#nerdery and stuff

[themagpiealchemist]

Hey @mysandwichranaway guess what, I know what Ling's jacket is. Just had to find an old enough book I guess??

tl;dr it's a Balenciaga camo hoodie

...sorta.

It's a Manchu military archer jacket. But like, for casual wear reasons.

(Looks like the V&A museum never bothered to take a better photo than this, but description says in item is actually sky blue, with red and white additions. Which is a... choice. The circle is military insignia.) Okay, so, basically, the Qing dynasty was suuuuper proud of not being like These Han Losers ok. They were warriors! Nomads! Horse riding archers!

They wanted everything close cropped and with side cuts for mobility, no fancy billowing sleeves allowed because you could not very well draw a bow like that.

(Here seen on Emperor Qianlong and his entourage resting during/after a hunt, because the dude sure wanted his hunting prowess known. Also note the leg wraps and shoes on his people uwu) Anyway, even when you were not fighting/hunting from horse back, looks like it was v much the style to flaunt your roots and wear 'military-cut' clothing, except the fabrics got flimsier and more decorative.

"[...] In addition, a short jacket was also worn for travelling. This was so short thati t did not even reach the waist and had sleeves barely covering the elbows, so it was used for riding and was therefore called the “riding jacket”. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty it was worn by soldiers and used to be called the “victory jacket”. But later any civilian, man or woman, was also allowed to wear it in peace time so that it became a kind of casual garment. [...] Riding jackets were of different kinds, the highest class being the yellow riding jacket, worn only by special favour of the emperor. With regard to the styles, there were the big lapel jacket, the mid-front opening jacket and the lapel-less jacket. The first kind was usually for casual wear and was worn on top of a robe. The second was for formal occasions while the third, also called the “lute shaped lapel jacket”, was made according to the style of the lapel-less robe and was also used for travelling.

As to the quality of the materials, apart from fabrics such as silk and satin, there were also some that were made of skins of wild animals. During the reign of Emperor Qianlong, some people — chiefly prominent officials and aristocrats — wore the jacket inside out."

[demonslayedher]

Nerdy cultural details about the word "Hashira"

Some details can be hard to pick up without context or in translation. I recently went over a few details about the Hashira's names, Breaths, or symbols, but today I want to focus on the word "Hashira."

To get this out of the way, I use "Pillar" all over this blog because I thought that's what they were called. I was astounded that phrase was not translated, as it is a (somewhat rare) case of a one-to-one translation equivalent. They are the pillars that support the Demon Slayer Corp, after all. The kanji for it (柱) very literally means "pillar" in any modern day Japanese to English dictionary. But since you all know the word "Hashira," let's climb up and see where it takes us! First, the kanji itself (brought over from China and given the Japanese pronunciation "hashira," based on the existing spoken Japanese language), is composed of 木 for "tree" and 主 for "master" or "main/principal," among other semi-literal or more widely applicable possible meanings in modern kanji dictionaries. However, Prof. Owada Tetsuo, a retired university professor who published an unofficial book of his own Kimetsu no Yaiba interpretations based on Japanese demon slaying folklore, points out that 主 can also be interpreted as a still flame atop a candlestick, and that 柱 (hashira) is a tree that cannot be moved. (I'll continue to use a lot of Prof. Owada's details in this explanation, as well as details I have picked up in other research.) That makes 柱 closely associated with holy trees found in, or treated as, Shinto shrines throughout Japan. As Shinto is a nature-based belief system, trees are often something that a kami (deity) will inhabit. Keep Shinto in mind, because we're going to focus on that a lot.

Before that, let's finish up with the kanji 柱. According to the first official fanbook, there is an upper limit of nine Hashira because there are nine strokes in the 柱 kanji. (See this dictionary entry for a breakdown of those nine strokes.)

Now that the easy official tidbit is out of the way, back to the Shinto fun stuff and conjecture! We need to dive a bit more into the spoken Japanese language, from which a lot of Shinto terms derive. For starters, the Japanese language uses counter words for when you say a certain number of beings or objects. You could think of this as "a sheet of paper" or "three rolls of tape." It is an annoying part of starting out your study of the language because there are a lot to memorize based on sizes, shapes, types of animals, etc. Deities also have their own counter word: 柱 (hashira). This goes to show how the Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corp are something more than human, what with how much power they possess.

