#tumblr has really killed the ecosystem that used to exist here

[cupcakeshakesnake]

are you serious about believing that cats shouldn't be let outside?

why? like don't get me with that "oh they'll kill animals" well yeah, maybe they will. it's their natural instincts, and allowing them outside promotes a range of natural behaviours. so isn't it cruel to prevent that? and if you believe they shouldn't be allowed to go outside, isn't it cruel to choose to keep them inside instead of just *not having a cat?*

also for that arguement the rspb says " there is no scientific proof that predation by cats in gardens is having any impact on bird populations UK wide." while you may not be from the UK, the UK isn't a place where domestic cats are native either!

I wonder if you are American as so many Americans seem to have this weird opinion - is it very common to believe solely in indoor cats where you live? /gen q. it's very common to have cats that go outdoors here in the UK, and the concept of outdoor cats doesn't exist - if someone mentioned an outdoor cat I'd think of a cat that never went inside, like idk a barn cat. a website I found said 90% of cats in the uk can go outdoors but based on what I'm seeing on your feed and Tumblr it's very different for you?

Yes, I'm serious.

I suppose it's also a natural instinct of coyotes (US), foxes (UK) and hawks to kill cats, so isn't it cruel to prevent that? Cats may have natural instincts but they are not part of nature. They're not part of your local ecosystem, you brought it there. Do you only care about your cat fulfilling its 'natural instincts' and nothing else?

Let's say you have, oh I dunno, the Xenomorph from Alien. Let's say you love it a lot. Are you gonna set it free on the neighborhood because its natural instinct is to kill?

If you believe children shouldn't stick their fingers in the wall socket even if they want to, shouldn't you just not have children?

And yes there is plenty of scientific proof. Cats are not native ANYWHERE. If your cat just stays in a fenced garden or maybe a catio, it's fine, but studies found that cats' kill counts are so high because even 'freeroaming' cats roam less than their wild counterparts (i.e. jungle cats) and thus kill in a more concentrated area. They also kill for fun and not just to eat. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild, I'm directly quoting an article here.

Very weird of you to push the American button just because I disagree with you, I am in fact South Korean, and oh believe me outdoor cats are barely a thing here. Cats here are either firmly indoors or stray, save for very rare cases. Most cat owners (and people in general) live in the city and if they let their cats out, a variety of things could happen - such as their cats eating trash and getting sick, being hit by a car, or being killed (or worse, captured and tortured) by ill-meaning people (which has very well happened before).

+ Edit) Let's talk cruelty. What is more cruel, a cat being bored out of its skin, or the cat being flattened by a car, or countless small animals being torn apart and left to die? All of which is preventable with a few extra steps from the cat owner.

In my opinion, having cats (or any other pet) is a lot like raising children. Of course their needs should be paid attention to, but they themselves don't always know the best way to go about fulfilling those needs and it's your responsibility to keep them safe and happy at the same time. You can't let them do whatever they like all the time. AND, you are responsible for what your pets/children do.

#snake got an ask #anonymous #dni if you're an outdoor cat person /hj /srs

[somebodytolove31]

I'm gonna be fully honest here I think this is a tumblr pissing on the poor situation coming from the fact that a lot of people don't know what proper cohabiting with animals actually means. It doesn't mean "don't kill any insect ever" it means "actually learn about what insects are native to your area and what a properly balanced ecosystem looks like in your place"

Like if a person has a rat infestation problem in their house they're not bad for wanting to deal with it, we're part of the ecosystem too, and while yes there's many unethical and complicated ways to deal with it you also have to understand that most of the actually efficient and ethical ways aren't really available?

So no I don't blame someone for using Raid in their backyard because they have a mosquito infestation, or for hating mosquitos in general, when they're literally invasive and way out of control in many areas. The same applies to many animals. It doesn't mean that the species doesn't have value it simply means they don't belong here.

"Don't hate animals solely for existing" and "some animals do have to be erradicated" are things that co exist, have yall never heard of the time rabbits invaded an entire island and fucked everything up until they were hunted to extinction in that island? It doesn't mean rabbits suck, it means they didn't belong there.

[jaemtens]

hi! just wanted to drop by to tell you that i think your gifs are always super beautiful, you are my favorite gif maker of the nct, the boyz and ateez fandom 💖

thanks, that's really nice of you to write 💕

unfortunately, i don't think i will be giffing as much as i have been lately. real life is getting busier, and idk if i can hang around all morning from 6 pm to midnight kst waiting for content to drop. it's also been really demotivating to make sets that are much higher quality than ones i would make 2-3 years ago, only to see them get 5-10x fewer notes. gifmaking isn't as fun as it used to be for me, and i can't justify spending as much time and energy as i currently am for the response i'm getting.

#anonymous #answered #idk i'm just trying to move on with my life #tumblr has been fun and i'll probably still make stuff here and there #but i am annoyed that nearly 13k followers and high quality sets comes out to... 200 notes #i used to enjoy reading tags but there's only like 5-10 reactions per set sometimes #tumblr has really killed the ecosystem that used to exist here

[the-art-of-animated-gifs]

Interview with my friend A.L. Crego

I have not met A.L. Crego.  I have not spoken with him on the phone, in fact I do not even know what he looks like.  But I can confidently call him my friend.  Three years ago when I started this blog he immediately disagreed with me in the comments about things I was writing and I loved it.  As a person putting ideas out there, you treasure things like that....because you know someone cares.  We have had many back and forth discussions over the years....if we had lived in Paris in 1911 we would be having arguments at La Rotonde (not to compare either of us to Picasso).

A.L. Crego is a motion artist who does a wide variety of things.  He has now become a very visible and active figure in the NFT Movement.  He recently completed a large and very successful project in which he animated the work of a number of well know street artists on the building themselves, something he has done for years.  His Tumblr page is a good place to start to see his work, which is largely surrealist in nature -- another Spanish artist following in the footsteps of other great Spanish surrealist artists.

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How long have you been creating gif art?

In a conscious and intentional way since 2014. Previously I haven't pay too much attention on one hand for its common use that was mostly ads and funny little videos, and on the other hand because it was a 'standard' format we accepted as something part of the web so I never stopped to analyze its potential. The key point for me was about 2010-2011 when the concept of 'Cinemagraph' was brought to life just giving it a name. It's format is .gif but its characteristics are different so I saw there the midpoint between photography and video, which gave born another format of art.

Art mutates when a new format appears. I was using and studying this format since then but it wasn't until 2014 that I decided to publish some of them.

What is your background?

In general terms, bachelor, 2 years of stone sculpting and two attempts of photography and audiovisual mediums. I say attempts because I gave up both of them as I was feeling that I was looking for something else more than studying all the previous history, style and isms, which is nice to understand where everything comes from and to be aware what are the key points on the history to use as reference, as a map. But in some way I felt limited as I was using digital tools since I had my first computer with 14 years, and I was being taught things I learnt by then. Even more in this times we are living where we are 21 century people, been taught by teachers from the 20 with 19 century methods.

A constant line that feeds my background is literature and music overall and later Street Art, next to more temporal interests as everything related with mythology, alchemy, history, psychology, neurology, biology, human condition in general... I don't have studies buy I'm a studying guy!

I always like to highlight that all these years that internet got strong and social networks appeared, I decided voluntary to be out of them. First reason was to keep my privacy safe in a growing world where it seemed that some "curtain" felt and everybody accepted that intimacy was now 'ex-timacy' and correct to show their private life, (this shocked me). Another reason was about the psychological effect that social networks were having on people I had around and everywhere in general. I started to notice patterns and "waves" about series, aesthetics, styles, and I was seeing clearly that if I go there, I will become permeable to all this "Amniotic Culture" I was trying to avoid.

This fact of being far (but study them closely) helped me a lot about researching and developing my own ideas and style, for the mere fact that I was using all this time and attention Social Networks require, on drinking from another sources. The B-side of this is that I was 'out of the radar' of mass people as this social networks are designed to live inside them. My idea of internet and spreading ideas is not in this way.

Where do you live and work?

In the north west of Spain, Galicia. Now due to Covid I travel less but before it, I was working and traveling many places as I only need a camera and a computer. This allows me move to work anywhere.

Do you think that animated gifs are a new art form?

I think so, despite the fact that the format existed since 1987. But as every new format of art it takes its time to be considered as art. The first photographs were not considered art until many years later. Same happened with film, same with CGI. Is nice to have in mind that gif format is the last strictly digital format of the three main ones on the web: picture, video and gif. Photography has about 200 years of history, video about 130, CGI about 60. Finally gif has 33, and used as art itself no more than 10-15. In the same way anybody takes a picture of anything does not convert it into art, is the same with gifs. One thing is the format, another is the 'art'. Everybody can take a picture, record a video or do a gif. The difference is on the how, the why, and from my point of view overall, the what.

Do you think that there is a difference between pure .gif files and the .mp4 files that people post on Instagram?

The first, big and obvious difference is the format. Is not the same a painting as a picture of a painting. Here happens the same. For example, if you treat a gif with Cinemagraph technique, you are converting in picture some parts of the image, so they still remain and with the texture and totally stillness of a picture. If you convert this gif into a mp4 this still parts, despite not having motion, will convert into a video texture (noise, subtle motion in pixels, etc) so the main characteristic, among the perfect loop, is lost. Another point is that you must play a video, a gif is always running. Waterfalls are always running and this characteristic is something that is inside our human nature, we react nice to "bucle" motions as waterfalls, fire, etc. We find pleasure on this. Of course if it's a video the perfect loop is lost and the visual mantra disappear. And another key point here is the soundtrack. In a video you can use sound to enhance or give another meaning to the piece that you can't with gifs. For me this is another characteristic that give meaning to gif. For me gif is silence, the sound is generated by the motion, the melody are the details and the beat the perfect loop. You can "hear" almost every gif.

The difference between a gif and a video is the same that between a waterfall and a hose (if this works).

What do you think are the characteristics of good gif art?

For me first and overall the perfect loop. Not using it is not using the only format that has this characteristics. Of course there can be gif art that is not perfect loop, but from my point of view and in my work is a must. It's a new way not only of creating but also of thinking. Imagine an still scene is easy, imagine an A-B point action is easy. For me the challenge is about thinking an idea that is perfect looped where all the elements interact and eventually come back to its initial point. Succeed doing this is where the perfect loop appears and you are not able to find where is the start point of the action. Like a visual mantra, that it's repetition leads you inside the piece. Gif art is nice to use the power of the hypnotic movements. Another point to have in mind for me is the flow of it, the frame rate I mean. Depending on the idea and the kind of animation this should vary; is not the same fps to achieve something with flow than if you want to achieve a more 'retro' old style. Another thing is about dithering and color palette. This second one is essential to understand as it affects the final file. When we work with photo and video we are using millions of colors but when rendered as gifs all the gradients, lights and even colors will change if there is a previous understood of this point.

As summary: If motion doesn't add, change of enhance the meaning of the piece, is expendable.

I'd would like to add that I'm not really supporter of this kind of gifs generated automatically that just move a still image itself. I understand that this 'technique' is used as a tool for certain motion (I use it) but not to move a whole image. I feel the same as if somebody hold a painting in front of me and moves it randomly. If the work was born still, it must remain still. A good example of 'inner motion', this means that the motion is implicit on the image despite not being in motion, are the photographs of Cartier Bresson for example. Giving motion to this pictures for example, will kill it because it will break the concept of 'perfect instant' .

'Instant' differs etymologically from 'moment' in the motion. So, still image (painting, photo, sculpture, etc) is an instant, videos are stories with a-b point, and gifs are moments, the mid point.

