• for-the-writing-artist
    pinned

  • A quick FYI

    Maybe people care. Maybe they don't. Anyway, the long belated About and Tags pages are out. Hope they are helpful!

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  • greater-than-the-sword

  • Minor miracle of God bending spacetime by exactly 36.6 seconds to allow local woman to finish watching her YouTube video on break goes unnoticed by any created being in the universe

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  • wachinyeya

  • https://english.radio.cz/beavers-build-planned-dams-protected-landscape-area-while-local-officials-still-8841536

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    A beaver colony in the Brdy region has gained overnight fame by building several dams in the Brdy protected landscape area, creating a natural wetland exactly where it was needed. It saved the local authorities 30 million crowns, and has the public cracking jokes about public administration and red tape.

    The administration of the Brdy protected landscape area, which had gained approval for the 30 million crown project, was dealing with red tape and seeking the respective building permits from the Vltava River Basin authorities when the dam project was completed almost overnight by a local colony of beavers.

    They could not have chosen their location better –erecting the dams on a bypass gully that was built by soldiers in the former military base years ago, so as to drain the area. The revitalization project drafted by environmentalists was supposed to remedy this. Bohumil Fišer, head of the Brdy Protected Landscape Area Administration says Nature took its course and the beavers created the necessary biotope conditions practically overnight.

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  • sfaira

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    Another Frostpunk character commission - private Colin MacKenzie, the force of calmness, one who doesn't think anything untill ordered to.

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  • cyberphuck

  • Before we get back to our story, today's sponsor is Scam. Scam is a great new service that enables you to pay Scam, right from their app. Unlike other services, Scam lets you pay annually, monthly, so you can pay the entire year every month. Click on the link in the description and enter the code SCHLORP for 10% off Scam Premium.

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  • ladycavalier

  • it makes it 100% better that i can’t understand her, i feel like i’m hearing what cats hear

  • crtter

  • Heh, she’s speaking Portuguese! Here’s what she’s saying:

    *baby voice* “… and if you have any questions, just ask me! And now… yeah. And now you draw the roots. You draw them all twisted up! Got it? A flower? Now draw it. Did you get it, Luis Roberto? Did you get it, Jurandir? Look. Did you get it? That’s how you draw a flower.”

    Luis Roberto and Jurandir are people names (Jurandir is especially a name associated with older men) so it’s extra funny that the cats are named that, heh.

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  • sent by w4tchtower

    I'm curious about the eating pick, how would you compare using it to using a fork?

  • answered by petermorwood

    It’s a lot more fiddly - stab not scoop - and having used both a pick and a two-tine fork it surprises me that the three-tine fork with less space for things to fall through (or maybe even something like a modern spork) wasn’t an immediate next step, rather than taking more than a century to arrive and then, AFAIK, only for fruit.

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    Medieval food was mostly eaten with knife-spoon-fingers, and the pick (again AFAIK) was used more like a carving-fork, to hold large pieces in place so they could be cut to spoon- or finger-size, than to convey those pieces to the mouth.

    The well-researched “Wolf Hall” series shows Tudor table etiquette, eating with a spoon and with right-hand fingers kept clean by using the napkin worn on left shoulder or forearm.

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    Earlier table manners were similar; there’s plenty of reference to hand-washing, napkins and so on.

    IMO “The Private Life of Henry VIII” (1933) is probably to blame for the pop-history notion of “historical” dining involving whole chickens pulled apart with both hands and bones thrown over shoulders or onto the floor.

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    This link is to the full scene on YouTube, where the dialogue proves that it’s being done partly for comedy, and partly to show how nervous Henry made his court.

    People in the Middle Ages didn’t cut their food with daggers; yes, they’d have worn baselards or rondels or ballock knives because those were part of everyday costume (including women, there’s pictorial evidence for it), but they wouldn’t have used them at the dinner-table any more than they’d have used a sword.

    I wonder sometimes if those who claim daggers were table cutlery know how big a medieval / Renaissance dagger could be, or how out-of-place it would look at a dinner table.

    There’s plenty of evidence for picks and small eating-knives as personal possessions. Here’s a 14th-century painting and a modern reconstruction of the thing on the belt.

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    …and another painting, “The Peasant Dance” by Breughel, showing both a big fighting-knife (Messer) and - worn by the red-hosed dancer in the middle - an eating-knife and maybe pick.

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    The armed man is also showing off (look at his hat!) that he owns a pewter or maybe even silver spoon…

    Eating-knife and pick, collectively called “by-tools”, could also be slotted into the scabbard of something bigger, such as that Messer in the Breughel painting as recreated by Tod Cutler…

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    …or a dagger like these Swiss ones…

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    …whose scabbard ornamentation with human figures proves how they were worn…

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    - horizontally (usually across the small of the back) so their decoration was right-way-up for proper admiration.

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    By-tools could be part of even larger weapons, a sword or Kriegsmesser (war-knife) like this one, which belonged to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I:

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    Besides holding down or picking up food, a pick had other functions for which a knife with edges wouldn’t work as well such as an auger to drill holes in leather, or a fid or marlinspike for splicing rope or laces.

    By the mid-1500s, people on the cutting edge (hah!) of fashion started to carry the ornate version of that little eating-knife-and-pick sheath; they had a “dining trousse”, personal table cutlery with its own separate case or scabbard, and a REALLY stylish trousse might even include the latest toy, a fork.

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    But that was often regarded as a pointless (hah!) affectation, because after all, everyone had fingers…

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  • thepalerimitation

  • Love Eowyn and Faramir because she’s wandering around depressed and downtrodden and the most noble man on earth just stands next to her saying “Oh, it’ll pass. Spring’s coming soon.” and he holds her hand.

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