#but no scans were available online

[strawberries-are-my-life]

#Sweeney Todd #Franne Lee #costume design #i couldn't find these online anywhere #so i emailed the newyork public library #because they said they had them #but no scans were available online #so here they are #after months of searching #i can't believe they're in colour #I'd only seen them in black and white and i just thought that's how they were #but in colour? #they look incredible

[lauralot89]

Transition and Athletics

Before her own transition in 2004, Harper expected that her 10,000-meter race time might increase by "a minute or two" as her testosterone level dropped and she slowed. But in less than a year, Harper was running a full 5 minutes slower than her personal best. "It just blew me away, and it very much piqued my interest as a scientist."

In 2005, Harper realized her experience wasn't unique after reading an article in Runner's World about another transgender female runner who had also become significantly slower. But when Harper searched for studies about the physiology of transitioning, she found none. So on nights and weekends, she began to moonlight on a research project.

Harper showed that the athletes' age grades before and after hormone therapy remained nearly the same. That is, the women were as competitive with their age- and sex-matched peers as they had been when competing against men. They weren't, in other words, likely to dominate women's races. "No one had previously looked at actual performance of transgender athletes pre- and posttransition," Vilain says.

Harper has since shown similar results for a transgender rower, a cyclist, and a sprinter. Together, the findings make a case that previous exposure to male levels of testosterone does not confer an enduring athletic advantage.

— "This scientist is racing to discover how gender transitions alter athletic performance—including her own" Science.org

Additionally, the hormone-replacement therapy—which starts before surgery can occur and is taken by many who don’t choose to have surgery—also has a tremendous impact on athletic performance. The extent to which testosterone blockers (given to transgender women in conjunction with estradiol, a form of estrogen) erode a runner’s strength and stamina is hard to measure, says Dr. Wylie Hembree, a New York–based endocrinologist who has been treating transgender patients for 20 years. He says, “Anecdotally, I have had avid runners say to me that they can no longer run the distances and speeds they could run before, and one can presume that that could be due to the reduction in testosterone levels.”

Gapin noticed that despite putting in the same effort, she was running slower, losing a minute or even two per mile fairly soon after starting on hormones. She also experienced a significant decrease in her vitamin D levels (although this is not a common side effect of hormone-replacement therapy), which went undiagnosed for two years and greatly affected her training. “When I started taking supplements to raise my vitamin D levels, I’d get to a point in my running where I’d just be crushing it and running 50 miles a week, and then again, I would plummet to 6 miles, so I was yo-yoing back and forth,” she says.

In the three-plus years she has been on hormones, Liston believes she has lost around 10 percent of her running speed; working her way back up to where she was before is no easy feat. “But I’ve also come to accept some of that as part of aging,” she says. “My body at 47 is different than my body at 40, and despite the hormones—I now wear a B cup—and my stamina being less, I also don’t have the same goals with my running that I used to before my transition, when I was running with anger and frustration. Now, running is much more soothing to me.”

— "Being Transgender and What It Means for a Runner," Women's Running

She used to be able to run 5:30s. Now she can’t. She trains, she pushes herself, she uses everything she has; it doesn’t matter. On the weekend-morning group runs, when serious Marin runners gather near trailheads to pace each other up the dirt roads that climb Tamalpais, Janet starts with the pack, as she has nearly every Saturday and Sunday for 25 years. “Usually there are a lot of guys,” she says. “They start slow. I stay with them for the first mile. Then I start falling away. They’re chatting. They don’t even notice.”

When she was Jim Furman, a 5’11”, 148-pound middle-aged man in excellent physical shape, she kept up.

As Janet Furman Bowman, a 5’11”, 148-pound middle-aged woman in excellent physical shape, she’s too slow.

That, to her astonishment and irritation and unceasing soft regret, is the permanent price she has paid.

— "A 6-Minute Difference," Runner's World

or basically

#trans #transgender #transition #trans athletes #science #gender transition #hormone therapy #fun fact #I first read that last article in a book like ten years ago #and went searching through all the running books in the library to find it again #planning to scan it and then transcribe it for this post #I didn't realize that the book was made up of magazine articles #which were available online

[lizbotw]

i found a folded schedule and campus map from 2014 in a book at my university’s library today. almost a decade it went untouched. my heart hurts i love life

#the pages it was between were in the chapter i needed too #sobbing #i didn’t even want to move it but i had to so i could finish working #i had to find a certain section for my prof and there weren’t any copies online #my dumbass crawling all over the shelves trying to match the letters + numbers on the call tag i found online #all the check out stamps in the front say 1999… 2001… i could cry #when i saw that i kind of just stood in the bookshelf aisle like. oh wow #in 1999 someone was just like me #except scanning and pictures didn’t exist so they had to take it to their dorm to read and had to keep coming back week after week to renew #it because they were so obsessed with writing about it for their class and couldn’t let it go #+ fighting with everyone else over the singular copy available #and then the next semester there was someone else and then… #TAKING OICTURES W THEIR PHOJE *** SORRY I NEVER REREAD #i just needed to get smth rq from the book so i left it behind after but it was so bittersweet :( like me n u are forever connected… ilu #yes i took the papers i found for. reasons. they are my treasures now

[tillman]

obsessed with combing ebay for odd merch and shit like at least once a week i poke thru the gg doujinshi on there i enjoy the time capsule of it all and skipping the egregiously insane ones sometimes there are some w art styles i am just entranced by so bad

#honestly. u would think there would be more online in different places but ive been able to find........... a couple at most #(mostly sol.ky which. looks around) #sorry i was doing this again its enchanting #i cant find the one i was so fucking obsessed w the art style of .... may whoever got it treat it well it was very cute #but god yeah no its . saur sad i wish more were scanned #or like. at least somewhere available for purchase online... #but its been years i kinda get it #txt #like oh theres this fucking. johnny/sol one? which . ok. but man the art is really really cool #but i spent like an Houuuurrr and couldnt find a single bit of info about the group that made it . like this is the most upsetting shit in t

[jarofstyles]

Buttercream

Hello my loves! This is the first part to our Patreon exclusive series, Buttercream. The ready is available on Patreon (over 18 parts) and is still being updated. You all asked to see what’s available to read and I’m giving you sneaks of it!

A series featuring an Alpha Architect Harry, a bossy bakery owning omega Y/N, the sweetest treats taste tested and some steamy smut.

Check out our Patreon for all parts of the series and 150+ exclusive writings.

——-

The smell kept him coming back.

In his life, Harry had been to a quite a few bakeries. He could be considered an expert on fudge brownies, a specialist on cupcakes and the swirls of icing, a connoisseur of croissants. He treated himself a bit too often, if his mother had anything to say with it. His sweet tooth had always been prevalent in his life.

The new bakery down the road from his job, though? That had made him a true problem.

Every day before work, he stopped. Suit and all, pulling into the parking lot and nearly drooling the moment he got out. His feet carried him towards the door and the smell hit him immediately. Sweet buttercream, frothy vanilla, spiced cinnamon, and… something else. That something else that had him nearly vibrating, and now on a mission to have the whole menu to figure out just what the hell that scent was.

It was intoxicating. Mesmerizing. If Harry didn’t have work, he would spend hours just sitting here to smell it. It had a weird hold on him, and he didn’t quite know how to ask if it was an air freshener. That was unlikely for anywhere but restrooms anyways considering how offensive it could be for the noses of alpha’s and omegas alike. A bad scented one could send them into moods. Or even sickness. The sense of smell was very important.

“Mr.Styles.” The teen manning the cash register saluted him. He came in every day and was known to the cashiers, so he had ruled out it being one of them. Thank god. They were either young enough to not have a scent or too old for it to be possible. “What will it be today? Y/N’s been whipping up a storm for the holidays. New recipes. We’ve got a peppermint bark brownie that would go well with the peppermint mocha you like.” She chirped, watching as he scanned the cases.

Harry was a little intimidating but he was exceptionally charming. He smiled, he conversed, he tipped well, but he always seemed to be looking around. Trying to find something that no one could really place. The bakery was empty besides a mum and her friend with their kids, munching on treats and coffee as they watched the traffic go by. It wasn’t them. Harry’s ears did perk up when he heard an unfamiliar name.

“Y/N?” He asked, tilting his head as his attention went back to the cashier. “Who’s that? The owner?” Harry had never met the owner. For some reason, every time he came in the morning she had stepped out for her own break. It didn’t bother him so long as his compliments to the baker got passed along, but hearing her name stirred something in his chest.

“Yep.” She popped the p in her word. “She’s awesome. She started this all on her own after she went viral on the internet. She got the funds from online orders. You see the custom cakes and stuff but she does awesome experimental flavors. She doesn’t care if they’re hits or misses and let’s us go home with leftovers.” There was obvious pride to be working for someone like Y/N. It peaked his interest.

“Oh?” He asked, leaning his body against the counter. “That’s incredible. I’d be very happy to taste some of the new things.” He flashed a smile, tapping his card against the wood of the counter. “What would you think Y/N would suggest?” And why did saying her name make him feel silky and hot? Like it was meant to live on his lips? They tingled as the word left his mouth, making him shift his stance slightly. His skin was buzzing slightly as he heard someone else come from the back.