How would you describe your gif art?

I usually condense it as "Visual Mantras", as the technique and the aesthetic vary depending on the idea , but in all of them the perfect loop and the intention of hypnotizing is always present.

In another terms about aesthetics and themes I think ‘Industrial Nature’ can fit nice. I use a lot of industrial elements but I like to mix their mechanics with the biological natural ones.

How long have you been creating and selling NFTs?

I am selling NFTs since mid 2019, but it wasn't until October 2020 that I focused more on it and dug into the ecosystem to find new paths to focus my work.

Do you think that NFTs are a positive for gif artists?

For me, and the main reason I jumped into cryptoart and NFT, is that now I can certify my digital work as original. Even more to gif works as they were always understood as something banal and minor for the context of its born. Gif art was born prostituted, used mostly for ads and to claim our attention on the internet, next to the highest glamour of painting and traditional art, and 3d, photography and video these last decades. Even worst if we realize that gif format was the only visual format born by and for the internet.

NFTs are totally positive for gif artists because despite being a digital/online native format it never had its own ecosystem to live in. I feel that I was creating creatures for an ecosystem I was waiting to drop them there. Now with the blockchain, NFTs and cryptoart, I found the place where they can live, being watched by everybody and have the certify that is my work. Until some months ago my work was "free" on the web and I had no control over it at all. This was a huge problem I was suffering since my first month into gif art as people use it indiscriminately with no credit at all. It's ok, and I always defend that my work is to be seen, to be shared, but I was looking for the way to be able to have this link with my work without losing the option of being available for everybody. NFT totally changes this.

What do you think will happen in the future as NFTs get even more popular?

In general terms I think it will happen the same as when print got more popular. People will use it more, a lot of crazy and useless things will appear, tons more of different uses and useful purposes, (not only on art). This opens a new door a lot of people was waiting so the future is unpredictable but we can feel where things are going. NFT arrived to stay and the concept of decentralization is something that was always present on the internet since first days but born inside a centralized system. NFTs are being a way for people to understand the 'peer to peer' philosophy and this makes people think in different codes, so we can expect a lot of new horizons, in art, music, design...

What do you think of the environmental impact of NFTs?

This question can goes really deep but in general terms I think that is something that is being oversized due to the hype and the boiling point we are, and it's understandable because is not false that it has an environmental impact, as everything does. But on the other hand I have two main areas in mind. The first and the obvious from my point of view is that when something is new and developing is less efficient, in the way that it requires more effort to achieve the result. But at the same time, the more this technology is used the more is developed and all this issues are part of it. The first car was not electric.

The second point that usually reverberates in my mind and that it seems that 'hard critics' omit is that they are not having in mind that this NFTs we mint, give us a profit that can be used offline to do another things that can be useful to solve this problem, for example, investing part of this money on living on our own in a minimal and clean way (not working for huge multinational that their environmental impact is tons times more than NFTs and then being part of an ONG to feel clean) and on using part of this money on looking and researching new ways to mint and to keep this digital ecosystem more efficient and clean. Every development needs time.

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If you have found this content valuable considering getting me a cup of coffee

#gif aesthetic #street art #surrealism

[develation]

SCP AU

So @emeraldtrainer1 (Ao3), @writingforfunandbecauseboredom (Ao3), and DarkstarWolf53 (<-Dunno if they have Tumblr) did an SCP AU three-way Convo fic some months ago. I really enjoyed the outline and concept and asked if I could expand on it. With their permission and about a month of research into what the actual SCP Foundation is (and holy cow there is so much, no wonder people are all over this) I've finally managed to get a start on this. There is a decent amount of things that are different from their original Convo (via their permission) but it will basically follow the same storyline that they created. Please go check their Convo out, it's a very long and fun read with a lot of good fluff and Angst mixed in.

I will hopefully be drawing some of my designs soon but for now, writing seems to be the way to go. Here is a link to it on Ao3 -> https://archiveofourown.org/works/33213928/chapters/82464553

I'll also have it below in case you would like to read it on Tumblr instead.

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Error: (The End Of All But Me.) There are too many unworldly traits that spiders have that I couldn't just not give to Error, so I've kind of combined their Puppetmaster concept to my design. He has 4 arms with clawed fingertips, his tail is prehensile and his jaw can split open. He has 5 tongues still, 2 of them are spear-like, and can shoot out and impale victims. The saliva produced under the tips of the barbs on the two tongues can liquidity a prey items insides so he can drink them up (still a clean freak, using the skin as a cup and drinking up any mess leaving a skin bag behind). His other three tongues are prehensile and can extend to an unknown length, they are barbed aswell but do not carry the venomous saliva. Strings wrap along his bones from his eye sockets, which he uses to create a nest atop the ceiling of his cell.

SCP-002's (Apollyon class) cell is a blank room (it ask for a TV later on) that goes up vertically 2 floors. The top half is required to be shrouded in darkness as it likes voids of either white or black. It has filled the darkness of its cell with a nest of strings that it spends all of its time in, even when feeding. It does not attempt to attack staff, when asked why it replied with, "Not yet." Personal have not been able to decipher what it means by that statement. In an interview via speakers and mics within containment cell, it was asked why SCP-002 stares off at seemingly nothing for extended periods of time and never touches the ground. Subject responded with, "Busy." When asked what it was busy doing- "Watching." When asked what it was watching- "The world. Everything." Due to this experience, it can be concluded that 002 can view any place in the world and perhaps beyond via "screens". These "screens" are unviewable to anyone but 002 and 001 as the latter SCP had called them so, hence their given name. SCP-002 has a strange relationship with SCP-001 and it can not be determined if 002 likes or dislikes 001.

Ink created Error on accident. In the beginning, Ink didn't know what he was doing, and the brutality of Earth's natural forces of destruction were uncontrollable. If he wanted to bring life to his chosen planet he needed a way to control the chaos. And so through the storm, a new force was born. And even if Ink didn't create it, he did wish for it.

Error is a ticking time bomb for extinction. He waits and watches until he decides it's time for a "spring cleaning" and starts his work. The Ordovician, Late Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous mass extinctions were all him. He deemed the human race ready for a "cleaning" a long time ago and Ink agreed with him, ready to see and make something new. But Nightmare threatened the both of them by stating that he would make the earth forever inhabitable and they would have to kill him before he stoped his rage. Nightmare fears that if another extinction event were to occur he'd lose his boys.

Ink: (God doesn't care about what's right or what's wrong. God just wants to watch interesting things happen.) His form is always changing, different traits from different animals and organisms he's created. Ink is basically Gaia. Born when Theia crashed into Earth around 4.5 billion years ago, he made everything that ever existed. Since he's made A LOT of organisms he has a ton of favorites and the traits from them are what mostly show up when he mutates. Sometimes it's Kaprosuchus with belonged snout and fangs. Sometimes it's Tylosaurus with its marine reptilian posterior. Sometimes it's Chital Deer and their antlers. More often than not though, his tail has consistently stated having bristle-like hair at the tip of it, which is basically his brush. The concept of paintbrushes is pretty new to him since the human race has been around for a short time compared to other species, so while he does have one, his tail is his broomie. If his next from doesn't have it then he just uses his hands and his blood.

Ink can't be contained. It's that simple, he just can't. He just sticks around because it's interesting and hilarious to see his creations so intelligent but so stupid. (remember how humans are still young in terms of Earth's age, so the fact that they're so smart... on a thought level that could almost match his own is so very interesting to see and watch. even if there ruining his planet.) The SCP foundation just has to let him do his thing and hope that he doesn't override 003's and 004's decision to not have an extinction event.

His cell is basically a mini-ecosystem, with all of his favorite organisms living within whether they are extinct or not. He loves his little sample of the world and it keeps him in his cell for a good amount of time so the foundation let him have it. If any of them even touch what is HIS without permission then he rips them apart and feeds them to the baby Rhamphorhynchus. Don't touch his babies.

...Cross though... he can touch his babies... and Dream... and maybe Error... That's it though!

SCP-001 (Apollyon Class) is a being older than all living things, despite his toddler-like mannerisms. Even more infuriating, within an interview, 001 openly admitted to being the cause of all SCP's and their anomalous effects. It stated that they were all just mistakes and/or experiments, testing the limits of their own abilities. 001's quoted response- "You don't get it do you? I made everything here! All of your little "SCP's" are just of my creation as all of you. Sure there all mistakes but, it just proves my point that it's time to start over again. A clean slate y'know? Pfft- wow you look mad! If it makes you feel any better, I don't like most of them either. They were cool at first but... it's like flicking black paint over a finished painting. Sure, you can try to get over it but eventually, it will just bother you so much that you just can't stand it! Well... I do kinda want some of them to stay... If I could just convince Ru..." -shows evidence to this conclusion. Termination trials were approved by the 05 Council, though have not been able to start since 001's creation of a barrier around its cell, preventing entry of anything that tries to pass.

[Note: Error, Dream, and Nightmare are not included in what Ink views as "mistakes". Y'know when you're trying something new and you don't know what you’re doing, yet it works somehow. That's them, happy accidents. Ink adores them.]

Ink finds the attempt of Termination trials on him to be absolutely hilarious. The fact that humanity's insecurity about their lifespan and control is so great that they'd try to KILL HIM. Amazing. He can't believe he's managed to make the simultaneously best and worst organism ever.

Dream: (When day breaks.)  Again he was accidentally created by Ink’s actions in an intense solar storm. The flare drifting over the earth in combination with Ink’s magic still working to bring life brought him to existence. Dream’s design is almost harpy-like, with beautiful golden, sun-like wings with a small feathery crest atop his skull. Two tail-like feathers sprout from the crest that can rise up and down depending on expression and mood. He also has bird feet and legs, and a tail.

Dream adores all life, his is the warmth and growth of the sun (original form being a ball of light and plasma that literally looks like a mini sun). He is basically like a piece of the sun on earth. His cell is kinda like Ink’s, only in the fact that there are just a couple of animal species. Some deer, birds, and insects mainly. Ink obviously just appeared in his cell one day and made it for him. While Dream could be considered to be a Safe SCP, his ability to damage or completely ruin the planet if inraged prevents that classification.

SCP-003 (Apollyon Class) has proven to be a relatively docile creature. It is elegant in nature (like that of a bird) and shows greater empathy towards all life in general. Unlike SCP’s 001, 002, and 004 who view it as more interesting and admirable, more like a pretty crystal than an actual being with its own consciousness. 003 can not be fully contained and has shown the ability to travel through light rays. Its aura has also shown to be some form of anesthesia, and exposure for prolonged periods causes victims to feel more at peace and calm. 003 does have the capability to travel through the “dreamscape”, what exactly that in tails is unknown.

Dream doesn’t agree with the extinction event thing because the Holocene period hasn’t lasted for nearly as long as it should. On the other hand, he does distaste humanity/monsterkind for all it has done to the planet. Even so, he feels like they deserve more of a chance.

Nightmare: (Does the Black Moon howl?)(Death) Complete with the theme of being Dreams opposite, Nightmare was born from a black moon and the combination of Ink’s magic bringing life to the earth. He isn’t an evil force or anything, just the night to the day. His design is pretty true to OG nightmare, although his legs and feet share the same digitigrade format. His tentacles are more ghostly than slimy and they drip upwards instead of towards the ground. His bones also have a ghost;y wisp to them, but it isn’t that noticeable. Instead of only having a turquoise glint in his magic, there are sparks of purple aswell. (His original form being a black sphere of what looks like smoke).

