#its a public site

[reaja]

Not me just straight up forgetting there are minors on this site. End me.

I spend literally all my time in an 18+ Discord server and completely fucking forgot that kids exist in fandom spaces sometimes.

[c0wb0y-k3lly]

A Newsies hyperfixation??? in 2024???

God Bless My Soul.

[presiding]

While browsing Vogue magazine, Sébastien Mitton found a photograph of Ruby Aldridge from the Céline Fall 2011 fashion show. He said, “Boom! We have the direction!” Her beauty and her unsettling gaze drove the first concept art for Emily.

[neriumxoleander]

(Please do not interact with my posts/follow if you are a minor or have no age listed on your blog, I will block you)

I feel like putting this out there for anyone who isn't a patron: Gato deleted her social medias. This ISNT gato, and I'm guessing they're going to go on a tirade about her soon. I would reccomend blocking them.

EDIT: Things changed, this user was bringing some things to light by using gatos username after she removed her social media accounts. They went about things in a very harsh way, but I believe it helped remind everyone that we need to watch what we say/how we say things to people.

[nidera]

digital mascot design by Reiko Chiba

[secondjulia]

When you know the surveillance state is watching everything and you really need to keep your mouth shut but it's just not working

[manofmanymeats]

This guy is literally such a creep

[sainz100]

December 2024

[starswallowingsea]

I have one (1) person saying they'd like a post about different styles of lighthouses so that's what this is going to be. As lighthouses serve as aids to navigation both during the day and at night, they have to stand out from each other so every lighthouse will look unique in some form or another. On top of that, many lighthouses were built out in the water and their structures had to be able to withstand the harsh weather in the open water (which not all of them did, several structures have been washed away in particularly powerful storms and had to be rebuilt). Under the cut will be several images of various lighthouses and the different classifications of these structures.

The first type of lighthouse we'll discuss in this post is the integrated lighthouse. Wikipedia describes these lighthouses as "...a lighthouse in which the tower and keeper's dwelling are united in one structure." This refers to lighthouses on land almost exclusively, but these lighthouses take on many different appearances. There are some standard designs, such as the school house design used at South Fox Island and Copper Harbor in Michigan (below), and others are more unique in their designs.

Both of these lighthouses, South Fox Island and Copper Harbor respectively, follow a standard "schoolhouse" design in their basic structure, however to tell them apart, they were given different daymarks, such as South Fox Island's whitewashed brick compared to Copper Harbor's natural cream brick. These differences help sailors to identify which specific lighthouse they're passing by and every single lighthouse will look at least slightly different, especially if it was constructed during the golden age of lighthouse construction, generally considered to be from about 1840-1910 (and obviously lighthouses were constructed before and after this period, but these 70 years saw a huge expansion in lighthouse construction, in part, due to the invention of the fresnel lens and the ability to mass produce them in France).

Not all lighthouses constructed on land are considered to be integrated lighthouses, however. Lighthouses like the one at Cape Hatteras are simply the tower, with the keepers' quarters often being nearby to the structure, but not attached. Cape Hatteras is also one of very few lighthouses bearing a "barber pole" daymark. So far as I can tell, only three lights in the US have this daymark, including St. Augustine in Florida and White Shoal in Michigan (which we'll discuss a little later).

Pictured above: Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, North Carolina, United States // Contis Plage Lighthouse, Landes, France. Both of these lighthouses are towers detached from any keepers quarters.

These are the two most common lighthouses you'll find on land, but what about those lighthouses built on the water? Well, they're divided into a few different categories: Caisson lighthouses, Screw-pile lighthouses, and Crib lighthouses.

Let's start with the Screw-pile lights. These were some of the first lighthouses built out on the water, with their piles being screwed into the mud and sand. These are actually slightly modified from older straightpile or simply pile lighthouses, differing mostly in the shape of the structure. Straightpile lights were taller and more skeletal compared to screw-pile lights. These structures had open legs which helped alleviate some pressure from the waves crashing on the structure, literally just giving them less surface area to hit and damage.

