officecyborg

[officecyborg]

Glad to see them trying to solve their differences

#dragon age

[officecyborg]

i hope that the discussion about student protests does not get reduced to "privileged rich kids faffing around at an ivy league school." setting aside that tenuous claim, over the last week, protests have erupted over the entire country. a few days ago, riot police beat, pepper-sprayed, and arrested NYU faculty shielding students; protests started at the university of southern california when the admin cancelled the valedictorian's speech; encampments appeared at the university of southern carolina, UT dallas, the university of maryland, the university of new mexico, IUPUI, virginia tech, the university of virginia, the university of illinois, the university of north carolina — chapel hill, the university of pittsburgh, uc berkeley, the university of michigan — ann arbor, MIT, emerson, tufts, the university of rochester, rice, swarthmore, the new school, vanderbilt university, with students arrested; students protested or walked out at miami university, northwestern, temple, the 5 claremont colleges: pomona, pitzer, scripps, harvey mudd, and claremont mckenna, stanford, washington university in st louis, students were arrested at ohio state, students were confronted by riot police at cal poly humboldt, after which they occupied campus, students were arrested at the university of minnesota — twin cities, after which faculty walked out; and yes, there are protests at the other ivies, most notably yale, with students facing mass arests after encampments, but there is also an encampment at brown, protests appeared at cornell, princeton faculty issued a statement of solidarity while students are preparing an encampment, and harvard banned the undergraduate palestine solidarity committee. there are thousands of students who are protesting for palestine across the entire country, facing harassment, arrest, and suspension in return

#police brutality

[officecyborg]

"cops are called because students aren't allowed to shut down campus" more lies! first of all, campuses aren't getting shut down: students can get to wherever they need to be—if they can't, it's because of the cops. but over the last few years, graduate students did thoroughly shut down campuses with strikes. columbia was again a notable center of labor action, with a 10-week strike during which TAs, discussion sections, grading, and any other graduate labor was cut out, grinding courses to a halt; sporadic picketing shut down access to campus. columbia took illegal measures by threatening to suspend all graduate students, but at no point were any cops called. other key graduate strikes took place at nyu, the university of michigan, and temple university, with no cops called despite other intimidation tactics by university administrations. this is not to mention hundreds of sit-ins, die-ins, encampments, and other protests that take place yearly across the country with no notice. yet tents honoring palestinians is just cause to unleash the police?

[officecyborg]

today years old when I learned that the reason bears in DAI are so stupidly hard to fight is that the game’s wilderness designer was once chased by a grizzly bear while riding his mountain bike.

[officecyborg]

#doc sebby from bdbn

[officecyborg]

holy shit is this gorgeous.

#huh. you know i never thought about how you make mother of pearl flat when shells are concave #videos

[officecyborg]

#someone submitted the killer to spoiler bracket so yeah I do lmao. otherwise no way #polls

[officecyborg]

ok im really curious do you guys have books you consider your "white whale"? as in books you keep telling yourself oh yeah i really want to read that, but you keep not reading it?

#house of leaves also #it’s not like you can impulsively pick up an ebook of that one haha #oh also crime and punishment. got halfway through and never finished

[officecyborg]

Made the worst brownies ever created just now

#well from the looks of it you either forgot the eggs or did 3d10 necrotic damage

[officecyborg]

Latin Literature Tournament - Round 1

Propaganda under the cut!

Suetonius Propaganda

I say this with all love and affection--Suetonius is so full of shit. Like reading a magazine in the grocery impulse aisle, in the best possible way

Has very cool intratextual bits and ring structures

He runs on pure vibes, and honestly I love this for him

Vergil Propaganda:

The vates himself, everyone. The poet so good that the Church was like "okay yeah this one magical pagan can stay"

The Fourth Eclogue is such a weird little delight. Is it about the children of Antony? Augustus? Is it a prediction of the birth of Christ? Is it somehow, as I heard one professor suggest for some reason, about Gallus? The possibilities are endless

Are you going to vote against the world-shattering masterpiece that is the Aeneid?

