Clement Tahershamsi @Clementulus@social.cleverlibre.org

More dragonborn paintings :D

This was my first piece really utilizing head sculpts and digital lighting software. I think it really shows

#anthro #dnd #furry #fantasy #illustration

The Map of Magnamalous, a high fantasy version of New York City, which I created for Action Fiction’s Monsters of Murka: Chromatic Gamut.
Never had I drawn that many rooftops in one single map!
#ttrp #dnd #fantasymap #mapmaking #cartography

The larch.
The larch.

#thelarch #mastoart #watercolors

lunation 1204, 2020

taken over the span of two months during a period of intense grief and insomnia. 18 moon phases composited together.

#art #mastoart #photography #compositeimagery #moonphases #southernhemisphere #documentaryphotography #blackandwhite #circleoflife #womeninphoto

A cuneiform keyboard, for all your modern communications.

#Language #Technology

All of my great-grandparents were born in countries that no longer exist today.

All of them spoke a mother tongue different to mine.

We have no idea what our descendants will be like or what they’ll need.

To help them now, the only safe bet is to help create a fairer, more livable world for everyone.

👉 A world based on universal human rights.

#introduction
Before retiring, I was an aerospace engineer (Apollo, Viking Mars lander), software developer, and tech writer. But that was to pay the bills. I think of myself as a writer -- mostly sf, some horror, some mystery, some (yet unpublished) fantasy. Lots of details at www.dvorkin.com

My wife and I also help writers self-publish. You can find out more at www.dldbooks.com

In theory, I should be writing much more now that I'm retired. In practice, that's not happening. I blame the Internet.

> While the need to rescue people at sea remains deeply ingrained in the seafarer ethos, as well as an obligation under maritime law, uncertainty over when and where they could disembark rescued persons, and the potential costs of deviations and delays serve as disincentives to merchant vessels to do their duty.

On this point I will say that, disincentives or not, on the two occasions that I have personal knowledge of, the crew acted without hesitation, with impeccable professionalism and humanity. They had the full backing of both their employer and the ship's charterer.

May those miserable politicians who fuel xenophobic discourses and inflict such suffering never find themselves in that predicament.

Cool new Hubble image of an ancient supernova

https://esahubble.org/news/heic2214/

@General

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

#TerryPratchett #DiscWorld #Fantasy #magic #magick #Literature #Book Quote #Quotes

Ce Hörthron amplifie le son venant d'une direction précise. La personne qui s'assied à l'intérieur perçoit les sons de façon très directionnelle... ce qui est extrêmement déstabilisant.

> The European Union has abdicated its responsibility to ensure search and rescue in the Mediterranean. No #EU ships actively patrol anywhere near where most boats enter into distress. #Frontex, the EU’s border and coast guard, conducts aerial surveillance in service of interceptions and returns, not rescues. Despite overwhelming evidence of horrific detention and abuse of migrants in #Libya, the EU supports the Libyan forces’ efforts to detect boats and pull people back. EU governments and institutions have largely turned a blind eye to unlawful and dangerous pushbacks of boats to #Turkey by #Greece in the Aegean Sea. Alarm Phone, a hotline for migrants and refugees in distress at sea, consistently reports failure of the Maltese authorities to respond to cases in their vast search and rescue area (#SAR).

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/13/endless-tragedies-mediterranean-sea

I've seen some people describe themselves as a "Twitter refugee".

Would it be possible for people to stop using that term please. Refugees flee from persecution, usually also fleeing for their lives. Moving from Twitter to Mastodon is not fleeing from persecution or fleeing for your life.

Using refugee in this context comes across of making light of what it actually means to be a refugee, and can strip away what being a refugee actually in everyday parlance means to if used causally too often.

A relevant blog post for this Mastodon platform: 'The "palaeontological folklore" of mastodon hair': an essay about the surprising LACK of fossil evidence for brown, shaggy hair in these elephant-like creatures. It turns out that there's no reason to assume mastodons were mammoth-like in appearance, and the brown, hairy mastodons you see everywhere are a #paleoart super-meme.

(Mastodon image by Charles Knight - one of my favourites from him).

http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-palaeontological-folklore-of.html

New kittens Totoro and Calcifer settling in. They’ve already put the resident dog in her place. #catsofmastodon #studioghibli

i hope no one tries to make a watermelon/cauliflower hybrid... that would just be very sad

a "meloncauli"

Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” TV series is now on YouTube!!! #astronomy #cosmology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG7GIfMq3DI

@jjhysell I think kindness is more specific, as well as more actionable. One can act with kindness or be kind TO others, first and foremost. Whereas though “be nice to…” is grammatical, the concept is more about an assessment of you. (Originally “nice” meant innocent!) Because there’s so much context into being “nice” as in socially appropriate, niceness might mean neatness, respect for hierarchy, being well dressed, gender conformity, having community norm hobbies or interests, or being good at small talk. Or even performing disapproval of the wrong type of person!

Consequently I’d much rather speak of being kind, even in situations where kind and nice overlap.

Often considered the newest world religion, the Bahá'í Faith has its own calendar of 19 months consisting of 19 days each. The Bahá'í New Year is Naw-Rúz, coinciding with the ancient Iranian festival of Nowruz that celebrates the return of spring in the northern hemisphere. On Naw-Rúz, Bahá'ís celebrate not only the return of spring, but also the spiritual springtime ushered in by Bahá'u'lláh, whom they know as the long-promised Manifestation of God for this Day. #bahai #HappyNawRuz