#one-way slabs

[shreetmtbars]

Comprehensive Guide to Different Types of Slabs in Construction Explore the various types of slabs used in construction with this detailed guide from Shree TMT. Learn about one-way and two-way slabs, waffle slabs, flat slabs, precast slabs, hollow core slabs, and composite slabs. Understand their applications, benefits, and how they contribute to structural integrity. Perfect for construction professionals and enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge.

[serpentface]

Etadinii priest (cult of Inyamache) standing near the serpent stone, a megalithic structure predating any historical record. Contrary to first impressions and occasional jesting, this is almost definitely not a giant penis (though Some level of symbolic phallic intent is possible), and was probably shaped to cast a long shadow resembling the head and neck of a snake.

Its location is within the present-day province of Wardin adjacent to the city Jaesai, close to the border of Ephennos. A temple to Inyamache was built around it three centuries ago and greatly expanded within the past century, though the stone and the majority of the associated site remains intact.

It is most likely at least couple thousand years old, long predating the written record and having only hazy and conflicting accounts in different oral histories. Most of its original features have been worn away by erosion, but petrogylphs of a snake and rows of scimitar deer (locally extinct or possibly never extant in this area), gazelle, and aurochs remain visible (and may have been re-carved at various points in history), and there are traces of concentric rings at the 'head'. 21st century level analysis would also find traces of ochre within the lines of the petroglyphs, which were painted and repainted red for at least a couple centuries after its creation.

This is the largest single prehistoric megalithic structure located within present day Imperial Wardin (unless burial cairns constructed over slab tombs are counted) and its existence is very technically impressive, especially given the nearest possible quarry is about 50 miles away. The builders of the site were almost certainly a fairly small society of nomadic pastoralists, so the diversion of time and manpower to the quarrying and movement of this stone (and others on the site) would have been absolutely exceptional. Most similar structures from the era are significantly smaller (about human height) and found closer to quarry sources.

The stone is part of a larger site that was mostly or entirely constructed in the same period. It stands adjacent to a shallow, rounded manmade pit buffered from erosion with brick walls, encircled by smaller horizontal slabs. A single circular slab is placed in the center, which is currently referred to as the sun stone. A nearby arroyo also shows signs of modification from the same period (beyond typical redirections for irrigation), diverting any potential floodwaters away from the site to prevent inundation of the pit.

The primary purpose of this stone and the site itself is recording the winter solstice. During the solstice sunset, the snake's cast shadow approaches and perfectly engulfs the circular slab at the center, appearing to devour it. The notion that the sun is eaten by a snake (either on the winter solstice, during total eclipses, or both) appears to have been a common thread in religious belief in the region. This notion is no longer held in the Wardi sphere (the night of the solstice is the sun's yearly death and total eclipses are a concerning premature and unnatural death) but still has linguistic traces, particularly in the word for total solar eclipses being a compound form of the phrase 'swallowed sun'.

Ownership of the site has changed hands numerous times over its history, but it has been in near-continuous use by all its owners as a place to observe the winter solstice and perform related rites. Virtually all proto-Wardi monotheist animist worldviews cast the sun (or sun + sky) as God and/or the source from which all beings emanate, and most considered the winter solstice to be an exceptionally significant (and potentially dangerous) moment in the year, as the time of the sun's dying and subsequent rebirth.

Within the faith of the 7-faced god, veneration of God has shifted to focus more upon the earth (with the sun as an Extension of the earth, all parts of God's body) but the winter solstice still retains extreme religious significance- it's used in part to determine the date of the new year (which occurs on the first new Nyaram moon on or after the solstice), and is still recognized as the moment of the sun's death.

The state cult of Inyamache currently maintains this site as part of the temple grounds and uses it to measure the winter solstice in the same capacity it has for millennia, using the total engulfment of the sun stone as the signal to begin their most important rites of the year. It is understood that it's at least Possible that the sun could fail to rise the next morning if proper action is not taken to ensure its rebirth.