“She would suggest the peppermint bark brownies, the s’mores donut, the lemon cream cookie and the chili chocolate cupcake. Spice and sweet work surprisingly well together.” The airy voice went to his bones.

Harry could smell it fully now. The scent that laced the bakery was now engulfing him. Filling the space, making him inhale it with each breath. His hand tightened on the card, curling into a fist at his side as he caught a glimpse of her. She had been the source. It wasn’t a baked good or a cashier, but it was the baker herself that was making him addicted to the sweets laced with her scent.

He was silent as he observed her, a smile quirked on her lips. Slightly glossy and deliciously plump as she greeted the cashier with a simple hey and asking her to go to the back to grab the other new tray of cinnamon buns. Sliding them on to the rack, she used her hip to gently nudge the counter open and grabbed one for Harry.

“Here. On the house.” She slid the bag over to him with her soft simper, hands tapping on the wood.

She was marvelous.

Harry was speechless. Something he never usually was- the alpha could talk to a brick wall if he needed to- but this sweet little omega has been slowly hypnotizing him with her scent over the course of a month and now he was finally seeing her. He loved delayed gratification, a fan of edging, but this? He wished he had seen her far earlier.

“Hi.” He peeped. His face looked like he saw a ghost. The woman in front of him was like a mirage- and he wasn’t trying to be dramatic. He swore she was familiar to him in some way. Some how. She was all omega in the ways that called to him. The curve of her face and her soft voice… he could have started purring if he didn’t have some semblance of self control in his body.

“Hi.” She returned the greeting with a soft chuckle that heated his chest. “I hope you like the suggestions. I recognized your voice. You’ve been in here every morning we’re open and I figured it was about time to meet the loyal customer.” She chirped, brushing the stray hair that had fallen from her ponytail behind her ears. The adorably disheveled look added to her appeal.

A candy apple red apron was dusted with various baking material, tied around her waist snug. It showed the curve of her waist went deeper than what he could tell under her sweatshirt that appeared to have the bakery name printed on it. A swipe of flour was decorating her forehead, like she had wiped hair from her face and simply forgot about flour coated hands. Little details he was memorizing to think about later.

“I love the smell.” He blurted out. Immediately, he winced. That hadn’t been what he had meant to say, at least how he had meant to say it. Heat crept up further under his cheeks as he opened and closed his mouth, watching her giggle a bit as he tried to find his bearings.

“Fucking hell- I meant to say, I love your bakery. It smelled amazing when I went past it so I decided to stop in a few weeks ago and now it’s become a part of my daily routine. I bring in pastries for the office.”

“Aren’t you a star coworker.” She cooed, turning from him with a wink as she grabbed one of the red boxes and began to construct it. “They must love you at the office. I have on good authority that the one that brings the snacks, gets the pats on the back. Especially hand made, beautifully crafted baked goods.” She teased, opening up the case and beginning to place some sweets into it.

“I’d hope they like me. I’m their boss.” He laughed quietly, scratching the back of his neck. Never has he felt more like a schoolboy talking to a playground crush. He was head to toe in a suit good enough to meet his best clients, and a girl with flour on her face was sending him to his knees. Each time she moved, a gentle waft of her scent was given his direction and made that ever loved self control hang by a thread.

“Ooooo. Bossman.” She grinned, wiggling her brow as she placed another iced brownie with crushed peppermint bark sprinkled on top into the box. “Should have guessed. Love the suit, by the way. You look very handsome.”

That little compliment made his day. The pretty omega with the prettier smile and mouthwatering scent thought he looked handsome. That would be lingering in his brain all day. How she thought he was handsome. The casual compliments.

“Thank you.” He preened. “We do interior and exterior design for businesses. Up and coming places and remodels. So if you ever need a guy- I’m here.” He placed his hands in his pockets and lifted up on his toes rocking back and forth.

“Oooo. Is it that bad in here? Do I need a renovation?” She sucked her teeth, tilting her head. It had him freezing, mouth falling open to grovel. He hadn’t meant to offend her at all, hadn’t tried to insinuate it needed a remodel.

“Shit- no, I’m sorry. It’s very cute in here, I didn’t mean to insinuate it needed any help. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how it would sound-“

“Cool it, bossman.” She cooed, laughing at how he had nearly fallen over himself. “I’m just messing with you. The place does need some exterior work, actually. I hadn’t had the budget when we first started, nor the time. But I didn’t take any offense to it. You’ve got to market yourself. Don’t worry.” Her reassurance made him melt into relief, leaning into the counter. This whole encounter had him feeling a bit on edge in the weirdest way. He wanted to snuggle this woman, yet he was almost afraid of her. An omega. He was afraid of an omega.

Anyone else would laugh at him, perhaps, but he felt the nervousness creeping in his bones. He wanted her to like him. He wanted her to think he was cool and want to know him better. Y/N, Y/N, Y/N. She had unarmed his normal charm and made him feel like a nervous bundle of sweat and it was exhilarating.

“I’ll take a card, though.” She placed her hand out flat. “If you’ve got one. I’m gonna check out your website.”

Harry fished one out of his wallet, thankful he kept them on hand. It had his office number, and part of him wanted to offer his personal cell but he knew that would be a bit weird. Especially if she wanted to use his services. He almost hoped she didn’t- asking a client on a date wasn’t good for the image, was it? He wasn’t sure.

“If you’ve got any questions you can reach out on the email there, it’s a direct line to me- or uh, I come in every day so.” He shrugged. “Around this time. You’ve got very good coffee too. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good hazelnut. People put a lot of syrups and things… but your shop does it the best.”

“Thank you.” She seemed chuffed with his praise. “I taste test everything with the crew here. You’ll be in for a treat. If you’re coming in every morning, do you think you’d want to be a bit of a guinea pig for me?” She slid the box across the counter. “I’ve been experimenting like my lovely employee was saying. But I’d love a real customers opinion. Even if it’s bad. I want to know what the consumer likes.”

Harry was shocked. Y/N was kind of treating him like a friend, like she valued his exact opinion. He couldn’t deny he felt exceptionally special. Having not only the owner of the bakery but an omega he had some sort of crush on suddenly want to sample the new things she sells and get his opinion on it.

“Oh- uh. Alright. Of course! I can do that.” He grinned shyly, handing his card over for her to pay for the things she had put into the box. “I come in every morning during the week so… you can just let me know what’s new to taste.” There was a giddiness in his stomach. An excuse to talk to her every day. Or at least a few times a week. He’s never really reacted this way to an omega before, the scent craving, the shyness he suddenly felt, all of it was so new to him and he was unsure how to navigate it but he didn’t want to stop. He only wanted more.

“Perfect. What is your name, by the way?” The card was handed back to him and there was slight disappointment their fingers didn’t brush, but Harry took today was a victory.

“Harry. Harry Styles. It’s lovely to meet you.”

“Y/N. I’m glad to meet you too. I hope to see more of you soon.”

#jarofstyles #harry styles one shot #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles smut #harry writing #harry styles imagine #harry drabble #harry styles blurb #harry styles writing #alpha Harry #alpha harry styles #harry styles abo #harry styles au #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry fluff #harry smut #harry angst #harry fanfic #harry styles fanfics #harry styles fic #dom harry styles #patreon #patreon exclusive

[acheronist]

to the ghost of henry peglar, congrats on writing your poem down 177 years ago!!!

to the actual academic scholars who have studied the pages before me....

so I took the royal museum greenwich's scan of the poem page (which is available online hereeee) and screwed around with its light levels in photoshop until henry's script was darkened enough to see more clearly. then I digitally traced over the darkened letters as best as I could, while also trying to discern his handwriting, and type up how I was reading it & this process took me about a week to get done between like... living my regular day to day life lmao.......

so when it WAS done, the final isabel acheronist peglar papers ["the open C"] transcript seemed a bit different than how I remembered the readily available russell potter transcript going ? (the poem is on the last two pages of that pdf for those of you who don't spend a billion hours a week looking at it btw)

it felt like I was getting more/different information out of it, compared to the potter transcript, which was kind of stressing me out honestly. so THEN I compared mine with barry cornwall's original poem and found more words that matched up? particularly in the second and third stanzas?

so!!!!! almost two hundred years later here's what I've landed on:

April 21 1847 the C the C the open ) ( it grew so fresh the Ever free the Ever free the Ever free without it without it covered it will Run to Earth above Re gions Round I love the C I love the C when I whare & I wish to be with and and silence whare Never go if a sailor should a Come and Make the meek What matter what matter Come Ride Or Sleep there was shores white and of red morn at the noisy hours knew I was ever near I was Born the [...] in felt Unto the Maid the wale the young dolphin ...... yet thes back of gold the Call of gods When I was on Old England Shore I like the young C more and more oftentimes time flew to a sweltering place like a bird thats seeks it mother Case and ware she was bird oft to me for have I loved a young and Hopen C

so then after going thru All Of That, I wanted to have a version of the original poem with parts that Henry did remember clearly highlighted for comparison purposes:

I know it's a popular theory that Henry was writing a dirty parody of the original poem? which if true, is funny as hell. me when i have to write cheeky victorian porn before i die.

