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But not the Cup of Ankh?

Faience lotiform chalice, Egypt, Dynasty 22-25, 945-664 BC

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Truth

Just going to repost this from my twitter because I am way to proud of this description

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Some concept sketches of steampunk Tattletale

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Gold earring with Nike pendant, Greece, 4th century BC

from The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

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Zheng Yi

Zheng Yi (also Cheng I, Ching Yih, Cheng Yao-I, Cheng Wen-Hsien, or Cheng Yud) was a Chinese pirate who lived from 1765 to 1807. Operating in the South China Sea, Zheng Yi famously led a 600-ship pirate confederation. This force of more than 40,000 men was divided into six fleets and it terrorized merchant ships of all nationalities travelling between Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Zheng Yi’s personal fleet was the Red Flag Fleet, so-called because each ship flew a flag of that colour to distinguish it from other ships in the pirate confederation that flew flags of another colour. Looting cargoes of gold, silver, silk and spices, Zheng Yi’s pirates also attacked coastal towns and villages and demanded protection money. Following Zheng Yi’s death in 1807, the pirate confederation was successfully taken over by his widow, Zheng Yi Sao (aka Ching Shih).

Early Career

Zheng Yi came from a long line of pirates and so he fully appreciated the risks and opportunities of taking merchant ships on the High Seas from a young age. He seems also to have participated in wars involving rebels in Vietnam. In some European documents, he is described as a hunchback.

Returning to China in 1801, Zheng Yi selected Kwangtung Province as his base. He operated in the South China Sea from Vietnam to Hong Kong, taking advantage of the busy shipping routes from China to Vietnam and back again, as well as ships on the China-to-Malaysia trade routes. By 1802, Zheng Yi had established himself as the pirate chief in this area, a position formerly held by his cousin (or uncle) Cheng Chi (1760-1802). Targets ranged from small local fishing vessels to intercontinental merchant ships. The latter class of ships carried gold and silver as well as valuable cargoes like rolls of silk, spices, Chinese porcelain, cotton, and tea. The pirates made such frequent attacks on ships in the Canton area (modern Guangzhou) and around the small islands that dotted the Canton River Delta that European sailors called the area and the people who haunted it the Ladrones (meaning thieves or brigands). When the pirates could not find sufficient provisions on the ships they captured, they attacked and looted coastal villages.

The captured cargoes were sold on to merchants eager to get their hands on discounted goods while corrupt officials were given bribes to turn a blind eye to the illicit trade. Zheng Yi had no qualms about taking European vessels that were not too heavily armed. Their cargoes were just as valuable, and there was the added bonus of being able to ransom the crews. Although Chinese seamen were frequently tortured when captured to reveal where their valuables were hidden, or simply on a sadistic whim, there are no records of Europeans being treated in this way by Chinese pirates.

One European mariner, John Turner, was captured by Zheng Yi’s pirates in 1806. Turner was the chief mate on the Tay, and he was held captive in terrible conditions for five months until a ransom was paid. He describes in one passage how a captured officer of the Chinese imperial navy had his feet nailed to the deck before he was beaten with a rattan cane, taken ashore, and dismembered. Not for nothing did Turner title his memoirs as the Sufferings of John Turner, Chief Mate of the Country Ship Tay Bound for China and Captivity Among the Ladrones, published in 1809. In another passage, Turner describes another brutal killing:

A man was here put to death with circumstances of peculiar horror. Being fixed upright, his bowels were cut open, and his heart was cut out, which they afterwards soaked in spirits and ate. Mr Turner did not witness this bloody execution, but he was shown the mangled body. He also understood that this shocking treatment is frequently experienced by those, who, after offending the Ladrones, should ever be so unfortunate as to be in their power afterwards.

(Turner, 19)

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Would Sibuna count as a cult?

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Snippet

Butcher smiled at the exhibit. Her long light brown curly hair flows behind her black skull mask wrapped together with spider silk with yellow lenses that leaves the back of her hair flowing. The mask obscures her bluish green eyes. The yellow lenses of her mask are durable, high-end swim goggles tinted to help filter out bright lights, with lenses from an old pair of her glasses sealed inside with silicon. The mask design features dull yellow lenses and sections of armor designed to imitate a bug’s mandibles. She wears a black-and-grey spider silk bodysuit with armor panels made out of insect shells, human bones and exoskeletons augmented with more spider silk. Each had "layers" resembling a pillbug. She wore spider silk crafted gloves with clawed fingertips which inched towards her utility belt. Her tools of choice lay in each patch alongside her material for her more… obscure power.

She knew in her very soul what each item was and what they were for. The data her mind compiled allowed her to identify each item worth her time. She activates the firefly lights to highlight to the Teeth each item she requires along with activating the invisible security. 

She inched her flashlight to the side of the wall. Within minutes, her true power activates within the flashlight. Layers of lights in the form of webs flash into life before the Cape. The rest of the Teeth stare in amazement. She nods and they put her training to work.