The serpent stone stands in contrast to the brightly plastered and painted temple (and the other prehistoric slabs on-site that have received this treatment) in remaining unaltered in the modern era. The state cult holds that the serpent stone and its associated site was created by the first men, and considers the location and the serpent stone itself to be sacred and regulated by taboo. The only people permitted to enter the site and touch the stone are Etadinii priests (who cleanse it with water once per solar month). Solar eclipses (and subsequent misfortunes attributed to them) are occasionally blamed on trespassers.

[vaguely-concerned]

tiny animation detail from this scene I really like: rook glances towards the locations of lucanis and bellara's rooms (and possibly where they're most likely to be found in this moment?) respectively when they deliver this line!

(honestly I expect that lucanis is hanging out somewhere other than the pantry during this to give everyone in this unfolding catastrophe some space, but consider: it's so much funnier if he IS sitting in the pantry hearing this all go down on the other side of the wall like

taash stomps in with thunder and trepidation in their eyes like 'hey. I need vegetables. can we make vegetables happen.' and lucanis already handing them a lettuce and tomato like i gotchu fam this is literally the only thing I know how to do for you in this situation go with the maker and these salad ingredients I resignedly already know you'll just put on a plate with no dressing no spices no nothing. just the most sleep deprived caffeinated to the point of vibrating gently in place awkward-yet-painfully-well-meaning man in the world standing there before his friend about to have one of the most difficult conversations of their life like '...can I offer you a turnip in these trying times' while rye desperately treads social water out in the dining room to buy time. amazing. our lives really all do touch each other. headcanon passionately embraced)

[another-goblin]

Dr. Ratio in Amphoreus at home:

I'm not sure exactly, but I think this guy is Nikador's Reason he discarded before going crazy, so it makes sense for him to talk about "eradicating foolishness" and "teaching lessons." But where did the last part come from? Why is it so similar to Ratio's "It is only in moments of solitude and despair, when help is absent, that fools grasp how to pick themselves up"?

Even if Dr. Ratio turns out to be from Amphoreus, I doubt he would have anything to do with Nikador.

And uplifting ordinary humans through strife is not exactly what I expected from Nikador. Although it makes sense for pre-madness Nikador, I guess?

Upd. Btw Gnaeus is a Latin name so Ratio wouldn't be out of place there either. Not all names there are Greek.

[dreamsy990]

some of the less nice thoughts about being aroace

extras below the cut

sketch

closeups on my favorite panels

bonus: adios

[b0nelessdoodles]

SHADOW MILK DAY IS UPON US

i'm sick in the head and delusional as all hell but what if the hooded figure in the trailers is a pv from the future who failed to stop shadow milk and was able to yeet himself back in time (hello timekeeper i love you) to try and warn himself before it all went to shit again would that be cool or what?????

[voidbits]

ITS OFFICIALLY HALLOWEEN TIME POST SPOOKY MINECRAFT BUILDS

[infwctednyacifier]

I woke up at like 5:02, walked around & laid around, my mom told me I had a 2 hour delay, then at like 8 she said my dad said I’m not going 2 school so I hopped on Crafting & Building at like 8 nearing 9 or smth and it’s now 12:32 and I finished a clinic, farmhouse+farm, & library in my own little village essentially across the big ass land that I built 2 modern houses on & a small, pink n white ticket booth type building. Also at like around the middle of 8 I realized that I have paracosms and the reason I like Minecraft so much is because the ability to build randomly and create a storyline around it/build the space that I never thought I’d be able to (kinda) physically be in and actually fully & properly visualize, decorate, and actually interact with the space made in my mind. Anyways this village was supposed to be small like every other poverty stricken Minecraft village but hey!!!! Good builds & made from scratch!!!!! And I had 3 straight days of rage bc it kept failing and lagging my phone!!!!!!! :3

Requests/suggestions for builds are appreciated since I’m tryna fill this big ass plot of land!!!!!!!!

