Reblogged ohmyoverland
Reblogged ohmyoverland
its 1am and i am overwhelmed with love for a person who kindly and knowledgeably answered questions on a forum about niche topics. this is not the first time and it absolutely will not be the last
I wanted to figure out how to identify/describe a silver blade vs a steel blade for a fic, and I found a post on silver-collecter.com from 2010, and answers from a man named uncle_vic:
in this same thread, olewheat asked about another silver piece; uncle_vic explained that blades were not made from silver, because it'd be too soft - often carbon steel would be silver plated, and eventually get pitted.
after a volley of questions, several users asked if they could contact uncle_vic directly. vic responded, very kindly:
I am always, always charmed by a clearly veteran hobbyist helping out new people on a forum, and i wanted to see what else uncle_vic posted, what other nuggets about his life i could learn, and it turns out he was a pillar of the community:
He joined in 2006, when the website was only 2 months old, and throughout the next 6 years, he helped many identify their silver pieces, and welcomed them all with: "Hi there and thanks for joining us", and always ended with a "Regards, Uncle Vic"
He helped so often, he'd post on the social thread to let people know he'd be gone without internet access for an extended period of time!
These often didn't get many interactions, but he did so anyway, like a journal made public: one about how a hurricane was reaching him in Baton Rouge; several about his fishing trips, like this one in 2011:
A year later, he wrote a similar vacation post, which became his final topic on the forum, titled: "Gone fishin'".
In May 2012, 3 months later, a newer user asked Vic what type of fishing he liked.
Vic replied: (content warning for cancer)
This was Uncle Vic's last post on the silver-collecter.com forums. Unflinchingly honest, and this time, instead of his usual "Regards", he ended with "Keep the Faith".
According to the obituary posted in the same thread, he passed away the next day, at his camp on the Tickfaw river -- well known for fishing.
--
This isn't the first time I've come across kind, dedicated forum users, usually knowledgeable retirees, who suddenly stop posting; it certainly won't be the last. But everytime I fall in love with them, and in turn, with humanity even more, to see what we leave behind.
A retired Cajun lawyer from Baton Rouge found a silver collecting forum from a hobbyist magazine in 2006, and decided to spend the next 6 years, up to his dying day, sharing his life, his love, and his knowledge with strangers.
Thank you, Uncle Vic, for the forum users you helped; thank you for the countless, anonymous users who found your posts through search engines like me.
I'm glad your corner of the internet exists so that, 12 years since you've been gone, I can visit and you can still teach me a whole lot about identifying silver and silver makers.
Reblogged
We Have An Announcement!
And here it is: after 10 episodes dedicated to Lockwood & Co, we've covered all the topics we want to cover, and we simply don't have any other thoughts related to this series.
From here on out, Haunting the Narrative will focus on Jonathan Stroud's newest trilogy, Scarlett & Browne. We hope you're as excited about this change as we are! Our first of estimated 800 episodes on Scarlett & Browne will release tomorrow morning, April 2nd.
... *clears throat*
Happy April Fool's Day! We are not abandoning our beloved ghost hunting teens. At this rate, we'll never run out of topics to discuss related to Lockwood and Co. (We just added a new idea to our episode list this afternoon.)
But! In honor of the American release of Stroud's newest book, we will have a special Scarlett & Browne focused episode for you tomorrow!
Reblogged hailqiqi
Okay. Say you ask a small child to draw you a house, and they come up with something like this:
For the purposes of this analogy the child is shit at colouring in, because I only wanted to give the general idea.
So, we can all agree that the child who draws a house probably isn't trying to communicate anything in particular other than “look at this cool house I drew”, right?
Cool.
So… Why is it seemingly in the middle of nowhere, when most children live in houses with neighbours?
Why is the main body a square and the roof a solid triangle when that doesn't look like any house that has ever been built anywhere?
Why does it have a wood-burning stove with smoke actively coming out of the chimney, even though the sun indicates warm weather?
Why is the sun smiling? Why is it yellow?
Answer: because the child has seen picture books, and films, and the drawings of other children, and has on some level absorbed that this is what a house is meant to look like.
Face to face, the child almost certainly wouldn't know where to begin communicating “yellow is a colour culturally associated with happiness and warmth, and two dots accompanied by a curved line symbolically represent a smiling human face, so I have combined these attributes with the sun to convey that it is a very warm and pleasant day”.
Or “historically most houses in my country used fire for heat and cooking, and even though this is no longer the case for the majority of households, most media portrayals of houses are inspired by other, older, media portrayals and therefore include the chimney. I have chosen to follow this trend.”
Or even, “I have poor motor control because of my age, and large, 2 dimensional shapes are easier to draw than anything involving detail and perspective”.
Yet this is all information that you can pick up from detailed study of the house drawing.
Ultimately, it's not about what the writer intended. That's what the whole death of the author thing means.
If you think of literature like as a conversation, then think of all the analysis stuff that your English teacher keeps trying to get you to look at as like body language. It's the stuff that the other person doesn't even necessarily mean to communicate, but that can tell you a hell of a lot about what they mean.
Also, a poem written by a poet who got high is still a poem written by a poet.