His cell is basically an entrance to a cave system that Ink had made for him. Inside is a galaxy of crystals and gemstones that glow and sparkle like the night sky. A small stream runs through, the light refracting off of the water, adding to the glow effect. It is a nice calm place for Nightmare to just chill in, his separate own little world.

Nightmare is kind of mysterious, in the realm of Error in which he likes to watch things happen. Just lurking in the shadows, a quiet observer. Though, he wasn’t as fascinated by life as the others. So to prevent his boredom Ink made him a present- Killer. Nightmare hated the little thing at first but it didn’t take too long to grow fond of the little guy. Not too long later Ink pronounced his joy in watching Nightmare sigh in frustration by sending 2 more bundles his way -Dust and Horror- and Nightmare had to threaten Ink to stop before any more joined the fray.

SCP-004 (Apollyon Class) is an entity whose intentions are completely unknown. A mysterious being that chooses to dwell in the cave system 001 made for it. The entity refuses to interact with personal unless in interview. And when it does respond, it does so in riddles and metaphors. It seemingly takes joy asking more questions than the interviewer, turning the conversation in its favor. On such question that has been repeated multiple times - “Does the Black Moon howl?” has puzzled personal. Though 004 states that if answered correctly and explained why, then it will share its secrets with that person and that person only.

004 proves to be uncontainable like its counterparts, able to travel through shadows. SCP’s 012, 032, and 024 seem to be “followers” of 004, and regularly go missing from their cells. Most likely 004’s doing.

[Ink created Killer, Dust, and Horror during the era where dinosaurs were still alive, so they have some traits from them.]

Killer: (War) Was created by Ink for Nightmare to keep him entertained. Killer was born as a baby in Ink’s very hands, a little skeleton with curved blades for hands and digitigrade legs and feet (and little quills on his back). Growing up under Nightmare’s care was an interesting experience, but he thought Kill’s everything he needed to know.

-[SCP-012, Keter]-

Killer is fast, very fast. And he enjoys killing things (what a surprise). He’s pretty much the same cocky boi as always. His more SCP side is that he doesn’t seem to ever feel pain and the black liquid that leaks through his eyes. That can be used as a type of venomous toxin to whatever he pleases.

Dust: (Pestilence) You know Epidexipteryx and Therizinosaurus? Those are Dust hands, long with even longer claws. He can also turn into literal dust, more of a phantom or wraith in nature. He can walk through walls, and turn others to dust and grow himself if he wishes.

He and Horror could be twins since Ink made them both at the same time. Holding his little creations in his arms as they wriggled and whined in confusion at suddenly being alive.

-[SCP-032, Keter]-

Dust is pretty quiet and tame. He has his episodes but he stays pretty much the same as bookwrym’s, writing’s, and Dark’s Dust.

Horror: (Famine) Since Horror is a vent crawler I based his design on that. Horror’s second set of arms are like a praying mantis with an extra joint, hands serrated blades almost like Killer’s. He used to sit in trees and wait for prey to walk underneath him, plucking them from the ground with his long arms and eating them alive.

Same thing when in vents, just waits over the openings and plucks a person off of the ground and into the vent (if personal don’t keep up with his feeding times)

-[SCP-024, Euclid]-

Other than his design Horror is pretty much the same as bookwyrm’s, writing’s, and Dark’s concept.

Outer: [SCP-044, Safe] His stardust makes him have luminescent galaxy and star patterns on his bones. He floats regularly without control over it and can sometimes make other objects float, in rare cases people, aswell. Ink made him a jacket where pieces of its hood and aglets float off like a sort of fluffy foam. The pieces orbit him like planets to a star before joining back, making a continuous cycle.

(And yes writingforFUN, he will still keep his anime sparkling eyelight’s).

Cross: [SCP-00X, Thaumiel] Was created by Dr. X to help contain and terminate Keter SCP’s. Being forced to kill his brother when he turned Keter, not completely in control of his actions. Dr. X’s “programing” making him see his brother no longer as such, just an object to be eliminated. When Cross became uncontrollable Dr. X put wiped his memory without the 05’s or administers permission and an MTF was sent after him that came back empty-handed. Cross was brought back soon enough and had his memory wiped.

They bring him back in as a staff member and that’s when the story kicks off, mostly following bookwyrm’s, writingforFUN, and Dark’s original outline/convo.

(I apologize for any typos)

#undertale au #scp au #writing

[sixth-light]

Chekhov’s Garden Shed

For the last four or five years, the RoL fandom has had a masterpost of Chekhov’s guns/unanswered questions from the series – the last version, with links to the original, can be found here. Past contributors include @deviantaccumulation, @the-high-meggas, @maple-clef, @uncommonsockeater​, and @flannelgiraffe, as well as others who I have doubtless forgotten. [If that’s you or someone you know, please speak up!]

Ben Aaronovitch has indicated that he views the various open questions of the series as less of a set of ‘guns on the mantelpiece’ (which must be taken down and fired before the series is finished) and more a ‘garden shed’ of things he thinks might be useful one day but could also end up rusting in the back after getting buried under other things. The fun is finding out which is which. (Thanks to @ilikesallydonovan for originally reporting this and chasing down the link!)

So, without further ado, here is the renamed Chekhov’s Garden Shed Of Stuff That Might Come Back Later. It’s separated into Answered Questions, Partially-Answered Questions, and Things Still Buried At The Back Of The Shed. I enthusiastically welcome comments, corrections, and missing items. Contains spoilers for all published RoL-related material including the novellas, comics, online snippets, and interviews with the author. A mirror of this version can be found at Dreamwidth – I will try and keep it updated as I update this one.

ANSWERED QUESTIONS:

·        What the fox said to Abigail in WuG It was warning her about Chorley’s involvement with/interest in Skygarden. 

·        Peter’s father needs a few thousand for dental work; his mum is very keen to get the money so that he might re-launch his career. They’ve already done a gig (beaucoup money) for Ty. Will this be a vulnerability for Peter at some point? Apparently not; his dad’s band do regular gigs for the demi-monde, his dad has his new teeth, and Ty doesn’t seem to have been involved at all. Peter just has to live with his parents being better-informed about his work and new world than he might like! 

·        Will we see Awa Shambir again? Her of the suspiciously expensive hijab to be cleaning the offices (of a front organisation for an evil wizard) in… Goodbye Awa Shambir the Somali cleaning lady, hello Lady Caroline Elizabeth Louise Linden-Limmer, surreptitiously aerial scion of nobility. 

·        What was Molly doing in the tech cave? Is she on facebook/twitter/tumblr/a cooking forum? Looking up recipes? Has she discovered online shopping? Molly is active on Twitter gossiping and swapping recipes; it’s not a secret from either Peter or Nightingale, they just pretend not to know. 

·        Is that watch Nightingale gave Peter going to have any future relevance? Peter and Caroline had a watch-off in The Hanging Tree which Peter won, and the practitioner habit of wearing mechanical (and hideously expensive) watches enabled Peter to identify Chorley as the Faceless Man. 

·        Who is Mr. Nolfi’s mother? Where did she learn magic? and Have any other Newtonian wizards continued to practice in secret and/or trained apprentices in other parts of the country, without telling Nightingale? (Broader: was Nightingale mostly wrong about being the last wizard in Britain or really, totally, 100% wrong?) and What about the “female affiliates” of the Little Crocodiles? and How many wizards did Wheatcroft actually train and where are they now? Most of an answer to all of these: there’s a long-standing tradition of women practicing and teaching each other Newtonian magic dating back to before the founding of the official Folly. Mr Nolfi’s mother and the ‘female affiliates’ of the Little Crocodiles could well have come from this tradition. And Nightingale was totally utterly wrong about being the last wizard in Britain. Practitioners exist trained by ‘hedge’ wizards and witches, trained by Little Crocodiles, immigrated and bringing other traditions with them…that cat is not only out of the bag, it was never even in it. C.f. Patrick Gale and co. in Detective Stories and Lies Sleeping. However, many Little Crocodiles never really learned magic at all, or managed to brush it off after university as unimportant – unfortunately for them, Martin Chorley targeted them as tools and bait.

PARTIALLY-ANSWERED QUESTIONS:

·        What happened at Ettersberg that caused magic to disappear? Answered in various interviews: magic didn’t disappear at Ettersberg as an objective thing, but a lot of practitioners were wiped out by the war and the Nazis, as well as a lot of genii locorum and other fae and magical people. Nightingale over-indexed on this because he was depressed and traumatised, and the magic ‘coming back’ is a combination of a new generation of gods, fae, and practitioners growing up, and Nightingale noticing the ones who were there all along.

·        Where are the notes Peter was promised? Peter has a deal with Nightingale about getting questions answered in return for magical progress; we haven’t seen him look at any old wizard’s notes specifically but he doesn’t seem to be waiting on them. 

·        What was Nightingale doing in the 70s that he managed to miss the original FM’s adventure in Soho? Working with the Met, apparently - he was called in when Woodville-Gentle got his at Lady Helena’s hands, but too late to determine whether it was magic. Seems like he just wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on around him!

·        What was Peter doing after he left school and while he was a PCSO? Why did he have problems during his A levels? Why did he join the police? Peter flatted and worked retail for a while after he left school (possibly while he was at school, too). We still don’t know what happened with his A-levels or what led him to join the police. 

·        Outwith the Met, does the Folly answer to the Home Office (or higher)? There are hints at that (cf. Walid in RoL), but nothing more and Who is Nightingale’s boss/who does Postmartin send his files to?  No direct answer to who they answer to beyond what we already knew, but we learn in THT that they have their own source of funding and aren’t an official part of the Met. Nightingale does not appear to have any direct supervisor beyond the Commissioner (or presumably they would have been informed/called when he was kidnapped in Night Witch). 

·        How do “Hedge Witches” practise magic; how does it differ from formal Newtonian magic and will we get to meet any? Are “Hedge Wizards” simply rusticated Newtonian wizards, or do they also have informally-developed skillz? Per the one we meet in Black Mould: hedge witches and wizards have informally-developed skills rather than just being rusticated Folly wizards, but how close their magic is to the style Peter is learning, it’s hard to say (because it was a comic.) Others are probably from the female tradition, ex-Newtonian wizards, etc – it’s a mixed group.

·        How old is Postmartin, exactly (Peter thinks he looks older and frailer than his Dad, who’s in his 70s, but that’s just his guess)? How did he get that job, and is he ‘just’ a civilian affiliate, like Walid, or something else? Who does he answer to, and what happens if/when he needs replacing? What’s his twitter handle?! Postmartin served during the Korean War, so must have been born between 1928 and 1936 (per @sparrow-wings) - he’s currently in his 80s, as it’s late 2015 in current book time. His Twitter handle might be “dyingforafag” (who Molly is chatting to in Body Work). 

·        What sort of experiments were the Nazis doing with vampires? (Do we want to know? Proooooooooooobably not.) and Can the Rivers be killed, if they’re badly injured enough far enough away from their river? What happens then? We found out in Lies Sleeping you can use ‘tinned vampires’ to kill and hurt genii locorum and discomfit practitioners, so that’s…you know…fine. Rivers can definitely be killed in general, c.f. the former Lugg whom the Methodists got to. It’s only functional immortality.