Above: Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, Florida, United States // Chesapeake Bay Lighthouse, Maryland, United States. Fowey Rocks is a Pile Lighthouse and Chesapeake Bay is a Screw-pile lighthouse. Both types of lighthouse included a keepers quarters in the structure above the water on a suspended platform, but are not considered integrated lighthouses like their mainland counterparts.

Caisson Lighthouses were created in response to Screw-pile lights, being both cheaper to build and sturdier as a structure. These lighthouses were built on metal or concrete caissons which were screwed into the sediments, with the rest of the structure completed on top. These lighthouses weren't immune to accidents though, as seen with the Sharps Island lighthouse in Maryland, which was knocked on an angle from an ice floe in 1977 and remains at a tilt to this day. It was decommissioned in 2010.

Above: the Sharps Island Lighthouse, Maryland, United States. This lighthouse actually replaced earlier screw-pile lighthouses that were also destroyed by ice floes through the area. The keepers quarters on the last Screw-pile lighthouse was fully lifted off its legs and carried safely away by the ice floe and none of the keepers inside were hurt.

The final type of lighthouse built out on the water are the crib lighthouses. These lights were built on wood and concrete cribs, often in the Great Lakes region due to the composition of the lake beds. The first crib light was built in 1851 on Waugoshance Shoal and more lighthouses soon followed. The most striking of these crib lights is White Shoal, located near Waugoshance, which has the only red and white barber pole daymark in the United States. Both of these lighthouses are located in the Straits of Mackinac region, which has ~15 lighthouses, including several crib lights (Gray's Reef, Poe Reef, and Spectacle Reef, just to name a few).

Above: Waugoshance Shoal Lighthouse // White Shoal Lighthouse, both located in the Straits of Mackinac, Michigan, United States. Waugoshance Shoal sits in just 4 feet of water, making it very difficult to access for repairs and restoration. The lighthouse was used as bomb target practice during the second World War due to it's location inland and the fact that it had been decommissioned in the 1930s. It still retains it's iconic birdcage lantern room, one of only four that survives in the United States.

There is one more type of lighthouse to discuss, and those are skeletal tower lighthouses. Not every skeletal tower light is considered an official lighthouse for a variety of reasons, but there were a number of lights built in this style. They are very reminiscent of pile lighthouses with their open frams, though skeletal towers can be built on shore as well. They became popular due to the relative ease of construction in remote locations, and that they could be deconstructed and reconstructed if need be. One of the most famous lighthouses built in this manner is Whitefish Point, where the modern Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is located and where you can still go and see the bell of the infamous Edmund Fitzgerald, which was the last major wreck on the lakes occurring in 1975.

Above: Two different angles of the Whitefish Point Lighthouse. It contains a central staircase in a white column. This lighthouse was not operational during that November gale in 1975 when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, as the captain noted how inconvenient it was that the light was out in one of his final transmissions. Thankfully there has not been a major shipwreck since then, though shipping culture on the Great Lakes is a whole other post in and of itself.

These are just a few examples of lighthouses, and these structures decorate the coasts of our oceans and several lakes in the world to help ships navigate the rough waters and stay safer on their journeys. I hope you learned something about lighthouses here and can appreciate the effort put into creating them just a little bit more! If you'd like to learn more about American Lighthouses, I'd recommend reading Brilliant Beacons by Eric Jay Dolin, which is where I got a lot of this information, and it includes a lot of anecdotes about lighthouses and their keepers throughout the country.

Above: Cape Agulhas Lighthouse, South Africa // Yokohama Breakwater Light, Japan. Just showing some more examples of lighthouses outside of the United States. Can you identify what types of lighthouses these are?

[stemmmm]

its really funny that the bluesky account i made just to get my username and never posted on even once or announced that i had made anywhere somehow has like. 30 followers im pretty sure. how did you people find me. did you really search for me? do you really like me??

[yasmeensh]

Paleolithic Media Catalogue

Hello everyone :) Short story first: When I began brainstorming for my prehistoric story, I started wondering what other prehistoric fiction there is out there. I was not familiar with it and have not seen much. That's when I started my grand literature review and began a search for what fiction exist out there. I wanted to know what kinds of stories are being made with this time period. What are the common themes or recurring ideas (I found lots of humans and dinosaurs works. And time travel). Since I've had a growing collection on my computer, I decided I should keep on enlarging it and put it online. It's nowhere near complete. I'll slowly keep accumulating the collection as I find more. I only have fiction books and comics right now. I still need to work on the film section.