But (serious voice) something about that hadn't ever seemed exactly right to me... IN MY HEART it seems more realistic that around 1847 he (and also by extension, the whole surviving expedition crew) were starting to experience confusion / brain fog symptoms from being ummmm quite physically unwell. the lead poisoning/scurvy combo would have severe effects on the brain's ability to function properly, and I started to wonder if Henry was trying to test his memory somehow? So he picked a widely known and popular Victorian era poem about being a sailor to see how much he could recall??? and he then got a little whimsical with it, and wrote in his own words to fill in the portions he couldn't fully recall, because it's his own diary and likely didn't expect anyone else to ever read it, much less have it turn into ONE of TWO surviving sources about the expedition?????

like... idk... this is probably the work of someone in the exact moment as they were starting to realize how bad things were, and then was trying to cope by using poetry. and That hurts my feelings enough as it is, but going through it was also just a very weird and haunting experience....... like, I can recognize all these tiny details in this dead guy's script and handwriting now. and to read his own account of his life in his own words, what stood out to him and what he recalled, what he wanted people in the future to know about him? insane. it literally felt like i was getting haunted by him for no reason. on top of knowing that Someone (#teamarmitage) loved this guy enough to keep his memory protected and safe, even though They Were So Totally Fucked And Going To Die There, unknowing if they'd ever be found again........

SIGHING + SIGHING + SIGHING + SIGHING + CRYING A BIT HONESTLY

anyways thanks for reading this all. I don't think that this is revolutionary franklin expedition news by any means, and idk if there's a better different transcript somewhere that i've not found that already covers all this? but it's consumed a lot of my life lately lol and i wanted to share. because its the anniversary of henry writing it, and it felt...... important....? 💌....????

#📜 #henry peglar #this is my crazy person post i wanted to make two weeks ago #i really did do my best to follow his hand btw but let's all read this expecting a few mistakes #franklin expedition #peglar papers

[mspaesthetic]

Tidbit: The “Posterization” Effect of Panels Due to the Consequences of GIF Color Quantization (and Increased Contrast (And Also The Tangential Matter of Dithering))

There’s this misconception that the color banding and patterned dithering found in panels is an entirely deliberate, calculated effect Hussie manipulated the image into looking with some specific filter, but this isn’t the case, exactly. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision he took but rather an unavoidable consequence of the medium he partook in: digital art in an age where bandwidth and storage was at a premium.

Not to delve too deeply into the history and technicalities of it, but the long and the short of it is back in the early nineties to late aughts (and even a bit further into the 10s), transferring and storing data over the web was not as fast, plentiful, and affordable as it is now. Filesize was a much more important consideration than the fidelity of an image when displaying it on the web. Especially so when you’re a hobbyist on a budget and paying for your own webhosting, or using a free service with a modest upload limit (even per file!). Besides, what good would it be to post your images online if it takes ages to load them over people's dial-up Internet? Don't even get me STARTED on the meager memory and power the average iGPU had to work with, too.

The original comic strip's resolution was a little more than halved and saved as a GIF rather than a large PNG. That's about an 82.13% reduction in filesize!

So in the early days it was very common for people to take their scans, photographs, and digital drawings and scale them down and publish them as smaller lossily compressed JPEGs or lossless GIFs, the latter of which came at the cost of color range. But it had a wider range of browser support and the feature to be used for animations compared to its successor format, PNG ("PNG's not GIF").

You'd've been hard-pressed to find Hussie use any PNGs himself then. In fact, I think literally the only times he's ever personally employed them and not delegate the artwork to a member of the art team were some of the tiny shrunken down text of a character talking far in the distance and a few select little icons.

PNGs support semi-transparency unlike GIFs, which is why Hussie used them to preserve the anti-aliasing on the text without having to add an opaque background color.

While PNGs can utilize over 16 million colors in a single image, GIFs have a hard limit of 256 colors per frame. For reference, this small image alone has 604 colors:

For those who can't do the math, 256 is a pretty damn small number.

Smaller still were the palettes in a great deal of MSPA's panels early on in its run. Amazingly, a GIF such as this only uses 7 colors (8 if you count the alpha (which it is)).

Not that they were always strictly so low; occasionally some in the later acts of Homestuck had pretty high counts. This panel uses all 256 spots available, in fact.

If he had lowered the number any smaller, the quality would have been god-awful.

To the untrained eye, these bands of color below may seem to be the result of a posterization filter (an effect that reduces smooth areas of color into fewer harsh solid regions), but it's really because the image was exported as a GIF with no dithering applied.

Dithering, to the uninitiated, is how these colors are arranged together to compensate for the paltry palette, producing illusory additional colors. There are three algorithms in Photoshop for this: Diffusion, Pattern, and Noise.

Above is the original image and below is the image reduced to a completely binary 1-bit black and white color palette, to make the effect of each dithering algorithm more obvious.

Diffusion seemingly displaces the pixels around randomly, but it uses error diffusion to calculate what color each pixel should be. In other words, math bullshit. The Floyd-Steinberg algorithm is one such implementation of it, and is usually what this type of error diffusion dithering is called in other software, or some misnomer-ed variation thereof.

The usage of Pattern may hearken back to retro video game graphics for you, as older consoles also suffered from color palette limitations. Sometimes called Ordered dithering because of the orderly patterns it produces. At least, I assumed so. Its etymological roots probably stem from more math bullshit again.

True to its name, Noise is noisy. It’s visually similar to Diffusion dithering, except much more random looking. At least, when binarized like this. Truth be told, I can’t tell the difference between the two at all when using a fuller color table on an image with a lot of detail. It was mainly intended to be used when exporting individual slices of an image that was to be “stitched” back together on a webpage, to mitigate visible seams in the dithering around the edges.

To sate your curiosity, here's how the image looks with no dithering at all:

People easily confuse an undithered gif as being the result of posterization, and you couldn't fault them for thinking so. They look almost entirely the same!

Although I was already aware of this fact when I was much younger, I'm guilty of posterizing myself while editing images back then. Figured I may as well reduce the color count beforehand to help keep the exported GIF looking as intended. I view this as a complete waste of time now, though, and amateurish. Takes away a bit of the authenticity of MSPA art, how the colors and details are so variable between panels. As for WHY they were so variable to begin with, choosing the settings to save the image as requires a judicious examination on a case-by-case basis. In other words, just playing around with the settings until it looks decent.

It's the process of striking a fine balance between an acceptable file size and a "meh, good enough" visual quality that I mentioned earlier. How many colors can you take away until it starts to look shit? Which dithering algorithm helps make it look not as shit while not totally ruining the compression efficacy?

Take, for example, this panel from Problem Sleuth. It has 16 colors, an average amount for the comic, and uses Diffusion dithering. Filesize: 34.5 KB.

Then there's this panel right afterwards. It has 8 colors (again, technically 7 + alpha channel since it's an animated gif), and uses Noise dithering this time. Filesize: 34.0 KB.

The more colors and animation frames there are, and the more complicated dithering there is, the bigger the file size is going to be. Despite the second panel having half the color count of the first, the heavily noisy dithering alone was enough to inflate the file size back up. On top of that, there's extra image information layered in for the animation, leaving only a mere 0.5 kilobyte difference between the two panels.

So why would Hussie pick the algorithm that compresses worse than the other? The answer: diffusion causes the dithering to jitter around between frames of animation. Recall its description from before, how it functions on nerd shit like math calculations. The way it calculates what each pixel's color will be is decided by the pixels' colors surrounding it, to put it simply. Any difference in the placement of pixels will cause these cascading changes in the dithering like the butterfly effect.

Diffusion dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 25.2 KB

This isn't the case with Noise or Pattern dithering, since their algorithms use either a texture or a definite array of numbers (more boring nerd shit).

Noise dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 31.9 KB

Pattern dithering, 16 colors. Filesize: 23.1 KB

There's a lot more I'd like to talk about, like the different color reduction algorithms, which dither algorithms generally compress better in what cases, and the upward and downward trends of each one’s use over the course of a comic, but since this isn’t a deep dive on GIF optimization, I might save that for another time. This post is already reaching further past the original scope it was meant to cover, and less than 10 images can be uploaded before hitting the limit, which is NOWHERE near enough for me. I should really reevaluate my definition of the word “tidbit”… Anyway, just know that this post suffers from sample selection bias, so while the panels above came from an early section of Problem Sleuth that generally had static panels with diffusion dithering and animated panels with noise dithering, there certainly were animated panels with diffusion later on despite the dither-jittering.

Alright, time to shotgun through the rest of this post, screw segueing. Increasing the contrast almost entirely with “Use Legacy” enabled spreads the tones of the image out evenly, causing the shadows and highlights to clip into pure black and white. The midtones become purely saturated colors. Using the Levels adjustment filter instead, moving both shadow and highlight input level sliders towards the middle also accomplishes the same thing, because, you know, linear readjustment. I'm really resisting the urge to go off on another tangent about color channels and the RGB additive color model.

