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Ten of Swords. Art by Jesse Lonergan, from The Unveiled Tarot.

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Photographer Debbie Parker captured this lightning strike in West Virginia. - Author: sco-go

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On yesterdays stream we covered the Tiki formation of India, a productive Triassic formation most notable in recent years for it's bonebed of Colossosuchus. This formation was deposited largely during the Carnian, an episode in Earth history known for increased global rainfall.

Subsequently there are lots of flooding events from this period and since we have this from the Tiki formation as well a flooded forest seemed like the best setting for this piece. Also not the baby and juvenile Colossosuchus: the bonebed that preserved them mostly consisted of...

...younger animals so we though if could be cool to show a nursery. Interestingly phytosaurs differ from crocodile in that they have proportionally much shorter snouts as babies. Besides this charismatic megafauna we have a lot of small stuff from here. Based on micro...

fossils the most common animals should actually be small archosaurs, but so far their record isn't good enough to put a name on them. Plants are also known in larger quantities.

Thankfully Julianne Kiely helped with this and even provided a quick little guide to the flora of this formation.

As so often Discord member JW provided the size charts for this stream. take note on the huge temnospondyl from here, a specimen that is now unfortunately lost. Thanks to personal communication with Dr. Sanjukta Chakravorti we were able to get a pretty good estimate.

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Tired of stories where the author worldbuilds a whole religion only to chicken out at the last moment by making the main character a skeptic. You mean to tell me that there’s all this richness in lore and culture, but you’ve trapped me with the one person in this society who doesn’t care about it? So bland. I could meet an agnostic easily enough by walking down the street, but your story is my one chance to hear the perspective of someone who follows whatever religion you’ve contrived. You made this whole world; convince me that your character really is from there.

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I'm not familiar with American geography, so the little thin threadlike patches of lands dividing the three lakes, are those accessible? Can people go across the lakes via those barely visible land bridges?

these?

those aren't land bridges, they're bridge bridges!

the southern one is the Mackinac Bridge, which is the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere.

it's fucking ENORMOUS. it's about 5 miles long and the deck is 200 feet over the water. the bridge towers are 550 feet tall.

it honestly breaks your brain a bit to look at it, but if you want to cross from Lower to Upper Michigan or vice versa, it's your only choice.

and the northern circle is the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge, which is just fine.

(it's pronounced "SOO saint marie")

it takes you to Canada from Upper Michigan if you want to go, so there's Customs at the end. bring your passport, and also your dog's passport.

and that's how we get around up here! if you need to go somewhere in the Great Lakes area and there's one of these big watery fucks in the way, you either take one of these bridges, hop onto a car or passenger ferry, or drive the long way round.

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GAY BOOKS FOR CHEAP 🏳‍🌈

One Night in Hartswood and All the Painted Stars ebooks are $0.99 across US & Canada stores throughout June! That's Kobo, Google Books and Kindle that I know of - but check your preferred ebookstore!

Come get your gay medieval yearning and read 'em before Book 3 announcements start happening ✨

One Night in Hartswood is about a guy who runs away the night before his wedding with a Mysterious Hunter (who, uh oh, is the brother of the woman he was supposed to get married to. Woops).

All the Painted Stars is about a woman who steals her brothers' armour and dresses as a knight to save the woman she loves her best friend from being given as a prize in a tournament. Also, there's beer.

Read more about ONIH here and ATPS here!

Not sure if medieval queers are your jam? Read the first chapter of One Night in Hartswood for free here!

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The fuckin lake monster lives!

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Why isn't "too scary" a good enough reason to never drive a car

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The ebook is done! Expanded stories! Illustrations! Never before seen content! For the low, low price of $5, you can have all the Michael stories in one convenient format! https://ko-fi.com/s/8c4ca9100b

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bit hot today got the feets out

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idk i don't think it's terrible to joke about common themes and even tropes in poetry and fiction. like some things are funny in the way that they pop up so often and are sometimes overdone & hamfisted.

the problem for me is when people on this site post poetry or short prose and someone reblogs it with a joke and that version of the post gets big notes. and that happens on here like every other month.

regardless of whether it's "good" or not, that's someone's art and unless they've already published it, this this is likely the only place they're "publishing" so the comments & tags here will be the only feedback they get.

and if they push back at all, they're portrayed as bad sports. i joined this site as a creative writing blog when i was 15 in 2008 and over the years i've seen so so so many young writers here play along and laugh it off when one of their poems becomes the new joke, because at least then only their writing will be criticized, not them.

i'm not by any means suggesting that no one is rude and terrible to visual artists here as well but i will say there isn't a hugely popular tumblr trend of reblogging someone's drawing and commenting "lol this is corny and stupid" and then that version gets 100,000 notes with everyone agreeing and laughing.

people seem to find it uniquely acceptable to make fun of poetry, something so vulnerable, because it exhibits vulnerability. there are literally "iconic" copypasta memes from this site that were originally teenagers' poems.

try being nice

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