She smiled. Within seconds she instinctively danced through each layer like nothing. Unlike the rest of her gang, Butcher somehow obtained the experience to do that before she “trained them.” She gleefully notes, “Nothing like a task of poisonous spider webs to prepare oneself.” 

While she never did understand how she knew the training method. She gleefully enjoyed how effective it was. 

Flashback

“Just imagine the security lights as these poisonous webs.” The amnesiac pointed out to the group. The webs congested brutally in the path of the Teeth. On each web is a specialized venomous spider with orders to bite if the web is touched. Vex stared at her, “Seriously?””

“Yep. I want each of you to practice till no one is bit. Understand!” The leader of the Teeth ordered.

End Flashback

She looked at the glass. It was supposed to be a jackal-headed golden divine mask made of unknown material that temporarily released a flash of light after being put on, and it was the size of an average adult human skull with pointed ears, a half-discovered nose in the lower part, and a mustache from the level of the nose up down to the level of underbrush on either part, however, the part that covered the wearer's lips, underbrush, cheeks and ears was completely uncovered. It also possessed eyeholes with lines above them that resembled eyebrows, and a third-eye crater on its forehead where an unidentified gemstone that served as its power source was located. Unfortunately, the gem is not there. So the mask retained a more bronze look to it. She smiled thoughtfully, “Hello there, my old friend.”

But no matter, Butcher guessed where it was. She placed her hand on the case. “Do not worry, old boy. I will restore you to full power. Anubis will bless us both.”

By activating Butcher II’s power, she removes the last barrier to her goals. Within seconds she grabbed her prize. “Poor Gustav. He never did know what he had.”

She glanced over to the Teeth. Each managed to obtain the targeted items. She moved over to the Mesopotamian section. With a flick of the wrist she sprayed special Hieroglyphics she knew in her hearts proved true. Fuck Baal. With that, Butcher led her forces out the door and teleported away.

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Important find

Research alert! A new study finds that an extremely well-preserved fossil of Triarthrus eatoni, a trilobite found in upstate New York, has an additional set of legs underneath its head! What did researchers learn from this discovery? Find out with Museum Curator Melanie Hopkins, who coauthored the research. Read more.

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Cool

~ Fragmentary Figure.

Culture: Olmec

Period: Middle Preclassic

Date: 900-300 B.C.

Medium: Jadeite

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Skin? Moisturized. Teeth? Tusk-like. Today’s mood? Mastodonsaurus giganteus. This animal lived during the Late Triassic about 215 million years ago. It’s an extinct relative of frogs and salamanders, but it probably behaved more like a crocodile: Its large, flat skull and tusk-like teeth (some of which protruded through the skull) seem to be adapted for seizing large prey. You can see this life-sized model in the Museum’s Hall of Vertebrate Origins! Plan your visit.

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Marco's mom is also already free and just like Marco.. ready for some payback.

Just finished reading Animorphs #49: The Diversion where Tobias finds out that his mom is still alive and in danger.

It's super stressful because Applegate would murder that poor kids mom right in front of him just to make some kind of point.

But also I think it's interesting to see how the other parents react to finding out about everything: Cassie's parents are instantly compassionate, they hug her, tell her it's going to be okay. It's no wonder Cassie is who she is.

Rachel's mom tries to fight a bear (Rachel) with a spice rack. Very genetics. Much lineage.

Jake's parents are already controllers. He can't save them. It makes sense that he doesn't get to have his parents with him, he hasn't been a child for a long time.

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Ooh. Old School.

週刊少年ジャンプ　1980年27号

Dr.スランプ

(1980 - No. 27 Cover: Dr. Slump by Akira Toriyamaから) https://pin.it/2KPBSmrQW

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Gee thanks

Thanks @optimisticdetectivebasement for suggesting this game. You really know how to cause a guy to ragequit. Never Ending Eight is sane compared to this.

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Decided to change the channel. Currently looking up Rhapsody III faqs. Seriously. This game is hard.

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Gestation 1.2

There's such a specific pain that comes from the person you trust the most stabbing you in the back, I don't know if it's the worst pain in the world but there's really nothing else with that... I dunno, that feeling that the ground's gone out from underneath you. And knowing about Annette's death, and that I think Emma becomes this way as a kind of idolization of Sophia... it's just a bad situation that gets worse with context and over time. Utterly miserable.

Two hundred pages of notes on your own powers and training as a superhero is like. So fucking much. I don't think I'd manage that one, I don't know how many people could match that one. Is this a side effect of Wild "7000 page novel" bow being the author here? Is this what he considers normal?

Bless Taylor for making even a token effort at trying to look at the bright side of a shitty situation, I don't know how long that's gonna last but even now she's still trying.

Also, okay, the dismissal of Taylor's power isn't just textual, it's coming from inside the house. Kid, your power is great, that's the self-loathing talking, you're gonna change the world with that shit.

Also lmao @ Taylor's lack of killer instinct, how long does that last I wonder.

Is a little interesting that Taylor doesn't even necessarily get the full factual information of a bug under her control, but I guess that's not really necessary for her power to do its thing.