·        What’s the deal with Mr. Punch when Peter’s leaving London at the beginning of Foxglove Summer? Is he coming back? Is it only Peter who senses him? If so, why? and How are Lesley and Punch connected? And What powers does Lesley have now aside from face-changing, if any? Martin Chorley was trying to murder Punch, who was a god of chaos and vengeance, in order to 1) gain magical power 2) ????? 3) glorious white supremacy. Lesley agreed to help Chorley to get back at Punch, but may still have some connection to him, having survived possession by him; she certainly has magical powers of her own now, being able to change her face at will. They wanted Punch powered up so he’d be a better source of magic when taken down. Punch was still pinned to London Bridge, but was freed by Peter. He can be talked down by his daughter Walbrook, but for better or worse, he’s out and a player in London’s magical ecosystem. Let’s hope Peter’s right and he plays an important role in it.  

·        How and why did Isis become immortal, since just marrying a River doesn’t appear to do the trick? Kelly tells Tobi Winter in The October Man that sometimes the partners/spouses/better halves of Rivers do just pick up immortality, although even she as an elder River doesn’t know exactly how or why that happens. Probably it’s what happened to Isis. Why it hasn’t happened to George McAlister is an open question.

·        What does it mean that Michael Cheung is ‘the new guy in Chinatown’? and Is there something going on with Guleed (PLEASE NO) or is she just picking up things about the demi-monde via her friendship with Bev (…and others)? Michael Cheung is the latest of a long line of people who have responsibility for any magical shenanigans in London’s Chinatown, so 1) the Folly/Nightingale don’t have to worry about it and 2) Chinatown doesn’t have to be offended by their attempts to worry about it. He’s dating Guleed and teaching her cool martial arts magic. Whether she has other demi-monde contacts is not yet clear.

·        Who is Chorley’s mole within the Met?  Probably not Seawoll, Stephanopoulos, Richard Folsom, Guleed, or Carey, due to the security practices put in place during Operation Jennifer. But if not any of them….then who?

·        How/why the fox knows about [Skygarden and Chorley], (and why it would tell Abigail) According to Abigail, the talking foxes view themselves as secret agents, and someone like Chorley would naturally draw their attention. Why they do so and who they think they should be reporting to is still unclear (but may be elucidated in the Abigail novella).

STILL BURIED IN THE SHED SOMEWHERE:

·        What about the paintings of Molly and a blue-eyed elderly man who looks like Nightingale that Peter found in the coach house?

·        Are there really werewolves or just creepy magic trackers called werewolves? (I’m waiting for them to turn up.)

·        Why does Fleet have a captain of dogs? What do her dogs do? (Is this related to the werewolves? Were-dogs?)

·        What’s the actual connection between Wheatcroft, FM1 (Woodville-Gentle, if that’s him) and FM2? Did he train them both, or did W-G train FM2? NB: Unlikely to be directly answered now Chorley is dead.

·        What’s up with Abigail’s apparently useless protection charm?

·        Is there a special reason that Nightingale is called The Nightingale? (+ is he strong/good at magic because of hard work or something else.)

·        People I’d like to know more about: Nightingale’s uncle, David Mellenby, Nightingale’s family.

·        How much do senior officers in the Met really know about the Folly/Nightingale/magic? Is it well-known that Nightingale has been running the Folly since the 1940s?

·        How did Nightingale learn the language Father Thames speaks?

·        How much does Nightingale and/or Walid know/suspect about the deaging thing? How much of this aren’t he/they telling Peter?

·        How did Walid and Nightingale meet?

·        Are there aliens?

·        Was the 1911 decrease of odd magical activity in Herefordshire linked to Molly?

·        Why does Seawoll dislike Nightingale so viscerally?

·        Did Peter really drop architecture because of his draughtsmanship or was it something else? Is it related to why his chemistry teacher wrote that letter to the newspaper?

·        How active is the ex-wizard grapevine, really? Is the FM connected to it at all?

·        What was the Faceless Man actually planning on doing with his Crossrail lair? Why build it so close to the Folly?

·        What happens if one river tries to userp, unseat or in any way properly fight another? Are the results ‘mythic’?

·        Was Emma Wall really a waste of space? As a character she is a bit of a smoking gun - red herring, or something else? She was living next door to our two, and *in* one of the flats where… stuff was being put. Any happily waltzed out on d-day. Peter never really got a chance to speak to her - but Lesley did, and was the one to dismiss her from suspicion. Which is suspicious (to me)!

·        Although we found out after that he’s been around for much longer, Nightingale said that Father Thames was definitely the same person in 1914. So presumably they met then… In what circumstances?

·        Are fae genetically different to other humans? Are they human? What about changelings (like Zoe in FS) - and will she get in contact with Dr Walid? NB: Dr Vaughan is getting some genomes sequenced, so answers to this question may be forthcoming....

·        What did Lesley say to her family about what happened to her face? Do they know about magic?

·        Just how much of an age gap is there between Peter’s parents?

·        Why did the Virtuous Men blame the British for Ettersberg? What was the agreement between them that Nightingale was referring to?

·        Postmartin made a show of wanting to get Peter alone to have a ”big” talk with him. Yet, the discussion we, the readers have witnessed was relatively small. Nightingale only arrived to The Eagle and the Child an hour later. What was said between Postmartin and Peter in the meantime?

·        Peter’s narration at certain points (like Chapter 14 in Moon Over Soho) waivers between past and present tense, and he is occasionally referring to events in (presumably) later books. Just what point in the future is Peter actually narrating these books?

·        When Nightingale got an infection in MoS, how did Walid know? Did Molly phone him and do her Nightingale’s being an idiot silence, or was he just visiting anyway?

·        What does Molly do on her days off?

·        When Nightingale doesn’t go to Peter’s parents’ for Christmas, did his not wanting to leave Molly excuse have any truth to it, or did he just say that so Peter didn’t realise that Nightingale planned to work (and so Peter didn’t feel he should be missing his own Christmas to help)/ he had a reasonable excuse to not go to Peter’s family’s Christmas celebrations?

·        (tongue-in-cheek) What would have happened if Peter and Lesley had given Molly a Heston Blumenthal cookbook?

·        What’s the deal with Lady Helena (and Caroline) - are they connected to Chorley and/or Lesley’s face being healed?

·        What does Caroline want to escape from? What was she doing posing as a cleaning lady at the County Gard offices? 

·        What do the Virginian Gentlemen want, and how connected are they with the American government?

·        What’s their specific definition of a ‘shade’? 

·        When and how did MI5 learn about magic, and do they have any practitioners of their own?

·        Was Christina Chorley a practitioner, possessed, or something else? 

·        Who sold and bought Molly, Foxglove, 'Charlotte' (the Pale Nanny), and 'Alice' (the Pale Lady)? Where were Foxglove, Charlotte, and Alice before they were put in the oubliette and rescued by Woodville-Gentle and then Chorley? Where is the fifth girl who was with them before they were split up?

·        Is it important that Walbrook is also Isis of London? Are there any other Isis-figures in the UK and Europe (aside from Isis who is married to Oxley, and is probably an Isis of Oxford?)

·        Are there any other non-Mama-Thames tidal Rivers? What exactly is Lea’s relationship with Mama Thames, as they see it?

·        What WAS Chorley's master plan, aside from ‘become Merlin, Profit!’?

·        How is the Difference Engine linked to magic, and why? NB: May be answered in ‘False Value’, which is about computing to some degree

·        Who or what is killing talking foxes (as Peter discovers in The Furthest Station)? Why?

#rivers of london #ben aaronovitch #meta #word of god #chekov's garden shed

[majingojira]

Monsters of the 20th Century

I had this odd notion.  A (brief) analysis of the origin of various supernatural creatures, as I wondered what ‘new’ monsters/supernatural beings had been created in the 20th century (roughly).   I’ve completed some of the research, and I’d like to share it with you all.  I’m also gonna tag @tyrantisterror because he is one of the more knowledgable people about monsters I know about on tumblr and I’m sure he can correct me a bunch in this!

1. Frankenstein - 1817 - The oldest literary monster and outgrowth of the concept of the Homunculus and Golem as an artificial being.  So pervasive is its reach, western ideas of Tulpa are tainted by it (every time you read about a tulpa ‘going out of control’, that is the influence of Frankenstein). 

2. Dinosaurs - The Dragons of the age of science entered pop culture in 1854 at the latest with the opening of the Crystal Palace Park.  Other prehistoric animals had captured people’s imagination before, and they didn’t start to enter fiction until 1864 (”Journey to the Center of the Earth”) and a short story by C. J. Cutliffe Hyne had an ancient crocodilian in his story “The Lizard” (1898).  Ann early Lost World style adventure, “A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder” by James De Mille in 1888 has the first true dinosaurs in them.  There, Antarctica has a warm spot where prehistoric monsters and a death cult lurk.  In 1901, Frank Mackenzie Savile’s “Beyond the Great South Wall” had a Carnivorous Brontosaurs worshiped by Mayan remnants.  “Panic in Paris” by Jules Lermina had dinosaurs attack a city, but it was published first in France so few saw it.  Finally, we have Conan Doyle in 1912 with “The Lost World” which solidified dinosaurs as a thing in fiction. 

3. The Evolved Man/Mutants - After “The Origin of Species” is published, it wasn’t long until Evolved Men or Mutants started showing up in fiction. “The Coming Race” and (1871), “The Great Romance” (1881).   They are generally big-headed and often have ESP of some sort.  In “Media: A Tale of the Future” (1891), they can control electricity too. It wasn’t until 1928 (”The Metal Man” by Jack Williamson) that Radiation was thrown in as a cause for Mutation.  Cosmic Rays would follow in “The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton (1931).  After that, we have “Gladiator” by Philip Gordon Wylie (1930) where we have an engineered “Evolved Man”, and “Odd John” by Olaf Stapeldon which grants us the term “Homo superior” followed by “Slan” by A.E. van Vogt which has Evolved Humans as a persecuted minority.   And with that, everything that makes the X-Men what they are is collected.

3. Man-Eating Tree - First reported in 1874, the idea of man-eating plants grew since then to encompase many monsters, but started as Folklore about ‘Darkest Africa” (Madagascar) in the New York World.  They’d print anything back then.

4. Hyde - While it is tempting to link him to Freudian Psychology, Freud did not publish his work regarding things like the Id until much later (he didn’t even coin “Psychoanalysis” until 1896).  What is springs from, I currently cannot say without more research. 

4. Robot - Though there were automata since the days of the Greeks (Talos), the first Robot in modern fiction is from “The Future Eve” by Auguste Villiers de I’lsle Adam (1886).  THough the term Robot is not invented until 1920 with “Rossum’s Universal Robots.”  They definitely offshoot from Frankenstein, but with a more mechanical bent.  

5. The Grey Alien - The modern idea of an Alien has it’s first antecedents in the 1800s.  Specifically with the essay “Man of the Year 1,000,000″ by H. G. Wells (1892-1893). He speculates what humans will evolve into, and basically invites the Gray by accident.  It wouldn’t achieve it’s alien attachments until much later.

6. Morlocks - With the Evolved Man, there is also the ‘Devolved Man’.  That is what the Morlocks are. They are, as the name implies, tied to Well’s “The Time Machine” (1895), and the word has become a catch-all for subterranean monster-men, be they Mole People, CHUDs, or straight up Demons (’GvsE’). 

7. The Martians & Their War Machines - The First Alien Invader, and the first Mecha can be traced to “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells, 1897.  Not much more to say as far as I’m aware.

8. The Mummy - The 1800s saw an Egyptian craze in England, leading to some really nasty habits (google “Mummy Powder” if you need ipecac).  1827 saw “The Mummy!: Or, a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century” which is more a bit of futurism with an ancient protagonist.  Though “Lost in the Pyramid” (1868) by Louisa May Alcott predates it, it is overshadowed by Conan Doyle’s horror story “Lot No. 249″ (1892) which has the classically animated mummy going out and killing people under control of another.  The former is a “Curse” story rather than a monster.