Anyway, there aren't any examples in MSPA that are quite this extreme (at least in color, but I'll save that for a later post), but an image sufficiently high in contrast can be mistaken for being posterized at a glance. Hence the Guy Fieri banner. In preparation for this post, I was attempting to make a pixel-perfect recreation of that panel but hit a wall trying to figure out which and how many filters were used and what each one's settings were, so I sought the wisdom of those in the official Photoshop Discord server. The very first suggestion I got was a posterization filter, by someone who was a supposed senior professional and server moderator, no less. Fucking dipshit, there's too much detail preserved for it to be posterization. Dude totally dissed me and my efforts too, so fuck that moron. I spit on his name and curse his children, and his children's children. The philistines I have to put up with...

In the end, the bloody Guy Fieri recreation proved to be too much for me to get right. I got sort of close at times, but no cigar. These were some of the closest I could manage:

You might be left befuddled after all this, struggling to remember what the point of the blogpost even was. I had meant for it to be a clarification of GIFs and an argument against using the posterization filter, thinking it was never used in MSPA, but while gathering reference images, I found a panel from the Felt intermission that actually WAS posterized! So I’ll eat crow on this one... Whatever, it’s literally the ONE TIME ever.

I can tell it's posterization and not gif color quantization because of the pattern dithering and decently preserved details on the bomb and bull penis cane. There would have had to have been no dithering and way fewer colors than the 32, most of which were allotted to the bomb and cane. You can't really selectively choose what gets dithered or more colors like this otherwise.

Thank you for reading if you've gotten this far. That all might have been a lot to take in at once, so if you're still unclear about something, please don't hesitate to leave a question! And as always, here are the PSDs used in this post that are free to peruse.

#tidbit #homestuck #problem sleuth #gif #dithering #posterization

[mossmurdock]

grocery clerk suguru x youtuber reader... we r officially walking people (we r holding hands btw) @twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat i hope u dont mind being tagged but i know u were excited about this!!

OK! so this is such a specific concept but it is so very special to me. i imagine suguru working as a clerk with one of those cute little aprons some stores sometimes have their employees wear. so he's got this little job but then later at home he likes messing around online.

yes guys, im making him a little streamer in this au i couldn't help myself. (what games he likes to play specifically i'm not too sure about yet, but i think he likes to stream a variety of things!) he's got a small audience but he's found that it's a cool way for him to decompress so he really enjoys it!

anyway back to the reader. you come into the store suguru works at pretty frequently, with an array of impressively well picked groceries almost every single time. he likes to play this little game when gets bored on shift where he guesses what people are cooking based on what they buy, and you're by far his favourite any time he plays it.

it's a little embarrassing to admit, but you're kind of the best part of his week. always so kind even on days he notices you're in a rush or stressed out, bidding him a good day after you're done bagging your items, a small smile on your lips the few times you raise your head to look at him.

suguru notices that you seem to favor him anytime he's at the registers, feeling an odd sort of pride whenever he spots you scanning the lines and choosing his every-time. call him delusional, but it sort of becomes hard to ignore when you choose him even when a register with a much shorter line is available.

for some reason he's found it strangely difficult to break the ice with you, finding it hard to secede from his practiced script in the short time the two of you share a space. the most deviation he's been able to muster in the past weeks has been asking you if you'd like to sign up for the store's rewards card.

subconsciously searching for something to point out casually takes him a few troubling days, but he finally conjures something in the spur of the moment. right as he's handing you back your cash, suguru notices the vibrant colour of your nails; they're different from last months.

"I like your nails," he mentions quickly, semi distracted by the upcoming customer already beginning to place their items on the belt.

You look up from your bagging and Suguru is able to literally catch the way your face brightens, fixated on the flash of your teeth and the crinkle of your eye. It's the first time he's seen your cheeks rise up so high, delightfully different from the subtle smiles you've granted him till now.

"Thank you," you reply, a laugh laced into your voice. And then you're gone again, throwing a sincere good bye over shoulder, bag hung over your arm, and stepping out the automatic doors.

the interaction is short, brief enough to have suguru thinking about it the rest of the day. latching onto it enough that he finally buys that nail polish remover he's been needing to wipe away the chipped mess on his own fingertips. and maybe he repaints them new with you in mind.

it goes on like this for a little while. you notice the new colour on suguru the next time you see him and compliment it. he does the same for yours, mentioning how close it is to one of his favourite shades. actively holding back from slyly commenting on how you've been subtly matching it to his preferences based on your short conversations. blue, green, black; anything he mentions makes a subtle cameo onto the design of your nails in the following weeks or so.

he never explicitly mentions you during his little streams, but suguru does have this thing where he'll mention craving a specific food that's related to what he'd seen you buy that specific afternoon to his chat. it's fun to mention it to his few viewers, sometimes they'll recommend him tutorials on how to make certain things or even share their own recipes. it often ends rather jokingly, with crazy inedible recipes no one would dare follow, but some times it can be rather wholesome.

one night, he gets off stream and actually decides to check a few of them out. aimlessly scrolling through both the serious and unserious suggestions.

he never would have imagined recognizing your nails, jewelry, and voice after typing in the title of a video and pressing on it.

turns out the reader makes content themselves! they've got this semi-popular cooking channel they've been growing for the past two years or something like that. i like to think it started off as something sort of accidental for you. like one of your close friends liking your cooking so much that they beg you to share it.

then you just kind of picked up the habit of making different types of videos by following a vague schedule. you found yourself really enjoying the process of making the food and sharing the way you did it with people. one of your favourite parts is reading the comments of your videos and seeing how people's food turned out for them, if they liked the taste or if they cooked it for someone else.

it's been a motivator to indulge in your groceries a little more. eventually you switch over to buying at the more expensive grocery store more often in order to purchase higher quality ingredients.

it helps that you meet geto there, the cute clerk who has a sweet voice.

you grow to enjoy him being part of your routine. a small part of you even believes him ringing you up adds a dash of luck to how your cooking will turn out that week.

the more you've frequented, the chattier he's gotten, gracing you more with that silken voice of his. it almost reminds you of a warm meal.

but this afternoon seems odd.

geto can't seem to stop staring at your hands today.

#i totally forgot about this so here it is! #finished it up right before the last class of today :) #AHH IM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG ARI #it's just a cute thing atm and it will probably stay that way i need more cute writing in my arsenal #moss writes #god I havent used that tag in a bit LMAO #they would both be faceless content creators btw idk if i made that clear enough #this is unedited btw sorry! #jjk x reader #suguru x reader #geto x reader #suguru geto x reader #geto suguru x reader

[irish-dress-history]

Irish dress history sources online:

A list of sources for Irish dress history research that free to access on the internet:

Primary and period sources:

Text Sources:

Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT): a database of historical texts from or about Ireland. Most have both their original text and, where applicable, an English translation. Authors include: Francisco de Cuellar, Luke Gernon, John Dymmok, Thomas Gainsford, Fynes Moryson, Edmund Spenser, Laurent Vital, Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn

Images:

The Edwin Rae Collection: A collection of photographs of Irish carvings dating 1300-1600 taken by art historian Edwin Rae in the mid-20th c. Includes tomb effigies and other figural art.

National Library of Ireland: Has a nice collection of 18th-20th c. Irish art and photographs. Search their catalog or browse their flickr.

Irish Script on Screen: A collection of scans of medieval Irish manuscripts, including The Book of Ballymote.

The Book of Kells: Scans of the whole thing.

The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne by John Derricke published 1581. A piece of anti-Irish propaganda that should be used with caution. Illustrations. Complete text.

Secondary sources:

Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509-1610) by Constantia Maxwell published 1923. Contains a nice collection of primary source quotes, but it sometimes modernizes the 16th c. English in ways that are detrimental to the accuracy, like changing 'cote' to 'coat'. The original text for many of them can be found on CELT, archive.org, or google books.

An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish By Joseph Cooper Walker published 1788. Makes admirable use of primary sources, but because of Walker's assumption that Irish dress didn't change for the entirety of the Middle Ages, it is significantly flawed in a lot of its conclusions. Mostly only useful now for historiography. I discussed the images in this book here.

Chapter 18: Dress and Personal Adornment from A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland by P. W. Joyce published 1906. Suffers from similar problems to An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish.

Consumption and Material Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland Susan Flavin's 2011 doctoral thesis. A valuable source on the kinds of materials that were available in 16th c Ireland.

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy Volumes 1 and 2 by William Wilde, published 1863. Obviously outdated, and some of Wilde's conclusions are wrong, because archaeologists didn't know how to date things in the 19th century, but his descriptions of the individual artifacts are worthwhile. Frustratingly, this is still the best catalog available to the public for the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology. Idk why the NMI doesn't have an online catalog, a lot museums do nowadays.

