Latest Posts by killfalcon - Page 5

Me and who

Not my ship, but a legitimately lovely edit that deserves a share.

surviving finals the best way i know how: making spirk edits

this time to north by saint mesa

Was reminded (because I am kinda terrible at social media) that I ought to let people know I made an art history video about the cave art in Lascaux: How it was made; what pigments and what ingenious art tools were used (Paleolithic mouth-powered airbrushes!); and the historical development of ideas of the Paleolithic and how they were shaped by prejudices of the time.

And I bust some myths:

The cave paintings and engravings had nothing to do with hunting. The animals that people of the time hunted don't show up in the cave art.

It is very unlikely that men made that art. There has not yet been found any physical evidence of adult men in any of the decorated caves of France and Spain -- but there are numerous examples of footprints and finger-marks of smaller people, from woman-sized down to baby-sized, and groups of children alongide woman-sized footprints.

For some weird reason most of the scholarship on Lascaux identifies these smaller footprints as "adolescent boys" for no apparent reason apart from, well, sexism. The increasingly unlikely and awkward contortions made to rationalize how half-grown boy children made this magnificent art, rather than any acknowledgement that perhaps experienced adult women artists had a hand in it, feel kinda bizarre to me.

Anyway, here's my art history video. It's educational!

Reblog to unleash this cat on your mutuals

I love it when I see a nice art and it immediately dissolves into WTF-ery. Give me those man-made beauties beyond my comprehension.

Moooola!

This has long been my belief, honestly. I'm convinced somewhere in this there's an analogy between Star Fleet and the Guides/Scouts. Their primary purpose is to give out-doorsy kids something to do.

Just what level of “don’t ever fuck with us” is Starfleet? I mean I used to think Jem Hadar and Klingons being these fierce warrior races was something of an Informed Trait when they kept losing in face-to-face fights with mild-mannered Starfleet officers. But then I realized… it’s actually because Starfleet officers are just that tough.

Just how motivated and ambitious you have to be, as someone coming from a post-scarcity society, to sign up for such arduous training and potential danger? I have to wonder kind of people decide to go through years of rigorous education, constant work and travel, and the possibility of a nasty death when they are guaranteed lives without fear or want right on their home planets.

Could it be that Starfleet may, in fact, be a place for malcontents? Not the kind of small-time malcontent that turns to destruction and exploitation, but the kind of malcontent that is stifled on some level by the cushy existence of their home planet (even while being willing to die to protect it) and wants something more. Something out there and anywhere but here.

Such people are dangerous to the preexisting system unless they have an outlet for their energies. Just to name a few headliner captains, leave the James Kirks, the Jean-Luc Picards, the Kathryn Janeways, the Benjamin Siskos, the Philippa Georgious with nothing to do but enjoy life, and chances are they’d get restless. You can see their innate drive in the paths they didn’t take and in alternate universes: Picard has a brother who was perfectly content to run a vineyard at home, living a comfortable rural existence. Picard could have had that or any of a million other career paths, but he still chose the uncertainty of the stars. The 20th-century version of Benjamin Sisko had a burning ambition to write groundbreaking science fiction despite being struck down over and over again by racism. Georgiou was goddamned Emperor in the Mirror Universe, and Burnham and Lorcas wanted her throne. Clearly these are not people who can sit content and let the world be; they shift the very earth they stand on and reach for the stars any way they can.

So what do you do with world-shakers in paradise? You could choose to kill them or lock them up and “reeducate” them, but that goes against the Federation’s ideals. You could let them live free and potentially climb to the top, but they might make too many changes and disrupt the whole comfortable arrangement.

Or, you could give them a way out–infinite ways out, in fact, into space. Their boundless energy would be structured and channeled in morally acceptable directions by the strict rules and directives of Starfleet, and their ambition to be better than others and be judged by their abilities would find expression in rank and promotions.

These are, of course, the same individuals who would die to protect the Federation when it is threatened by a race of fierce warriors, a mechanical collective, or vast theocratic empire. The same people who would have felt stifled in civilian life and could have threatened the whole system become its fiercest defenders. It’s a brilliant system, really, that meets everyone’s interests and turns a society’s potential threats into its greatest assets.

I don’t think it’s any wonder, looking at these incredibly trained and driven people who can take down Klingons in single combat and engineer their way out of alternate timelines, that non-Federation worlds–and maybe more than a few Federation ones–hover somewhere between suspicious and outright terrified of the Federation’s intentions. Starfleet is one of the major reasons one can make a case for the Federation being a “soft” empire, and I can see why peoples ranging from the Ferengi to the Klingons are so suspicious of them. Because you do not ever fuck with Starfleet.

