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Would anyone be interested if I put together a post on how to write a scientist/engineer/techy/smart-guy type character? What would y'all want to know?

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Do you still have the baby muzzle comic…..you know the muzzle they give babies who cry or yell or talk too much……

oh yes this little yarn

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Long before the introduction of color film, a Russian chemist and photographer named Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky used an innovative technique. He took three individual black and white photos, each through a colored filter (red, green, and blue), to create fully colored, high-quality pictures. The photo of this woman, taken by him, is around 107 years old!

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After all that complaining, this turned out not half bad. His hairy tits don't draw quite so much attention now that they're not the darkest thing in the image XD (For the Bookish Artists quarterly drawing challenge, where artists draw different characters based on the same reference pose)

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Tomateyes

watercolor, colored pencil, and digital animation.

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OMG, look at this dreamy Venice, Italy apt. It has 1bd, 2ba, 1,592.20sqft, $1.052m approx USD. This realty and its stupid watermarks!

Love the entrance. There are spiral stairs to go up to the apt., but there's also an elevator.

This hall is outside the living room.

The gorgeous entrance makes it look like you're walking into a little shop. Look at the inlaid floor, too. Above it looks like a terraced building.

Look at the design on the doors. What a cozy room.

Lovely dining room has a little nautical vibe going. It also has doors to a terrace.

Cute little balcony.

The kitchen is directly off the dining room.

It's a galley kitchen, but it's beautiful. Pretty cabinets and look at the cabinet around the stove. Plus, there's a big bench for you and guests to sit while you cook. And, this end of the kitchen is a desk.

This mural is a stunner. I don't think I've ever seen such an amazing galley kitchen.

This is one of two baths.

The bedroom is off the dining room. Look at that little niche in the wall.

Closeup of the gold leaf detail on all the doors.

The bedroom is lovely and a nice size. Plus, it has doors to the terrace.

Details of the bedroom ceiling.

What an interesting ensuite.

This is a loft room. Can you imagine this room as a studio? It also looks like the captain's office on a ship.

The front of the building and the piazza.

https://www.venicerealestate.it/property/sumptuous-apartment-near-campo-santangelo/

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Kevin vs. Quantum Mechanics

This is an autobiographical piece. Names have been changed for anonymity, but it's otherwise left be. ---

The class's first suspicion of Kevin was that he had, somehow, cheated his way up to this course. He just seemed perpetually confused, and strangely antagonistic of the professor. The weirdest example of this was when he asked what an ion was (in a third year EE class?), and was informed that it referred to any positively or negatively charged particle. It would have been strange enough to ask, but his reply of "Either? That doesn't sound right" sealed him in as a well known character in the class of 19 people.

The real tipping point in our perception of him during a lecture where the professor mentioned practical uses for a neutron beam, and Kevin asked if a beam could be made out of some other neutral material. When asked "Like what?", he replied "An atom with all of its electrons removed." When we pointed out that the protons would make that abomination extremely positively charged, he just replied with "So what if we removed those too?" and then was baffled when we informed him that would just be neutrons.

That's high school level chemistry. Not knowing it was so incredibly strange that I felt like something was off, so I asked him if he'd like to grab lunch. He accepted, we chatted, and I finally began to get a sense of his origin story.

See, Kevin wasn't a junior/senior electrical engineer like the rest of us. Kevin was, in fact, three notable things: A business major, a sophomore, and a hardcore Catholic. All three of those are essential to understanding his scenario.

What had begun all of this was actually a conflict with Kevin and his roommate. Kevin frequently had his fundamental belief in Absolute Good, Absolute Bad, and Absolute Anything pushed back on by his roommate, who was in STEM. Said roommate kept invoking quantum mechanics as his proof against Absolute Knowledge. Kevin was tired of having something that he didn't understand thrown at his convictions, so he decided to take a quantum course to settle things once and for all.

Despite not having any of the pre-reqs.

He'd actually tried to take quantum for physicists first, but the school's physics department wouldn't let him. It's actually pretty strictly regulated, because it is a mandatory class for physics majors. However, because quantum is not mandatory for electrical engineers, there aren't really any built in requirements for the class. It's just assumed that nobody would actually try to take it until their third year because doing so would the be the mental equivalent to slamming your nuts in the car door. Just, pure suffering for no good reason.