Volume I: Articles of stone, earthen, vegetable and animal materials; and of copper and bronze

Volume 2: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities of Gold in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy

A Horsehair Woven Band from County Antrim, Ireland: Clues to the Past from a Later Bronze Age Masterwork by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 1998

Jewellery, art and symbolism in Medieval Irish society by Mary Deevy in Art and Symbolism in Medieval Europe- Papers of the 'Medieval Europe Brugge 1997' Conference (page 77 of PDF)

Looking the part: dress and civic status and ethnicity in early-modern Ireland by Brid McGrath 2018

Irish Mantles, English Nationalism: Apparel and National Identity in Early Modern English and Irish Texts by John R Ziegler 2013

Dress and ornament in early medieval Ireland - exploring the evidence by Maureen Doyle 2014

Dress and accessories in the early Irish tale, ‘The Wooing of Becfhola’ by Niamh Whitfield 2006

A tenth century cloth from Bogstown Co. Meath by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 2004

Tertiary Sources:

Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia edited by Sean Duffy published 2005

Re-Examining the Evidence: A Study of Medieval Irish Women's Dress from 750 to 900 CE by Alexandra McConnell

#resources #dress history #irish dress #irish history #early medieval #bronze age #textile history #late medieval #16th century #historical dress

[bsd-bibliophile]

Survey Dates: 11/15/2023 - 12/15/2023

Number of Participants: 326

Tumblr will not allow me to post pictures of all the survey results, so only part of them are included in this post. You can download and view the complete results here or view them in the BSD-Bibliophile Online Library.

Thank you to everyone who participated! If you are interested in viewing the results from past surveys, here are the results from 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.

View the complete survey results here or on the BSD-Bibliophile Online Library.

Comments:

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(⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)

:)

:3

All my favs are the ones who aren't from Japan💀

As a huge bsd fan, I admire how commited you are to the blog. Have a good day, as well as a happy new year!!!!! I´ve been filling out your annual surveys since 2020, and I´m glad that you still carry them every year. Thanks!!

BSD Bibliophile is generally such a cool and useful resource, I’ve used it both for fun as well as for school work (I didn’t have my physical copy of Akutagawa’s works with me and needed to cite “Spinning Gears”/“Cogwheels”). Thank y’all for everything you do!

BSD-Bibliophile, the website and the Tumblr posts have been invaluable to me in my literary journey. I thank you so much for your service to the community, I can't express how happy I am that the lesser known or completely unknown authors are getting more western attention. Thank you so much!!

comments on my answers: I used to own more books but when I emigrated I could bring only one. The book I brought here from Russia is Dazai’s stories collection. Since many of the books are available in Japanese for free, I also read them on aozora app.

Finding Japanese literature from these authors is actually pretty difficult in Scotland. Also, Dazai and Nakahara are such fangirl answers, but I actually adore both of their works

First of all, sorry for my horrendous English 💀 I love this page so much! I was absolutely lost as to where to read the translations of the LN, wan! And others, it had been so helpful for me when it comes to my time enjoying BSD. Also, I enjoyed a lot that one section of like fun facts of the real authors and I was so happy when I found the bunch of English translation of the real authors, it really made my day.Now when I want to read a book of the real authors, or read something BSD related I know where ti search for first! I absolutely adored all the work you put into this (or the team (?) I don't know how mane people is running the page:(), thank you for all of it, keep going! 💗

for the images included on posts; the only thing i don't like about them is that they're a bit too tall (making the post look too long as well). i think images would still be nice if they were longer width than height! also, thank you for all of the work you do running bsd bibliophile! you've put together such an amazing and invaluable resource for bsd fans and non-fans alike.

Great work!

Have a nice day!!

Hello! - princy :3

Honestly, I would read stuff by the authors but I just don't have that kind of money

hope you are having a great day!

I absolutely love BSD it made me get into japness literature, as well did Bungo To Alchemist. ALSO BSD LIGHT NOVEL ON TOP!!

I appreciate the work you do! It has really expanded my taste in literature, and for that I am very grateful <3

I appreciate your work🥰😘❤

I believe that having more of a separation from the BSD characters and the real life authors in the bibliophile’s posts would be highly appreciated from a lot of other people; and not just myself

I bought Summer of the Ubume by Kyougoku Natsuhiko when it still was in print in English. I took it with me when rereading and lost my copy. I’m kicking myself years later for not buying a used copy for $50. Earlier this year I was able to borrow a copy from a library and took a picture of every page so I can keep it with me that way. I was delighted to find a scan PDF of the novel when your tumblr linked stories to read for Halloween. Thank you for sharing and thank you whomever made that scan. The BSD Gaiden novel is my favorite thing from BSD and I’m deeply thankful to the person who shared their amazing fan translation. It’s led me to buying all of the English translations of Ayatsuji’s works, plus the two volumes of the manga. I’m a newer follower of your tumblr, but have enjoyed reading each new quote and seeing ones I’ve recognized. Thank you for your work, it’ll definitely be inspiration when I want to read more Japanese literature.

I enjoy the BSD-Bibliophile page on tumblr! I like reading parts (?) of the authors' works and i've become more interested in their works. Thanks for all that you do!! :D

I have the page bookmarked in my browser so that I can check it out from time to time. Also I love Chuuya

I honestly love this website like literally. This bibliophile has helped me Soo much like finding the authors I want to read and learning more about the authors featured. Honestly, words can't describe how grateful I am that this site being created to help accessing literature more easier

I just want you to know that i adore all the effort that goes into this page and that its (In my opinion) a staple of the fandom

I look forward to the survey every year to see how far I’ve come in interacting with Japanese literature. Thanks for running the blog and library, it’s an amazing resource. Best, Comical tuber

I love BSD bibliophile so damn much, whatever BSD related author work and BSD manga (both wan and anthologies) weren't possible for me to find this easily. This website is the work of art. My favourite place

I love BSD-Bibliophile Online Library! Thank you for managing it!

I love the 'recently published' section!

I love your blog and what you do for the fandom! It really scratches the itch which is my obsession with BSD and classic/20th C literature <3

I love your site so much, it's made it so easy to get more info about Japanese authors and figure out what else I want to read. Thank you so much!i love your work!!

I personally believe that using advertisement through mangas and animes specially bsd connects me to the world of books one more time Also I’m grateful for free online websites for putting pdfs of books that I can’t easily have access in my country

I really appreciate all the information you have online here. I have learned a lot and I admire you and your passion. This might sound weird but I truly hope I can collect and read Japanese Literature and organise information as you do when I am older.

I really like your blog, keep it up :3

I really want to read Q's Dogra Magra but I think it's only been translated completely in french so far. Thank you so much for your database! It makes it so much easier to access learning.

I think it's so cool that you're doing these surveys! I think this bibliophile project is just awesome in general tho :) (also dang its hard to choose a fave char) lots of <3 <3 <3

I want to read many more books of the real authors so i cannot yet judge who my favorite will be. Dazai's works are the easiest to get access to in my country and I got Chuuya's poems as a gift so I am still hunting for more :)

I want to read some of their books but i'm to scared of telling my mom this fact ┻━┻︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻

I wasn't sure if that question about reading Japanese lit was about reading it in Japanese or not

I will try to get more into this Library ! It's really good and good job for the the tumblr blog, i love it !

I would like if the quotes didn't repeat a lot– Like finding more than 4 posts of the same quote is weird to me at least... instead of doing the same authors in repetition, do more characters that have been published a few times in the blog 🙌🏻

I’m a BSD anime fan who would like to try some of the works by the authors the characters are based on but hasn’t gotten around to figuring out a good entry point for people who don’t usually read literature

I'm new to the fandom, but I'm looking forward to check out any translation that are available (I plan to read at least the work the ability is referring to for a start)

I'm so thankful for your website making Japanese literature available, as I live in a somewhat rural area. Keep up the good work!

I'm very grateful for the resources that had been accumulated by bsd bibliophile, really, I've only been able to nurture my interest in Japanese literature and grow to be passionate about it because I had such easy access to the translated works so thanks a lot for the work you do!

I've just decided to make use of the online library and I'm very excited! I'll check of Oda and Nikolai first because they are most interesting to me :)

i've remembered about the bibliophile purely by chance. in a span of a single night, i've read another media that draws heavy inspiration from japanese literature – ""hashihime of the old book town"". i say ""finished"", yet i'm only done with a single route of this novel. i plan on seeing it through the end. i am enamoured by this script. it's as If i've found true literature again. i truly do not know why im saying this. forgive me If my words are unclear in my ramblings. i am simply here to pick up some kyusaku. maybe then i will be able to fully unravel the fabric of this novel, thread by thread.

I've used this blog to help open myself up to more Japanese literature for years now, ever since I first got into bad, and I can't thank you enough for running this!

Just followed a little while ago so my answers probably aren't that helpful, sorry! I'm looking forward to going through your blog though! Hope you have a nice day/night! :)

Just started following the blog recently tbh, but I’m excited to check out the online library!

Keep up the good work!! :)

Keep up with the good work! I'm always happy to see your content

Love your blog and everything you do!!!

My 1st fav character is Atsushi, but Chuuya's also on top :))

My book count is prolly squewed as I had to go off of memory (since I left many behind in the US at my parents house). I counted Japanese fiction from non BSD authors but not manga and light novels. Also I used to watch & read BSD but no longer do so, but still enjoy Japanese literature.

sorry i took this for fun and wanna read a lot of multiple authors works but uh i havent come around to it yet (also money 😭)

Thank you :)

Thank you <3

Thank you for all the posts you have posted! I can find it hard at times to have the motivation to sit down and READ lol but you inspire me to read more with all the quotes you have shared with us on your blog. <3 Take care!

Thank you for all you do

Thank you for all you do <3

thank you for creating and running this beautiful blog anne♡✨.

Thank you for creating this amazing website ! :D through this website i can learn more about the authors and im happy because of it thank you once again !! <3

thank you for everything you do!

