Yesterday was Night of the Museums in Hungary. All museums open all night with many different events and programs. It's one of my favorite things.
I was at the ELTE Museum of Natural Sciences first, in the Mineral Collection. I told folktales and legends related to Corundum (mineral of the year 2024). First to kids, then adults.
Then I was at the Polaris Observatory telling legends about the Northern Lights.
You know the dilemma folktale type where four men create a woman? Carpenter carves her, tailor dresses her, jeweler makes her jewelry, scholar brings her to life. And then they fight about who gets to marry her.
Well I just found a Tamil version where the woman dumps all four of them, saying they should care about her own qualities, and not bicker about who did what for her.
And then she goes to the king and requests a proper husband.
Hey, neat! Thank you! It's an "imagination engine" - the original mod @Arotrios kbin.social wrote a detailed description here.
I never really fully got my head around it but it seems to be a combination of art, poetry, music, cinema, mythology, etc and a lot of the posts in it bounce off other posts in it.
Just read an article about a theory that the myth of Asclepius and the story of Alcestis used to make one continuous epic. Which kinda make perfect sense.
The story starts with Asclepius killed by the gods for trying to bring back the dead with medicine.
And it ends with a drunk Heracles bringing back the dead by beating up the god of Death and breaking some of his ribs.
Resurrection. Best accomplished with booze and wrestling.
I'm not new here, but my old #introduction no longer fits, so here we are.
I'm a wizened (and withering) game dev since 2004, with credits on Warhawk, Starhawk, LEGO Brawls, and Destiny 2. I mainly do design, but I've also got a tech background and I don't shy away from engineering.
I'm currently exploring more writing and linear storytelling, which were my original passions before I fell into games and got hella burned out. 😭
I finally got around to writing a new blog post. "Beginnings Suck, and That's Okay" is all about jettisoning your expectations of how great beginnings work in other media, because TTRPGs just follow different rules. #ttrpg#rpg#narratology#storytelling#dnd
I'd seen the last partial eclipse, and while it was fun and interesting, I truly wondered what all the fuss was, regarding a total eclipse. A total eclipse is like a partial eclipse, just more of the same... right?
Three minutes of totality was hardly enough time to process what I was seeing, hearing, feeling.
From my human-on-a-planet perspective, I experience myself as moving very fast, and the planet as frozen in place. Even the moon and the sun seem sluggish in their movements compared to the speed with which I walk. But as the moon and sun crossed paths and slipped in and then out of totality, I was aware in a visceral way of just how fast these celestial bodies move through space.
It was electrifying.
It was also, literally, dizzying. In the gray light just before totality, several of our small group experienced vertigo. It felt like some odd combination of morning sickness and the sudden drop when you're in an elevator going down. The sort where if you move your eyes too quickly from side to side, you're likely to get queasy or the world will suddenly tilt at a very wrong angle.
At first, I thought it was just me. But when I awkwardly blurted out, "Vertigo!" several other folks nodded in wordless agreement.
The gulls over the water went mad, shrieking and pinwheeling. The frogs in the creek joined in the chorus. I like to imagine they felt it, too.
Another sensation as the light and color dimmed was the chill from the temperature dropping rapidly. It went from a beautiful sunny day, 60 or 65 degrees, down to 45 or 50. I started in my shirtsleeves; close to totality I had to run inside and get a coat! My nose and fingers turned to ice.
Milliseconds before full coverage, I saw pink flashes around the edge of the sun! Even with my viewing glasses on!
Then – in an instant the sun was gone, replaced by a glowing, sparking ring in the sky. We all yelled and cheered and clapped our hands together. I felt a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the chill in the air.
There's no doubt, some ancient part of my DNA knows that it is completely wrong to steal the sun and that my very survival depends on its light and warmth.
I ripped my glasses off to gaze long and lovingly, directly at the sun for the first time in my life! I could see a solar prominence, a pink loop of fire, a loop of plasma so big that it was visible to my bare naked eyes from eighty three million miles away.
I remembered that I had brought binoculars outside, and so I snatched them up, held them to my face, and gasped. No wonder the sun has been worshipped as a god. I wanted nothing more than to spend all three minutes looking through the binoculars, but I also desperately wanted everyone else to see what I was seeing. I shrieked, "Look! Here! You have to look through the binoculars! Look and pass them around! Quick! It's unbelievable!" and probably other mad frantic exclamations, as I shoved them into the hands of the person next to me. "Hurry!"
Once I'd handed off the binoculars, I took a moment to look around. It was a difficult choice to have to make. I mean, I've seen the landscape around where we live. I see it every day – but never during an eclipse. And I might never get to see the sun like this again. Which to look at?
I'd never seen the landscape – or the rest of the sky for that matter – quite like this. Everything immediately around me drained of color yet perfectly visible. The horizon on all sides glowing golden and blue, as if it were sunrise or sunset 360° around us. The sky above turned violet-gray. High atmospheric clouds shimmering like fish scales against it. A sprinkling of stars, and the planet Venus. The faces of my comrades slack with wonder.
I wished in the moment that it could last for hours.
When even the tiniest sliver of sun re-emerged, even that barest hint of Sol instantly swept away the eery gloom and lit the whole world back up. We all shouted, as loudly as when the sun had disappeared, and reflexively turned our faces away to shield our eyes. #storytelling#eclipse#vermont
"In 2022, days after Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by an Israeli sniper, Ruth Anderson wrote an article on Index on Censorhip’s website about the matter. Neither Israel nor the Israeli army were mentioned."
What some Lemmy communities that are dead or very low number of new posts that you would like to get more active?
My pick is /c/albumartporn