9. Cordyceps - Everyone these days knows the Cordyceps fungus as a great source for making zombies, and I’m lumping that fungus in with these other monsters because, well, fungus’ that take over humans is a monster of the 20th century.  Best known for Toho’s film adaptation “Matango” (1963), it is inspired by a short story from 1907 by William Hope Hodgson called “The Voice in the Night”.  There, the poor victim doesn’t realize they’ve completely become a fungus monster, acting as a warning for those near the island.    

10. Aerofauna - Conan Doyle strikes again with “The Horror of the Heights” (1912).  A pretty tight little horror story of a whole ecosystem high above our heads in the clouds.  Many a sky tentacle owes its existence to this one.

11. Lich - Possibly derived from Kosechi the Deathless of Russian folklore, the idea of undead sorcerers became a staple of the works of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smyth, dating back to 1929.  Though Gary Gigax coined the idea together for D&D and based it on Gardner Fox’s “The Sword of the Sorcerer (1969)

12. Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster - I lump these cryptids together, because (thanks to a ton of research by Daren Naish, Daniel Loxton,  Donald R. Prothero, and others) we can trace them back to the same source: King Kong (1933).  The idea of prehistoric animals being out in the world in hidden places goes back to Conan Doyle’s “Lost World” (1912), but Kong made it widely popular.  And between the giant ape and the Brontosaurus attack (and the timing of sightings picking up), we can blame Kong for this.

13. The Great Old Ones - Lovecraft’s primary contribution to fiction first appear in “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) and expand upon from here.  As near as I can tell, he made a LOT of monsters.  These include “Ancient Aliens” & Shoggoths (1936 - “At the Mountains of Madness”), Gillmen (1931 - ”The Shadow over Innsmouth”), & The Colour Out of Space (1927).  14. The Thing - The Ultimate Shapeshifter.  It first appears in 1938′s “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell, Jr.  Though Campbell's square-jawed heroes literally tear the Thing to bits, it reached its zenith of horror in adaptation.  I can think of no earlier shapeshifting humanoids of such variety at an earlier time, or of such fecundity. 

15. The Amazons - The Amazons do indeed come from Ancient Greece, but it was a way for the Greeks to rag on Women.  It wasn’t until later that women co-opted the image of the Amazons as a source of empowerment, and that was codified in 1942 with one character: Wonder Woman. She helped spark the Amazons further into the culture, or at least, Amazon women who have superpowers (as they did in those early stories).  From there, we get a more recent direct descendant that was part of the reason I started this list: Slayers from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

16. The Hobbit - Though ideas of ‘Wee Folk” are part of worldwide Folklore, Tolkien took them out of the realm of Faerie, and made them... idyllic middle-class Englishmen with his 1937 book of the same name.  With the Lord of the Rings following in 1954-1955.  His works also gave us other monsters and supernatural beings: Orcs, Ents, & Balrogs. 

17. Gremlins - An Evolution of the wee folk once again, this time adapted for the mechanical era and of a more malicious bent. It became slang in the 1920s, with the earliest print source being from 1929.   They were popularized by Roald Dahl in”The Gremlins” (1942).  Later they were used to vex Bugs Bunny (1943′s “Falling Hare”), and then they got their own movies in the 1980s.  The rest is history.  

18. Triffids - There are a LOT of fictional plants out there, and a lot of carnivorous ones, but the Triffids were the first to be extremely active in their pursuit of prey.  From 1952′s “Day of the Triffids” by John Wyndham, the story is a keen example of the ‘Cozy Apocalypse’ common in British Fiction, sort of like the whole ‘schoolboys on a desert island make well of it’ thing that “Lord of the Flies” railed against. This paved the way for everything from Audrey II to Biollante.

19. Kaiju - 1954.  You know what this is.  Between Primordial Gods and Modern Technology, the Kaiju are born.  The difference between a Kaiju and a Giant Monster is a complex nuanced one, sort of like what makes film noir. But, in general, if the story has Anti-War, Anti-Nationalist, and/or Anti-Corporate Greed leanings, it’s probably a Kaiju movie.  If not, then it probably isn’t.

20. The Body Snatchers - Another horror of 1954 from the novel “The Body Snatchers” (1955), which includes aspects that the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” did not.  Like that the Duplicates only last 5 years and basically exist to wipe out sentient beings with each planet they infest.  Clearly drawing from the idea of the Doppelganger, these Pod People have evolved into a new form.

21. The Blob - That 1958 movie has one catchy theme song.  The whole thing was inspired by an instance of “Star Jelly” in Pennsylvania, circa 1950.  It was tempting to shift this under the Shoggoth, but I think they are distinct enough.

22. Gargoyles - Longtime architectural embellishments, they did not become their own “Being” until 1971 with “The Living Gargoyle” published in Nightmare #6.  The TV Movie “Gargoyles” came soon after in 1972, firmly establishing the monster.  Though it was likely perfected in the TV Series “Gargoyles” (1994). 

23. D&D - From 1973 Through 1977, D&D was formulated and many of its key monsters were invented.  Partly as mechanics ways to screw with players and keep things lively.  This brought us Rust Monsters (1973), Mindflayer (1974), Beholder (1975), and the Gelatinous Cube (1977). 

24. The Xenomorph - Parasitoid breeding is applied to humans to wonderfully horrible effect in the 1979 film “Alien”.  It became iconic as soon as it appeared. 

25. Slasher - The first slasher film is often considered to be ‘Psycho’ (though the Universal Mummy films beyond the first prototype the formula).  The idea of an undead revenant coming back to kill rather randomly started in the film “The Fog” (1980), but was codified by Jason Voorhees in either 1984 or 1986.   I am no expert on this one, though, so I am not fully certain.

26. The Dream Killer - Freddy Krueger first appeared as a killer in dreams in 1981, but there were other dream killers before him.  They could only kill with extreme fear, though.  Freddy got physical!  I think.  Again, more research is needed.

27. Chupacabras - This is another cryptid inspired by a movie.  In this case, “Species” (1995). No, really.  This is what it comes from.   I know a lot of these are really short down the line, but the research for this one is thorough and concise! 

28. Slender Man - The Boogieman for the Internet Age.  An icon of Creepypastas and emblem of them.

Needs More Research: The Crow/Heroic Longer-Term Revenants, Immortals as a “Group” (might go to Gulliver's Travels, but I’m trying to track Highlander here) are also on the list, but they are proving extremely difficult to research, so I thought I’d post what I have at the moment.  Shinigami might also be on the list since they are syncretic adoption of the Grim Reaper into something more.

#Monsters #Folklore #Fiction #Frankenstein #Mr. Hyde #Mummy #Aliens #Morlock #Alien #Martian #War of the Worlds #matangeshwara temple #Dinosaurs #Aerofauna #Robot #Gremlin #Old Ones #Cthulhu #Tolkein #Lovecraft #Lich #Gargoyles #Loch Ness #Bigfoot #king kong #Kaiju #Amazon #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #D&D #Slasher

[not-poignant]

Your thoughts on freaky Australian wildlife+sealife?

YES I LOVE IT.

I love it ALLLLLL.

Actually if you could see my bookshelves, there are so many like ‘frogs of Australia’ ‘mammals of Australia’ ‘birds of Australia’ ‘reptiles of Australia’ ‘insects of Australia’ ‘orchids of Australia’ etc. books. My house is basically a tiny Australian museum library when it comes to wildlife. I recently bought a book just on Australian Magpies by the CSIRO. It’s just like 150 pages on magpies. I’m SO HAPPY.

As for the things that can kill us, it’s funny you know, because all Australians seem to have this weird unspoken code to immediately tell strangers of all of the worst or freakiest stories we’ve ever had. Like ‘oh remember when we had that friend WHO DIED FROM A SNAKE IN THEIR BED’ or ‘REMEMBER WHEN we had that family member who got bitten by a redback and nearly DIED’ etc. Or ‘my friend got bitten by a shark’ etc. Everyone has those stories.

And it seems most Australians find strangers and immediately start talking about them. Idk what it is. Maybe we’re just that kid that really wants other people to find us cool? So we start collectively talking about really awful things while the other kids all back away with their hands up like ‘I...didn’t come here for this.’

I have those stories too. I’ve definitely been part of this bizarre trend. It’s like when you meet a Canadian and they just can’t resist telling you about their bear or raccoon or mountain lion encounters and then when you’re exclaiming in horror at bears, or protecting your bins, or how huge moose are or whatever, they then go ‘but haha it’s not like that all the time and we’re all used to it.’

The reality is that like...yes there are risks - as with any country (I’d prefer not to live in places where the main fear is guns and not fatal spiders though), but encountering them is minimal and you’re raised knowing the kinds of things to protect yourself without thinking about it. You shake your boots out before putting them not because you’re thinking ‘I’m gonna get bitten and I’m gonna die’ but because that’s just what you do. You stay on the path while bushwalking not because you think ‘shit there’s venomous snakes out there that could kill me in 1 hour with a bite’ but because that’s just what you do. It’s all very mundane and normal, and the world is built around that being easy to cooperate with.

Of course when you explain why we do these things to tourists, then they might start thinking ‘shit things are going to kill me.’ The irony is that if you just do those things - stay on the path, shake your boots out, and a few other things - well, no actually, you’re going to be fine. And if you’re staying in suburbia or the city, you’re going to be really fine.

I love our freaky wildlife. I love that we have birds (cassowaries), seashells (cone shells) and octopus (blue-ringed octopus) that are all lethal. I love that we have the weedy and leafy sea-dragons (not lethal, but weird), and like, many other strange things happening here. I love that we have trees that need to be smoked or set on fire to flower or fruit or seed, which means if you’re buying native plants for your garden, you need to check the label to make sure they don’t need ‘smoke germination’ or ‘smoking to assist with flowering’ lol. I love that we have lots of marsupials, a golden marsupial mole that lives in the sand and is blind etc. I love that we have antechinus that mate so violently they can both expect to die from the process (like what???), or our beautiful ant-eating numbats. I love that our swans are black. I love that we have whales migrating along the coast and bottlenose dolphins everywhere and incredible sea-life.

Actually back in the day I desperately wanted to be some kind of zoologist. I didn’t have the maths requirement (alas, I am not smart enough), and I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life studying Australian animals (and ecosystems, and geography, and flora). Now I still study it, I just didn’t go to university for it. I’m involved in a few groups that focus on conservation, and can identify local birds by song, local plants by sight and try not to be an obnoxious little shit about it.

And yeah, I’ve looked a lot into the deadly animals too. They’re badass! :D I actually mostly just post memes about them on Facebook, and on one of my Tumblrs under this tag.

tl;dr don’t ask me about this if you don’t want me to ramble excitedly about it because I am sadly one of those people where you’ll back away slowly with your hands like like ‘whaaaaat.’ (Also I love animals all over the world so...but anyway I can’t afford to buy all the ‘reptiles of Madagascar’ books that exist so anyway, I’m learning all the time! I mean I’ve drawn over 400 animals, and that’s what my job as a professional artist was - combining practical information with spiritual shit, so at any one time I am filled with absolutely useless trivia like: ‘did you know the collared aracari is an unusual toucan in that it roosts communally/soclally throughout the year?’ like, I’m sorry, lol. I usually just keep it to myself, but you opened the floodgates! *shoves everything back in*)

*

From the ‘your thoughts on’ meme.