Thank you for letting me know of the library! I've been wanting to read the authors' works but couldn't find them along with money issues

Thank you for providing information that I could not find in anywhere else on the internet in English!

Thank you for the hardwork!! <3

thank you for you blog! literally my go to anytime i need any bsd related! it is literally invaluable and im so so grateful to you!

thank you for your hard work <3 i'm currently studying japanese, because i really want to read japanese literature in its original language and translate it, but until then i will continue relying on english translations - most of which i was only able to find on your site. again, i thank you and the translators from the bottom of my heart for providing us with such amazing resources and translations for free <3

Thank you for your hard work and efforts to share and compile the legally available works of the BSD authors! Your site has allowed me to appreciate BSD as well as Japanese literature itself a lot more.

Thank you for your hard work o7

Thank you for your hard work! Have a nice day:)

Thank you for your hard work! Was it not BSD-Bibliophile I'd be completely lost with researching irl authors and their art of writing. You helped me lots of times.

thank you for your hardwork! i appreciate what you do <3

Thank you for your work and your posts! :D

Thank you for your work at BSD-Bibliophile. For the research that I am conducting and for leisure purposes, the curated library is immensely helpful. I am happy to see that interest has grown in Japanese literature alongside the depth of available resources.

Thank you for your work! It’s always a bright spot in my day to see these quotes :)

Thank you for your work! Your blog has been a great source of information for me for a few years now. Sending love and hugs 🌸

Thank you for your work!!

Thank you so much for all you've done for the community!!!

Thank you!

Thanks :D

Thanks for all the work you do

Thanks for all your work! It's because of you guys that I've been able to read as much as I have (and will continue to do)!!!

Thanks for this resource, it's helpful as a Universal Literature student

the online library has really helped in finding japanese literature

The online library helped me so much in getting to know more about japanese literature thanks a lot for you ♥️

The website has been of great help to find my way around the literature! Truly a godsend! Keep up the great work

The world of literature is a big one & some of it aren't really that accessible. It's great that there are more people translating these previously untranslated works so we can see just how unique each author's style is

There were questions asking for "favorite Japanese BSD author", but those questions were very misleading. First of all, the characters in BSD aren't authors; they don't do or haven't done writing for living or anything along the lines. Secondly, said questions made it sound more like you were asking for whether I like Asagiri, Harukawa, Kanai, Hoshikawa or some other creators who are credited as authors of BSD. They are BSD authors, not the characters like you made it sound like in your questions. If you are asking about real-life authors who happen to have characters based on them in BSD, leave out BSD from the questions, or specify them with something like "Which Japanese author do you like the most, who has a character based on them in BSD?". Last I would like to suggest adding option to the question regarding BSD media, where people who are ex-BSD fans could specify that they've been previously fans, but don't consume or follow the series anymore. The option could be literally just "Previously have been BSD fan, but don't consume any of the official content anymore". I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people like me who have enjoyed BSD in the past, but now just enjoy Japanese literature alone or through some other medias that have nothing to do with BSD. Thanks for the annual survey as always. It's been interesting to see how much the fandom reads and who are the authors who people read in the first place. I wish more people would pay attention to some less popular authors, as there are plenty of hidden gems and your favorite author doesn't have to be the same as your favorite BSD character.

there's a redditor in r/templeofes who's working on translating dogra magra and they're working very hard :D

This blog is a national treasure, thank you all <3

This initiative is so beautiful, thank you for all the hard work.

This website is amazing!!!!!! It’s hard to find Japanese classics in America but this list has them all ❤️

Tumblr doesn't show me many of your posts, so I will try to interact more to see them ^.^

Very cool survey! Thanks

Well have have read many of Fyodor dostoevsky books but not any Japanese novels or poems

When I first got into bsd your online library was an invaluable resource and the only reason I have read works by bsd Japanese authors. I use it less now because my hyperfixation has waned but I still really appreciate all that you do and the resources made available to fans. Thank you!

will check the BDS-Bibliophile website <3 hope u have a nice day

yooo!! thanks for this super awesome survey!! happy easter <33 -a migrating tumblrer

You’re one of the best resources I have for BSD and JP literature. I’m eternally grateful for all the work you do

#bsd-bibliophile #survey #results #survey results #2023 #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[thechanelmuse]

How genealogy is used to track Black family histories

Our names are important to us. They tell us who we are and often, who we come from. So imagine suddenly discovering the last name you’ve always carried… might not actually be the name you should have. 

Alex Neason began looking into her family’s history after discovering her great grandfather’s name was different from what she believed for her whole life. In her search to discover the story of that last name, she enlisted genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith.

For Black Americans, genealogy can fill in the blanks left by the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. Services like the Freedmen’s Bureau and Slave Voyages provide free access to records and documents to help with that search. We talk about the power of genealogy in fostering knowledge and connection for Black Americans.

Source

If you click on the word “source,” it’ll take you to the article where you’ll see a LISTEN button. It’s a 30-minute audio that discusses the info provided in the article even further. Y’all know I’m big on getting people to trace their lineage. All that “we don’t know where we come from.” Who told you that? Everything in the US is in plain sight. Everything.

Discover your fam. 

I assist others when they reach a roadblock, like getting past the “1870 wall.” But you can’t beat the feeling of you discovering them on your own. Unearthing your history, seeing photos, reading stories that were stored, and saying their names that haven’t been said for centuries. I’ve been tracing mine (scanning, logging) since my family reunion in 2005 through oral family history and obituaries (those are records), and since 2011 through databases of US archived records like ancestry.com (purchased by BlackStone) and familysearch.org (free database owned by the Latter-day Saints Church). There are others, but those are the main two I use for comparative results.  

Archiving Centers, Census Records & Other Records

There are archiving centers in every state and DC that also keep records for those particular states and the federal capital. There’s a footnote on all records that tells you where they are housed. And please...Don’t just do a simple pedigree chart of your family tree. Get to know your great-aunts, great-uncles and cousins. It’s also helpful for seeing who lived around who (fam often lived next door to each other) and puts more of the pieces together of your complete family story. You can see the land and acres they owned or your fam today still owns, as well as if that land was stolen from them.

US census records go back to year 1790. Depending on when or if your ancestors were enslaved or free: you’ll find them attached to slave logs that have been made available online or kept in archiving centers (you go there), or or they’ll be listed on census records as free persons (1790-1710), free colored male/female (1820-1840), Black (1850-1920), Mulatto (1850-1890, 1910-1920) or Negro (1900, 1930-1950). “New” census documents are put on sites, like ancestry.com, every 10 years. As of 2023, you can only trace from 1950 to 1790. The 1960 census will be out in 2030. How to trace from 1950 to today, birth, death and residential records. So again, depending on the census year, you’ll notice your ancestors racial classification change throughout documents for obvious reasons. 

Keep in mind that the the largest slave trade for the United States was the domestic slave trade. In house human trafficking and selling (in addition to property insurance of enslaved people and the selling of enslaved people as the building block of Wall Street’s stock exchange) is how US capitalism was built. So just because you know a lot of your people are from Tennessee, for example, it doesn't mean that’s where that line stayed. I’ve found my ancestors throughout 7 states (so far). Another example, people with Louisiana roots damn near always have ancestors who were trafficked from early Virginia. Going beyond year 1790, records were kept in Christian and Catholic churches and old family history books so most of those documents are scanned online and/or still kept in the churches. I’m talking books books. 

If your ancestors walked the Trail of Tears, or were caught as prisoners of war or trafficked to Indian Nations to be enslaved, you’ll find an Oklahoma Indian Territory and Oklahoma Freedmen Rolls section on ancestry.com. You can discover more info on sites, like the Oklahoma Historical Society. (Every state has its own historical society for archived genealogical records.) 

Here’s the National Archives.

Also for Oklahoma, you may also find your ancestors in Indian Census Rolls (1855-1940) as [insert tribe] Freedmen, depending if they weren’t rejected through the “blood quantum” Dawes Rolls for not being the new light to white status. You’ll see their application and the listed questions & answers with or without a big void stamp. And on the census, you’ll even see the letter I (pronounced like eye) changed to the letter B. This is also for those in Louisiana.

Freedmen’s Bureau & Bank Records 

There were Freedmen’s Bureau records and Freedman’s Savings Bank records in other states. To see if your ancestors had their records in those systems, you can search by their name. The state and age will pop up with people having that name. It’ll give you a wealth of other info, like all of the kids and other fam if they were present or mentioned to the person who logged that info in. With the Freedmen Bank records, you can see how much money your ancestors put in there (that was later stolen from them by way of the United States government), which is still there today. It’s the biggest bank heist in US history (that they try to keep hush hush) with the equivalence of more than $80 million in today’s value stored in there today. Back then, it was valued almost close to $4 million. Stolen wealth met with bootstrap lectures. 

Here’s a short video on that heist:

Today the bank is called the Freedman's Bank Building, located right on Pennsylvania Ave. Plain sight. 

Trace your lineage. 

There’s a lot more that I can list. But this is just the basics. Like I said before, it’s a more rewarding feeling when you discover your ancestors by yourself. You may reach roadblocks. Take a break. Try going the “Card Catalog” route on ancestry.com’s search engine. Don’t skip the small details. 

