#this new learning amazes me

[stesichoreanpalinode]

I've been interested in the Arthurian legend recently, so I'd love to know your opinion on this topic. I'm sorry if this bothers you 🥺

Comparing the Queen boys with the Knights of the Round Table, who would they be? (Includes Merlin and Arthur if you like.)

Being all lovers of fantasy I think they could all probably give a much better answer to this question than I could, because I bet they all read the legends and thought about this very question.

It’s not my favourite mythic cycle so I don’t know too much about Arthurian legend but I do know it varies in different versions. Brian of course was born to be a pre-Raphaelite illustration of a scene from Tennyson but is he Merlin, wise weaver of magic, or Lancelot, torn between his sense of chivalry and his passion for a forbidden love? Roger is Sir Bedivere, both the lover of scientific fact in the Monty Python version and the loyal-to-the-end friend of the Morte d’Arthur. Or perhaps the Gawain of the early versions of the story, also loyal but a known lover of women - I could totally see him as the Gawain who matches wits with lady Ragnell. Freddie is another Tennyson/Burne-Jones Arthurian but can certainly do wise magician Merlin but also do-anything-for-love Sir Pelleas and Percival, quester for the Grail. Which leaves John, definitely from the metrical romances or Geoffrey of Monmouth, maybe Gareth, younger knight, or perhaps Yvain, just because of his lion…

What are your own thoughts?

ETA: and *of course*not a bother!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

HOT, SINGLE, UNSTUDIED SPONGES. 3000 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY. Come sail the distance and read Tiger Tiger!

[ryssbelle]

Drew a bunch of Marinettes in a bunch of different artists styles it was a lot of fun!!

Artists who's styles I mimicked: @buggachat @hamsternamedmarinette @ladybeug @sabertoothwalrus and @anna-scribbles all epic artists 🤟😎

[reasonsforhope]

Humans are so cute. They think they can outsmart birds. They place nasty metal spikes on rooftops and ledges to prevent birds from nesting there.

It’s a classic human trick known in urban design as “evil architecture”: designing a place in a way that’s meant to deter others. Think of the city benches you see segmented by bars to stop homeless people sleeping there.

But birds are genius rebels. Not only are they undeterred by evil architecture, they actually use it to their advantage, according to a new Dutch study published in the journal Deinsea.

Crows and magpies, it turns out, are learning to rip strips of anti-bird spikes off of buildings and use them to build their nests. It’s an incredible addition to the growing body of evidence about the intelligence of birds, so wrongly maligned as stupid that “bird-brained” is still commonly used as an insult...

Magpies also use anti-bird spikes for their nests. In 2021, a hospital patient in Antwerp, Belgium, looked out the window and noticed a huge magpie’s nest in a tree in the courtyard. Biologist Auke-Florian Hiemstra of Leiden-based Naturalis Biodiversity Center, one of the study’s authors, went to collect the nest and found that it was made out of 50 meters of anti-bird strips, containing no fewer than 1,500 metal spikes.

Hiemstra describes the magpie nest as “an impregnable fortress.”

Pictured: A huge magpie nest made out of 1,500 metal spikes.

Magpies are known to build roofs over their nests to prevent other birds from stealing their eggs and young. Usually, they scrounge around in nature for thorny plants or spiky branches to form the roof. But city birds don’t need to search for the perfect branch — they can just use the anti-bird spikes that humans have so kindly put at their disposal.

“The magpies appear to be using the pins exactly the same way we do: to keep other birds away from their nest,” Hiemstra said.

Another urban magpie nest, this one from Scotland, really shows off the roof-building tactic:

Pictured: A nest from Scotland shows how urban magpies are using anti-bird spikes to construct a roof meant to protect their young and eggs from predators.

Birds had already been spotted using upward-pointing anti-bird spikes as foundations for nests. In 2016, the so-called Parkdale Pigeon became Twitter-famous for refusing to give up when humans removed her first nest and installed spikes on her chosen nesting site, the top of an LCD monitor on a subway platform in Melbourne. The avian architect rebelled and built an even better home there, using the spikes as a foundation to hold her nest more securely in place.

...Hiemstra’s study is the first to show that birds, adapting to city life, are learning to seek out and use our anti-bird spikes as their nesting material. Pretty badass, right?

The genius of birds — and other animals we underestimate

It’s a well-established fact that many bird species are highly intelligent. Members of the corvid family, which includes crows and magpies, are especially renowned for their smarts. Crows can solve complex puzzles, while magpies can pass the “mirror test” — the classic test that scientists use to determine if a species is self-aware.

Studies show that some birds have evolved cognitive skills similar to our own: They have amazing memories, remembering for months the thousands of different hiding places where they’ve stashed seeds, and they use their own experiences to predict the behavior of other birds, suggesting they’ve got some theory of mind.

And, as author Jennifer Ackerman details in The Genius of Birds, birds are brilliant at using tools. Black palm cockatoos use twigs as drumsticks, tapping out a beat on a tree trunk to get a female’s attention. Jays use sticks as spears to attack other birds...

Birds have also been known to use human tools to their advantage. When carrion crows want to crack a walnut, for example, they position the nut on a busy road, wait for a passing car to crush the shell, then swoop down to collect the nut and eat it. This behavior has been recorded several times in Japanese crows.

