Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Johannes Kepler first used “Vulgar Era” to distinguish dates on the Christian calendar from the regnal year typically used in national law.
In an utterly repulsive paean to the Tiny Tyrant, Johnny Enlow at Charisma News made this little announcement:
Trump’s God-given assignment is so powerful and extensive that I was shown we will be known nationally as “before Trump” and “after Trump.” In fact, the whole world will be known as “before Trump” and “after Trump.” As a nation, this presidency is being used by God to save us from a systemic “gangrene” of corruption that was so entrenched we would not have survived moving forward. Evil was entrenched in hidden, behind the scenes, power positions that were now humanly impossible to overcome. We needed help, we needed rescuing and God has sounded His Trump and come to the rescue. It is not Trump rescuing us. It is God rescuing us.
All I can say is that I’m very glad I have not yet eaten today. If you have a cast iron stomach, and about twenty new irony meters, you can read the rest of the toxic garbage here.
AFP/File / Christof Stache.
The Nuremberg Toy Fair opened yesterday, and all the hot new toy trends are making happy waves.
The Nuremberg toy fair, the world’s largest, opened its doors this week to an industry in the throes of reinvention as toymakers vie for the attention of children increasingly glued to smartphones and tablets.
With traditional toy companies torn between joining kids in the digital world or coaxing them away from their screens, here’s a look at some of the most eye-catching trends from the fair’s 69th edition.
[…]
Parents whose pleas to “play outside” routinely go unheeded may be happy to hear that nature is, apparently, in.
Be it the humble spade, magnifying glasses or DIY gardening kits, there’s no shortage of tools to get kids interested in the outdoors. One firm is even offering the chance to raise your own butterflies.
For those who’d rather not get their hands dirty, there’s Beekeeper Barbie — comes with a hive, bottles of honey and tiny bees.
[…]
The boom in board games is showing no sign of slowing as families try to turn off their screens and spend time together, said Heinrich Huentelmann, a spokesman for German giant Ravensburger.
Old classics like Monopoly and Cluedo are perennial favourites, but there’s also been a surge in games that have no winners, such as the smash hit Gravitrax where the goal is to build increasingly complex tracks for marble-type balls.
“We can’t manufacture that one fast enough,” said Huentelmann.
Also in the spotlight are “cooperation games” where the only way to win is for all players to work together to chase a mechanical cockroach from a castle for example.
[…]
Toymakers are taking the “blind bag” craze to the next level this year, betting that children will not just want to collect the ever-more elaborate mini-toys found in surprise packs, but also the matching accessories and play-sets.
Known as “collectibles”, the cheap dolls or fantasy creatures sold inside opaque packaging are essentially the industry’s answer to the “unboxing” trend that caught toymakers off guard a few years ago, when YouTube videos of toys being unwrapped mesmerised kids everywhere.
In 2017, collectibles accounted for eight percent of the global toy market, according to the NPD research firm, making the tiny toys a multi-billion-euro business.
“Kids love the surprise element and being able to trade and swap. Key for parents is the low price,” said Gary Coppen of the Headstart toy company, which is bringing out baby and pet collectibles whose gender is only revealed in water.
And, it’s predicted that Mermaids are going to be the next huge thing, edging out Unicorns. You can read all about it here.
Isidore sits on a chair, writing on a sloping desk the words ‘(ysid)oris (de) natu(ra) hominisI’ Isidore, Concerning the Nature of Man.
Quite the misogynistic treatise.
Text Translation:
Of the age of man There are six stages of life. Infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity and old age. The first age is infancy, which lasts from the time the child enters the light till it is seven. The second is childhood, that is, when the child is pure and not yet old enough to generate young; it extends to the fourteenth year. The third is adolescence, when the child is old enough to generate children; it lasts until the twenty-eighth year. The fourth is youth, the the most robust of all the ages; it ends in the fiftieth year. The fifth age is that of riper years, that is, of maturity, and represents the movement away from youth to old age; you are not yet ancient, but you are no longer young; the Greeks call someone at this age of maturity presbiteros, an elder; an old man they call geron. This age, beginning in the fiftieth year, ends in the seventieth. The sixth age is that of old age, which has no end-date; whatever of life is left after the five Previous ages is classed as ‘old age’. The final part of old age is senility, senium, so called because it marks the end of the sixth age, sexta etas.
Philosophers, therefore, have categorised human life in these six periods, during which it is changed and runs its race and comes to an end, which is death. So, let us proceed briefly through the above-mentioned categories of the ages, pointing out their etymology in the context of man.
Beatrice, who looked very much like her RatDaddy Havelock. She was a very shy girl, difficult to get a photo of unless I caught her eating.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Oh so cute! From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
From Giliell, click for full size! Kinda looks like a cross between a Goldfinch and Pine Siskin.