"Reply All" is an excellent name for a battleship.

the head of the catgirl space empire’s war fleet is wordlessly chainsmoking as she finally reads over the list of ship names she sorta ignored when she signed off on the approval. like, for instance, the catgirl space empire eschaton-class superheavy warship Slutty Dads Ahoy. Then there’s Catgirl Space Empress RPF. Lox Bagel, Please. Kill Yourself. Ship Namer’s Local 2323 is On Strike. she’s gonna start drinking before she finishes the list

I'm going to interrupt my normal posting schedule briefly to discuss naming airplanes. Don't worry, I'll post the regularly scheduled Friday review after this, but first I'm going to talk about naming airplanes.

When I say that I don't mean naming types of airplanes. I mean giving the airplanes names. A lot of airlines do it. Back in the day you had your Clipper This, Flagship That, Star of the Whatsit, so on. Lots of airlines name theirs after places. Aer Lingus names theirs after Irish saints. SAS names their Vikings. FedEx Express gives theirs human names, like Gabriel, Richard, JobEdokat, and Meredith.

The year is 2023 at time of writing. Clipper This, Flagship That, and Star of the Whatsit are now all relics of a distant past where a plane ticket cost more than some cars and airports sold life insurance at kiosks. That age is long past. Delta, United, American...all cowards, their airplanes long unnamed. Though the practice is alive and well elsewhere, for some reason it has largely gone dormant in the United States. There are few exceptions, but there are exceptions, and there is one in particular which stands out from the rest. Just one carrier on a mission and their 289 individually named flying machines.

I would like to present you with a curated selection of things which jetBlue has named their airplanes. There are many more - 289, to be specific. Take a look through them all if you care to. But this is a list of my favorites. Just a bit of appreciation for a true titan of aircraft-naming in an era where the art seems all but lost.

Roses Are Red, This Plane is Blue (N3104J)

Aruba, Jamaica, Blue I Wanna Take Ya (N2016J)

Blue's That Girl? (N997JL)

Don't Hate Me 'Cause I'm Bluetiful (N996JL)

Don't Mind If I Blue (N971JL)

Blue Kid On The Block (N913JB)

1. Fly JetBlue 2. Repeat Step 1 (N807JB)

Shantay, Blue Stay (N794JB)

#Follow @JetBlue (N334JB)

Enough about me...let's talk about blue (N712JB)

Big blue people seater (N705JB)

Bippity, Boppity, Blue (N565JB)

Blue-yah! (N187JB)

Badda Bing Badda Blue (N534JB)

FuhgeddaBlueDit (N3113J)

Boogie Woogie Bluegle Boy (N3062J)

My Other Ride is a JetBlue A320 (N329JB, an Embraer E190)

My Other Ride is a JetBlue E190 (N793JB, an Airbus A320)

And, my personal favorite:

How's My Flying? Call 1-800-JETBLUE (N715JB)

(Although if you can read that, you're probably too close. Incidentally, 'If You Can Read This, You're Blue Close' is an A320-200 with the registration N729JB.)

Considering SAO's reputation (mostly due to its shitty adaptations), it's really funny to see a part where Kirito and Asuna just turn to the camera and say "stop treating women as property and start treating them as people."

I found a guide for a no tape, easy to unwrap wrapping tutorial to make Christmas a little more accessible, wish I just found it sooner

the whole "sao just awakens the 'i can fix her'-instinct in people"- thing is so fucking funny to me because literally not even the author is immune

reki kawahara really looked at his own novels and said "i can fix her" and that's why the sao progressive novels exist now

something about this story just does that to people, it's great!

*slaps roof of dragon* This baby can fit so much pure annihilating light in the trunk.

now that's what I call BWEEM

Found a six leaf clover pressed in a book from 1902.

I'm reminded that one of the first lessons I learned as a forum moderator in the early 00's was "some people only want to know who the targets are". Doesn't matter if the rules are "don't be a dick", seventeen pages of legalese, or anything inbetween: there are always folk who really, really want to hurt someone. When told to stop they just want to know "if I can't hurt them, then who am I allowed to hurt? Must be someone, surely."

Sometimes I stumble across a particular species of queer discourse post on this site and I get a vivid mental image of the OP paging through an enormous rulebook with furrowed brow muttering "come on, there must be someone I'm allowed to be homophobic to".

I misread this as "fanfic can be as good as professional wrestling", and that seemed rather unkind to everyone involved.

At some point "fanfic can be as good as professional writing" became "fanfic should be as good as professional writing" and that's caused major damage to fandom spaces.

Trees, man. Just big fuckin' trees. Love 'em.

The General Sherman Trail - Probably my favorite spot in Sequoia National Park.

Prints - Framer.art

Not exactly the same thing, but in Warframe if you play too much multiplayer your Warframe will catch a parasite from other infected Warframes. You need to harvest this parasite to make a monster dog.

i fell asleep for 2 seconds and woke up with the thought still in my mind that they should let you have visible parasites in MMOs. a braincrab, for example. you have a crab on your head slowly causing more and more damage to your Focus stat or whatever but you wear it as a fashion accessory like a hat and it's sort of like a cosmetic pet if you think about it though yes you do get a debuff correponsdent with it eating your brain,.