[slime-crafters]

I don't remember ever recreating this, but The First Night Lego set was my whole life as a kid. I fucked up a bit, and this is by no means a "first night" build but... I think you could get this done in the first day

Reference I used below

[vaguely-concerned]

fascinated by the thematic contrast of how like... in dishonored your actions as a protagonist have such incredible cosmic consequences, especially when it comes to the use of violence. I've always loved that you change the entire moral tenor of the universe with your actions in dh1 and dh2 -- something something the relationship between the observer and the observed both ways, as you gaze into the world the world gazes also into you because it is a mirror and will reflect your kindness or cruelty back to you accordingly. it's both moving and horrifying to be able to shape the world so fundamentally, and feels like part of the outsider's touch on you that marks you as... something. notable in some way. for good or ill, what you do will matter.

meanwhile in deathloop, your actions and especially your violence have no consequences whatsoever, ever. you could mow your way through a level and leave no fucker alive, and you could walk through a level like a gentle whisper on the wind and kill no one, and it makes absolutely no difference on a mechanical level. no one will ever even know what you've done, except you and julianna and she couldn't care less haha. if you experience interpersonal consequences with anyone, that's only ever going to be very briefly and then it will be like nothing ever happened again. clean slate, no blood left clinging to your hands unless you start to feel it there anyway lady macbeth style. it's a very nihilist approach to contrast with the deeply ensouled and reactive world of dishonored. (and to be clear: both are good. both ways of conceptualizing the world are doing something thematically crucial in the game they hail from. let's not get anything twisted haha my girls are both pretty.) this extends to there not even being any bodies to clean up after a murder spree, no lingering biological visceral ickiness left behind for you to face or deal with, everyone just turns into shimmering light and wait to be born again tomorrow, unmarked by pain. for good or ill, what you do will not matter at all.

and yet one of the very first things you encounter in the story is a previous loop colt turning up and telling you, almost pleading with you, that you don't have to do it like this anymore. you don't have to go through the world like a butcher's cleaver. you could try different ways than unthinkingly causing suffering in the name of expedience, enjoyment, pragmatism, or even just out of ingrained unexamined habit. you are smart. be smart about it.

after that it's your choice. you can try to follow his suggestion, or not. you can try it sometimes, try and get tired of it, start trying it once you're getting a feel for the levels and placements after going guns blazing first and feel like you can refine your methods with what you've learned. you can just ignore it altogether and go in guns blazing every time pew pew and yeeee haw!!! the game doesn't track what you do either way. there's no reward for being 'good' and limiting the harm you inflict, just as there's no punishment for acting callously, brutally or carelessly. how much does ending the loop as quickly as possible by whatever means weigh in the scales of suffering compared to trying to do so cleanly, knowing it might all go on forever if you don't? you have to kill the visionaries themselves to free everyone from the wretched purgatory they've created for themselves, but with enough patience and skill you could let everyone else pass by unharmed. the killing of the visionaries doesn't even have any particular inherent moral charge to it -- you're not really out for vengeance the way you are in dishonored or set on shaping the world by whatever means necessary in dishonored 2, you're not acting as the cosmic punishment for their (admittedly many and inventive) sins. they're just like. a grocery list. 'to do' items that need to be crossed out one after the other gotta catch 'em all. to achieve what you want to, these are the steps that need to happen. that's it. what you bring with you to that task emotionally as you see how awful flawed and even occasionally somewhat human they are is, again, up to you. if you find justice in it, you constructed that justice yourself. the universe is indifferent.

if there are motives to play deathloop 'low chaos', none of them stem from mechanics or gameplay, there are only story, roleplay and immersion reasons. some voice in colt's head thinks it's worth trying to change. do you agree with him? are you willing to mull it over, to play the game in what might be a more difficult way for no tangible reward, just for the sake of colt's and by extension your own conscience? to what extend does a normal human conscience even apply under these circumstances? they'll all be back tomorrow and remember nothing anyway, and over the endless ages we'll do this so many times you'll have done and killed everyone at least once so does it actually matter what you do to any of them on an individual loop? like well. it might matter to you what you do and how you feel about yourself afterwards. it might not. it might matter to you, but to uphold the ideal is too tedious and troublesome for you to stick with, and fair enough it's a game and you're supposed to play it however is fun for you. and that's where it begins and where it ends, there is nothing else. it is asking you what you'd do in a world with no consequences and, if you're an introspective sort of person, what what you do here says about you. and it's genuinely an open question. no condemnation, no commendation. just you and the loop, forever. if the universe cares about any of what's happening on this island, it's only going to be through the part of the universe that is you.

