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Do you mind if I piggyback on this idea?

@artstardoodles and I have talked about making a fighting game where all the characters are public domain literary figures. So like marvel versus Capcom, except it's League of extraordinary gentlemen but also The Great Gatsby and Popeye are there.

And given that all of the graphics are formed from text, it's kind of aesthetically in keeping with the source material, because they all exist as text that is openly accessible to the public and therefore to the collective unconscious. Or something.

Either way, I love this idea.

hear me out. Dwarf Fortress Smash Brothers. inspired by that one post about "if you don't know what to do with your ocs make a fighting game" i think i should make a text-based platform fighter. pros: runs on a lemon probably. don't need to learn 3d modeling and/or animation i'd just need to figure out how to code. vM7add9 acoustic would be there and ae would have a tether recovery and also probably a tether grab.

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Hello Nyx, are you aware of the book "Bayesian Thinking for Toddlers"? If yes, how would you rate toddlers on their general Bayesian analysis abilities? https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/w5vbp_v1

toddlers themselves? 3/10 I’ve mediated too many arguments to give them any higher 😞 love them tho

as for the picture book itself…. 10/10 better explanation than my stats class

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Religious art leaves out the best part and it’s such a goddamn shame. Livestock, Agriculture and Food is an integral part of any culture and we all need to be pushing for more realistic sheep in religious art. #FATTAILSFORJESUS

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it really is mind-boggling to me that the only reason i know about the Congolese and Sudanese genocides is because of the tireless work of grassroots activists and advocates posting on social media. I can honestly say that if I didn't have social media and didn't happen to be following Black authors and activists, I never would have known what was happening in Sudan and Congo because it is simply not being reported in the great majority of mainstream media. We're talking millions upon millions of PEOPLE enduring unimaginable pain and devastation with next to no official reporting. And yes that is in huge part due to the level of violence and displacement occurring that is preventing a lot of news from getting out of these countries, but it's also so blatantly due to anti-Black racism and the perception of African Nations as inherently savage and violent. But genocide is not and never should be normal for anyone anywhere. With that in mind, please keep Congo and Sudan in your thoughts. Check out Focus Congo for resources to help the Congolese people on the ground. Focus Congo's MO is a local organisation whose goal is to rebuild homes, rehabilitate land, and provide medical aid, education, and resources to Congo's most affected people. Also, Check out Keep Eyes On Sudan for how to help out and raise awareness of Sudanese people displaced by civil war. According to Sudanese TikToker bsonblast, donations to local food kitchens in Sudan are desperately needed to fight famine. If anyone has other resources specifically for helping Congo and Sudan, please add them and link them <3

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what ppl defending kids on ipads don’t seem to understand is that there are other ways to keep kids occupied. my mom had a whole bag full of little toys and games for me to play with while waiting in lines at disney world. once your kid is like 7 or 8 they can read a book. they can color. or they can literally just sit there and imagine things. i did that a lot as a kid.

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One must imagine Sisyphus happy

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Sin City (2005) review.

The Robert Rodriguez adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City comics is often praised for its stylistic bravado, but reading the original strips next to the 2005 live action version shows how much nuance is lost in translation. The comics are over-the-top, noir-flavored, and every bit as cartoonish and violent as the most gruesome grindhouse horror film or madcap Warner Brothers short—but also deeply human and tied to the medium in ways the film flattens.

Take Marv. In the comics, he’s not just a hulking brute—he’s a manchild. When we see him visiting home, his room is still set up like a little boy’s, with an airplane hanging from the ceiling and toys strewn about. These details are cut from the film but are crucial to understanding Marv's psychology.

Dialogue also clarifies his arrested development. In the film, Marv narrates that, “Lucille’s a dyke, though god knows why, with a body like that she could have any man she wants,” but in the comics, this is expanded to him outright saying this to her, and then being genuinely surprised when she’s offended. He never brings it up again. This reveals Marv isn’t homophobic—he just doesn’t understand social norms any more than a child would.

In the film, Marv is implied to be a virgin until Goldie sleeps with him. In both the film and the comic, he says that his face prevents him from even "buying a woman" but the more detailed psychological portrait that Frank Miller has time to paint in his chosen medium clarifies that it’s Marv's arrested development, not his looks, that prevent him from forming intimate relationships.

Marv is acutely aware of his limitations: he’s mentally disabled, yet self-aware enough to recognize those limits and work within them. This makes him both innocent and dangerous. Dwight compares Marv to a barbarian, but that's only half the story. Marv is a fusion of archetypes—on one hand, Conan the Barbarian, the embodiment of brute strength and relentless will; on the other, Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a childish fool whose naïveté occasionally gives way to odd flashes of insight. By combining the epic hero with the cartoon simpleton, Miller creates a character who is at once mythic, absurd, and deeply human. That paradox is what makes Marv unforgettable.