Now if we think about the pronunciation of the spoken Japanese word from long before a Chinese written character was assigned to it, the "hashi" of "hashira" is a "bridge." Clever ones among you might know that "hashi" also means "chopsticks." But even chopsticks have the same effect as a bridge! They serve as a connection, bridging the gap between you and what was another living thing, that which will become a part of you as your sustenance. "Hashira," as pillars, are likewise something that serve as a connection, in this case, a vertical one. They are that which connect us with the heavens, or in the case of the Demon Slayer Corp, they bridge the gap between the limits of human strength and the inhuman strength of demons.

As another Shinto tie, one of the connections that Prof. Owada and I both made was that there are nine pillars that support the main sanctuary in shrine architecture like that of Izumo Taisha Grand Shrine. Or rather, in the case of at least one of the historical iterations of Izumo Taisha, there were nine groups of three massive tree trunks each, resulting in a shrine over 48 meters in height (see here for photos of how big the remains of those pillars are and how exciting the archaeology is). These pillars give you a sense of awe for just how powerful pillars can be, especially when you have a spread of nine to distribute the weight. Now, there's more that Prof. Owada and I would both say about how Izumo Taisha also ties in with the "Ubuyashiki" surname or the "yakata" title by which the Hashira address him, but that's a dose of nerdery for some other time.

[anneapocalypse]

Edited to add: I was wrong, check the notes for further info!

It would be interesting if Urianger used the formal you/informal thou distinction (mostly because we'd have a field day analyzing when he uses which and why, heh), but I can find no evidence that he does. So far, I've found three instances in which he breaks from thee/thou exclusively:

This snippet of "Pre-Calamity Dialogue" from the GamerEscape wiki. I can only assume this is from 1.0. While from what I can glean of context, this would be consistent with a usage of formal you, I have nothing to compare it at present so I don't know if he uses thou elsewhere or not; also this usage of you does not seem to have carried forward into 2.0 and beyond. (Also, I would kill for actual footage of Urianger in 1.0, and YouTube has thus far yielded nothing; drop me links if you have them!)

The lines of prophecy he recites for the Scions upon their departure to the Far East include ye as a plural you. ("Look ye where the sun doth rise..."). This is Urianger quoting a text, however, and I haven't found anywhere he uses this in his own speech.

There is one line in Shadowbringers where Urianger says, "I am in your debt." This is not particularly an instance where the formal you would make sense (he's addressing a friend), nor does he ever address the Warrior of Light that way in similar contexts that I can find. (Compare to other times when he is apologetic with them, like the Heavensward patches, "Speak thy mind. I do not expect thy forgiveness," or earlier Shadowbringers, "I thank thee. Doubt not but that I will do all in my power to repay thy kindness," if the WoL offers him forgiveness.) As such, I'm inclined to assume this was a mistake and an editing oversight rather than an intentional deviation.

Are there more? I would be interested to see them! So far though I don't see him using this distinction. He seems to use thee/thou pretty exclusively when he's speaking in his own words.

Unfortunately, I have not played Endwalker yet (I'm through 5.3 at the moment) so I have to say please don't give me any spoilers, thank you!

[fazedlight]

Two things I think about a lot:

How air mass running over wings generates lift for an airplane to fly. Every time I fly (whether I'm flying myself, or on a commercial flight)... that takeoff rotation and the world falling away, or that ground effect feeling as I flare for landing, leaves me in complete awe. I know the physics. It's still magic.

I never thought much about the internet as infrastructure, until I got a job that required me to learn about it. It's all massive fiber cables, industrial routers, all across the globe. Look at this map of submarine cables. Some of you on here are in Europe, in India, in Australia. You're seeing my emoji & dumb jokes because I am sending them to you via light signals across the bottom of an ocean.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Totally disagree that Fine Line's success was modest for Harry, wasn't a significant step, and didn't indicate growth. Its sales figures on debut in the US were more than double that of his first album, with almost triple the streaming numbers (I know you disregard the US sales, but Harry, his team, and the record industry certainly do not! 😆) Given the abrupt shift in how music is consumed between 2017-2019, for him to double sales showed a significant growth and expansion of his audience

This was backed up by the exceptional demand for his tour, by Adore You's radio success and build in December/Jan/Feb, and by the positive album reviews and coverage worldwide. All showing a shift in how Harry was perceived as an artist by audiences outside his initial core fandom, and a significant growth in audience attention.