#asks and answers #personal #memey goodness #//// #///// #STRAYA #i fucking love this country #it's a GREAT place to live if you're interested in biodiversity #especially the south west of western australia #which is one of the most biodiverse regions in the *world* #some sections comparable with the amazon rainforest #LOOK I"M STILL DOING IT #SOMEONE MAKE ME STOP #administrator Gwyn wants this in the queue #Anonymous

[gurubuckaroo]

A Tumblr looks at 50

Tomorrow, the 21st of February, I turn 50 years old.

#what are you going on this hell site #delete your account #go pay taxes or something #hes literally twice the ops age

Go ahead, get it out of your system. Those are all things I’ve had replies to me tagged with. A lot of people think a lot of things about people my age being on Tumblr, and they’re not shy about saying it. If there’s one -ism I’ve learned that’s perfectly acceptable to most Tumblr users, it’s ageism. That doesn’t bother me. The last time I got anonymous hate, I donated to the ACLU on their behalf.

There are a lot of things being old (ugh) means. There are a lot of things it doesn’t mean. I don’t deserve your respect because of my age. It doesn’t make me better, or wiser, or smarter or more educated. It doesn’t make me more interesting.

The only thing I’ve got on you is that I’ve had a lot more time to make mistakes than you have. And boy have I taken advantage of those opportunities.

They say people can’t learn from the mistakes of others - they have to make their own, and only then do they learn the lesson. Well, that may be. Maybe it’s true for my generation but not yours. Maybe if I can prevent just one person from making some of the mistakes I’ve made in my life, this will be worth it.

Stop hating yourself. There are plenty of people out there willing to do it for you. Don’t be like them.

Stop berating your talent. You think your art is bad. Your music is bad. Your cosplay is bad. You know what? Everyone who has ever expressed a talent feels the same way about theirs. If there’s one constant about artists, it’s that they always feel like their own stuff is trash. Stop being your worst critic. Again, plenty of other people out there willing to do that job. You don’t want to be like them, so don’t agree with them.

Drink. Do drugs. Or not. But always in moderation. Moderation in all things - including moderation. Be moderate in your moderation. Although stay away from crack, cocaine, heroin, and anything prescribed - unless it’s your prescription (more on that later). I’ve seen those first three kill far too many friends. Worse, some of those killed are still walking around, pretending to be alive.

If you’re going to do LSD or other hallucinogens, do it with someone you trust who’s done it before. Bad trips happen - but almost always because of something you or your tripmates bring in with them. An experienced tripguide can walk you back out of a bad trip. Never do it alone. It’s almost impossible to have a bad experience on shrooms, but they might give you stomach cramps - if so, make tea out of them instead of eating them.

Take your Brain Pills. If you’ve been prescribed antidepressants or some other psychoactive meds, take them. My first psychologist appointment was when I was 5. I’ve literally fought clinical depression my entire life, to the extent that I was hospitalized for 45 days just before my 18th birthday. It’s not something to be ashamed about any more than having Diabetes or Sickle Cell or Grave’s Disease or Autism. Depression, Schizophrenia, Bipolar, these are all brain diseases, not failings, and taking medication for them is how you treat them. If you’re terrible about remembering whether or not you’ve taken your meds, they sell pill bottles now with caps that show how long it’s been since you opened it last. They’re great for my chronic pain meds. If you can’t afford them, you’ve got a Tumblr - make a draft post and update it every time you take a pill.

Don’t over-rely on safe spaces and trigger warnings. I can hear you now - “Oh here he comes, about to call us all snowflakes or something.” On the contrary. Safe spaces are wonderful. My wife is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and teenage sexual assault. I worked for most of our (so far) 27 year marriage helping her to heal, only to see so much work thrown out because of a well-placed trigger from someone who proudly considers herself a SJW and doesn’t care who she offends.

The mental immune system we build up in our psyche is every bit as important as the biological immune system we build up in our bodies. Excessive trigger warnings are no less damaging than refusing vaccination, and can in some cases be triggering themselves. In both cases, the individual will be perfectly fine living in a sealed bubble, but will be completely unable to survive in the world at large. Like biological defenses, the young brain is the best at developing coping mechanisms. As individuals age, those systems become more difficult, and more traumatic, to develop. I’m not suggesting that there should be no trigger warnings or safe spaces. I am suggesting that, like in all things, moderation is the best course.

Fact-check. Snopes is your friend. Google Reverse Image Search is your friend. You may really want to believe that new rumor from a .info site. It takes 20 seconds to check before you powerslam “reblog.” It could save your reputation. It could save someone else’s. (Oh, and any website ending in .info is trash. That domain costs the least to register, so it’s essentially disposable). And for god’s sake, don’t believe everything Anonymous says. Bryan P. Willman, a part-time police dispatcher, had his life ruined because Anonymous claimed he was the shooter who killed Mike Brown, and half of Tumblr and Facebook reblogged the accusation without pause.

Be yourself. Shakespeare said it - “This above all else: to thine own self be true.” Of course, knowing him, it was probably an elaborate dick joke that I still don’t get. But it’s still true. Capital-T True. Possibly the biggest Truth I’ve ever learned.

See, we all like to have friends. And we start off thinking that the best way to have friends is to be what our friends what us to be. Doesn’t help that we probably don’t really know what our friends want us to be, but that’s beyond the point. The problem starts when we end up feeling like we’re being drawn and quartered - because we are trying to be all things to all people. God help young people today who have potentially hundreds of friends through Tumblr or such - they’re trying to be perfect in the eyes of too many observers. Throw social forces into this, and we start to try to be perfect to entire movements. It cannot be done.

There’s another perfect truth we have to realize. It’s simple and absolute: People are jerks. Not all the time, and not to everyone! But we are. And here’s why: We’re all individuals. At some time, we’re going to rub someone the wrong way. And if we’re trying to be exactly what everyone else wants us to be, we’ll end up being jerks to everyone. If we’re true to ourselves, we’ll only be jerks to those who just naturally deserve it. Because we aren’t trying to be perfect for the wrong people.

Be yourself. First and foremost. Be the best yourself you can be, but be it because you are it, not because someone else wants you to be it. Let’s face it, other people quite probably don’t have your best interests at heart. If being yourself means that you don’t fit well with a few people, that’s OK - because it means you will fit better with some others.

When you first met the people you call friends, you probably acted like yourself. Because you didn’t know what they wanted yet. Imagine how much more they’ll like you when you go back to being that person they first met, rather than being a mirror.

Regrets are OK. Self-recrimination is not. There are so many decisions I’ve made in my past that I regret. One decision I made I will never be content with, even though I know (then and now) it was the correct action. My regret from that is purely for my own lost chance. Every once in a while I look back through hindsight and say “well maybe it would have been OK to make the other choice”, but I know I’m lying to myself. I just end up wallowing in self-pity over having lost the experience. Don’t be like me. I’m still trying to learn this one. It’s possible I never will.

You will hurt people. Don’t be afraid to apologize.  Some of my actions ended up hurting people - some accidentally, some deliberately, some through sheer childishness. I’ve managed to apologize to most of the people I’ve hurt. A few have left this world before I got the chance, or the courage, to face my own failings. And in almost every case, it was my own failing that hurt them. Growth comes when we recognize our own failings, and learn to overcome them. And if we’re going to grow, we’ll need a good ecosystem - and that means friends, who may be hurting because of what we did.

Life is too short to spend with toxic people. There can be a case made that you become an “adult” when you no longer need to tolerate toxic people. This is especially the case regarding parents. I first cut my father out of my life (to my mother’s delight) when I was 11 and refused to come visit him over the holidays. Later we attempted a reconciliation - that experiment lasted 3 terrible years. Since then, I’ve exchanged maybe an hour’s worth of words with him, over three in-person visits and a few phone calls. I doubt I’ll attend his funeral, should he ever get his shit together enough to die.

Unfortunately, there will always be times when you have to tolerate toxicity. Usually at the workplace. The really nasty stuff can often be abated (but not always cured) with a trip to Human Resources - but not always. At least, not yet. Things in the workplace are better now than they’ve ever been, regarding this at least. One can only hope the trend continues.

Life is an experience. Don’t be afraid of it. Imagine yourself on a roller coaster. You’re locked into the car, and slowly it starts climbing the first hill - clack clack clack - and the ground is falling away, and ahead you see the turn. Excitement builds. You crest the hill - and pull quietly into the station. Oh boy, can’t wait to try that again, right? Life exists in the dips, the valleys, the turns and rolls.

Every day you keep pushing through, every day that you groan and pull yourself out of bed anyway, every day you curse while tying your shoes, pulls you kicking and screaming through life. I’m not going to promise you it’ll put you one day closer to your dream job, or one day closer to happiness, or contentment, or whatever. Life isn’t about reaching a goal. It’s an experience. And every day you keep moving, you get to keep having that experience - the highs and the lows. And the highs make the lows so very much worth it.

If you’re still hung up on my age, and think someone my age doesn’t belong on Tumblr, tell me - at what age are you going to give up your fandoms and delete your account?

#happy birthday #life #self care #mistakes

[violetsystems]

#personal

There’s been a lot of encouraging news in the face of absolute disaster lately.  None of it really applies to anybody but me.  So I have been living that reality to the best of my ability.  It hasn’t been without missteps.  Things feel even more fucked up than they were in the world let alone life.  For me society trends downward when I shut the door.  So I’ve been focusing on improving my surroundings.  My kitchen has officially become my office.  Google announced their employees were working from home until the end of the year.  Facebook threw its hands up and said forever.  My situation is far more complex but doing my job depends on the internet.  I upgraded my router back in April at the first hint of all of this.  Slowly I’ve been building up the infrastructure around here to support me being able to do my job.  I upgraded my internet and finally got a home phone number linked to a 312 area code.  I’ve been relying on package delivery for a good month and a half.  The amount of packages I’ve had stolen has dwindled.  Yesterday the Stussy drop from Dover Street Market was misdelivered.  The day before they wouldn’t drop it off without a signature.  I had to flag down the fed ex truck on the corner.  I walked them back to the address explaining that I had to be vigilant due to gang activity.  That morning when I put out the signature release one of the gang members from the block had talked to me.  Mostly in passing about life.  I’m pretty sure theirs is rougher than mine.  But that’s the upfront and transparent life I live.  Having to be up front and center with people at all times nobody what emotions I feel inside.  I wore a mask when I approached the fed ex truck.  When I walked them back they discovered they had delivered both packages for my address to the neighbor.  So I killed two birds with one stone though my neighbor would never know.  I woke up Sunday morning to a pigeon completely ripped apart on my porch.  I can’t tell if it was the cats or something else.  I cleaned it up at eight in the morning regardless.  Finally just decided to clean and minimize the porch for the summer.  I had a refurbished shark robot vacuum delivered by UPS that same day.  They texted my phone and I ran out to grab it.  The guy thanked me for being fast.  I plugged it in and set up the app on my phone.  The splash screen showed a clean, neutral home.  Lurking in the background picture was my router.  I let the thing run for an hour.  It picked up dust I never knew existed.  My cat is bewildered and afraid.  Much like most of the neighborhood is when my name comes up in conversation.  What is he like?  What does he do?  Is he single?  No.  No.  And no.  Do I get things delivered on time?  I get them in the end.  I ran around the neighborhood in the Nike X Stussy drop after my works hours yesterday.  I almost got run over twice.  The shirt says increase the peace.  I guess I struck a nerve.  And yet people have been walking over me for years.  The embarrassing part is now everybody sees just how much and in what context.  And people are reasonably scared because as calm as I seem if they were in my shoes it would be different.  They would break down.  They would collapse.  My credit score went up a hundred points this week.  That’s some encouraging news.  Cash positive is a good look.  Too bad our president isn’t.