SN: Slave Voyages isn’t a genealogical site, but rather a database for slave ship logs and the estimates of purchased Africans who became human cargo to be enslaved by country like USA, or by colonizers like Spain, Great Britain, etc.

#black americans #genealogy #lineage #ancestry #census records #freedmen's bureau #freedman's bureau #freedmen's bank #freedman's bank #american heist

[saltydkdan]

Salty, may I ask which you recommend more: the one piece manga or anime. I wanna get into it but I also want a recommendation on which one may be better to start with depending on the pros and cons. Anyways I apologies if this is a dumb thing to ask.

Sure! One Piece is a really interesting beast when it comes to the difference between it's anime and manga, and at the end of the day it depends on your preferences- However yes, there are Pros and Cons to each! For this ask, I'll be trying my best to stick to the Official options available to you.

Also, this post specifically will be about how to best GET INTO the series, not necessarily a critique on the content of it! (I'll gladly do a separate write up on that eventually if anyone is interested in my thoughts on the Pros and Cons of the series itself)

Anyway, here are my personal thoughts:

MANGA

(This is my preferred way to experience the story)

PROS

-I'm not a manga purist by any means HOWEVER, the One Piece Manga is really good

-The pacing is really great (especially initially). In the first half, arcs are very quick and snappy! And even as they got progressively longer in length I didn't mind because by that point the story already gripped me.

-The art is wonderful in both black and white, and the official colored scans (which you can find online)

-This isn't really a "pro" per say, but it's something I enjoy doing. When I read, I like to put on some of the soundtrack from the anime. I usually find stuff like "Tense One Piece Music" or "Emotional One Piece Music" and listen to it as I read. It really enhances the experience for me personally. I also like to look up clips of arcs from the anime that I'm reading or already finished to see what they look like, and also see them in a fun new way. I feel like this sort of mixed approach is optimal for me.

CONS

-You have to read 😔

-There are many ways to read One Piece and in many different languages. There's black and white and colored manga- however just be careful. The best one TRANSLATION wise is the official release, and while you may find other options, some older "unofficial" translations are VERY outdated (I once saw one where Zoro casually dropped slurs)

-That also being said: Even though the official translation is the best, it is stuck in black and white. Many official colored scans were never officially licensed in English, and because of that aren't as accessible.

-Collecting it physically is fun, but can get VERY pricey. Like... hoo boy. Thankfully they sell compendiums that collect a metric shit ton of chapters, however the paper/print quality is noticeably cheaper. So if you want to collect them, the smaller volume releases are the way to go. That being said, I would just suggest using the Shonen Jump App by Viz Media. It's the best official way to support the series officially, as well as the cheapest for the average consumer! $3 a month for the entire library as well as other series + getting new chapters updated every week is great. I'm not sponsored or anything either, I just really like the model. So if you find yourself really enjoying the series, THEN you can go about collecting it physically if you want!

ANIME

PROS

-It's animated (obviously)

-You have a choice of either the Japanese Sub or English Dub. This also boils down to preference but from my experience they're both great options!!

-I'll get into it in the "Cons" section, but the One Piece anime is VERY long, like... kind of in a not so good way at certain points. However, I've heard that even though some parts are a bit too long, it's one of those things that if you really get into it, you'll love the fact that it feels like a never ending adventure! Not my experience, but it's what others have told me!

-This is gonna sound crazy, but Filler Arcs. A lot of people don't like these, and I get why, but they are very easily skippable if you want to look up a guide, and some of them can actually be really short and fun (as well as add a bit of extra flavor to the story). One of the best examples is an arc called "G-8". Even Manga readers recommend it, so you know it's good and gives each of the characters some fun moments!

CONS

-You may be aware already, but the One Piece anime has a very bad reputation of having HORRIBLE pacing. Now, to be fair, many people say that the pacing only gets truly horrible AFTER a very specific arc about halfway through the series (which is where a lot of anime watchers jump ship to the manga)

However, I'll be honest... I wasn't a super huge fan of the pacing from the beginning. To clarify, I STARTED with the anime. I don't have a super great attention span, so having to wait around 38 or so episodes for "Arlong Park", the arc that people suggest you get to before deciding whether to keep going or quit, was very difficult for me at first. I got through it, and I'm glad I did, but as soon as I did, I decided to switch over to the manga and had a much easier time.

-I find the show's music very repetitive at times. That's not to say the music is necessarily bad, I love the One Piece OST! It's just... over the years they have barely updated the soundtrack. Every arc you might here one or two new tracks, however a lot of the time you'll hear the same tracks replayed in the same sort of situations. ("OVERTAKEN" is an AMAZING track, but if I hear it one more time I'm gonna snap)

-This is a bit of a nitpick but I need to say it. One Piece's sound effects, while iconic, are also extremely outdated. When you start the series and hear the older-styled Toei Animation sound design, it is super charming because it fits with the older visuals. However in more modern One Piece, which visually looks incredible, THEY STILL USE THE OLD SOUND EFFECTS AND THEY JUST DON'T FIT.

TOEI, UPDATE YOUR SOUND LIBRARY!!!

ANYWAY...

Anyway, I hope my funny little list here helps!! Sorry it's so long, went a bit off the handle. But I think this is a fine enough starter guide and may help you get started!

#salty asks #saltydkdan #one piece #Manga #long boys

[trigun-manga-overhaul]

TRIGUN ULTIMATE OVERHAUL JUNE UPDATE

OVERHAUL UPDATE 06/02/23 - New website and pins by Ventus Pins.

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!

WE ALSO WANT TO WELCOME THE 3000+ FOLLOWERS! THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!

Hey everyone and welcome back to another update post!

We're finally beginning to pick up work again after a bit of a hiatus period. We're taking it slow, as to not push ourselves back into work too early. Our scanner has still been busy at work for this entire period, since there is obviously a lot to scan and magazines to collect.

Information on the new site and the Imgur issue below for those who haven't read previous posts!

Also read about the pins using Overhaul 2.0 cleaned official art below by Ventus Pins.

~~

Our scanner and fellow member of the team, Arth, has set up a new hosting site for our Overhaul project, as we ran into issues with our previous hosting site. Imgur updated their TOS and this included the removal of all posts that were tagged as mature. Unfortunately, it was not possible for us to see which of our posts were marked as such, and when chapters began disappearing, we had no option to appeal the mature mark.

Instead, Arth has paid for a domain for Overhaul, and we've begun updating all links for reading the chapters online. This new site is a lot more phone friendly to read on, and in general a lot more straight to the point. There are no ads or anything else beside the pages, so it's sparse but it does its job. It might be a temporary hosting site, but for now it's a better alternative to Imgur.

If you come across any broken Imgur links when you try to read a chapter online, don't worry, it will get updated soon!

Let us know how you feel about the new hosting site when you have a chance to see it, and we always welcome feedback if there's something you feel like is missing or if you find a mistake.

~~

Trigun pins will be available tomorrow!

We've shared a piece of our Overhaul 2.0 cleaned official art with Ventus Pins and it has been made into a pins that will become available tomorrow from their website or their Instagram

Free pins were generously given to the entire Overhaul team, and after receiving my own, I will say I am quite pleased. It is a large, solid pin. quality is high, the pin is hefty and doesn't bend easy. The white parts are indented, giving the surface lines texture, otherwise it is completely smooth. There are four pins in the back with their own locking mechanism.

All thanks goes to Ventus Pins for the amazing pins and for the opportunity to take part in their creation, as well as their gift to the Overhaul team!

~~

Anyway, that was all for this update!

SEE YOU GUYS NEXT MONTH!

#trigun #trigun maximum #trimax #trigun manga #manga #fan project #trigun overhaul #trigun ultimate #trigun ultimate overhaul #infodump

[textfromthelookout]

Did you hear of the news?

I have. :(

Everyone else has their tributes so, here, a summary of my experience with Dragon Ball.

I was in fourth grade art class. A kid had the February 2005 issue of Shonen Jump, back when Shonen Jump was still physically printed here. I recognized Atem on the front cover because the Blockbuster around the corner from our house had DVDs (I think they were DVDs and not VHSs then since I distinctly remember it having a menu and special features) of some of the later episodes of Duelist Kingdom and my brother and I watched them on repeat. So I was like oh, hey, what's this? They make books of that stuff? I don't remember the conversation but the kid ended up giving me that issue, and I took it home with me.

There were a LOT of significant, groundwork things happening in that issue, now that I think about it. We were just beginning to see Sanji truly in action against Pearl. The Dark Tournament was in it's early stages still with Roto fucking around and finding out against Kurama. Sakura shears off her hair in a move that rearranged sexualities the world over. The reason Atem was on the cover was because Yu-Gi-Oh Millennium World was just debuting its first and second chapter. Bleach wasn't even serialized yet. And Dragon Ball, of course, was also there, about a hundred and fifty chapters ahead of everybody else.

Keep in mind that this was my first experience with manga, period. So my very first experience with Dragon Ball opened on this:

and ended on this:

Yeah. Truth be told, at the time Yu Yu Hakusho piqued my interest more than Dragon Ball (a guy fighting with plants? how creative!) but I never did forget these chapters. I thought the art style was so different from the others.

