You know, lots of people think they were collaged, but they weren’t. They were built…
Here are the covers to 1, 2 and 6 respectively.
And yes. If you keep an eye out in Burgess’s mansion in Episode 1, you’ll see a lot of the things on the shelves of the cover to #1 in display cases on his walls…
A funny story, but might need to wait until you're a little better before reading it.
Matcha isn’t a Tea in my humble Opinion.
Matcha is an experience.
The year is 2009, the place is the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu, and I am recovering from a still-undiagnosed disease that left me with a 100+ degree for over three weeks, extreme weight loss and permanent Brain Damage. I have signed up for an introductory Art History class because I need an additional Humanities credit.
It’s called “The History and Philosophy of the Japanese Tea Ceremony”, and for a class I can only sort of remember, it stands out.
Tumblr has discovered Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. Here are some of the examples of proof of that discovery. The good and the not-so-good.
1. The Corinthian (A nightmare entity) has been referred to as a “Blorbo.” Based on my understanding of the meaning of the word I am pretty certain The Corinthian probably should not be your Blorbo. But then again you might be into that sort of thing. I’ve seen some strange things in the Horror movie slasher fandoms. Just know that if he was real it would probably not be safe to think of him as your Blorbo.
2. The Corinthian has been called Cori and Cory respectively. And so it begins…
3. Morpheus has been referred to as a poor little “Meow Meow” and not while in his cat form. And yes, I know he fits the criteria for the term. It’s just this was the first time I’ve seen him called it without it being literally related to his cat form. You have truly made it in the world of Tumblr when they start calling your character a Blorbo or Poor LIttle Meow Meow. Whatever happened to Woobie? I would think Morpheus would fit under “Woobie.”
4. I have seen Tom Sturridge (Morpheus’s Netflix actor) referred to as a DILF. (Dad I’d like to …have fun with). As the term is usually reserved for older men, and I, myself, am forty, and Tom Sturridge is a few years younger than I am, this term usage came as a surprise to me. It turns out some fans are using the term quite literally as Tom Sturridge literally is a father. I was used to the term being used specifically in regard to age.
5. Morpheus has been compared to a Disney Princess.
6. A scene from the source material has been taken out of context to make the character look more like an asshole than he actually is even though there are plenty of real asshole moments as the character is on a long redemption arc.
The scene in question is when Matthew the Raven says “Penny for your thoughts.” And Morpheus responds with “You have no pennies, Matthew.” Later Morpheus offers Matthew a literal penny in exchange for him voicing his thoughts. Morpheus being too literal is what is happening here. Context matters.
7. There are people trying to bluff having read The Sandman without having actually read The Sandman to try to gain clout in the fandom. It’s okay to have not read it yet, guys. It’s a great read. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Go have fun. I promise it’s not as difficult as some people make it out to be.
Someone genuinely tried to argue with me that the “White haired version of Morpheus” was not created by Neil Gaiman and was created long after he was done writing The Sandman. If you have read The Sandman you would understand how wrong this is.
Don’t try to bluff having read The Sandman if you have not. We can tell. We can always tell.
8. There are gatekeepers trying to intimidate new readers into thinking there’s nothing whimsical in The Sandman and that it’s “So deep” and “you won’t get it the first time you read it. You have to read it a few times to understand it.”
Yes, there is darkness in The Sandman. It’s part dark fantasy / part Gothic Horror with moments of gore but there are light things too. Don’t discourage new readers. I promise the story isn’t as hard to get into as some people make it out to be. I know terms like “Classic” can make some people chafe. Just give it a try. If you don’t like the first issue, try the second. If you don’t like the second, keep going until at least issue four. If you still don’t like it after issue 4, it’s okay to stop. No one will judge you. If you don’t like comic books, try the audio drama, it’s divided into chapters like a novel. Each issue being a chapter. If you don’t like it after chapter four, that’s okay. You’ll know if you like it or not by then.
9. There is already fan art of Tom Sturridge as Morpheus in funny / ridiculous scenarios. No picture is given here as I did not get permission from the artists to share them yet.
10. There are already people complaining about the casting without having watched the show yet. One faction claiming the casting is “too woke” while another faction seemed concerned that it’s not inclusive enough even though Desire is nonbinary and pansexual, Death is a black woman, Rose and Unity are black women, Ruthven Sykes is a black man, Lucienne is a black woman who wears spectacles, Lucifer (who has no set gender or even sexual reproductive organs) is being played by a woman, Alexander Burgess is gay, The Corinthian is gay, Johanna Constantine is bisexual, Cain and Abel are West Asian…
There even seem to be politically charged rants complaining because the English language show, with an English cast, written by an English writer, has a lead actor with an English accent…
So what do I have to say about Tumblr discovering The Sandman?
Well..
Welcome to the Sandom!
You’re in for quite a ride. And don’t put your fingers too close to The Corinthian’s face. Just… Don’t.