Your metric - judging Fine Line's initial success against his later work which went on to be even more successful- isn't a meaningful metric for judging how its success was seen at the time by Harry or his team (or audiences). Harry's House hadn't happened yet. Fine Line was hugely successful at debut. Harry's House blew the roof off.

I was super happy to see this anon because it means I can talk true chart nerdery.

Just for clarity - I'm comparing Fine Line's initial release not with what came later, but with HS1. I'm arguing that the data we have about Fine Line indicated that in first couple of months Harry had roughly the same number of people spending money on him and roughly the same number of people paying him attention as he did during HS1.

It's impossible to understand this, without understanding the relationship between 'fans who are spending money' to any metrics - including album sales - is not fixed. The 'album as merch' strategy which is going very strong at the moment greatly increases the number of album sales an artist can get out of one fan who is willing to spend money. If there was a clampdown on the rules for this (for example limiting the number of versions that could be put out) then the numbers for TS11 would be way down from either Midnights or TTPD (unless they came up with somehting new). But that wouldn't mean the number of people who are willing to spend money on Taylor will have changed.

I think UK, while there was a move to streaming over this period, there wasn't a lot of change in record label practices around album sales between 2017 and 2019, so the similarity in the two releases is a straight forward argument to make. Fine Line sold roughly 10,000 fewer copies than HS1 in the first week. I don't think that necessarily suggests a 20% drop in people spending money on him. As you say charts were changing rapidly (although UK official charts was always much stricter than Billboard so there was less inflation) - and Stormzy's sales fell by a similar amount so it could just be the changes in how people listen to music and where they spend their money. And even if there had been a change it wouldn't have been that significant.

But in order to understand what was happening in the US - in order to understand if it's true that "given the abrupt shift in how music is consumed between 2017-2019, for him to double sales showed a significant growth and expansion of his audience". We need to look at what was going on with Billboard rules and how record labels were jacking numbers in the late 2010s.

This was the era of bundling. Billboard allowed both merch and ticket bundling. This meant that artists could set it up so that everyone who bought a ticket to a concert also bought an album (although they did have to actually download the album). Artists could also do exclusive merch bundles . Both of these were at their absolute peak when Fine Line was released. Billboard disallowed merch bundles in January 2020 and ruled out ticket bundling in late 2020 (not that they'd been that pertinent for the last six months). The popcast episode about bundling - is a great summary.

Just a quick sidebar bundling was a really shit way of jacking the charts and I'm really glad it's gone - it meant that artists were giving record labels a piece of revenue streams that should be theirs (album and merch sales) and giving them to record labels - just to increase their chart positions. It also put significant extra financial stress on artists with the pandemic. I think these rules changes ended an exploitative practice by labels (there's some good discussion of this on The Road Taken podcast, but I cannot remember which episode).

Both these practices exploded between HS1 and Fine Line - and Fine Line's very high physical sales were greatly increased by both merch and ticket bundling. Harry had roughly 450,000 tickets on sale in the US at the time, they didn't all sell in the first week and they won't all have included the digital download. But combined with the merch bundling - Harry was getting far more album sales per person who wants to spend money on him during the Fine Line release than he had for HS1. He had a new merch bundle the second week of sales, that helped secure him his second number one.Harry had bundled tour tickets for HS1 - but only the small venue leg. There were only 35,000-40,000 tour tickets sold bundled for HS1 and merch bundling was much less advanced.

I'd be surprised if Harry sold less than 250,000 tickets with an album bundled in - that's the difference between HS1's first week and Fine Line's first week - let alone merch bundling. People bought merch when HS1 was released and tickets to the arena legs of Live on Tour, but this didn't count as an album sale. The fact that album sales were higher when these purchases did count as an album sale is not evidence that more people were spending money on Harry.

Ultimately we can't know for sure there's heaps of uncertainty. We don't know the redemption rate. We have no idea of merch sales. There may have been some growth there may not have been. Ultimately I think the increase in sales in the US is probably understood in the same way as the decrease in the UK. Hard to make exact comparisons - but evidence his career remains in a comparable place.

Your point about streaming tripling is worth investigating - but I strongly suspect it reflects the general growth in streaming at this point. 2017 was still very much part of the transition and there was substantial general streaming growth between 2017 and 2019 (there's a better chart out there - but this captures the basic idea). I quickly compared Reputation and Lover - and Taylor had similar growth in streaming numbers over that time. Would love to consider other examples.

