the reconstruction of dinosaur bones is still an act that is entangled in politics.

Text by: Richard Fallon. "Our image of dinosaurs was shaped by Victorian popularity contests". The Conversation. 31 January 2020.

[oddityroadshow]

Seasons - Episode 6: The End

The sixth episode of a standalone Actual Play Event Mini-Series ran by Joel Ruiz. 

Follow the journey for four groups of monster hunters as they take on what they think to be their last job, but soon find out the fate of all the worlds is in their hands.

Narration by Jack David. Opening track by People Need Goals.

Featuring Danielle Bryn, Cole Burkhardt, Paul Byron, Kyle Claset, Alex Flanigan, Brandon Leon Gambetta, Taylor Johnson, Shelby Lee, Jack Packard, Renee Roads, Eve Smith, Shannon Strucci, Patrick Tracy, Dallas Wheatley, and Aaron Willems.

SeasonsMiniSeries.com #SeasonsMiniSeries

Associate Producers - Birras & Luke Holt

Executive Producer - Andrew Harper

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Check out this episode!

[spacerangersam]

Tell me more about your BBC Ghosts character swap AU please?

(like I wanna know from you about the other BH ghosts you didn't draw in their character swap AU version yet on what their character swap would be, for example Thomas, Mary & Robin please?)

Thanks!

I'd be happy to!

Thomas is a caveman, tricked into a fight by his cousin (with less of the dramatics though, since Francis couldn't have forged a letter)  who either got stabbed with a spear or bonked on the head with a club. Regardless, he was killed and in death, gets to carry around a spear. It‘s big, cumbersome and annoying, and I just think it’s funny. He can give the living bruises with it.

To blabber on a bit: his name is actually To, but Julian thought that was stupid so renamed him Thomas, and he did originally come from Scotland. Though it wasn't called Scotland when he was there, obviously.

He struggles a lot with modern English - he’s lived through the rise and fall and change of so many languages that he really struggles to keep up. He slips between using new English and old English, French, old Brythonic languages etc, especially when he’s upset. That's what really kick-started his friendship with Patrick- Pat was the first one really willing to just stop and try to understand what Thomas was saying, and the first one to really sit down and help Thomas with his English. They have lessons every Thursday evening. 

He still likes poetry, but because of all that he’s even worse at it. He also still hates Byron, just for less personal reasons.

With the whole having being around for thousands of years and watched people come and go, he's terrified of the other ghosts moving on without him. He doesn't like to sleep alone because of it, likes being able to keep an eye on at least one ghosts during the night. He tends to spend the night with Pat or Kitty, curled up on the foot of their beds, but he’ll stay with someone else now and then

Mary is a Girl Guide leader from the 80s. She's a timid woman to begin with, raised in a strict Catholic household, who works in a farm shop-come-cafe. She was encouraged to take up the Guide role by her husband to give her more confidence, and she stayed with it after his death. It didn't really make her more confident though, and her Guides quickly learned that they could walk all over her. She died while camping out on the Button grounds - some of the girls set a fire that quickly got out of control. Mary couldn't get out of her tent and died of asphyxiation (suspend your disbelief if you wouldn't mind). She still was close to Annie (and depending on how much you want to play around with the au, Annie could still be around, era switched with the plagues) and learned to be more confident through her.

She insists on doing grace at mealtimes, even though she can't eat, tells people off for blasphemy, and prays on Sundays in lieu of going to mass. The longer she's with the ghosts though, the less she does it. She has a few handy survival tools in her pockets, and like Pat, knows a thing or two about using a bow and arrow.

Robin is from the Georgian era, a nobleman's son who was sent to live with his uncle in hopes he'd straighten Robin out and turn him into a proper gentleman. Robin hated that idea. He planned to make a getaway and start a new life, one where he could just be himself, only to get struck by lightning before he ever made it off the grounds.

It's hard think of a Robin with ‘perfect’ speech, so I like to imagine he came over from North Wales, Welsh being his first language. He does speak English, albeit reluctantly, and has no desire to be fluent in it.

He's still outdoorsy and cares a lot about animals - his parents never had much time for him so he spent most of his time chasing around mice in the manor and sneaking into the stables to pet the horses. He can also still muck around with electricity.    

I don't think I've talked about Julian either, but he's the headless Tudor. Much like in canon, he didn't pay much attention to his wife or child, which was ultimately his downfall when he unknowingly partied with people who were plotting to kill the queen and was damned by association. He got his head lobbed off, and the head can appear in photographs. He makes so many jokes about it.

I can't really think of much else to say at the moment but yeah, that's them

[blueshistorysims]

February 4th, 1925, Harlem, Manhattan, New York

My Dear Byron,

You cannot imagine my surprise by your letter. Not by its content or sender, but by pure coincidence! I had just sat down to in fact write you a letter when it was handed to me. It seems you have beat me to it. You are not the only one who will be married! If you will remember a woman I  had mentioned in a letter from years ago, Miss Adanna Okafor—well, she and I are to be married as well. In fact, this letter was also meant to be an invitation to my own wedding.

I never thought I would marry, hence being 34 and only now getting married, but now, I am so enamored with my fiancée, I can barely imagine what life was like before I met her. Our situations are familiar, I think, when it comes to our parents. My father especially does not like that Adanna is one, Nigerian and two, Catholic. I find it all very silly, but what can he do, I am a grown man. 

I am delighted to meet Miss Balass and make her acquaintance—I expect her as well as you to be at my wedding. It will be on July 17th, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral (I am still shocked we will wed in a church as nice as the cathedral). Of course, I will attend your wedding, and I know Samson will be eagerly writing to report the same, and so will my parents. 

I can read between the lines with the invitation of the former in-laws to your wedding. In truth, I am not sure if Stella would have gone if she were able, but there is other happy news in our family: Stella is to have a baby! Mother and Father are very excited for a grandchild. By your wedding, she will be caring for a newborn, as the baby is due shortly after my nuptial date. Campbell, on the other hand, still feels shame about the nature of the end of your marriage to my sister, and I don’t know if he will come. Perhaps if you affirm that you have no hard feelings in person, he will change his mind. 

I look forward to your reply, 

Thaddeus B. Gardenhouse

London, England

The news of Stella’s pregnancy startled Byron. She’d told him more than once that she never wanted children. He’d been fine by this when they married, but to learn she was to have a child sparked something in him he couldn’t explain. She could have a baby with Campbell but not with him? Perhaps it was unjustified anger or envy, but he couldn’t help it, much to his guilty conscience.