This is of course a simple statement of part of Newton's First Law of Motion.
A more usual simple form of the law is something like:
A body in a state of rest or uniform motion remains in that state unless acted upon by a net external force.
This basically says two things:
Something which isn't moving stays still unless something pushes it or pulls on it. Pretty obvious and in line with our everyday experiences.
An object can also move if it itself produces a push or pull on nearby objects. This covers the case of self-powered objects like
animals or vehicles, which can move without something else pushing them - basically they push themselves. Nothing really special there.
Something which is moving will keep moving at the same speed, and in the same direction, unless something (including itself) pushes or pulls it. This
one isn't quite so obvious. After all, if you kick a ball along some grass, it doesn't keep going at the same speed. It slows down and eventually stops.
But what's happening here is that frictional forces between the ball and the ground act on the ball, slowing it down. If you could get rid of the
friction, the ball would indeed not slow down.
It was this second part that really established the framework of modern mechanics (i.e. the physics of forces and motion). Other people had essentially
formulated the same statement before Newton - notably Galileo and Descartes - but Newton took it and used it as the foundation for his theory of motion,
which was the first really successful treatment of the physics involved.
2022-05-15 Rerun commentary: It's lucky Newton didn't know about Einsteinian relativity, because then he'd know that time is merely an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
I heard that bananas are radioactive. If they are radioactive, then they radiate energy. How many bananas would you need to power a house?
Kang JI
Bananas are radioactive. But don't worry, it's fine.
Bananas are radioactive because they contain potassium, some of which is the radioactive isotope potassium-40. The factoid about banana radioactivity was popularized by nuclear engineers trying to reassure people[1] that small doses of radiation are normal and not necessarily dangerous. Of course, this kind of thing can backfire.
Thanks to their use as a radiation dose comparison, bananas now have a reputation as an especially radioactive food, but they're really not. The CRC Handbook of Radiation Measurement and Protection, the source of the original data behind the banana factoid, lists lots of other foods with more potassium-40 than bananas, including coconuts, peanuts, and sweet potatoes. A large cheese pizza might be three times more radioactive than a banana,[2] and your own body emits a lot more radiation than either.
Potassium-40 decays slowly, with individual atoms sitting around for millions or billions of years before quantum randomness finally triggers their decay. Imagine you're an atom of potassium; every second you roll 21 dice. If they all come up 6s, you decay.
There are gazillions[3] of atoms of potassium-40 in a banana. In any given second, 10 or 15 of them make that all-sixes roll, spit out a high-energy particle, and become stable calcium or argon.
That high-energy particle released by the expiring potassium atom[4] will promptly bonk[5] into other atoms, leaving everything vibrating with extra heat energy. In theory, you could use this heat energy to do work—that's how the Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance are powered.
The Mars rovers use plutonium, which decays millions of times per second, releasing a lot of power. By comparison, the 15 decays per second from one banana work out to a couple of picowatts of power, roughly the power consumption of a single human cell. Even if you captured that decay energy with perfect efficiency, powering a house would require about 300 quadrillion[6] bananas, which would form a heap large enough to bury most of the skyscrapers in the NYC metro area.[7]
The potassium-40 in bananas is a terrible source of energy. But that's okay, because you know what's a great energy source? The banana itself! A banana contains about 100 calories of food energy, and if you incinerate whole bananas as fuel, it would only take about 10 bunches per day to keep your house running.
Unfortunately for New York City, which we buried in bananas a moment ago while trying to make the radiation idea work (sorry!), radioactivity vs chemical energy isn't an either/or thing. If you piled up a lot of bananas, they would start to release that chemical energy, one way or another. The sun-baked banana pile would start to rot. The heat from the bananas decomposing in the atmosphere would immediately swamp the heat from radioactivity. The sun-dried bananas would dry, crack, and eventually burn.
Decomposition by anaerobic bacteria deep in the pile would produce various gases, including highly flammable methane. As they bubbled up to the surface of the burning banana swamp, they could ignite; gas buildup from food waste is a major industrial explosion hazard.
So don't worry about the radioactivity in bananas. It's the rest of the banana that's the real threat. But if you're willing to risk the danger, you could power a lot more than just your house. With just a modest weekly supply of bananas—enough to cover Liberty Island in NYC...
...you could power the entire city.
[1] After nuclear engineering, this is the main pastime of nuclear engineers.
[2] Google has a handy tool for looking up the amount of potassium in foods, which even lets you select specific pizza brands. But for some reason, if you select Pizza Hut Pepperoni Pizza, your only serving size options are either "1 slice" or "40 pizzas." Nothing in between.
[3] There are about 800,000,000,000,000,000 of them, which is probably quadrillions or quintillions or something, but life is too short to sit around counting zeros and then looking up the Latin prefixes for big numbers.
[4] RIP
[5] The technical term is THUNK.
