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Thank you, Edmond

With vanilla extract being a meme, I wanted to share some black history of Edmond Albius a black slave who revolutionized vanilla pollination.

He used a technique he learned of pollinating melons to polinate the orchids to create the vanilla beans. Vanilla was rare and a luxury mainly due to only being able to be pollinated by its natural pollinator in Mexico.

unfortanely, he didnt receive any money for his discovery despite being called the main man who revolutionized pollination, he died in poverty...

everyone say thank you Edmond

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Neil: I had this idea about a baby swap, kind of like The Omen, but it all goes wrong and it becomes a nice kid. So I wrote 5,000 words of this thing, and I sent it to a few friends to look at, and then Sandman and Books of Magic took over my life and my time and didn’t really think about it. I knew it was a thing, I knew that I’d get to it one day, and then I got a phone call from Terry.

Tim Ferriss: How much later was this?

Neil: Maybe eight months, nine months. He says, “That thing you sent me. Are you doing anything with it?” I said, “Well, no, I’m doing Sandman. I’m doing Books of Magic.” He said, “Well, I know what happens next. So either sell me the idea of what you’ve written so far, or we can write it together.”

Now, as far as I was concerned, that was a lot like Michelangelo ringing you up and saying, “Do you want to paint a ceiling together this weekend?”

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Useful.

Really good Twitter thread originally about Elon Musk and Twitter, but also applies to Netflix and a lot of other corporations.

Full thread. Text transcription under cut.

Keep reading

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OH SNAAAAAP

what are your thoughts on the recent exchange between stephen king and j.k. rowling on twitter ?

I didn't know there was one. I thought she'd blocked him a few years ago for tweeting that trans women were women, or trans people were people, or something like that.

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Blessings on Neil for the recipe.

Hi Neil

Why did you stop making bagels?

What did the bagels ever do to you?

XD

I stopped because I went to New Zealand, and didn't bring my sourdough starter. There's frozen sourdough starter waiting in the freezer in my house in Scotland for me to return and start bageling once again.

Working with rye flour was fun, as it was closer to using clay than to using dough. They were not beautiful but they tasted amazing.

(Photos: before and after boiling, and after coming out of the oven.)

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I’m not procrastinating right now, I’ll do it later.

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Your discussion of Subby!David makes me wonder if you ever saw his skit on the Friday Night Project years ago where he pranks some estate agents by posing as being kidnapped by an uber-fan tied up to a bed in his underwear? It's truly a sight to behold. (If you've never seen it, you can look up "David Tennant Pranks Real Estate Agent on FNP" on Youtube and that should get you there)

Hi, Anon! Oh, yes, I absolutely did see that skit of David’s on the Friday Night Project (for those who haven’t seen it, it’s here) and have enjoyed watching it repeatedly, for reasons that will soon be very obvious...

The skit is essentially a prank setup that is a spoof of the movie Misery (based on the book by Stephen King), which stars James Caan as a novelist and Kathy Bates as an obsessed/deranged fan of his. In this instance, David is the kidnap victim of a crazy fan, and when the person being pranked goes into a creepy house, this is what they find:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen and all members of the nonbinary nation: That is one David John Tennant (McDonald) gagged and tied to a bed in his underwear.

Now...if we lived in the reality where David Tennant isn’t a giant slut who had most definitely been tied up before this, he probably (probably) would have had the decency to look...at least mildly out of sorts. (As would anyone who is supposed to be in a skit where they’ve been kidnapped and tied to a bed by a psychopath with an entire shrine dedicated to them.) Yet David looks not only completely comfortable tied up, but like he is quite actively enjoying himself.

I was already having oodles of subby David-themed head canons before I saw this skit, but the sight of him tied up and gagged--as well as how utterly natural he looks in such a position--absolutely took my breath away. I don’t always see him as totally submissive, though, and I think a scenario such as this lends itself to David playing the role of a bratty sub...fighting and sassing his Dom just to get him (or her) to be rough with him.

I also think he wouldn’t (hasn’t) let himself be tied up by just anyone, and needs to trust the person implicitly to allow them to do something like this. Which is, of course, why I can so easily see David asking Michael to tie him up and gag him, because he’d be one of the few people David trusts enough to do it. (And because Michael would have so much reverence for such a lovely sight...)

So, yes, this FNP skit is fantastic--though I do wonder if anyone has ever pointed out the fact that the fictional deranged fan who kidnapped David was meant to be a man, rather than a woman (”He’s had me tied up here for two days”). Was that the hosts’ doing, or was that David’s choice? Very, very curious indeed. I still don’t know how this even made it onto the air (along with half the interviews David did in 2008, because he was saying and doing kinky shit all over the British airwaves for a solid two years), but we can all be thankful that it did...

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People don’t study satire and parody enough.

Mr. Gaiman, a few days ago I watched a movie called ‘The Omen’, from 1977. And I couldn’t stop noticing that it has some similarities to Good Omens — Do you confirm? Or is it just a coincidence?

It's not in your head. Good Omens is parodying The Omen and films like that, which at the time we wrote it, were culturally everywhere. It never occurred to us that one day we would have to explain that.

Fortunately there are lots of places that explain it for us. For example:

All of which brings us to the novel of Good Omens, which first appeared in 1990. Let me stress that date. The book appeared at a time when the Omen films were still fresh in popular memory, so that readers would exactly know the genre Gaiman and Pratchett were satirizing. The book only makes sense as a direct parody of The Omen and its dreadful offspring. The Omen imagines an Antichrist devil-child being born to a powerful US political figure, so he can grow up to be President and initiate the End Times. Good Omens posits an accidental baby swap in which the infant Antichrist ends up in a regular British family and grows up, well, quite nice.