At some point after this, probably between several months and a year and a half, the TV happened to be on one evening when Toonami was airing Dragon Ball Z. Oh hey, I said, I recognize that art, I know those characters. So I hung around and watched some of episode 281. Two things about watching that episode stick with absolute crystal clarity in my mind to this day. Firstly: Buu choking Vegeta out with his arm freaked me the FUCK out as a child. I could not tell you why I had a fear reaction to it but hey, there you go. The second is this:

Specifically I remember 'You died once. If anything happens to you now, you won't exist anymore. There'll be nothing I can do to bring you back.' Not precisely word for word over the years, but Schemmel's tone of voice on this particular lineread. If I had to guess I'd say it was because at that point in my life, uh, death was kinda permanent? So wait, what do you mean died ONCE. Doesn't that apply to everyone?

This still wasn't enough to get me super invested in it though, it just didn't seem like something that would appeal to me that much. So a couple years go by, I don't think about it all that much, and then of course, TFS hits the scene and drops DBZ Abridged. So you know. As a shithead middle schooler with a shithead sense of humor I thought it was the best damn thing since sliced bread. (My biggest character flaw is that I still think a lot of Season 1 is genuinely funny)

And that was really the extent of my interaction with the franchise for the next several years. Say what you will about DBZA but they did manage to put it all together such that someone who had a nonexistent concept of what the original context was could grok it with not a lot of effort. Some time in high school, I think I was around 15, I decided to bite the bullet and read all the manga, as much to increase the funny factor of DBZA as sheerly for the sake of being able to say I had. Stick it to the other weebs, y'know. Now they can't say I didn't know anything about good anime. This was unfortunately at a time when all that was available online were dirty poor-quality scans and questionable translations, but read it I did. I went 'yep, that sure is about what I expected', and proceeded to get on with my life. GT came and went, I looked up and saw Battle of Gods coming out and went 'oh hey that's still a thing huh', kinda was peripherally aware of all the divisiveness of Super as it was happening, didn't really pay it much attention, just stuck to DBZA and quite a lot of wiki-ing.

And then, this time of year about three years ago now, in the middle of conversation with @prophecydungeon, Dragon Ball somehow came up. Something to do with 'Even though I'm not hugely into DBZ's story or whatever Toriyama does have some great character designs' (yes I was referring to Vegeta and Future Trunks at the time, no i will not stop being predictable, yes i am a parody of myself). They eventually brought up the DBS Broly movie and said, and i quote: 'that was a solid 1.5h of unbelievably fun and wacky animation'. Having seen the Gogeta vs Broly part of it on twitter and been like 'damn that animation's kinda off the hook actually, good for them good for them', my response was to be like. Oh word? I've got a spare hour and a half to kill, sure, fuck it, why not, time to watch DBS Broly.

I think that movie was precision crafted to hit me in the hyperfixation, if we're being honest. Opening on a solid 20 minutes of Lore and Worldbuilding and then having most of the rest of the runtime being mindless slobberknocker fun by way of some of the hardest animation flexes ever? I was done for.

In summation. I have been aware of Dragon Ball for a lot of my life, in that its presence was pervasive and enduring as I grew up. I may have been late to the game of actually wholeheartedly enjoying it, but enjoy it I do. Dragon Ball is the roots of a vast tree of anime, and in reading it I began to understand why that is. I respect it for that, and I love it for that. My current fixation may have shifted, but as far as time devoted to one individual thing goes... it took me a year and a half to watch my way through all of the anime and read all of the manga. ALL of it. So there's something good in there, I'd say.

#rip to a legend #text from the mod #tangentially related: i am not actually dead #it's just that between school and my job and the pirate brainrot #(the previous four months of which was feverishly consumed with a 16k word project) #i have had neither time nor impetus to make dragon ball funnies #there is also the fact that my stupid autism brain is still fuming over the website changes #that have fucked up the Aesthetique of the text posts and made them much more annoying to get in a usable form #thus adding steps to what was a simple and comfortable process #and aforementioned idiot dumb brain has not stopped pitching a bitch fit over the inconvenience. #i know it's a stupid hangup. believe me i am fully aware. but there is so little i can do about it #so i am sorry about my long absence. i really truly am. #especially to the asks that have been chillin in my inbox for all this time now #it's just that they're interesting questions that deserve me giving 100% of my brainpower to them ya feel #i want to devote appropriate attention to these little funnies and not phone it in or half ass it LOL

[maniculum]

Wait, bestiaries are real? I've only seen them in videogames. Can you find scans of them online? Or maybe ask libraries for books worh pictures/scans? Or is it something you need a degree to be able to access?

Not only are they real, they were a pretty popular genre during the Middle Ages. TTRPGs and video games get the word from that tradition. If you want to check them out but don't have university access, here are some suggestions:

The Aberdeen Bestiary is a particularly well-regarded example, and the University of Aberdeen has scanned the whole thing and made it publicly available under Creative Commons, with a transcription of the Latin and a translation into modern English. Which is an extremely cool thing for them to do. You can find it here:

If you prefer your media physical, the Bodley Bestiary is from the same manuscript tradition as the Aberdeen Bestiary and is thus very similar. There's a complete translation with full-color illustrations published in a very nice slipcover edition by the Folio Society -- if you search for, like, "folio society bestiary", there are copies available for around $30.

If that's a bit steep, there's a translation of a Latin bestiary which I believe is of the same tradition (I'm honestly not sure what manuscript it's working from; I don't have a copy of this one) by T. H. White called The Book of Beasts. You may know T. H. White from his fiction writing, most famously The Once and Future King. (And if that doesn't sound familiar to you, it's the retelling of the Arthurian legend that Disney's Sword in the Stone is based on.) You can get it for under $10 if you look for used copies.

If you'd prefer an overview rather than a deep dive into a specific bestiary, a fellow named David Badke has been maintaining and improving a seriously impressive database of bestiary entries for over twenty years now. Every beast listed in his index has a general description, then tabs along the top of that entry that quote different bestiary sources directly, provide a bibliography, point you to (frequently digitized) manuscripts in which the beast appears, and show a gallery of illustrations of said beast. You can find all that here:

If you're only familiar with bestiaries as they exist in games, I should warn you that while games usually pair the description of the beast with, like, how to fight it, medieval bestiaries usually pair the description with... spiritually edifying metaphors to help you understand what you can learn from this beast. Which isn't as much fun, unless you're a monk I guess.

Obviously everyone participating in the Bestiaryposting activity we're doing every week on this blog should be cautious accessing those resources or risk spoilers, especially since the Aberdeen Bestiary is the source I'm using for it.

#ask

[longlostlorian]

I don't want to add on to that good webcomic post with what I'm p sure is just my own fruitless navelgazing, but I started doing webcomics as a kid in the mid-aughts and the scene was basically unrecognizable from what it is now. I would come home from school and post sketchbook comics scanned in with minimal touchups, and I don't think I've ever gotten as much engagement on anything in all the years since. I didn't know how to implement a comments section (I was hardcoding everything in html on a domain my dad helped set up for me, lol) but I got tons of emails from excited/curious readers every week! A phpbb board (early internet forum) with 300+ human members (and all the fun of viagrabots I had to cull by hand)! People were just excited by what it was possible to see online. And that was for a bad comic made by a kid with minimal skills that nobody remembers today!

For better or worse, the grand majority of readers live on apps now. Webtoons and tapas host hundreds of the most niche, beautiful passion projects you can imagine, better than nearly anything available 20 years ago, but there's just as many stories that were literally churned out by content farms (studios with large teams producing a groupthink product they aim to sell/IP farm - in other words, something that's nobody's baby). And by and large, the userbase is simply too young to discriminate. They've literally been trained to view webcomics as content. Does that mean readers today are the problem? No, of course not! And it's hard to complain about greater access to free, often queer art that's technically better than it ever has been before. I'm glad young readers have easy access to things like that.

But webcomics have become subject to the same level of scrutinization as any other aggregated content. Don't post for two weeks and people will talk about you like you've died, and a week later they stop talking about you altogether. The culture that I grew up with by and large doesn't exist anymore, though remnants of it struggle bravely on. Part of this comes as the "wild west" aspect of the internet circles the drain. When comics are produced with the knowledge that they will go up on webtoons/tapas - sites with strong censorship requirements - people dull down their work. They have to. Anything that goes on those sites automatically becomes a product. And so the truly weird, the unexpected, the indie, and the unapologetically, freely, charmingly bad (and messy) aspect of webcomics is systematically sucked out, both by the exacting standards of a captive consumer base and by the requirements of the platform.

I don't know that I view wt/tapas as net evils or anything like that. I use them myself. And I've heard things about places like comicfury that make it sound like a great substitute for the culture that used to exist around smackjeeves, drunkduck, etc. I also think it's more accessible than ever before for creators to monetize their work, even if for most of us, passion projects never come close to paying the bills. So maybe what I really miss is the early internet and I don't think it's ever coming back.

#webcomics #idek what to tag this as because i rarely longpost like this #so... #longpost #? #I find it hard to express myself/organize my thoughts in posts like this so i'll prob delete i just like to have my grandpa moments #reminiscing about the good old days!!! #(I still love webcomics)