You can access the blog here!

***

As for where I am in my reading, the one's I've finished reading are Earth's Children series (book 1-4. Dropped it afterwards lol. I made a post on with fanart) Dance of the Tiger and it's sequel Singletusk (They were good! I'll upload my review on the blog), and Sisters of the Wolf (It was ok!). I got my hands on The Inheritors and excited to start reading it. I REALLY want to read the Shiva trilogy, but I found no PDF online... and it's out of print :( There is certainly old copies on ebay. And I want to read Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. There seem to be lots of good books out there.

[savefrog]

Will never relate to people who get upset at game delays or the thought of there being less tv shows during a strike or a band not making enough music

HOW ARE YOU NOT CONSTANTLY OVWRWHRLMED BY THE VAST QUANTITIES OF MEDIA OUT THERE

How do you not have 3000 untouched games on steam. Youre caught up on every anime? ALL OF IT? ALL THE OBSCURE 80S OVAS??? GO WATCH SOME FRENCH FILMS!!! Go watch one of the trillions of youtube videos - you mean you havent seen 2527r8393.mp4 yet!?!?!? You have already listened to every song? You've heard every Finnish or Greek or Azerbaijani song ever made???? DOWNLOAD 8GB OF WEIRD WALKING SIMS AND VISUAL NOVELS OFF ITCH.IO!!!! GO TRAWL THROUGH ARCHIVE.ORG (IF ITS STILL AROUND)!!! DONT YOU ALSO HAVE 100 HALF-READ BOOKS AROUND!?!?!

If youre not hyperventalating at the thought youll never see every single cool thing in the world before you pass (like i constantly am) then you havent looked hard enough!!! What is it like to hear that a game you want to play has been delayed and NOT breathe a sigh of relief because you already have 5 unfinished games you started in the past year HOW!!!!!

[etchif]

Okay but genuinely. Why is Cats so severely hated on. I get the 2019 movie is largely what brought it back into the public conscience and thus strongly shaped the current generation's view of the show but there has to be more than that, people were hating on it even before the film came out. It almost feels like Cats (or god forbid LIKING Cats) is treated as somewhat of a musical theatre taboo. The One Show no one likes and you're not allowed to like because everyone will look at you funny, even folks who don't normally care much about musical theatre. Come on guys they're just kitty cats

Yadda yadda nice opinion did a youtuber give it to you try forming your own opinions on things without parroting other people's etc etc

[squeakadeeks]

Hope these words find you well, your cool, your arts cool, your creations cool. Hope you get a big break coming, may your financial needs perish and your dreams be on the rise, hope you feel as cool as you are.

ty!! (๑•̀-•́)و ngl this week has already been hella stressful. i no longer seek the embrace of fame or peer accolades. i hope my big break is i find a perfectly pristine parcel of quaker oats packets out in the wild

[liquidstar]

Bluesky is open to everyone now 🫡

ty anon!!! though tbh im not a fan of the ui of twitter or most twitter clones so idk if that would be my first option. especially bc i wanna make long posts

[misfit-toy-haven]

Hey did you like Neopets growing up? Do you like the look of this?

Or this?

Or this?

What if I told you that they can all be completely customized

So you could turn this into any of THESE

If that sounds interesting then good news, it can be found on 4dopt

This is a completely free ( I mean COMPLETELY free) pet adoption site I've been playing on for about 2 years now that happily just went into public access. It's run by a tiny group of virtual pet fans and has a kind, accepting, fun community with zero toxicity and a good sense of humor. It was created as an answer to what people were LOOKING for in virtual pet sites but couldn't find anywhere.

All of the pets are created by players and anyone can submit pets and items. This creates a massive and wonderful variation in pets and art styles.

I just wanted to share with yall in case any of my followers are like me and were looking for a nice casual virtual pet website. Enjoy :)