incredible video and also PSA: art competition for anyone interested

^^^ direct link for artists!!!

After ELEVEN YEARS of work, today I finally submitted my 205-page monograph on the diamond frogs of Madagascar, genus Rhombophryne.

We are describing several new species, and re-describing almost all others, or dramatically improving knowledge of their distribution, ecology, etc., including this beautiful chap, Rhombophryne testudo, the type species of the genus. It feels so good to finally have this paper submitted. It was a huge project and it has dragged and dragged. Now I can't wait to share the new species with you all! But it will probably be many months, maybe even a year, until it sees the light of day. When it does, I will of course share it here.

For an unexpected treat that surpassed ALL my expectations, for the love of God please read the Alt Text. A masterpiece. Thank you, @markscherz , and congratulations!

Always read the alt text.

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy being like, "I am 100% committed to respecting your 'no', but I heard you wouldn't promise my aunt not to marry me so I had to come and check just one (1) more time."

The Butterfly Boy: a Fairytale.

A fairytale about the feeling of waiting on the edge of massive existential societal tragedies you are powerless to prevent, the way that we scapegoat the victims of broader societal failures as if they were the Cause, and the way that we treat children who will never grow into a "conventional" adulthood.

Thank you to everyone who followed along as I was sharing the pages for these past couple months! <3 :_:

turukáno and anairë. like mother, like son.

A late one for @tolkienwomensweek if you accept AU versions of canonical characters, ie Nerdanel from the Prayers AU, dealer in symbols who died as one. The little meeting between her and Elwing at the station was one of my favourite scenes to write, second only to the time she refers to Maedhros as someone who communicates in crocodile noises. Really not my best work because I just slapped everything on two layers on a bumpy coach, but I wanted to get one more in for the girls!

E—m—d—a—s—h—N—e—c—k—l—a—c—e

Y—o—u—P—e—o—p—l—e—W—i—l—l—R—e—b—l—o—g—A—n—y—t—h—i—n—g

needs an em-dash at the beginning and/or end, otherwise the first or last letters will be right next to each other

϶—O—h—T—r—u—e—ϵ

(added clasps)

϶—F—r—i—e—n—d—s—h—i—p—B—r—a—c—e—l—e—t—ϵ

϶—C—U—R—S—E—D—A—M—U—L—E—T—ϵ

Cursed amulet necklace that doesnt have a cursed amulet its just the phrase cursed amulet

϶—C—U—R—S—E—D—(¤)—A—M—U—L—E—T—ϵ

϶—T÷h÷a÷t÷s÷A÷G÷o÷o—d—P o

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀K

⠀⠀⠀⠀M⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Y

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀B⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀EA

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀D

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did you know that, besides the apple of knowledge and the pomegranate of life, there’s another mystic fruit, one that grants you a sense of purpose?

yeah, it’s the raisin d’être

I love animation history and one of the things that always baffled me was how did animators draw the cars in 101 Dalmatians before the advent of computer graphics?

Any rigid solid object is extremely challenging for 2D artists to animate because if one stray line isn’t kept perfectly in check, the object will seem to wobble and shift unnaturally.

Even as early as the mid 80’s Disney was using a technique where they would animate a 3D object and then apply a 2D filter to it. This practice could be applied to any solid object a character interacts with: from lanterns a character is holding, to a book (like in Atlantis), or in the most extreme cases Cybernetic parts (like in Treasure Planet).

But 101 Dalmatians was made WAY before the advent of this technology. So how did they do the Cruella car chase sequence at the end of the film?

The answer is so simple I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner:

They just BUILT the models and painted them white with black outlines 🤣

That was the trick. They’re not actually 2D animated, they’re stop motion. They were physical models painted white and filmed on a white background. The black outlines become the lineart lines and they just xeroxed the frame onto an animation cel and painted it like any other 2D animated frame.

That’s how they did it! Isn’t that amazing? It’s such a simple low tech solution but it looks so cool in the final product.

I feel like the coolest job in the world would be one where you get to travel around meeting people who are experts in various things, learning a little about their thing, and then sharing what you learned with others.

If I could have any job in the world, that's the one I'd pick.

Recent Mass Effect sketches

i like the phrases "it's not for me," "it's not my thing," and "i'm not the target audience" because they're the most concise way to express "this thing that you enjoy has merits but idgaf about it" without being aggressive

They should add "On Horseback" option to Google Maps. For writers.