You make a number of other claims about Harry's career at the end of 2019/2020 that I think are exaggeration. The demand for his tour was not exceptional - it sold well, but it was easy to get tickets. I bought my ticket to Love on Tour a month or so after the album came out - a really good seat at a really good price. There were some good reviews, but also some very mixed reviews. Adore You did grow on radio, but very slowly. It wasn't in the radio play top 10 by the end of February 2020 and it peaked at 7 on the Billboard 100 in late March 2020. Again this was a success (even if it happened outside the time I was talking about), but it was not an improvement on SoTT on HS1 (which Watermelon Sugar was). You've based your claim that his image and audience claim on these exaggerations. There's no evidence that his image had changed - or that his audience had increased significantly.

None of this is an insult or a criticism. I think there's a lot of evidence that his team were taking a slow build approach - they didn't try to rush and they kept investing in Adore You as a single (which shows their faith in him). This all started because I said that if HS4 saw the same level of success as Fine Line did initially that would be OK.

[fictionadventurer]

Rejoice with me, for I have finished reading all the appendixes of The Lord of the Rings! With this, my trilogy reread is complete, and I am ever-more-firmly convinced that Johnny Tolkien was a massive nerd.

[curator-on-ao3]

This probably sounds like a weird question but it's something that's been on my mind for a long time.

I'm not sure if your familiar with TAS but the last episode "Counter clock Incident" established that Starfleet had a mandatory retirement age of 75. Do you see a logical reason for that? I know the US military has a mandatory Retirment age (which I think is 60). I just think the mandatory age in the 23rd century should be higher than 75--at least ten years higher).

I love any kind of Trek question, @marymoss1971! 💕 Thanks for asking!

I think you’re probably right that the US military is, once again, a model for Starfleet. (Whoa, that’s a troubling sentence.)

I’m actually against any mandatory retirement age. I have a friend whose father fell into a depression after being forced to retire from his job as a commercial airline pilot. (Currently 65 years old in the US, source: FAA website.) Imagine feeling like you’re at the top of your game, good at your job, in part due to decades of experience, and you’re told a number you can’t control means your work is over. It’s cruel.

Now, I’m certainly in favor of tests for eyesight and reaction times and all that, especially for pilots (and many more occupations). But people are different and a set age for everyone doesn’t make sense to me, especially when we consider Starfleet and how aging could work differently for different species or in different environments. Not to mention things like time travel and time reversals and transporter-induced de-aging and all the rest.

So, yeah, I think the logical reason for the mandatory retirement age is production-side ageism. But, in-universe, if I want to pretzel my Trekkie brain over it (which I usually enjoy doing), I would say Starfleet might want to ensure a place for new recruits or to transition older service members into teaching/training over exploration or any number of options.

Also, I think it’s worth noting that Tuvok’s age in Voyager (much less in Picard) is proof Starfleet either rolled back the requirement at some point or, at minimum, used age equivalents per species. Personally, I hope for the former.

Thanks for asking, @marymoss1971! 💕

[moinsbienquekaworu]

Immense win for me today: I got sidetracked talking about fanfic to a friend from uni, and an hour and a half later I'd sold her so well on one of my favourite fics of all time she opened the tab right as we split up to go home

[mikansei]

the frustrating part of writing a canonical genius is that i myself am not a genius, and to make some of kisuke's science-speak believable i find myself stumbling thru wikipedia articles on particle physics like a bull in a china shop

the fun part of writing a canonical genius is that technically i can make kisuke say little bastard words like "dark matter and dark energy are just reishi and reiryoku" anyway, b/c bleach worldbuilding is like 'whose line': the magic's made up so the physics don't matter

[lindwurmkai]

i have a "language" tag and a "languages" tag but hell if i can remember what exactly the difference between them was supposed to be most days

[trilobiter]

Lawl

[rottenbrainstuff]

Hunh interesting. I’ve just read that the two main actors from the 1968 Romeo and Juliet want to file a lawsuit for being coerced into being filmed nude, claiming they didn’t want to but were told the film would fail if they didn’t agree to it. It seems to be starting a lot of interesting (and disappointing) conversations.

