silliness and fun best friends forever!!!

cozy

This is amazing news!

Is this the Yuri on Ice I keep hearing about?

God, I hope so

In the process of updating the version of @petermorwood's signature dish (Pork with Chilies and Chocolate) on the Mind Palate site, and realized that we did not have a single pic of it plated up... only a shot from when he was cooking it for a couple of opera-singer friends in Vienna.

Fixing that now. Meanwhile: a shot of it coming up to temperature before it goes into the oven...

typewriter!

I love the orchestra trying and failing to maintain a straight face throughout

Exactly. These people had to rehearse at least a few times all at once yet when it's nkt their turn to play they still look at that guy with the typewriter as if he was the most fascinating thing they have ever seen.

My husband's wind ensemble played this song when he was in high school! you can do it with normal auxillery percussion, but it's so much more fun if you do it with a real typewriter

now that is a writing mood

they were really like, the only reasonable approach to this piece is to insert a clown at the center of the orchestra

If you're not playing Leroy Anderson's 1953 classic "The Typewriter" with an actual typewriter on stage... why would you even BOTHER?

From wiki

According to the composer himself, as well as other musicians, the typewriter part is difficult because of how fast the typing speed is: even professional stenographers cannot do it, and only professional drummers have the necessary wrist flexibility

just rewatched t2

Actually this time probably not. The writing was on the wall way before Reagan became president, and the steel mill closed in November 1981, barely ten months into his president.

He was governor of California during that "writing on the wall" period. He was the one writing. It was his wall.

Oh. Well don't I look stupid now.

Terrible news: you learned something today

The only good white washing

You can also add color to the mix! All those quaint postcard-esque colorful European houses that tourists clamour to see? That's limewash babey!!!

And you can apply multiple coats a year if you want the color to be opaque faster :]

spiritual successor to my email post

ok this too

she cries if I dont hold her, so I have to use my exercise bike like this

via r/risa

LOL someone tried to Blaze this post (excellent idea, btw) and Tumblr rejected it for being sexually explicit.

We will build an America whose strength comes not from its bombs and bullets but from its moral authority. An America whose greatness comes not from the value of its stock market or the wealth of its billionaires but from laws and values (and an economy) that serve us all. My friends, we will win and we will rebuild. We have no choice.

"Artemis II launch opportunities in early 2026.

NASA is planning on rolling out the Artemis II rocket and spacecraft from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center no earlier than 17 January. The 6.4 km journey will take up to 12 hours.

At the end of January, NASA will conduct a wet dress rehearsal - a prelaunch test to fuel the rocket. Following a successful wet dress rehearsal, the mission management team will assess the readiness of all systems before committing to a launch date."

Find out more on NASA's blog: link

does anyone have the screenshot of the comment on the youtube video of molten iron slag being poured where it's a guy describing his experience witnessing the same thing written in the most beautiful prose imaginable

@f2tal @barabones with your key addition of 'seagulls,' i was able to find it!

Boring things about the 1980s:

If you’re writing a period fic, whether you were alive then or not, it’s so difficult to catch everything, but getting some of the biggies right makes all the other things invisible to readers.

One thing that bothers me in a lot of Stranger Things fic, although I just ignore it a lot:

Bottled water! We take it for granted nowadays but it wasn't a commercially available thing until pretty recently, unless it was carbonated in some way.

Perrier (sparkling water) came to America in the late 70s.

But the standard plastic bottle of water was NOT common in the 80s! If you got bottled water, it was spring water from the source (or carbonated mineral water like Perrier), expensive, and purchased by the bottle or at most six packs.

It was in glass bottles.

OR it was those big 5-Gallon jugs for water coolers in offices.

PET bottles weren't really commercially viable for water until the 90s - once the soda companies had established production lines for their manufacture. Prior to I wanna say 1978? 79? Sodas were in glass too. PET that could tolerate carbonation was what changed the game, but it took time to percolate through the drink market.

In 1993 there was a waterborne disease breakout in the Midwest. I don't know which disease and where but it was, to this day I believe? The largest waterborne disease outbreak in US history. I remember because bottled non-carbonated water Suddenly Appeared. Like if you went to a 7-11 in 1993 you might find a single brand of bottled water, probably something like Saratoga, in single bottles. If you had access to bulk purchasing (which also became mainstream in the early 90s), you MIGHT be able to get cases of the single bottles.

But that outbreak made soda companies sit up. People wanted water and didn't trust their taps anymore. So boom! Within I wanna say a month, bottled water was everywhere.

So it drives me bonkers to have 1980s characters from a small town drinking plastic bottles of water. Unlikely! It would have been glass! And probably special spring water, or Perrier! Or water in a cup (not a refillable water bottle, unless someone had a thermos dedicated specifically to water) from a water cooler jug!

This is just because bottled water has a specific significance to my life so I am Hyper Aware of it, but we really do take it for granted, don't we?

not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe]

There is a fairly significant bit of wordplay in Frieren that will escape the notice of most English-speaking viewers, but I quite like it so I’ll explain it here. The title of the series in Japanese is 葬送のフリーレン (Sousou no Furiiren). “Furiiren” is of course Frieren; “sousou” means “funeral rites” or “attending a funeral”, but can literally be translated as “sending to the grave”. Since the story opens with Frieren watching her old adventuring pals growing old and passing away, we’re naturally led to the simple interpretation of the title: she’s attending her friends’ funerals.

(The full official English title is Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, because literal translations rarely make catchy titles.)

Later, as Frieren is fighting Aura, Lügner explains that Frieren is the most prolific demon-killer in history. In the English translations I’ve seen, this earns her the nickname “Frieren the Slayer”. But in the original Japanese, this nickname is 葬送のフリーレン: “Sousou no Furiiren”, the title of the series.

In this context, this line (and the title, too) could be more literally interpreted as “Frieren, who sends you to your grave”. It also means the line is a little more impactful in Japanese — you’re supposed to point at the screen and yell “hey that’s the name of the show!!”

There’s really just no way to preserve wordplay like this through translation so I can’t fault the translators at all for not trying, but it’s a fun thing that’s worth pointing out nonetheless. I just love that this was clearly something the author was setting up from the very beginning.