"Hevoslinja" (Trans-Horse) is a European art project started in 2014 by Finnish artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri - according to his own words 'skilless in riding and afraid of animals' at the start.

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

The Mongolian landrace horse is a very distant relative of the breeds above, but much lighter and smaller than the agriculturally focused modern Finnhorse - typicaly standing at 142 cm / 14 hh at most. (This would've also been common for Finnhorses before the 19th century.) What really differentiates them from Western breeds, however, is the way they're trained and raised in semi-feral herds, and it's said that while the rider may decide where the pair is headed, the horse is the one to decide how to get there.

also it's not quite google maps, but there is a lovely site called Viabundus!

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

it's quite neat and also free! i hope someone else finds it as fascinating and cool as i did :)

Thank you so much for sending me this, @quandocoeli ! All very cool!

An interesting question: how much do horses help? There are situations (long-haul hikes) where they’re sort of as much of a liability as a help. They really walk at Human Speed, or close to it, and horses weirdly have less stamina over long hauls than humans do. I don’t think a lot of fantasy authors realise this. If you spend time around horses, you will realise it, though.

But that’s the automatic “it would take an hour for both myself and a horse, or myself ON the horse, to walk 4 miles” answer. Writers who are interested in the problem are probably picturing something slightly more plot-relevant than walking to the gas station for scratch tickets and an Arizona Iced Tea.

I was interested to know if this could connect and hold true in terms of a long-term travel - say, a LotR-esque quest over weeks and different terrains - and thanksfully, I have a relevant interest to hand. Once again, the Camino de Santiago.

today, you may complete the Camino de Santiago on foot or on horseback. There are many horse rental agencies. A reasonable middle of the road pace suggested by one is: Riding between 25-35 km for 6-7 hours a day (normal mode). Various routes include terrain like mountains and plains; they presume you’ll largely camp. You are not allowed to run the horse into the ground (they will get mad at you) and a pilgrimage should be an amble, not a march. Plus, it’s hot in Spain and there are mountains; you’re going to be mooching and drinking water to survive this six-week hike.

but like I said: a keen math-brained person will note that this is basically human walking speed. It’s also about the time walked and distance covered by the human-only hikers. This strongly suggests that experienced horse-rental long-haul pilgrims don’t break above a walk, or do so very infrequently to maintain the average speed. and certainly aren’t cantering the whole Camino.

(This is definitely a modern company being mindful of horse welfare, although pragmatic animal welfare probably doesn’t stray too far from pragmatic medieval people not wanting to kill their horse. But is also the far more immediate concern that 6 hours in a day about as long as an average human wants to be on an average horse. Like, cattle drives are the outliers.)

You’ll see that the matches up to the second post. The horse in the Finnish expedition went about 20 miles a day, which is at the top end of the human Camino pilgrim and about what a Camino horse does, but heat/hydration is a major consideration on the Camino and probably less of a worry in Finland. 20 miles a day at 4 mph is 5 hours of riding on flat perfect ground and wrinkles if you need to add hills and hydration.

As the pilgrimage has thousands of pilgrims per year and excellent travel records going back to the medieval era, it would be really interesting to work out if this is a “fast” or “slow” estimation of horseback travel by fantasy standards. Are we being nicer to horses? Did medieval horsemen make them walk 10 hours a day? Has better diet and better understanding of fitness/gear sped up humans or given us more stamina? Do roads make a difference? There are a million considerations. If any of them are helpful in your novel, there is a very well-documented horse/human walking route across Spain in which medieval records can be compared directly to 2025 forum posts - a very rich seam, if you know what your question is!

But in general, especially for long journeys over many days, human walking speed on google maps is actually a surprisingly good rule of thumb for horse walking speed.

I don't know why people think "I am thinking about Thing in a sexy way" equals "I want and definitely will do Thing in a sex way in real life if I have a chance"

Because like this is how it actually works for me at least:

Some of the things in the green circle would literally disgust me in the other tiers

Some of it is even stuff that other people would find very normal and pedestrian

Sexual partners calling each other "babe" > outside of written fiction is an immediate boner killer for me but in a piece of writing can be hot

Like c'mon

Some things are only fun in your head when there are no actual bodily fluids or clean up or effort needed

Imagination does not equal actual real life actions

They’re called sexual fantasies for a reason.

i'm super curious to see what the responses to this are

feel free to put why you do/don't shave your legs, or any other nuances in the tags! reblogs for reach are appreciated :)