Money seems to be all that is important to people these days.  How much you spend.  What deals you make and steals you uncover.  I try to play that game sometimes.  I’ve saved a lot of money over the last few months.  Locked down.  I’ve improved my health, my cooking skills, my body tone, and my video game performance.  I just pieced out the first stage of a new desktop.  A mid sized microatx ryzen.  The first PC I’ve built in over a decade.  My goal is to play wow at the maximum settings on my TV.  More so like the phone, I’d just rather have my own computer for home.  My watch has organized a lot of my appointments and responsibilities in a low key way.  Much how I continue to live my life.  Low key.  This is not to say I feel trapped between two huge plates of metal.  The one grind where I’m not good or important enough to pay attention to in real life.  The other grind where people use me as a bait or decoy to trick people.  Neither of those cases treat me like a human being.  I have been hurt so much by this process that I have transcended to a point where I don’t bother much with society.  And yet society still expects so much out of me.  I ordered my Jacobin magazines for Mayday.  I might sit out on my porch, drink tea and read them by myself.  But nobody ever engages me in a way that’s respectful.  It’s all trick after trick.  Scam after scam.  Hushed back talk and shadowed praise.  I am fucking invisible.  Nobody cares about me.  If they do, they aren’t able to show it.  And there’s only a few people I love enough to understand that relationship deeply.  The rest of the world is empty to me aside from animals and gardening.  I should be so much more.  And somehow looking back to the last decade I am.  It’s just not of value to anyone but me.  And I’m not really interested in taking another step backwards to show how genuine and truthful I am.  The embarrassing thing is while people gave the most vile people the pass because they were more famous or pretty I suffered.  Over and over and over again.  To the point where whatever it was people were chasing after seemed meaningless to me.  I tried so hard to get back on track.  And then I did.  And I took a look around and it frightens me.  Nobody knows the value of anything beyond money.  And I’ve held a job consistently for twenty years.  Paid taxes for twenty years.  Grown actual competitive job skills for twenty years.  Accrued a pension.  Travelled the world.  Networked all over the map.  And I’m still here on tumblr every Saturday.  Typing away as a warning.  One that nobody really hears other than myself and my friends.  Who I think have offered me a place to control my own narrative in the face of lies, bullshit, and selfishness.  It all took work.  Courage.  Callous confrontation.  A look in the mirror of what it is I could become.  And what it is I am now.  I don’t really know.  I deserve to know.  I deserve to be loved, respected and treated like a valuable human being.  I know I am not.

For the record, I’m Tim.  I fucking hate politics.  I am an adult who has seen more of my time wasted and freedom siphoned.  And I also live in America.  A place where people tell me to stay indoors and shut the door.  A place where if you come knocking with a warrant you better be wearing a mask.  A place where I pay it forward enough and keep a high enough profile to avoid awkward conversations like that.  And yet space is still encroached on.  I am for the record enjoying the territorial markings.  I’ve carved out a very special place for myself in the third most populated city in America next to LA and New York.  I was thinking about heading to LA for a day sometime.  A lot of my friends out there are in the same ecosystem.  And yet the internet has kept us all together regardless.  Tied and knitted together by the stories, art, fashion and ideals we felt important to share with each other.  We are a community in and of itself.  The community that I pay forward to and have seen so many great things happen in my life.  Free thinking and independent minds linked like block chain when it comes to the latest drops or rare trivia related to science, anime or that little horny fucking skeleton guy you people draw.  People are always failing at engaging us.  And so we fall back to our dead platform and seeth in our collective anger sometimes.  Other times life goes on and we post another picture.  I post the same picture every once and awhile to let everybody know how much of a nerd I am.  And also how romantic I think I am when everybody tells me I don’t exist and could never connect with anyone.  I’m not good enough.  Handsome enough.  Young enough.  Happy enough.  For the record, people lie to discourage you.  They talk behind your back because they’re afraid of the competition.  They’re afraid of having to work as hard as you.  Suffer as a horribly as you in silence.  They have no plan other than being negative.  Playing dirty tricks.  Playing people against each other.  Using discontent, anger, division against their own people for the sake of consolidating power.  I’ve written about it in anguish for years.  And people just don’t listen.  I do.  I act on things creatively.  I think on my toes.  When the package doesn’t get delivered I don’t sit and wonder why.  I go out there and get it.  When the test of time is withstood.  It’s me sitting there with a faint smile on my face and a knowing look.  It’s been a long time.  And as long as I’m around you know what consistency looks like.  And maybe what forever has the potential to be.  Me and you.  Not me, you and the rest of society constantly knocking on our door asking for milk and sugar.  What will the neighbors think if I don’t answer?  That my time is more valuable spent with you.  A long time of no regrets.  Just forward thinking and self care.  And a humidifier in the bedroom.  Speaking of clearing the air. <3 Tim

[evanvanness]

Narrative edition, Week in Ethereum News, Jan 12, 2020

This is the 5th edition of the 6 annotated versions that I committed in my head to doing when I decided to see how an annotated edition would be received.

Given the response on my Gitcoin matching grant, I may have to keep going.  Check it out - giving 1 DAI right now will get more than 100x matching.

Thanks to everyone who has given on my Gitcoin grant.  It’s the best way to show you want these annotated editions to continue.

Even 1 Dai is super appreciated given the matching!  Since Tumblr adds odd forwarders to links, here’s the text of the link: https://gitcoin.co/grants/237/week-in-ethereum-news

Eth1

Latest core devs call. Notes from Tim Beiko, discussion of EIPs 2456, 1962, 2348

EthereumJS v4.13 – bugfix release for Muir Glacier

Slockit released a stable version of their Incubed stateless ultralight client, aimed at IoT devices. 150kb to verify transactions or 500kb including EVM. incentive layer coming soon.

A little slow on in the eth1 section, but Incubed getting to be stable is cool.  Obviously if they can get the incentive layer worked out, that will be fantastic.

When I think about that that I was wrong about, definitely if I go back to q1 or q2 2017, I  thought that IoT Ethereum was much more of a thing.   There was Brody’s early washing machine prototype, Airlock->Oaken, Slockit had some stuff 3 years ago, etc.  It hasn’t really happened.

Why not?  It seems to me like most of those things require enterprises to take the plunge.  No one is going to go out and manufacture a domestic electronic device just yet with all the uncertainty there.  

And light client server incentivization hasn’t happened yet.  There’s just things to be built still. So it’s cool to see Incubed hitting a stable release.  Slowly but surely all the necessary primitives get built.  I still think there will be lots of robots transacting some day.

Eth2

Latest Eth2 implementer call. Notes from Mamy and from Ben.

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Spec version v0.10 with BLS standards

Prysmatic restarted its testnet with a newer version of the spec and mainnet config

Lodestar update on light clients and dev tooling

3 options for state providers

Eth2 for Dummies

Exploring validator costs

Eth2 for dummies was the most clicked this week.  Even within the universe of people who subscribe to the newsletter, there’s always demand for high level explainers.

The spec is essentially finalized and out the door for auditing, so now it’s a sprint towards shipping, though of course there may be some minor changes as a result of further networking and of course from the audit.

Lately some in the community have been promoting a July ship date and I personally would be disappointed if it slipped that far.

Layer2

Optimistic rollup for tokens Fuel ships first public testnet

Optimistic Game Semantics for a generalized layer2 client

Loopring presents full results of their zk rollup testing

StarkEx says they can do 9000 trades per second at 75 gas per trade with offchain data, with the limiting factor being the prover, not onchain throughput.

9000 is a pretty crazy number, although since the data is offchain that makes it a Plasma construct and not a rollup.   StarkWare to my memory hasn’t provided details on what the exit game is - as an end user do i get a proof I can submit if i need to exit?  I have no idea.

Anyway, it’s very cool that the limiting factor is the prover, ie, nothing about Ethereum is what is currently limiting the 9000 transactions per second number.

Of course Loopring would also have a fairly crazy number if they did offchain data, but they have a thousand or 2k tps per second number with onchain data, and let’s be honest: right now the limiting factor here is the demand for dexes.   No dex at the moment can fill even a hundred transactions per second.  But as trades get cheaper, presumably there is more demand.   And token trading will certainly increase in the next bull market.

Meanwhile Fuel shipped its first testnet.  Very neat.

Stuff for developers

An update on the Vyper compiler: there’s now two efforts, a new one in Rust using YUL to target both EVM & ewasm as well as the existing one in Python.

A look at vulnerabilities of deployed code over time

a beginner’s guide to the K framework

Vulnerability: hash collisions with multiple variable length arguments

Verifying wasm transactions (and part2)

Austin Griffith’s eth.build metatransactions

Build your own customized Burner Wallet

Abridged v2 aiming to make it easy to onboard new users of web2 networks

Ethcode v0.9 VSCode extension

Embark v5

The Vyper saga is interesting. The existing Vyper compiler had a number of security holes found.  EF’s Python team decided they didn’t like the existing codebase.  So now some of the existing Vyper team is continuing on with the existing Python compiler, whereas there will also be an effort to write a Vyper compiler in Rust but to the intermediate language Yul, which means it will have both ewasm and EVM.

Also interesting to see the data viz of depoyed vulnerabilities over time.  App security has been improving!

Ecosystem

RicMoo: SQRLing mnemonic phrases

ethsear.ch – Ethereum specific search engine

Avado’s RYO node – nodes opt-in and let users access them via load balancer

30 days of Eth ecosystem shipping

Aztec’s BN-254 trusted setup ceremony post-mortem. Confidential transactions launching this month

RicMoo always has interesting posts on techniques to use in Ethereum that aren’t mainstream.  This one is pretty interesting.

I’m very excited about Aztec’s confidential transactions shipping this month.   Much like Tornado, this is huge.  The difference is that Aztec is about obscuring transaction amounts.   Well, it’s about more than that and will be an interesting primitive for people to build with.

Enterprise

700m USD volume on Komgo commodity trade finance platform

TraSeable seafood tracker article on the challenges points out the troubles with no private chain interoperability

Caterpillar business process management system

Q&A with Marley Gray about the EEA’s Token Taxonomy Initiative

700m USD.  It continues to strike me that enterprise is one of Ethereum’s biggest moats, and yet I don’t think I do a great job covering it.  Much of what gets published is press release rewrites.

And of course I did a small bit of editorializing by noting that an article on private chains was finding how hard it was to have all these private chains.  They need mainnet!

Governance and standards

EIP1559 implementation discussion

EIP2456: Time based upgrades

Metamask’s bounty for a generalized metatransaction standard

1559 is important because it kills economic abstraction forever!  It’s happening in eth2, it’d be nice to have it happen in eth1.   While I think some of the tradeoffs have not been written about - and that originally caused me to be a bit skeptical, perhaps i’ll write a post about that -- it’d be great to get 1559 into production.

In general, Eth needs better standardization around wallets for frontend devs.

Application layer

Flashloans within one transaction using Aave Protocol are live on mainnet

Orchid’s decentralized VPN launches

Data viz on dexes in 2019

ZRXPortal for ZRX holders to delegate their tokens to stakers

Dai Stability Fee and Dai Savings Rate go up to 6%, while Sai Stability Fee at 5%

EthHub’s new Ethereum user guides

It’s great that EthHub is doing user guides, that’s something that is missing.  What’s also missing is a concerted Ethereum effort to link to stuff so that old uncle Google does a better job of returning search results.