Plot and character moments are also cut or diluted. In the comic, Hartigan’s wife offers to believe he didn’t molest Nancy, even offering support and help when she begins to suspect it is true. Hartigan says nothing—not even to her—because Senator Roark has threatened to kill Nancy if he doesn’t take the fall for Roark Junior’s—aka, the Yellow Bastard's—crimes. This crucial scene is omitted in the film, in favor of a guest-directed scene from Quentin Tarantino, which adds little to The Big Fat Kill, the weakest story in both the early comics and this adaptation.

Dialogue works differently in animation or comics. Cartoonishly erudite henchmen, references to “bum tickers,” and over-the-top noir phrasing feel perfectly natural in a Looney Tunes short or EC comic book story, but can come across as silly or overwrought in live-action. Miller’s dialogue is part of the medium-specific charm.

Visually, the comics’ use of colour is deliberate. Early storylines are entirely black-and-white, and when colour does eventually pop up in later volumes, it serves a specific purpose in what is otherwise a sea of monochrome. For example, in That Yellow Bastard, the titular antagonist is painted yellow to emphasize his grotesque parody of The Yellow Kid, one of the earliest American comic-strip characters, and the yellow pops to inspire revulsion.

While Miller never explicitly frames it as parody, the grotesque transformation of a classic cartoon icon into a child-killing monster prefigures today’s wave of public-domain slashers, from Steamboat Willie: The Mouse Trap (2024) to Popeye: Shiver Me Timbers (2025). By recasting a familiar childhood favorite as a horror figure—and grounding this reimagining in the very medium the Yellow Kid originates from—Miller achieved a resonance that cheap live-action cash-ins on newly public-domain animated characters cannot hope to match. His disciplined use of yellow—and only yellow—to define that character underscores the point with striking precision.

The film, by contrast, spreads color throughout via selective greenscreens and CGI. It’s a novelty—turning live action into a “cartoon noir”—but it often feels gimmicky and dilutes the impact of Miller’s page composition. The high-contrast, often line-free shadows on white paper represent career-best work on the part of Frank Miller, and arguably some of the finest black-and-white comic art ever done period.

In short: the comics layer character, humor, and grotesque satire in ways the film flattens. Marv’s childlike intelligence, endearing innocence, and vulnerability are lost. Hartigan’s moral stakes are simplified. Colour and dialogue lose subtlety when translated to live action.

Sin City the movie is fun, visually striking, and a novel experiment in cinematic comic adaptation. But it misses the innovation and human depth that make the original comics enduringly remarkable.

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Calque is a loanword and loanword is a calque.

Calque was added to English from the French and completely unaltered.

Loanword was adapted to English from the German word lehnwort.

I propose that we add "Doomchurch" as a new category.

One of the funniest things about translation is when instead of actually translating the meaning of a word, you just swap it for one that sounds kinda similar.

Like the Finnish word for cathedral. Okay the actual Finnish word for cathedral is "katedraali" which is just a calque, but we don't call the ones we have here that.

The ones we have get their name from a Swedish word, domkyrka. Kyrka is a cognate of church and dom is short for domus Dei, house of god.

So in Finnish that became tuomiokirkko or, in the tradition of Finland being a country of the metal, doomchurch.

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Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

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Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with "In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights."

This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find

Some people get existential dread from this

Me? I think it's fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating

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@artstardoodles

Did you know that horses are still used for logging? Not just as a way to keep traditional handicrafts alive, but because horses are genuinely better at some jobs than machines?

Horses are much gentler on sensitive ecosystems, they're more flexible in rocky terrain, and they don't topple over on a hillside.

They can enter dense forests and drag out one specific tree without damaging the other trees and without compacting or eroding the soil.

They also run on hay instead of gas or electricity. Horses don't pollute the ecosystem with either oil leaks, gas stench, or noise.

In conclusion, draft horses are awesome c:

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… the French … 💁‍♂️

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10000 YEAR OLD ROCK ART OF GIRAFFES FOUND IN LIBYA LET'S GO

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I know I say that I'm kinda nuts for doing the amount of visual research I do, but at the same time: Specificity is SO much more compelling and real feeling, and imo not getting references often makes things look more amateur.

Eg. drawing a sofa- my mental image of a sofa is something like this:

Like. Its a sofa. It works. But it's not very convincing, the pillows are kinda wrong at the back, and it's not really giving any information about the owner. Even if you want a basic sofa... What kind of basic.

comfy and cheap?

kinda rigid?

inherited? ------

who does this comfy cheap ikea sofa belong to anyway?

guy living alone?

teenage girl?

Grandma?

Anyway I'll get off my soapbox but specificity is sexy and fun and it can do your storytelling for you!

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regular reminder that most tithing is not used for evil and nefarious purposes

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michi watashi neko ga syā dake ya kuru shiden

道渡し猫がシャーだけや来る市電

crossing the street the cat just hissed— approaching trams