Apparently, the counselors had tried to talk him out of it, but if Kevin was one thing, it was stubborn. He'd actually had to sign some papers basically saying "I was warned that this is incredibly stupid, but I refused to listen" in order to take the class.

He was actually pretty nice, if currently unaware of how bad he'd just fucked up. I paid for the lunch, wished him the best, and reported back to the class discord. We'd all been curious about this guy's story, but now that I had the truth, I could share it with the world.

Feelings were mixed. Some people thought he was going to drop out any minute now. Others thought that he wouldn't, be also that convincing him to drop now, while he still could, was the only ethical thing. Others figured that a policy of non-interference was best: The counselors couldn't dissuade him, and if we tried to do the same, he'd probably just think it was STEM elitism trying to guard its little clubhouse. He'd figure out how hard things were, or he'd fail. Either way, it would help him learn more about the world.

We wound up taking the approach of non-interference. If nothing else, understanding his origins gave us more patience when he asked bizarre questions. He wasn't trying to waste our time, he was just trying to cram three years of pre-reqs into a one semester course. He did get a little bit combative sometimes, and we could tell that he was really wracking his brain to try and find some sort of contradiction or error that he could use to bring the whole thing down, but he never could.

First test came by, and he bombed it. Completely unprepared. He'd taken Calc I, but he didn't know how to do integrals yet (that was Calc II). Worse, he was far past the drop date. I imagine most people in his shoes would've stopped struggling. They'd realize they were fucked and just let themselves fail, at least salvaging their other classes grades in the process. Why waste resources on an unwinnable battle?

Kevin never asked questions like that. If he was stupid enough to try it, he was stupid enough to finish it. God bless him.

He invited me to lunch after the test and said that the class was more fascinating than he'd ever imagined, but he didn't know if he'd be able to pass it. He asked if I could help, and I said...maybe. I brought the request to the discord, and from the eight people there I got three volunteers who admired this dork's tenacity. He was in over his head, miles beneath the surface, but his fighting spirit was fucking glorious. If he was willing to go down swinging, we were willing to bust our asses trying to get him caught up.

Some of the stuff was just extra homework we gave to the guy. We told him he needed to learn integrals, stat. We sent him some copies of basic software that can be used to teach the basics of linear circuit equations, and he practiced that game like it was HALO. Just, hours sunk into it. Absolutely godlike.

He was still scrabbling for air at just the surface level of the class, but he'd gone from abysmal failure to lingering on the boundary between life and death. Other people in the class started to learn about Kevin's origin story, and our little circle of four volunteer tutors grew to six. Every day, he had someone trying to help him either catch up in some way, or finish that week's homework. He'd gone from being seen as a nuisance that wasted class time to the underdog mascot.

He was getting twelve hours of personal tutoring a week, on top of three hours of classes, on top of six hours of office hours, on top of the coursework. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this kid was doing 40 hours a week just trying to pass this one single class.

Second test comes around and he gets a 60. He's ecstatic. We're ecstatic. Kid's too young to take out drinking so we just order a pizza and cheer like he just won gold at the Olympics.

After that second test, things hit another tipping point. With so much catch-up under his belt, he was able to focus a lot more on the actual material for the class. A borderline cinematic moment happened when I was trying to get ahead on the homework so that I could put more hours in on my senior project. Nobody else had finished it yet because it wasn't due for another week, so the specifics of the problem I was working on were still a mystery. I went to the professor's office hours and get some pointers, but he wasn't willing to give good hints when the HW wasn't due for another week or so. He said I still had time to think about it, which was true, but I wanted to be able to think about other things. Kevin had watched the whole conversation, waiting for his turn to ask the professor more simple questions, but when I left I got a text from him telling me to hop on zoom.

Kevin had finished it earlier, because Kevin started all of his homework the moment it was assigned. He needed to, in order to make sure that he could get it done on time. He'd finished it the day before, and was able to walk me through it.

From student, to teacher. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he probably saved me eight hours on that assignment. I could've kissed him.

