theavidhorizon

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did you know red snapper can live for over 100 years…. whatre they DOING down there

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Just wanted to call attention to this marvelous edit. can't wait to see who they ask this week

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In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed a controversial theory about how the Earth’s land masses formed. He said the great continents had once formed a single landmass, which had broken up over time. The idea went against all conventional ideas, and was roundly dismissed.

It took the work of young cartographer Marie Tharp to prove him right.

In 1947, she worked on a team that were running expeditions around the world, mapping the ocean floors with echolocation. However, Marie wasn’t allowed on the missions because women were seen as ‘bad luck’…

But the work she did back at the university was invaluable. Converting endless data into detailed profiles, she realised that the ocean floor isn’t a flat, featureless plane, but a complex, varied landscape.

Most importantly, she spotted a long, V-shaped valley in each of her profiles: a rift valley that supported Wegener’s theory, formed by two land masses moving apart, splitting the ocean floor in two.

But even with this evidence, Tharp’s ideas were dismissed as ‘girl talk’.

She then realised that her profiles tied in with worldwide earthquake maps being developed by a colleague.

The mounting evidence started to convince some sceptics, but not all. Renowned explorer Jacques Cousteau was so unconvinced that he sent an expedition to film the ocean floor and clear things up once and for all. What did his footage show? Exactly what Tharp had predicted.

Tharp’s steadfast determination had paved the way for Wegener’s continental drift theory to gain traction. As the tide of opposition waned, it gave birth to our modern understanding of plate tectonics and secured Tharp’s position as one of the most outstanding cartographers of the 20th century.

Watch the full story on our YouTube channel.

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i’m playing a sailor in my new campaign and i love sailor superstitions, so i made a bunch of dnd sailor superstitions/traditions! (some might be weird/bizarre, but a lot of ours are too so i felt it fitting)

having a water genasi on board is good luck, even better if they’re higher ranked (captain, first mate). however, if they’re a prisoner, it’s extremely bad luck for the crew that has them imprisoned. 

holy people of sea gods closely follow water genasi in good luck/bad luck.

sailors tend to get tattoos of a land god’s symbol in hopes that if they drown, a land god will get them back safely. however, sea gods find this extremely rude and disrespectful, so sailors have to find ways of hiding the tattoos at all times, whether with magic, clothes, or makeup. 

every port city has a shrine or temple to a sea god. the very last thing sailors do before heading out on the ocean and the very first thing they do when they get back on land is pray at one of these places. bigger port cities have special roads for sailors to take.

the only time it’s okay to sing sea shanties on land is if you have a vial of seawater on you. if you don’t have any, sea gods think you’re singing for the land gods instead of themselves. and if they think that, things will turn nasty when you get back to sea.

sailors don’t talk about their families/friends/loved ones while at sea. the sea could get jealous, and try and keep the sailors all to itself–by whatever means necessary.

there are various tattoos one can get for certain accomplishments (ie. defeating a monster, sailing for a certain amount of time/for a certain distance, which port you hail from, etc)

every ship brings a small animal that’s special to a sea god on board (ie a crab). that animal has all priority–in food, in defense, in healing. it’s said that if that animal dies, the rest of the crew will soon follow.

bonus sea shanties:

dwarf and orc shanties have a very steady rhythm and often involve drums–meant to keep rowing easy and sailors focused.

tiefling and elf shanties are melodious and often eerie to hear from another ship–especially in foggy/stormy weather. they’re meant to simulate the sound of the wind, waves, and those who died at sea.

dragonborn and genasi shanties often involved overlapping lyrics and melodies, causing them to sound like the storms out at sea. they’re meant to pay tribute to and appease the gods.

halfling and gnome shanties are cheery and peppy, meant to keep things interesting after monotonous days at sea and to make sure morale is up.

human shanties are as wide and varied as the race itself. they often tell stories–of the crew, of other ships’ adventures, or of history.

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A criminal investigation, Japan, 1958

Photographer Yukichi Watabe documented the investigation of a grisly murder that had occurred in Mito (Ibaraki Prefecture) in January 1958. Watabe closely followed two police detectives, one from the Metropolitan Police Department and the other local. Their investigation involved stakeouts around downtown areas of Tokyo, going undercover at a train station, canvassing different neighbourhoods looking for clues, and visiting the tannery where the victim had once worked.

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a totally unscripted show where a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons & Dragons

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So I saw a post last night that terrified me but then my app crashed before I could reblog it.

Smart appliances are completely, 100% reliant on wifi? Like if there's an outage or you couldn't pay your internet bill in time and your wifi isn't working, your stove/fridge/door locks etc are rendered completely and totally unusable? The oven doesn't revert back to a basic oven/stove that you just have to operate manually? It's competely inoperable? Is that what you're telling me because that's fucking terrifying. So you're either completely locked in or out of your home if wifi goes down? Who the fuck signs up for this shit?

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you’re sitting across from me in a shitty diner in anywhere, america, and i watch you pour too much creamer in your coffee and i think “i love you.” you look up, catching me staring, and for a moment i think i’m brave enough to say it, but i take too long and the moment passes. i take the balled up straw wraper and flick it at you, pretending that was my plan all along. you laugh. i never want to go another day without hearing that laugh. i think i will have all the time in the world to say it.

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Me: I’ve seen all of the terrors of the Neath, I’m prepared for anything the High Wilderness has to throw at me!

Failbetter Games:

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If I was going to put the Horrible Goose in a D&D game, I wouldn’t make it some big high-CR threat – it’d just be a regular goose that’s capable of regular goose stuff, with three significant exceptions:

1. It can show up anywhere, even if there’s no reasonable way for it to have gotten there.

2. It seems to have limited ontological intertia. If the players imprison it, it vanishes from its prison when they’re not looking. If they kill it, another goose shows up eventually. It’d be impossible to prove that it’s always the same goose, save for the third notable trait…

3. …namely, that it doesn’t show up in divinations. Like, at all. Predictions don’t take it into account. Scrying on its location reveals an empty room. Spells that would detect it or read its mind act like there’s no valid target present. If the cleric communes with their god and asks about it, their god has no idea what the cleric is talking about. It might take some doing to arrange for the players to become aware of this property, so don’t force it – the opportunity will arise!

There we go. No goofy boss monster tricks, yet it’s guaranteed to drive your players nuts – not even by harassing them, necessarily, but just by existing as they try to figure out what it means, particularly once they learn of the third trait discussed above.

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Stay close, Reverend. 

YEEHAW YALL I am already so in love with this miniseries - thank you CriticalRole for putting it together!!!!!

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i miss the OG Vox Machina fight music, like I’m glad they’ve gotten the right to use other stuff in the past…four years, but Five Armies by Kevin McLeod induces a Pavlovian response to fuck shit up at this point

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remember when terry pratchett wrote that snow globes hatch into shopping trolleys and shopping trolleys are the worker bees of shopping malls and shopping malls are the natural predators of cities?

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man i like how middle earth hasnt heard of therapy so at the end of return of the king gandalfs like “honestly frodo you should probably just die”