ELODIEUNDERGLASS

diplomacy ✨

The Nazgul after getting washed down the river Bruinen, and then realizing that they are going to have to go back to their master soaking and horseless, all the while sending in a report about how they stabbed some pillows in an inn.

just start bohemian rhapsody. the crowd will join in immediately so it won't matter if you can sing at all or even remember all the lyrics.

you're all correct

my phd supervisor is notoriously lax on fieldwork safety but he’s also 6’7 so it’s like yeah dude no wonder you’ve never had to worry about bears they see you coming and are like oh fuck it’s the slenderman

The finished commission for @snarlmalden of Jack Aubrey and the sloth he's "debauched" (according to Stephen) by giving it *gasp* alcohol!

Please don't do that to any poor sloths your surgeon friends bring onto your ships, guys.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Sausages,” Anne said deeply.

“Oh! Um, what about them?”

“Making them.”

“Oh wow!” Palinode sat and thought about making sausages too. It was extremely interesting. Oh, she really wanted to be just like Anne when she grew up!

“Can you make sausages out of anything?” She whispered at one point, and Anne said sombrely, “if you’re mindful of the importance of the fat content,” and so they fell back into a worshipful silence.

---

Word on the street is folks were in the market for a happier Palinode! What greater happiness is there than blissfully contemplating sausages with friends?

Changing my belief system from "this is the hill I'll die on" to "this is the hill I'll kill you on" has done absolute wonders for me 10/10 do recommend

"you really gonna die on that hill?"

"someone is."

what’s a normal way to flirt? uhhhh why don’t you pretend to kill me

i used to do this thing when people would angrily disagree with me in a forum thread where i would immediately pretend to launch a text-based rpg called TOWER OF THE WIZARD and provide them with settings and scenarios and prompt action inputs from them and for some reason they would start playing it every time

(image description: a tweet with the following text:

A child is polite: wow! such a good kid

A child is polite (China): the Chinese are taught from a young age that any individuality will be punished.

A child is polite (Japan): This can be explained by the Shinto concept of ゲイのセクシ, a word untranslateable into English,

end description)

For the record, 1. "ゲイのセクシ" (gei no sekushi) is Google Translate screwing up "gay sex" apparently (and the author of the tweet was very sleep-deprived when they made this)

and 2. that was in response to this:

(Image description: a tweet by Wirelessly__ with the text "thing I keep seeing" and two other images: one, a frowning face next to the word "thing" and a cheerful smiling face with a heart next to the text "thing, japan"; the other, the previous face smiling at the word "thing", and the frowning face with "thing, china")

Not just any paper maps, they had textbook sized atlases of the entire delivery area with each street meticulously mapped out.

These were insanely handy and a new edition came out just about every year to stay up to date on construction and road changes. I remember stocking my car with these for any of the cities I tended to travel to because they were the only way to actually get anywhere unless you wanted to call a friend and get very in depth instructions on how to get there.

AAA is now mostly known for roadside assistance, but at one time their primary business was MAPS.

For a few bucks a month you could become a Triple-A member and yeah, roadside assistance was one of the perks. BUT ALSO you could pick up the phone, call their 1-800 number, and tell the human operator who answered that you were planning a road trip.

They'd get your starting and destination address. Ask a few questions: what kinds of hotels you liked, preferred gas stations, any interest in touristy things?

Then in 7 to 10 days you'd get a thick package in the mail of carefully customized maps. Each map was the size of a paperback book cover, perfect for holding in the passenger's or driver's lap. Each was enumerated starting at #1 and ending at #whatever number of minimaps the trip required, with a hand-drawn highlighter path drawn on the map marking the route from one edge to another; entrance & exit points for that section of the route.

Motels, gas stations, and (if requested) tourist traps were indicated in color coded ink -- again, by hand. Sometimes detours were drawn in red marker, overriding the printed map because AAA kept up to date on road closures & regional disasters.

