She Said The Thing

to go even further, im not sure that "the brain without sensory input" is right either. im not sure that there *is* a brain, while you are in the pale. maybe you are dissolved into concepts, just a memory that remembers its own self. and with the aid of some techniques, you are simply re-embodied in a different place where the pale meets material reality. and the effects of the pale on cognition are a sort of conceptual cross-radiation, where other things become part of this idea of yourself, and as you are re-embodied, you still carry them with you

quick question to the lore masters: is the pale white or black? the paledriver says it's like looking into the ocean at night when harry asks how it looks. but it's called pale lol and in some canon artwork i saw it look like white clouds. i suppose realistically, the light should not be able to penetrate it at some point right? and if it's the opposite to things existing it makes more sense it's a literal hole in the world so should look pitch black?

God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain.

James Joyce, Ulysses

I uploaded some of my art to inprnt where you can get them as prints, stickers or cards! :>

VRML

A tiny Hawaiian squid, Euprymna scolopes, has become a model for thinking about this process. The “bob-tailed squid” is known for its light organ, through which it mimics moonlight, hiding its shadow from predators. But juvenile squid do not develop this organ unless they come into contact with one particular species of bacteria, Vibrio fischeri. The squid are not born with these bacteria; they must encounter them in the seawater. Without them, the light organ never develops. But perhaps you think light organs are superfluous. Consider the parasitic wasp Asobara tabida. Females are completely unable to produce eggs without bacteria of the genus Wolbachia. Meanwhile, larvae of the Large Blue butterfly Maculinea arion are unable to survive without being taken in by an ant colony. Even we proudly independent humans are unable to digest our food without helpful bacteria, first gained as we slide out of the birth canal. Ninety percent of the cells in a human body are bacteria. We can’t do without them.

As biologist Scott Gilbert and his colleagues write, “Almost all development may be codevelopment. By codevelopment we refer to the ability of the cells of one species to assist the normal construction of the body of another species.” This insight changes the unit of evolution. Some biologists have begun to speak of the “hologenome theory of evolution,” referring to the complex of organisms and their symbionts as an evolutionary unit: the “holobiont.” They find, for example, that associations between particular bacteria and fruit flies influence fruit fly mating choice, thus shaping the road to the development of a new species. To add the importance of development, Gilbert and his colleagues use the term “symbiopoiesis,” the codevelopment of the holobiont. The term contrasts their findings with an earlier focus on life as internally self-organizing systems, self-formed through “autopoiesis.” “More and more,” they write, “symbiosis appears to be the ‘rule,’ not the exception… . Nature may be selecting ‘relationships’ rather than individuals or genomes.”

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

Elder scrolls worldgen presets for Dwarf Fortress

People seemed to like the BotW Hyrule worldgen preset I shared for for Dwarf Fortress a few months ago so I thought I'd share these ones too.

The file contains world prests in different sizes for Cyrodiil (generated from the Oblivion heightmap), Skyrim (generated from the Skyrim heightmap), Vvardenfell (generated from the Morrowind heightmap) the Iliac Bay (generated from the Daggerfall heightmap) and Tamriel (generated from this fanmade heightmap)

Elevation should be relatively accurate bc I generated them from the games' actual heighmaps using PerfectworldDF, althought I had to make some minor alterations (such as connecting the Imperial City Isle to the rest of the world with a little land bridge). I did my best with the biome placement but I'm only human and the DF biome editor is not exactly easy to use, look at this shit:

This was made for classic DF but I've confirmed it works with the Steam version too.

How to use:

Download this world_gen.txt file

Go to your Dwarf Fortress install.

Go to data>init

Replace that folder's world_gen.txt file with this one.

(Make a backup of the old file if you want to keep your old world presets. Or merge the two files into one by copying the entire text of one of them and pasting it at the end of the other)

In game, choose "Design new world with Advanced Parameters"

Choose one of the presets from this file.

Before generating, you can tweak details like history length, number of civs, etc, etc etc.

What’s a food from your culture that u HATE #hatersonly

and to think that you havent gotten to the doomed revolutionary femdom mmf bit yet

50 pages into If On A Winter's Night A Traveler and, yeah, sometimes the timeless classics people name drop to sound cultured and which seem to be at least 50% an elaborate joke on the reader and/or chance for the author to show off really are as good as everyone says.

What are your opinions on birds as a subject for photography.

hold still you little fucker