Aave’s flashloans is another neat primitive.  Things unique to DeFi.

Tokens/Business/Regulation

David Hoffman: the money game landscape

Australia experimenting with a digital Aussie dollar, with a prototype on a private Ethereum chain

3 cryptocurrency regulation themes for 2020

OpenSea’s compendium of NFT knowledge

A newsletter to keep track of the NFT space

Initial Sardine Coin Offering

NBA guard Spencer Dinwiddie’s tokenized contract launches January 13

Progressive decentralization: a dapp business plan

I wrote a Twitter thread about Dinwiddie’s tokens.  I’m curious how they do, given that the NBA made him change plans and just do a bond.  I haven’t seen the prospectus, and press accounts have conflicting information, but it appears that the annual interest rate is 14%.  In that case, I wonder who puts fiat in?  I doubt anyone would sell their ETH at these prices for a 14% USD return.  There is some risk, but it basically requires Dinwiddie to lose the plot and get arrested or fail a drug test.  So it seems like quite a good return given the low risk (assuming it is indeed 14%)

That Sardine token is wild, but not crazy.  I won’t even try to summarize it, but perhaps even weirder is that they announced it at CES.  Is your average CES attendee going to have any idea what ETH is during the depths of cryptowinter?  Unclear to me.

Lots of good stuff in this section this week.   Jesse Walden wrote up the “get product market fit, then community, then decentralize” which has worked for a bunch of DeFi protocols.   

It’s also the opposite of what folks like Augur and Melon have done.  So far the “decentralize later” camp has gotten more traction, but I personally don’t consider this argument decided at all, especially if you are in heavily regulated industries like Augur or Melon where regulators might put you into bankruptcy just because they got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.

I also think Augur could be a sleeper hit for 2020, and I think Melon’s best days are still in front of it.

General

Andrew Keys: 20 blockchain predictions for 2020

Haseeb Qureshi’s intro to cryptocurrency class for programmers

Ben Edgington’s BLS12-381 for the rest of us

Visualizing efficient Merkle trees for zero knowledge proofs

Eli Ben-Sasson’s catalog of the Cambrian zero knowledge explosion

Bounty for breaking RSA assumptions

It’s amusing how heavy crypto stuff often gets put into this section.  The cryptography stuff is all super interesting, but not sure I can provide much more context for it.

Juxtaposed with intense cryptography in this section is Andrew Keys’ annual new year predictions.  Always a fun read.

Haseeb’s class looked great.  A place to pick up all the knowledge that has taken some of us years to piece together, blog post by blog post.  

Full Week in Ethereum News issue.

[mikemortgage]

Smartphone sales overcome challenge of consumer satiety with increasingly futuristic features

Bigger displays and better cameras were the obvious hallmarks of the latest smartphone releases from both Google (the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3XL) and Apple (the iPhone XS, XS Max and the soon-to-come XR). Reviewers, however, were quick to point out the similarities to their respective predecessors — and suggested consumers hang on to last year’s models. It turns out, consumers didn’t really need the advice. Even hardcore iPhone fans, known for lining up and even camping out for the latest launch, did not turn up in the same numbers as for the iPhone X.

“From an innovation perspective, everyone is waiting for what the next big wave will be,” said Dan Krausz, National Sector Lead for Telecommunications at KPMG in Toronto. “There are obvious trends — bigger screens, the demand for more video continues to increase, better and more cameras, more Artificial Intelligence software — but what we are really seeing is consumers are sticking with what they have at the moment.”

How we got here

It’s generally accepted that the first true smartphone was the Nokia 7650 launched in 2002. It had physical buttons, a small screen, was designed for 2G technology and ran on the Symbian Operating System, making it the first mobile phone able to take third-party applications. “It was designed like a regular phone and we used it to call people,” said Wayne Lam, principal analyst, mobile electronics, IHS Markit in Los Angeles. “The iPhone came on the scene in 2007 and threw the design book out the window. No more buttons. A bigger screen you could touch. And it was more than just a phone. That’s when the smartphone as we know it took over the industry.”

Lam likens the evolution to Darwinism, with the most successful evolving with successive generations. Today people use their smartphones to interact on social media, watch videos and consume content in a mobile way. “The smartphone industry didn’t think about Facebook or Uber in the beginning. All of these applications came after the hardware platform,” said Lam. “That’s the cycle: smartphone manufacturers create capabilities and hit on a killer application that further drives evolution. The next iteration does that better, faster, with more processing power.”

The result: in the past five years, screen sizes have almost doubled, with the average screen size at 5.8 inches today (the Pixel 3 XL is 6.3 inches and the Apple XS Max is 6.5 inches). Screens aren’t just larger, they’re more immersive, more colourful. The computational or digital cameras are so good they’ve largely killed off the point-and-shoot camera market, and even they are getting better.

What’s next

Multi and better cameras. LG just came out with the LG40 Thin Q, which has five cameras. The next evolution? Lam sees smartphones going after the high-end DSLR photography market. Built-in projectors, 3D and hologram features are also in the works, but Lam is skeptical largely because they aren’t particularly practical.

Flexible screens. Think Westworld’s smartphones that fold out into a tablet. “There have been previous versions with seams. Now companies are working on a single foldable screen that would open up,” said Duncan Stewart, Director of Technology, Media and Telecommunications Research for Deloitte Canada. “It would be thicker, heavier, and it’s not clear if consumers want it. Tablets are already being replaced by lighter, more mobile smartphones, with sales down nearly 50 per cent from 2014.��

Imagine your smartphone being able to predict your next usual activity, or bring up suggestions, or remind you to get into your car because it takes 45 minutes to get to your next event. These types of enhancements will happen thanks to AI. “In the past, it was the hardware that defined smartphone in terms of processing power, memory capacity, network interface, display size, battery life. In the future, carefully designed applications that allow consumers to easily interface anywhere and live their lives will define smartphones,” said Sagar Naik, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. “This is where Artificial Intelligence will play a big role. For example, an app powered by AI will match my need for a painter with the three best options on my phone within minutes rather than me having to search that information out.”

Augmented Reality. AR apps (digital overlays) already exist that enhance what you see through your phone. Just think about all those instagram filters, Pokémon Go and more practical tools like the IKEA app that allows you to take a photo of furniture in a magazine and see it in your living room. “That’s now,” said Lam. “In the future, AR will move from smartphones to wearables that are linked to your smartphone. For example, glasses that incorporate AR, so that when you bump into a colleague, an information bubble will appear in your lens, telling you their name, where you last saw them.”

Smartphone as healthphone. The ability of smartphones to connect with medical devices is on the horizon, said Deloitte’s Stewart. “The Apple watch recently received FDA approval for both a built-in atrial-fibrillation-detecting algorithm and an ECG. Regulators appear to be open to the idea of consumerization of medical devices that connect or attach to the smartphone, transforming it into a medical hub.”

5G technology. With 5G mobile networks expected to be available in Canada by 2020, this is perhaps the biggest game-changer for smartphones, bringing faster speeds, more capacity, lower latency and more competition. “5G unleashes the potential of the Internet of Things,” said KPMG’s Krausz. “Where the smartphone finds its way in that ecosystem of connected devices is going to be interesting.”

Where smartphones failed

Microsoft Kin One and Two came out in 2010 and within weeks the prices dropped. Built with Facebook and Twitter at their core, they were targeted to social media addicts but failed largely because they weren’t really smartphones, had no apps or games yet required a data plan with Verizon.

Google announced its modular Project Ara smartphone project in 2013 and shuttered it in 2016 without ever releasing it to the market. Modularity is a concept where you can upgrade the phone with customizable features. Motorola is still trying to make it happen but all those options seem to cause consumers paralysis of choice.

Amazon Fire launched in 2014 and quickly fizzled out. It featured four cameras to create a false sense of 3D and presented a different flavour of Android but proved to be too odd. Plus, it was exclusive to AT&T at the time.

More recently, Essential, a startup by Andy Rubin, the father of Android, has hit on a lukewarm reception. Among its features: a magnetic interface and snap-on 360 degree camera.

Finally, BlackBerry, once the tech leader, has fallen to the back of the pack largely because of its failure to keep up in a consumer-driven market.

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Starbucks to ditch plastic straws at all its restaurants by 2020 amid growing backlash

NEW YORK — Starbucks Corp said on Monday it will begin phasing out use of plastic straws at its restaurants by 2020, giving environmentalists a sizeable victory in their campaign to convince restaurants to abandon plastic utensils.

The Seattle-based chain said it would eliminate single-use plastic straws globally at its 28,000 locations. The straws will be replaced by new recyclable strawless lids and alternative material straws.

Its announcement came just days after its hometown of Seattle barred plastic straws and utensils at restaurants, amid a broader global push to discourage the use of plastic straws and other one-time use plastics.

Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s parent Recipe Unlimited to phase out plastic straws at its 19 brands by 2019

The growing environmental pitch for ditching the straw

Starbucks investors mourn end of an era as Schultz exits after nearly four decades

“For our partners and customers, this is a significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways,” Starbucks Chief Executive Kevin Johnson said in a statement.

Last month, rival McDonald’s Corp, the world’s largest restaurant chain, announced plans to transition to paper straws at its U.K. and Ireland restaurants, beginning in September with completion in 2019.

The McDonald’s decision does not extend to its other global restaurants, however. A proposal to investigate the impact of plastic straws at its 37,000 worldwide restaurants, what would have been a step towards phasing out plastic straws, was shot down by shareholders in May.

The U.N. Environment Programme estimates that some 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean every year — the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck full of plastic every minute — killing birds and marine life and compromising the ocean ecosystem.

Plastic straws represent a comparatively small amount of all plastic waste. However, they are more difficult to recycle than other plastic items.

Dylan de Thomas, vice president of industry collaboration at The Recycling Partnership, said that curbside recycling programs in the United States don’t typically accept straws. Even for those consumers who recycle plastic items, a straw is so small it can be difficult to sort.

“It’s really thin. It’s really small. It’s really light. So it’s really challenging in our existing sortation system to be able to sort it out,” he said.

In contrast, paper straws are often compostable. When disposed of in a landfill, paper straws decompose at a much faster rate than plastic ones.

For businesses, paper straws are also more expensive than their plastic counterparts. Per 250 straws at U.K.-based catering equipment company Drinkstuff, paper straws cost about US$8.62 (£6.49), versus US$1.66 (£1.25) for plastic, for instance.

In 2017 there were about 63 billion straws used in the United States per year, around 170-175 million straws per day, according to data provided by Technomic.

“Taken in isolation I don’t know that anyone would argue that slightly higher straw costs are going to break the backs” of restaurant owners, said David Henkes, senior principal at Technomic food service consulting company.

“But you couple it with rising costs in a whole lot of other categories and that’s where the challenge comes… It’s a small increase here, and a small increase there.”

Grassroots conservation groups have been among the most vocal opponents of plastic straws, though the push to paper and other biodegradable and recyclable materials has found support in some corporate boardrooms as well.

Earlier this year, the fifth-largest U.S. carrier, Seattle-based Alaska Airlines, said it would be going strawless, beginning this month.

“There’s always going to be people who still buy plastic straws,” Drinkstuff head of marketing Buzz Seager said in a phone interview. “Especially if you’re a little venue, prices are always going to be a bit of a barrier to it.”

Yet Seager said the company has seen an increase in demand from customers for straws that are better for the environment.

“You basically just pay for the privilege of being eco-friendly,” Seager said.

© Thomson Reuters 2018

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