These maps were customized for your particular trip, and were invaluable since GPS did not exist. Unless you were familiar with the local region, the alternative was buying a map at the next gas station and guessing.

GPS is amazing and I wouldn't want to give up the ease & simplicity of Google Maps, but my god the old tech was miraculous too in its own way.

Refidex my beloved - that's the Aussie version, the big book of maps that got my ass everywhere until years after I got my first smartphone. It has a full index of street names in the back with a map and grid reference, so you could flip forward and easily find it.

I was told by a taxi driver that in the old days they had to basically memorise the Refidex to pass the Taxi Licence test, since they weren't allowed to use it during the test.

BUT searching for a picture of the 2023 Refidex led me to this!

Brisbane and environs in 1951! Fully digitised with machine readable text and high quality images! I can buy it for 19.50 - nay, I'm GONNA buy it for 19.50! (Although I wish it was $19.51).

Holy cow, they've also got 1926.

Yoink!

in the UK all London taxi drivers have to do 'The Knowledge’. It takes 3-4 years of study before being able to pass the test, and is considered one of the hardest driving exams in the world

The Knowledge was first introduced in 1865 but has changed little. Drivers must memorise all the roads and landmarks within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross, around 25,000 streets.

I read the OP and was like, I wonder how many notes before someone mentions The Knowledge.

London cabbies who hold The Knowledge experience changes to their brains that are explained in every Neurobiology for Babies course. It’s a wickedly difficult skill: rather than the pizza delivery people in the OP, starting in one defined zone (pizza place) and radiating out from there, a cabbie starts a route in any position and has to navigate across a partially-medieval city with no grid pattern, deranged place names, and not many bridges across a very large river. It would be useless to refer to a paper map, so cabbies were required to have all the Knowledge memorized. This means that the paths and optimized routes would have to be at the top of one’s brain, ready for instant access. As a result, the cabbies develop materially different brain regions as they study and use the Knowledge. They have detectable, measurable changes in their hippocampi, with an increase in grey matter forming in those who pass the Knowledge test and use it.

When asked to navigate a route between two points, they describe the mental process as instantaneous and explosive visuals: it sounds as if the map generates itself behind their eyes. (One potential tradeoff, though, is the decrease in associated brain matter in areas associated with other forms of memory.) After retiring, the brains of London cabbies would appear to return to “normal” - when not exercised, the brain region dedicated to holding the Knowledge seemingly rewires itself - which is exciting because it indicates that brains are still capable of rewiring and adaptation even in later life.

That’s all very interesting for neuroscientists, which is why it’s in all the textbooks and underpins a lot of our understanding of brain plasticity (adaptability) especially in old age. After all, it’s only ever adults who go through this process: babies rarely do a PhD in becoming a human Google Maps.

Some science-fiction series, like Dune, have explored the idea of no-longer-human navigators. still, it’s under-explored. Today, researchers are interested in seeing how London cabbie brains could help with Alzheimer’s research, or other progressive brain conditions that deteriorate the hippocampus.

Cute concluding sentence, sci-comm joke, rhetorical question intended to provoke reflection but mistaken in the comments for an actual question.

THIS IS INSANELY COOL

@called-kept

hi im a mosquito I just noticed you're a giant ape with extremely dextrous limbs and binocular vision that make you well-equipped to kill me. its very nice of you to have just batted me away instead of annihilating me with a powerful thunderclap, as you could easily do. my plan from here on out is probably to fly in a sort of loose semicircle right back towards you and to try injecting you with my venoms and stealing your blood and giving you diseases etc. ah fuck

The first Slay. Of the Day.

When that chicken moves, it looks like it's glitching. I want to hug it

She’s got too many dang polygons

If you hold that chicken over your head and jump off a ledge, it will flap its wings to slow your fall, but then you'll both clip through the ground and fall all the way to the lower edge of the skybox.

At this point the world will reset and you'll be back where you started, but your sword will be gone.