That is what they are satirizing – not the Bible, not Revelation, not Judeo-Christian civilization, but a schlock genre of devil films. It is mocking a dumb genre in popular religious fiction, and what a necessary thing to do.  From The Omen, Good Omens, and Why Neil Gaiman is Not the Antichrist https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2019/06/the-omen-good-omens-and-why-neil-gaiman-is-not-the-antichrist-sorry/

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this mom thanks you, David

David wearing the non-binary pin ❤

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Staged - Down through the years (with everyone who appeared in more than 1 season)

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aw yeah my babies

“I will stop your mouth.”

Catherine Tate & David Tennant in Much Ado About Nothing (2011) dir. Josie Rourke

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the mighty one

Siobhán McSweeney Appreciation Post

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As a historian, I must agree.

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We don’t deserve dogs.

I was a teenager when I found Death of the endless. A few years after “A Game of You.” probably sometime near or at the time the “The Time of Your Life” collected version came out. I didn’t have a ton of money but you’d better believe that what I did have went directly to those books. 

Later, I’d figure out how to afford a few collectables. I think somewhere I even have the first “Action Figure” of the character. 

I haven’t exactly fallen out of love with comics, but I’m now a decades older, married with two children-person, who has significantly less time and attention for anything these days. Video games are often easier escapes from reality, though usually less rewarding. In short, I haven’t touched my longboxes in a while. 

About 8 years or so ago we adopted our second dog, a beautiful Chocolate Lab. 

Fitting that his name was Buddy, we wanted someone to help keep our other dog company. At the shelter, we were waiting to see some dogs, when one of my kids asked to pet a dog that was waiting to be placed in a shelter room. He’d just been dropped off, the shelter said “by an older couple who said they just couldn’t keep up anymore.”

My kid had barely touched his head when he leaned against her with full adoration and trust. I’m not sure if he hadn’t gotten much affection in a while, or just fell in love. With us, he was always very affectionate. At 9 years old already, we knew that our time with him was relatively limited, but there was absolutely no question from that moment that he was going to come home with us.

A regular fixture in the lives of my family, including my kids and my dogs, my mother adored Buddy. My mom had always loved dogs, but hadn’t been able to keep one for the past few years in her apartment. But she would come over daily, and spend hours with Buddy, just slowly stroking his fur and chatting with him about his day. 

In 2020, when my mother passed away, and she no longer showed up at our door, Buddy noticed. He would look for her. He missed his friend. He did his best, as a dog, to console us as we wept, resting his head in our laps, putting his paw on our knees. 

Today was Buddy’s last day with us.  For the past few weeks, his health had been in steady decline. I did the hardest thing I’ve had to do yet, and scheduled an appointment to let him go peacefully. He was so well behaved, he gave no trouble to the vet, and he passed away resting his head on my legs.

Because the universe works the way that it does, between waking up today, and Buddy’s appointment, I found myself with several hours to spend. Maybe because of the recent new about the Sandman show, or something less knowable, I remembered that I had those comics. 

I knew right where they were. 

And so, I spent my morning with Buddy’s head in my lap, gently stroking his head, reading comics, and dreaming of a friendly person, who loves everyone, even the creepy and weird ones. Someone who would make sure that Buddy wasn’t scared or lonely. Someone that could make sure he knew he was loved. Someone who would lead him to where my Mom would be waiting for him to ask him how his day was. And for a little while, I was very happy.  Thank you.

That made me very sad, and made my day at the same time. I'm glad you wrote it. I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you.

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Stockpile of 2,000-year-old gemstones found in Roman bathhouse drain

Archaeologists recently uncovered a stockpile of 2,000-year-old glittering gemstones clogging the drain of a Roman bathhouse near Hadrian’s Wall in Carlisle, England.

The 30 engraved, semi-precious stones — known as intaglios — likely dropped out of the ring settings worn by bathers who took to the waters sometime during the second and third centuries A.D., The Guardian reported.

“It’s incredible,” Frank Giecco, the archaeologist who led the excavation, told The Guardian. “It’s caught everyone’s imagination. They were just falling out of people’s rings who were using the baths. They were set with a vegetable glue and, in the hot and sweaty bathhouse, they fell out of the ring settings.” Read more.

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David Tennant as Hamlet

for Tennant Tuesday (or whatever day this post finds you)

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BRIGID

One of the most famous figures in all of Gaelic mythology is the goddess Brigid, said to be a wise woman and a daugher of the Dagda. In the Book of the Takings of Ireland, Brigid is said to possess two oxen, Fea and Femen; the King of Boars, the Torc Triath; and Cirb, the King of Sheep; each of which have plains in Ireland that bear their name. In the Second Battle of Moytura, Brigid is the wife of Bres and the mother of Ruadán, and when Ruadán is killed by Goibniu the smith, Brigid, in her grief, establishes the first practice of keening in Ireland. The Old Irish glossary Sanais Cormaic suggests that "Brigid" was a name for all the goddesses of Ireland, but that it referred specifically to three sisters: Brigid the Smith, Brigid the Poet, and Brigid the Healer, all daughters of the Dagda. The goddess Brigid has also long been syncretized with an Irish saint of the same name, who had an abbey in Kildare, and is depicted in Gaelic folklore as the nursemaid of Jesus. Saint Brigid's origins are ultimately a mystery, but her enduring and ever-present influence have lead many to theorize that she may be a euhemerized version of the goddess. This piece features an anvil, an ollamh's staff, and healing herbs to represent the domains of Cormac's Three Brigids, as well as a Cros Bríd to represent syncretism with the Irish saint. Engraved on the anvil are Brigid's boar, sheep, and two oxen, along with tears shed for Ruadán.