Side note, if you spell it "Virgil" you are my enemy

#we wouldn’t have I Claudius if suetonius hadn’t lied his ass off about a bunch of public figures. vote suetonius

[officecyborg]

Latin Literature Tournament - Round 1

Propaganda under the cut!

Ennius Propaganda:

The man who started it all... wrote the first Latin epic in dactylic hexameter (fuck Saturnians, all my homies hate Saturnians)

Among his many contributions, wrote a minor didactic work on where to find good fish

Was buddies with Scipio Africanus

Lucan Propaganda

Really said "what if the Aeneid was more fucked up" and honestly, respect

Every line of the Bellum Civile goes So Fucking Hard. The most metal piece of poetry out there

It's got something for everyone: witches, necromancy, archaeology, blood and guts, aristeia, ghost messengers, siege warfare, dubious protagonists, Ptolemies...

#this is so funny. let’s go lucan

[officecyborg]

Deeply dispiriting post: testimony from a DOJ antitrust action reveals the entire book publishing industry is celebrity memoirs, established franchise authors like James Patterson, children's books, Bibles, and back catalogues (e.g. Lord of the Rings). Publishing new authors is not even a rounding error; you get the sense it's only done anymore out of a vague sense of obligation, and the moment one of the Big Five decides on the defect strategy, and stops doing that to save a few more bucks, it will end entirely.

#a few years ago a mid list author was talking money. and iirc being a novelist earned them a net $50 a *year*

[officecyborg]

Daily affirmations

[officecyborg]

enough about taylor swift already. reblog and tag the smallest, least known artist you listen to

#any of my friends’ bands. plus lots of music alliance pact artists aren’t streaming or are difficult to find #so I might say solvor vermeer. the balconies. dame #outside of that stuff maybe amythyst kiah

[officecyborg]

Oh here’s something fun: my wife is doing a combined nightmare/trial run of DAI, and because of that she couldn’t recruit any extra companions until after Skyhold. But if you do that, some of the dialogue is different, due to your PC’s status and location change. The big one is that Blackwall has a ton of dialogue about Warden treaties—which includes him emphasizing that he knows nothing about Corypheus and has never heard the name before. Kind of a big clue he’s shady, considering the Wardens did all that however many years ago.

[officecyborg]

Remember this joke?

Well, I am going to do something similar only with photography. This is a photo someone took for an Amazon review of their Clinique products.

Honestly, it is not a terrible photo. They did some staging. They have an interesting background. All of the labels are legible. It is properly exposed. This would be a perfectly acceptable product photo for an Etsy page.

I've been taking these advanced photography courses in preparation for whenever I am able to create a new studio in the house. And my teacher is a photography badass. I just watched a 6 hour class on how to recreate a professional Clinique ad. And at first glance it looks deceptively simple. It's just some skin care products being splashed with a little water.

Which is why I wanted you to see an average person for reference.

This is what Karl Taylor came up with.

And I don't think I've learned so much about photography in one tutorial before.

Product photography is just loads and loads of problem solving. You have to light the chrome caps with a gradient. Which requires giant diffusion scrims.

Those big white panels are literally only there for the two chrome caps.

You need a pure white background, but you can't let light spill all over the studio, so you put up giant black light blockers.

And you have to add another light just for the orange bottle on the right.

Oh, and if you want the bottles to glow, well, you have to hide a silver reflector behind them.

But you still want the edges of the bottles to be darker so they have some contrast. So you add some black tape to the sides.

And in order for the reflective labels to have bold black lettering, you have to reflect black cards into them.

Ack! Karl's beautiful bald head is showing up in the chrome caps! He must put on the naughty blanket.

And once you get every aspect of every bottle perfectly lit, you finally get to yeet some water at it all.

I don't love product photography because I have a weird obsession to help greedy corporations make their wares look more beautiful. I love it because it is a complicated and challenging new puzzle every time. Every product is a different shape and requires a different technique to make it look its best.

I don't know if I will be able to live up to Karl's standards.

This is about the level I was at in 2017 before I quit photography.

I have so much more knowledge in my brain now. I'm really hoping I can surpass that.

[officecyborg]

Finding songs for your OCs playlist like

#ben folds’ entire discography