But what’s unique about Hiemstra’s study is that it shows birds using human tools, specifically designed to thwart birds’ plans, in order to thwart our plans instead. We humans try to keep birds away with spikes, and the birds — ingenious rebels that they are — retort: Thanks, humans!

-via Vox, July 26, 2023

[demaparbat-hp]

Zuko looked up and locked eyes with his cousin, who was struck speechless. Then, ever so slowly, Lu Ten's lips twitched upwards. And then he smiled. And then he beamed. And then he nodded proudly once, just once, and vanished.

Lu Ten comes back in For the Spirits Chapter VII: Take Me South, only to leave Zuko with more questions than answers. Just how much is he truly aware of? When will he return? What is Zuko going to do now?

(What will the South bring?)

[jojo-schmo]

The 24 Character Strengths are awesome references when writing characters!!

I've found this website to be extremely helpful and cool while fleshing out my characters' personalities and motivations.

Even if I only have basic personality traits for a character, exploring strengths that I feel fits them and reading their descriptions is fantastic for inspiration!! It really helps narrow down the basic ideals I imagine a character would believe in, and then I can get more specific from there. It's a great guide to springboard off of!

Each strength is sorted into one of six virtues. Starting with a broad virtue, for example "justice," and honing that down into the strengths of "fairness," "leadership," or "teamwork" makes writing them really fun!

Here's an example of the "fairness" strength description! Lots of detail and tangible qualities describing it!

Of course there are infinite ways to interpret a character strength, just like in real life. And people aren't always black and white and follow a strength 100% of the time. But it's been extremely helpful to see specific traits being described in so much detail, and imagining different scenarios that a character would react in. It's like I can understand them a bit more and think a little like them, especially if their trait isn't one of my personal strengths. :3

But I also recommend taking the actual personality test for yourself! I took it years ago and it was really cool to put a name to some of my strengths and see how detailed this descriptions were. And when my friends and I shared our results, I felt like we understood each other just a little more. :)

Just thought I'd share this reference that's been helping me lately :D

[martyryo]

HAPPY VERY LATE PRIDE MONTH!! 🥳🏳️‍🌈

Drawing this was my odyssey. Anyways, I think they're best friends.

(alt version and closeups below 🤭)

Without filters

Closeups

[cicide76536]

My gift to @tragediegh for Rote Winterfest Gift-exchange !

My beloved @vilyar was a life saviour for lending me his drawing tablet and computer when mine broke and for helping me sketch some of the harder parts ❤️ Thank you

[spineless-lobster]

Y’ALL I’M LEARNING GOOD RIDDANCE ON THE LYRE AND IT’S ACTUALLY TURNING OUT PRETTY WELL I’M SO EXCITED!!!!!

[amatus-jj]

i understood nothing and yet fell in love even more

jere 🫶🏻

[original video here]

[nams2]

Talking to other partnering aros: Yeah so I've been reading original fics on AO3 to try and find some good queerplatonic stuff. Theres a steady stream if you filter by the queerplatonic tag which is nice. The problem is that most of it's either too short for me or just underdeveloped background characters but its something. Yeah it sucks to settle for that but you know how dire it is finding rep.

Talking about being aro to allos: No Im aroace. That means aromantic and asexual. They're different things. It- no asexual means a lack of sexual attraction. They can be different.

[idontmindifuforgetme]

I’ll never forget how once my ex joked I “live under a rock” and when I asked how he showed me a Snapchat reel of “hot celebrity gossip,” after which he pointed out I don’t keep up with any of it. I really dated that that’s so embarrassing

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

You like a character a little too much and then all of a sudden you're in a college welding course

[lacomandante]

HELLO i'm alive, I just barely survived 9 days in Girona doing costumes for Assumpta's short film reels.....and immediately after we came back I had to do some frantic sewing in time for the week of events planned for the Dos de Mayo. I met up with some new friends I had met at the Museo de Traje two weeks or so earlier, and my Spanish has improved SO MUCH during my time here. I am so happy and having SO much fun. I based this spencer off of one Assumpta wears in Rossini, Rossini!, and had two days to make it. I did my hair how Teresa's looks in a snood in Company, but made a madroñera instead- it's a little lower class than Teresa would've worn, I think, but it was appropriate. (I want to make all of the costumes Assumpta wears in her films and make a pre-war Teresa wardrobe, though I'll be remaking this red spencer!) Over the course of the week we walked through many parks, got to see the changing of the guard, we went to many palaces, and I got to participate in the Dos de Mayo parade and battle, which was insanely cool, and where the first two photos are taken! I also got to go to a wonderful ball and danced with all my friends, which I'll post photos of soon. Now that the events are over, I'm rereading Sharpe's Command bc I have my review in my drafts and want to revisit it.

[glorious-blackout]

@aeolianblues Your work is complete - I suspect I may be a proper Fontaines D.C. fan now 😂

(rather fitting that I'm seeing them tonight 💚🩷)

[lit-in-thy-heart]

been trying out a new writing technique recently and it's called chilling tf out and reminding myself that fic is written for fun.