it makes my brain dance a funky little boogie, what thematically bulletproof shit!! it took me a while to vibe with the gameplay in deathloop, especially coming from loving dishonored, and I understand why not everyone stuck with it past that first brush because I found it frustrating too and almost bounced off it. but as I persisted and also started thinking about why they did it like this this time around, it all started falling into place so brilliantly. in dishonored you're accountable to the universe itself for your actions, and that's a horror. in deathloop you're accountable to no one but yourself. and that's perhaps an even greater one. the ludonarrative resonance going on in this game is out of this fucking WORLD I'm enthralled and beguiled

[thequibblingking13]

The modern gaming industry pisses me off so bad.

[3gremlins]

ngl it bums me out how fast everyone hopped off masks not just for covid/communicable diseases but just the concept of revisiting personal safety equipment in general.

long post i guess

I've been taking a 5 week pottery workshop on wheel throwing (it's neat!) and we got up to glazing last week. When you glaze pots, the glaze starts as a a thick liquid and then dries really quick into a powdery form (on your clay piece). I was asking my instructor about clean up and she was like "oh you can just rub off the excess carefully, but try not to get dust in the air as it's a little toxic. obviously you're wearing a mask but the rest of us aren't"

(my partner and i wear masks b/c it's inside and that's just what we still do. it sucks but it's better than covid and also now inhaling dust/fumes)

I kinda wanted to respond "maybe we should all be wearing masks??" like if not for covid concerns, at least for the semi-toxic powder we're all just handling/some folks are breathing in O.O

(i didn't b/c tbh i'm still a little on edge with the going out/doing stuff in public thing/esp indoors and people misgender me/mispronounce my name constantly and honestly sometimes you just want to do ceramics and not fight with people. it also just didn't feel winnable)

I feel like there's so many things like that that people just disregard as a risk that don't need to be, but as a society (US at least), we just never wanted to have that conversation (it was at best, begrudging, at the height of government awareness of covid and now it's completely gone by the wayside). At this point people either respond negatively or aggressively to any suggestion of it.

But like we've all had that one art teacher/professor who was a little bit off b/c they'd just been inhaling toxic paint fumes their whole career and it was always written off as just a quirk/part of the job (maybe things are better now? new art students feel free to chime in) and not something that could have been mitigated.

idk, it just makes me sad that we never got to even have the conversation about how so many jobs/hobbies should use more personal safety equipment than they do (either b/c people feel inconvenienced by it or don't know).

(tangent but i remain appalled at how many people i see riding bikes/etc around here that don't wear helmets! it's fucking wild to me, like we had the "wear a helmet or your head will be shattered like an egg" demonstrations as early as elementary school in massachusetts. Like it's just silly not to, and yet so many people in cali are like "a helmet? i don't know her". Also adults will agree that children should, but they shouldnt?!? wear a helmet for biking/skating/etc is the hill i will die on, esp on pavement)

[the-alphonze]

You have to prune the soul, huh? That means it grows and changes, which in turn, means that it truly is alive.

It’s alive. You’re a living thing, Alphonze. You’re alive.

Cold storage didn’t chip away at your soul: to the best of my knowledge, it forced some of your processors to slow or shut down. You didn’t cut away the fear from your soul, you just temporarily took away your body’s ability to process it. You’ve been growing for a long time.

It’s perfectly plausible that you might miss him.

…..

I really wish you’re right.

This is very kind but I don’t. I cant be “real” as much as I want to believe it, it’s not possible

[octoooo]

Yall, Sonic music is so !!!

AAARUGJCHHH *combusts*

Like its REALLY intense and GREAT for a cartoon hedgehog and I LOVE it

This could apply to just about any Sonic song but I’m talking about the Sonic Heroes theme in particular.

[confetti-critter]

I want to build giant factory in minecraft and also change an entire biome with colourful blocks and also build vast tunnels with scary things in them :) grins