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
L’Origine du monde, Gustave Courbet, 1866.
L’Origine du Monde, The Origin of the World, is a famous and well known painting by Courbet. It’s a beautiful work, and housed at Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Facebook France decided that a small thumbnail of this work was deserving of censorship.
The dispute around Gustave Courbet‘s graphic 1866 oil painting “L’Origine du Monde” (The Origin of the World), has escalated with teacher is taking Facebook to a Parisian court over allegations of censorship. Frédéric Durand-Baïssas says the social media network blocked his account without notice when he posted a thumbnail with footage and information about the painting.
The incident took place in 2011 but it has taken years of wrangling to establish whether or not Facebook is liable to French law, as it regards itself as a U.S. company. The art-lover posted a clip of the Courbet work after the account of Danish sculptor Frode Steinicke went down for a similar violation of the website’s rules on nudity. The company reactivated Steinicke’s account, although without the allegedly offending piece.
“On the one hand, Facebook shows a total permissiveness regarding violence and ideas conveyed on the social network,” the teacher’s lawyer, Stéphane Cottineau, told the Associated Press in 2016. “And on the other hand, [it] shows an extreme prudishness regarding the body and nudity.”
I would think, at this point, with Facebook being up to their neck in unethical and questionable activities they refuse to do anything about might have given them a bit of a wake up call over their astonishing prudery. They don’t care about threats. They don’t care about people being harassed. They don’t care about people using their service to steal. They don’t care about fakery of any kind. Oh, but if there is even an implied nipple, they are on the case, you betcha! There isn’t even an attempt to understand that the rest of the world does not have such puritanical views. There is nothing wrong with the human body, and it’s past time Facebook stopped acting like it’s the biggest shame of all.
Via Raw Story.
If you know who to credit, let me know.
Gloria Copeland, wife of Kenneth Copeland, who was recently boasting about the Gulfstream plane “Jesus bought” for him, has something to say about influenza.
A video was posted on the ministry’s Facebook page featuring Copeland’s wife, Gloria, telling people that there is no such thing as flu season and that they don’t need to get a flu shot because “Jesus himself gave us the flu shot.”
“Listen partners, we don’t have a flu season,” Gloria Copeland said. “And don’t receive it when somebody threatens you with, ‘Everybody is getting the flu.’ We’ve already had our shot, He bore our sicknesses and carried our diseases. That’s what we stand on.”
Right, it’s all part of Jehovah’s plan when people get sick and die, so no worries there. These idiots tangled with measles in the recent past, and measles won. A person might think they would have learned something, but no.
Praying for those who may already have the flu, Copeland proclaimed, “Flu, I bind you off the people in the name of Jesus. Jesus himself gave us the flu shot, He redeemed us from the curse of flu.” Those who don’t have the flu, she promised, can protect themselves by simply declaring, “I’ll never have the flu.”
“Inoculate yourself with the word of God,” Copeland advised.
Oh, I’m so sure “I’ll never have the flu” works a charm. The curse of flu? Okay, that’s a new one, where in the bible is that little gem, because I’d like to read it. What else do you tell people who do have the flu, that Jesus doesn’t love them as much? He got behind with the inoculations? As for “binding” the flu, uh, isn’t that kind of a witchcraft thing? While the bible doesn’t mention influenza, it does mention witchcraft. Might want to watch your step there, Ms. Copeland.
And while I don’t care if you want the misery of flu, you have no business inflicting it on others, you nasty, thoughtless ass.
You can see the whole mess at RWW.
The first landscape encountered in the Black Room interactive game (all images screenshots by the author for Hyperallergic).
The second landscape of Black Room.
Here’s an interesting game, Black Room:
The first few minutes of Black Room are a twist on my expectations. I know I’m not playing a traditional game. In fact, according the game’s homepage, I’m playing a “browser-based, narrative game about falling asleep while on your computer, on the internet,” where I play as “an insomniac on the verge of sleep, moving through shifting states of consciousness.”
Created and developed by Cassie McQuater, Black Room is free to play (with the option to donate money), and was “conceived as a feminist dungeon crawler, [and] features a majority female cast of video game sprites from the 1970s–current day.” After the game’s opening sequence — a blue light descends through a heron-filled sky before crashing to the ground and turning into a woman — my fingers are only allowed to do one thing: move my character to the right. As I do, the background comes alive with stars and fantastical birds. I’m moving through this dreamscape, alone. When I click on the “?” in the upper-right corner of the screen, I’m told, “The sky is vast. Yawning, you feel as though you’ve just woken from a long sleep. There is only one direction to travel.” Onward it is.
As a lifelong insomniac, I might have to give this one a try. You can read and see much more at Hyperallergic.