The whole Weakness Of The Flesh Immortality Of The Machine conversation is fun... I really appreciate the point that in the modern real world technology is controlled by an ever-rotating pile of tech companies whose business model is predicated on obsoleting everything older than like 4 years. If you, the person reading this, managed to upload your consciousness to a file, it would struggle to interact and be read in, like, 10 years max. And if you rely on medical aids that are connected to computers and the internet, you are already facing that problem.

All that said, I cannot stress enough that obsolescence is not an issue for the in-universe source of the whole "from the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh" quote

I've only seen the Christmas Specials, but this series really does poke gently at the heartstrings. Sure, it's a small celebration of craftwork, technique, tools and inspiration as a half dozen experts carefully fix some old stuff, but... it's always about who's old stuff it was. Grandad's chess set, granny's paintings.

what fucks me up is that “the repair shop” is loudly about restoring objects but quietly (or not so quietly) about grief and memory

I'm kinda curious, around when did we start getting all the official fem Kirito art (outside of what's directly related to Phantom Bullet)? Is it something that's been happening for ages now, or was most of it relatively recent? 🤔

(On a side note, I just got through Fairy Dance in the novels last night, meaning that it's finally time for Phantom Bullet. 😁)

as far as i can tell, it started with the original phantom bullet arc in the web novel way back when, and it just kind of happened organically from there

we also get maid dress kirito in the very first official anthology!

^published in 2013

so even if you ignore the ggo avatar, this has been happening for over a decade!

accel world is so hard to explain

like it just sounds incredibly contrived out of context

which sucks because it's genuinely fascinating once you get into it

I love her.

This is the nicest thing anyone ever said about the prequels' Jedi Council. There's always a lot to be said about how the Council was clearly in a bad place, politically or ethically, and how the Emperor's rise was in no small amount the Jedi Order's failure to be of value, rather than totally forgotten in barely two decades. But this? This is nice. And true. The order was, at least in the temple, still raising good kids like Obiwan, and they were all doing the work there.

I’ll never quite get over just how integrated kids are into daily Jedi life and the implications of that.

Dooku’s Temple "job" for years seems to have been “teaching lightsaber preschool.” Sifo-Dyas, the guy with the scary doom visions? Oh yeah, they have him working with infants, bringing babies to the Temple as a Seeker. Jocasta Nu is constantly depicted interacting with the younger generation of Jedi, teaching, helping, or mentoring. In TCW, she knows all the Padawans on sight. 

There’s just something really ordinary and charming to me about this. Sure, Dooku is a terrifying 2m of spider limbs in a robe, but he’s still going down on one sinister knee to check out the little crying kid who got a finger crunched by one of those wooden training swords. How many of the TCW-era Jedi were once babies who played with Sifo-Dyas’s hair loopies or cuddled on his chest as he pointed his T-6 back toward the Temple after another successful Seeking mission? (Space is, after all, cold. 🥺) You just know Jocasta is in very reluctant possession of knowledge of every single teen Padawan drama, crush, or breakup. She tries to stay out of it, but she’s broken up fights and pulled particulars into her office for tea and a gentle lecture on the inherent self-destructiveness of gossip. 

And these are not “just some” Jedi - they are all combat trained, politically important, at the top of their rank and even each sit on the Council at some point in their lives. The Jedi Order really went “super powerful space wizards with laser swords, yeah, but they should also all definitely know how to change a diaper." 

normal day in tf2 casual

Black asexuals of tumblr (from the UK and Ireland), I need you...

to fill out a questionnaire about asexual tv/media representations, what you think about them, and what they could be doing better. Almost all questions are optional, so you can come and say as little or as much as you'd like!

Please help a fellow ace out, and help me make this research not be just another look at white asexuals...

Go to https://tinyurl.com/acetvquestions or the link in my bio

Please share, even if you don't wanna do the questionnaire, many thanks!

Oh god, this may be why I keep persuading people to get into Good Media and then wondering why they're all three books/games/etc ahead of me suddenly...

"any time is a good time for mid, but quality deserves the perfect environment" really does explain my habits lmao

Something I've seen a couple of times recently: "Credit to the original artist," or words to that effect.

I've bitched elsewhere to get the feelings out (tl;dr FUCK OFFFFF WHAT A NOTHING PHRASE), but here you're getting the positively-worded PSA:

Crediting art is a practical act to let people know whose work they're enjoying. It needs to at least include their name, and if at all possible it's polite to put a link to somewhere their work can be found so people can explore further. This isn't just a spell we invoke for politeness' sake: it's part of a healthy artistic ecosystem, and without actually connecting to the original artist it's not achieving that purpose.

"Credit to the original artist" invokes the form but has none of the function. It's wearing credit's skin but I don't care about the skin; I need the meat.

thinking about creatures.

it's always a good day to complain about English speakers

Lord, grant me the strength to throw away this box that i'll never use, the courage to throw away this box that i'll never use, and the wisdom to throw away this box that i'll never use