Some people are saying, well, it’s been fifty years and just NOW they are complaining? This movie put these actors on the radar, they owe their entire careers to this movie, the nudity is tasteful, it’s not pornographic, so what’s the issue? These actors have said nice things about the director in interviews this whole time, etc etc etc

Look I don’t have all the details here. But my instinct is this is a shitty reaction to have to this. “Why are they only bringing this up now?” Maybe because at the time they were teenagers and brand new actors and didn’t feel like they could effectively speak out, maybe in the current culture of increased speaking out, they feel encouraged to actually say hey, this thing that happened wasn’t actually ok. “Why are they criticizing this movie when it made them famous?” Geeze that’s a really bullshit take to have? Shut up and be happy about it? “The nudity was tasteful” man it doesn’t really matter what your opinion is, does it? What matters is that they say they felt coerced. “They have been friendly with the director and have always said nice things about him before this” have you never… been… in situations like this where it is a very complicated dynamic? Where sometimes you feel conflicted because a person taking advantage of you also seems to be a good person? Or where you were afraid to say anything bad? Like…

I mean I think this is very interesting, I think there should be some discussion about this, but I think THIS particular take I just read with my own two eyes is dumb.

In addition I will say… perhaps these two actors have put on a friendly public face and not said anything bad about the director until now… but writer / director Bruce Robinson was also in Romeo and Juliet, and he HAS spoken about the director being a creep. Apparently in Withnail & I, the character Uncle Monty is inspired by this director.

Anyways. Interesting. I hope to hear more information about this that ISN’T some stupid “they should just be happy the movie made them famous and not rock the boat after all this time” bullshit.

[fazedlight]

I just found out cold welding is a thing and I'm going insane about this and it actually caused issues with the Gallileo probe and ????

[brasskingfisher]

Have to jump in here as a historian, but I suspect the reason may well be that corsets and binders (as I understand it) are designed to do different things.

The basic idea of a corset is to support the female lady breasticles and stop the wearer from breasting boobily (the compression forces more of the soft tissues in the middrift under the breasts, and the boning works the same way as the underwire in a brasserie to provide shape), hence why every woman in a costume drama wearing a low cut dress has a cleavage you could ski down. However, binders (AFAIK) are designed to compress the chest and remove the physical evidence of the wearer's breasticles, and work more like male corsets which are longer and encompass more of the torso (the vanity aspect is that wearing one makes you look slimmer/more broad chested by hiding your gut (ask any man to suck his in and you'll see the effect)).

The oft reported deformation of the ribs and displacement of the organs caused by corsets only really happens when you're wearing a tight laced one for hours on end (as in reducing your waistline beyond 6 inches (up to 4 inches off your waistline is generally the recommended amount) for 10 hours a day over several months or more).

THINGS I NEED TO FUCKING KNOW: Why every fuckin trans man or nb person I know who binds is like “oh binders are the worst, you can’t breathe in them, I know someone who broke a rib once”,

And meanwhile over in historical costuming, we are fucking eating, sleeping, swordfighting, riding horses, and feeling great like this:

(credit: Jenny La Flamme, The Tudor Tailor, Verdaera)

Like is there NO overlap between people who want to bind and people who care about accurate 16th century clothing reconstruction techniques?

(I, okay, maybe it is kind of a niche interest, but…. REALLY? Anyone who’s made a boned binder, PLS SPEAK TO ME)

Keep reading

[gallopinggallifreyans]

Is anyone gonna talk about how Clover looks a bit like Van Damme. Or how Taiyang kinda looks like Chuck Norris.

[cornix-the-void-crow]

Maybe I should succumb to the temptation of adding trains and tram network in Hazbin Hell and not care that adding public transport would make it less hellish.

On the similar note, I kinda want to go through with using knowledge about urban planning that I'm getting from uni and redesign Pentagram City. Maybe give it a big open market square in the centre where historically people would bring their wares to sell in temporary stalls. Or add a version of Sukiennice.

Also it would be neat to play around with Kowloon Walled City-adjacent development of Pentagram City, unregulated but kinda organised construction that was constricted from expanding outwards so it grew denser and taller.

Other thing that would be interesting is what vegetables and animals live in Hell and how are they cooked? How human dishes are adapted for local demonic ingredients.

And language! It would be so neat to play around with Hell's writing systems or how languages would shift in such mixed environment like Pride Ring