[6] Fine, I looked it up this time.
[7] It's 300 quadrillion bananas, Michael—what can it cost, 3 quintillion dollars?
I originally wrote this with Jar Jar's line in panel 3 as follows:
Jar Jar: Thissa means there'sa no finite biggest fish. But wesa observe a fish, so bysa inductions theresa must besa an infinitely large fish.
I showed some of my friends, and this conversation ensued:
Friend 1: It doesn't imply there's an "infinitely large fish", that wouldn't even help. There's just infinitely many sizes of fish. Friend 2: I'm afraid Jar Jar's reasoning has led him astray. Friend 1: Can't have Jar Jar getting it wrong; it'll damage his reputation as a genius. It would imply the ocean is infinitely large though. Friend 2: Not if infinitely many of the fish are nested. Friend 1: I don't see how nesting helps. Any finite ocean is too small for one of the fish. Oh wait I get you. Friend 2: All but a finite number of fish are in a matryoshka fish-chain. Friend 1: You mean the fish are like, "5 - 1/n" or something? There's still infinitely many of them above a finite size though. Oh, but you're putting them all inside each other then, okay. Friend 2: Obviously this poses philosophical questions as to what fish even are, if they can nest. Nonetheless! Friend 1: You end up with arbitrarily thin fish. I'd say it wouldn't work in practice, but, well... Friend 2: Then we apply inverse Banach-Tarski... Friend 1: A fish can't be bigger without being measurable. We're talking about the real world here not some fantasy axiom-of-choice abiding universe. Friend 2: Axiom-of-plaice. Hmm. If I have a non-measurable thing N, and I add something to it, do I not end up with a still-non-measurable-but-larger thing? Friend 1: No, you probably end up with something exactly the same size. Friend 2: That makes sense. Friend 1: You could define "larger" to be "a superset of", but you have to settle for being unable to compare the size of most things. Friend 1: So.... to fix the joke, maybe: "Thissa means there'sa no biggest fish. But wesa observe a fish, so bysa inductions theresa must besa an infinite sequenca of progressively largersa fish." (and punchline unchanged) Friend 2: Harrison Ford: Kid, it ain't that kind of comic.
So thanks to my friends for being the sort of nerds who help me fix jokes like this.
Asking the players if they want their characters to try something is a definite danger sign. But it can also be used completely innocently.
Player: We open the door.
GM: Are you sure you want to try that?
Player: Ummm... no? Quick, everyone, let's think about this. Maybe we should ready weapons and use magic to detect traps. Or maybe we should just leave it alone and try another corridor...
(Note: There's nothing at all dangerous about the door or what's beyond it. The GM is just being nice and making sure the player's intent was communicated correctly. What a thoughtful GM.)
aurilee writes:
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Ahahaha, I love this! And it's made even better by the Fantasy Campaign having happened with the GM controlling Westley!
Hmm, if I was the GM here, I think I would have planned out a few basic ideas before now; one for firing early, one for on time, and one for late. Potentially with early and late being the same outcome. Anything else after that will probably require lots of "winging it" anyway due to the players driving themselves and the NPCs crazy with the revelations. Or with panic if the Peace Moon starts exploding or disappearing or something.
Using my extremely scientific method of rolling a 3-sided die, I've determined that the Peace Moon won't fire again until it's too late. Rey and the trio could cause Hux's crew enough of a distraction that the weapon doesn't fire on time. All that would take is for the weapons technicians to not be ready to fire at the precise time; say, by needing to take cover against blaster fire, right?
Because it was made as a promotion after the show was made, I guess. It’s a lovely bonus thing. Also one of those Nuns looks a lot like me and is out of the habit.
2022-01-10 Rerun commentary: Alas, that standalone Wikipedia article has now been merged into a glossary of video game terminology (though the original link still works via a redirect).
Wait... why is it video game terminology?? It actually comes from much earlier games.
2021… a year of me posting pretty much nothing but god have I loved seeing all the amazing work from those I follow! Amazing art, writing, the talent - and the love! - is real and I’m frequently blown away by it. Happy early 2022 all! ♥️ I was surprised by a late Christmas present from my mother today… think I might have mentioned my love of Good Omens to her one too many times this year 🤷♀️
In the absence of authorized merchandise, I love that people are making their own. Even if this one looks like it says “I am an angel, you are a lemon. We’re hereditary enemies”. Which is a very different show.
The single greatest and most fascinating “futurist” architecture movement in the world right now is happening in Bolivia, where national prosperity and a dedication to works for the poor and public housing led to an explosion of colorful styles inspired by Aymara Indian art. There should be more articles about this, the interiors are just as amazing. Incidentally, most of these buildings are not for the rich or in trendy neighborhoods, but are public housing. I’ve heard this style referred to as “Neo-Andean” but like most currently thriving styles it doesn’t have a universally agreed on name yet.