Also interesting to note that Taylor still has nerves about her bugs, considering how much art I've seen of her absolutely crawling with the things. Guess that attitude doesn't last super long.

Okay so I think there's actually a lot to unpack in this section so I'm gonna get into it

There's an immediate and sharp divide between independent capes like Taylor and the big dogs who have people to take care of things like costumes for them, and that divide is only going to become more stark over time. I don't even know what the solution for such a thing would be, you can't exactly do small loans to anonymous capes for this kind of thing and any kind of neutral third party that could do this would be an immediate target for stealing customer information. It's a logistical concern, and a thorny one at that.

The cleverness with the spider silk and the subsequent roadblock of realizing that it's hard as fuck to make a costume out of spider silk are both great. Awesome idea that's immediately undercut by a complicated execution, I wonder if that's gonna come back up at any p

I'm a little curious about the exact decision making on Brockton Bay's location. Not to say that it's a bad call off the bat to put it where it is, more that Wildbow seems to have immediately made a call, realized it was going to complicate some things, and then made a workaround. I dunno how different the story would be if it took place further south, if at all, but it stands out to me at least.

(It is also a little funny to imagine that Brockton Bay is more popular with capes because it's easier to wear silly costumes in the local climate, I don't think it's true but not-trueities are fun)

Taylor's resourcefulness is an immediate standout trait in this chapter, I think this is the first time I learned that the armor plating was literally made from reinforced exoskeletons but wow what a cool and slightly gross detail.

I'm sure this will be the only time that Taylor feels a bridge has been burned beyond the point where it's worth mending and move to take decisive action in whatever direction doesn't involve that bridge, yessir. This will definitely not be a recurring behavior in this character.

Immediate Thoughts

More time spent getting to know Taylor. The plot isn't so much moving forward as getting into position at the starting line, which gives us time to get used to her perspective and her thought patterns. What I wanna know is how she thinks being an independent superhero is gonna, like, work? The likely answer is that she hasn't thought that far ahead and is just gonna like, wander around looking for random encounters. She's still too square (and broke) to get a police scanner or something like that, that's for sure. Wait to see what happens, I guess.

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Heroify Belos

This one's tricky, because part of the point of Belos's character is that there's a very real kind of story where he would be the straightforward hero- namely, an unreconstructed Monster Hunter story, or a kill-em-all romp in the vein of Doom. It's already kind of a perspective flip, intended to get you to re-examine the worldviews and assumptions of those kinds of narratives. As a result, making him the hero is a matter of putting your thumb on the scales in terms of elements that are already present in the story- portraying the Boiling Isles as the genuine nightmare reality it aesthetically gestures at being, exaggerate the callousness and brutality of the inhabitants and frame this as inherent quality, the society of the Isles as something amounting to a honey trap or gingerbread house, a society-shaped mask worn by something fundamentally alien that wants to get close enough to you to turn you inside out.

Now, when I started typing that, the obvious failure state I thought I was typing my way towards was that a Story where Belos is Right that All of This is Super Evil Actually is going to be unavoidably a hamfistedly and obnoxiously reactionary narrative. This is still a plausible failure state- you could very easily reverse-engineer the "acceptable Christian substitute" kind of dreck- but to some extent I'm also kind of describing the underlying thrust of Coraline, I'm describing some iterations of Peter Pan, I'm describing (to some extent) how demons work in the Otherverse. I'm a sucker for the drumbeat of "Magic is real, and bad, and can kill you- magic is not an allegory, but it's smart enough to pattern match to your assumptions about what it's an allegory for, pretends to understand you and eats you alive while you try to make friends with it." I'd probably read and enjoy a story about a killjoy John Constantine-figure battling quixotically to put the kibosh on an extradimensional parasite dimension that's evolved special mimicry and predation tactics against kids with overactive imaginations, failing time and time again because the traumas of the real world ensure that it'll have an endless supply of victims willing to turn a blind eye to everything that doesn't add up until they're too far down the gullet to extract themselves. In fact, I'm now remembering that I got pretty far into writing that exact thing in college, thanks for reminding me of that project.

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The Phoenician Alphabet & Language

Phoenician is a Canaanite language closely related to Hebrew. Very little is known about the Canaanite language, except what can be gathered from the El-Amarna letters written by Canaanite kings to Pharaohs Amenhopis III (1402 - 1364 BCE) and Akhenaton (1364 - 1347 BCE). It appears that the Phoenician language, culture, and writing were strongly influenced by Egypt (which controlled Phoenicia for a long time), as king Rib-Adda of Byblos admits in one of his letters to the pharaoh.

Egyptian & Cuneiform Influence

Our knowledge of the Phoenician language is based on the few extant written texts in Phoenician. Before circa 1000 BCE Phoenician was written using cuneiform symbols that were common across Mesopotamia. The first signs of the Phoenician alphabet found at Byblos are clearly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, and not from cuneiform. The 22 Phoenician letters are simplifications of Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols, which took on a standardized form at the end of the 12th century BCE. Like Hebrew and Arabic, Phoenician was written from right to left, and vowels were omitted (which makes deciphering Phoenician even harder).

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