A month or two later, we took the final. As soon as we were done, we six asked Kevin how he did. He was nervous, there was so much new material for him in this class that his retention hadn't been great. Us six were also a little stressed: We were going to pass the class, but the final was hard.

We waited for the results.

And waited. And waited.

Finally, the scores were posted as a table, curve included. From our class of 19 people, 4 withdrew within the deadline, 4 failed, 1 got a C, 8 got B's, and 2 got A's. We could see that the curve for a C was set at 59.2% overall.

We called Kevin. He was crying. End score, 59.2%. Teacher curved the C exactly to his score.

It was a week into winter break so we couldn't gather the forces around for a party like last time, but we were all losing our shit. Kevin was losing his shit. He couldn't believe how stupid he was to try this course, he couldn't believe that six people busted their ass just to make sure he didn't die, and he couldn't believe that the professor basically just passed him out of sheer effort alone.

He said it was the stupidest thing he'd ever done, and while I doubt that, it was outrageously stupid. And yet, I've never been so invested in a fellow student before. I'm prouder of Kevin's C than I am of my own B. I was walking on sunshine for weeks after that. In theory, my senior project was building a functioning washing machine, but in practice, in my heart, it was helping Kevin pass Intro to Quantum for Electrical Engineers.

(And as an epilogue: No, he did not renounce Catholicism and become an atheist like his roommate had hoped. He did walk out changed. I think that being that wrong about something, and realizing it, was a pivotal moment for him. It's hard to be dogmatic once you realize that a lifetime of being wrong feels exactly like a lifetime of being right, right up until the last two seconds of it.)

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Strange haunted photo where Winifred looks like she's a painting

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Brushbuddy embroidery, stitched with 1 strand of white floss on white canvas

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a gift  details (x)

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Haunted Books

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Walter Molino

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Why are my babies not selling? I came across several, just this morning. This 1959 mid-century modern in Waverly, TN was built by a Dr. and his wife, and was featured in the Feb. 1963 issue of Better Homes & Gardens. It has 6bds, 4ba, 4,415sqft, and has been relisted for $560k. It is a gem.

The double door entrance foyer. (Damn! They need a door mat, look at that carpet.) Anyway, note the unique rounded platform to the left.

How cool is this? It's like a little stage, and it even has built-in seating. Even if you put a karaoke machine up here, it would be a hit with guests.

Then, the rest of the audience sits down here in the living room.

Next to the living room there's the dining area. You get the custom made drapes and look at the pattern. What could be more classic than lily pads?

But, the star of the show is the kitchen. The Doc went all out for his wife, and they upgraded it at some point, but kept it pristine. Pink cabinetry, with curves, pink laminate counters. And, it even has the original linoleum on the floor and the ceiling of light.

Look at these features- 2 desks at the end of the kitchen. They double as dining surfaces, too. This side is like a little office. The wife can do her thing here, or the kids can do homework. It's so versatile.

Look at the counters.

What it looked like, originally, in the magazine feature.

There's also a large matching laundry room/pantry.

Here's the Mrs. sewing in the laundry room.

Is this not a fantastic wall in the family room? All pinked out and storage galore.

Look at the unique lighting in this corner. Open those doors for a surprise.

Can you believe the size of this sunroom? And, it opens to the deck.

The Doc had an office in here.

This is a nice suite. Who doesn't love a bathroom mural? The sink looks like new, and I think that's a sunken tub. I like the built-in desk in the bedroom, too.

This bedroom has a beautiful built-in meant for the bed, but they cleverly stuck a loveseat in there.

I don't now why, but the primary bedroom's ensuite has stairs.

Look at that. It's been nicely updated, though.

Down in the basement there's the lime rec room and bar.

Plus another bedroom w/matching lime built-ins.

The big deck at the back of the house and the beautiful pool.

The property is 1.9 acres, so it's a large lot.

Cute little sheltered patio area by the pool has a dressing room and a bathroom.

Very convenient.

On the side of the house, there's a private patio for the primary bedroom.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/205-Hillwood-Dr-Waverly-TN-37185/41521959_zpid/?

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I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.

My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813

*electric guitar riff*

And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like

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Moray Eel by Christophe Young