People love to say dismissive bullshit like, "oh, that's just the drugs talking" but actually, drugs can't fucking talk! It is always the human being doing the talking regardless of how intoxicated they are. The drugs are not creating the poetry. The poet's mind is creating the poetry. A person doesn't stop being a person just because they took something.
David Bowie said he was so high the year he wrote the album Hunky Dory that he didn't remember writing it (in fact he said he didn't remember anything about the year).
This is the album that includes "Life on Mars?", which many people consider to be some pretty cutting commentary on Marxism and capitalism.
Bowie himself could not tell you what that song is about, or if it's about anything at all. But quite a few people have found a lot of meaning in it.
My teenager is working on a big art project for school and they said their meanings tend to be very surface level
Their work is about flora and fauna is a mix of bone motifs, animal shapes and natural flora intertwining to create one beast that symbolises the land
And when I pointed out that it seemed to me like a commentary on how the ecosystem works and every part is reliant on another and how life and death are two sides of the same coin they didn't go "no I was just doing surface level nature is cool" they went "oh yeah! I can see it now!"
And I've had that experience as well
Sometimes artists don't know the meaning until other people point it out
Reblogged nomolosk
I didn't include The Skull because I felt like he'd sweep lol, and it didn't feel fair to call Jessica a haunting. I'm hoping to do a poll about the Skull's best quotes sometime soon to make up for such a transgression 💀
Reblogged hailqiqi
can we all just collectively agree to go crazy over Lockwood & Co. again. i can't tell you how much i miss when we were all crazy over Lockwood & Co.
Welcome, you are among friends <3
Reblogged lemonsharks
Clarinetist Doreen Ketchens playing for her grandson.
Reblogged thelittlemissmisfit
When I was in the hospital, they gave me a big bracelet that said ALLERGY, but like. I'm allergic to bees. Were they going to prescribe me bees in there.
So there's a medication called hyaluronidase. It's used to make other medications absorb better, because it makes the cell wall more permeable.
One common usage is to make local anesthetic more effective during surgery, for instance. It's used in a number of injected medications.
Bee stings contain an enzyme very similar to this medication, so sometimes, people with bee allergies have an allergic reaction to hyaluronidase.
This is called cross-reactivity, where your body mistakes something for the thing it's actually allergic to, and has an allergic reaction anyway. For instance, sometimes people with latex allergies also are allergic to bananas and other fruits. They don't actually contain latex, but there are some similar proteins.
Apparently, hyraluronidase used in humans is derived from one of four sources: sheep testicles, cow testicles, cow testicles again, and GMO hamster ovaries.
tl;dr: They won't inject you with bees, but they might inject you with purified cow testicle juice, and your body might say 'eh, cow balls are BASICALLY bees' and try to kill you anyway.
The world is full of such beauty and wonder. Thank you for that sentence.
@theshitpostcalligrapher how do you feel about
Your body might say 'eh, cow balls are basically bees' and try to kill you anyway.
oh right this was the context post for this one
Reblogged transformativeworks
my favorite scene in LotR as a kid was when Sam started miserably freestyling in the tower of Cirith Ungol and the only reason he ever found Frodo was because he deliriously tried to join in
lady-lizbian
…i did read some of the novels, but i couldn’t get through them entirely…
…and so i genuinely have no idea whether or not this is serious. coz i mean, obviously, it could be a joke. but it could also have legitimately happened. people who have only seen the films underestimate the amount of random things that happen in the books that could come off as utterly silly and ridiculous if removed from their context.
Haha, well, it is pretty much what happens. Sam is looking for Frodo in the tower of Cirith Ungol and is despairing that he will ever find him. He sits down and does what any self-respecting Tolkien character does during their moments of hopelessness and bursts into song.
It’s a really good song (ten year old Ship had it memorized) and as he begins the refrain a second time, he hears Frodo’s voice answering weakly from above. Frodo is poisoned and despairing and beaten but he is still a Hobbit and cannot resist a singalong even while on the brink of death.
ghostingrose
I just have to reblog because it makes me laugh EVERY TIME
Reblogged thelittlemissmisfit
Empathy: I feel you
Sympathy: I feel for you
Lycanthropy: I feel awoo
Reblogged
really good tiktok
Transcript:
Girl, just do it fat. Don’t wait until you’ve lost enough weight. You’re worthy of taking up the space that you fill. Live your life now. Don’t wait for some future version of yourself that you think will be more deserving. You have every right to pursue your passions and dreams just as you are today. Your worth isn’t tied to a number on a scale or the size of your clothes; it is inherent in who you are. You’re allowed to be seen, heard, and celebrated in whatever body you inhabit right now. Don’t let anyone or anything convince you for too long. So go out. Do it fat! Wear the clothes you love, pursue the opportunities that excite you, and live unapologetically. There’s no reason to put off living the life that you want, waiting for a moment that you’re not even sure will come. You deserve to be happy and fulfilled just as you are, and the world needs you exactly as you are today. Everything good that has ever happened to you, happened in this body. Girl, just do it fat.
Reblogged lilaccatholic
*Puts brief case down on the table and takes off glasses very seriously* “So about that AU we discussed that one time.”
Reblogged unintel-li-gible
Born to don't wanna. Forced to gotta