I guess it’s time to start giving this more of a try. Twitter feels lonely now. I’m not great at #introductions, but I read this is proper etiquette here. I’m a librarian. I like #books #boardgames #swimming #starwars #janeausten

Now I’m no #twitcher but when there are reports of a #Hoopoe just down the road I’ve got to try my luck.
What a bird..! 😲😎👍✅
These guys usually hang out in southern #Europe and occasionally appear in the south of #England causing a good deal of excitement.
But this one is in #Combee, #CountyDown, #NorthernIreland 😳

#nature #NaturePhotography #wildlife #bird #birdphotography #birds #rare #rarity #lifer #twitching #birding #exotic

#AmazingWorld
#ArtOfEasterEggs

Hennig Brand, who discovered phosphorus in 1669, found it while boiling down gallons of urine to try and make gold.

When movies get really stupid …

I’m watching this Tamil movie at the moment where this guy moves into a new house, doesn’t lock his room, has his housemate enter his room in the middle of the night, take car keys from his bedside to go to another house which has all its doors open in the middle of the night, enters the house and kills a woman and so on …

Do people really exist who have no suspicions at all of strangers and will leave their room door open if they share a house with somebody and they’ve just met the guy? I find it really hard to believe …

The movie goes on to have even more unbelievable stuff happen in quick succession and I’ll probably just watch it anyway to see where all the insanity leads but I find this one really hard to believe already 😛

#Movies #Plot #SuspensionOfDisbelief

I am James Davis Nicoll, reviewer, essayist, and part time cautionary tale. In addition to my own site and tor dot com, my work has appeared at Publishers Weekly, Romantic Times, and Interzone. Between 2001 and 2014, I was a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club.

Links and more details in comments. This sort of issue is why my blog is called More Words, Deeper Hole.

#introduction #sciencefiction #reviews #bookstodon

My wife pointed out something a couple of days ago that I hadn’t actually noticed myself — that we’ve seen a number of Indian movies and TV shows that dealt with the pandemic, but that there were hardly any shows from the west that incorporated the pandemic into their story.

It’s almost as if the pandemic does not exist in the fictional worlds of western movies/TV 😛

In fact, the only show I can think of where I remember the pandemic being dealt with extensively was “All Rise” … and there was a movie called “7 Days” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14494586) but it had an Indian director and Indian cast (but the movie was in English) and so I think it only counts as half a point 🙂

And that was since the pandemic began!

Compared to that, just in the last week I’ve seen at least 2 - 3 Indian movies which centered around the pandemic and wasn’t just referring to it as a passing thing.

I just find the contrast interesting …

#Pandemic #Movies #Reflections

My first attempt at #Mosstodon

Hi fedifriends - hope you can help.

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Retoots, boosts, retweets, hell whatever you prefer to call them very appreciated!

🌍💚

#Photography
#ThickTrunkTuesday

This rainy night scene was based on a 1937 photograph of New York City.

See it here: https://mark-tisdale.pixels.com/featured/empire-state-building-1937-mark-tisdale.html?product=art-print

#DigitalArt #Painting #MastoArt #NYC #NewYork #Manhattan #ArtMatters #Rain #Night #MarkOnArt

#ThickTrunkTuesday
#Trees
#Photography
This tree is known as "Árvore grande", or Big Tree. Was planted in 1856 by the Viscount of Alijó.
#Portugal
Species is Platanus hybrida (planetree)

Ogopogo

2023 03 29-30 day 279-280 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

I followed a Tatyworks tutorial, but went a wee bit rogue.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/ogopogo/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
A very crooked and bent tree wi…

Moons and Meteors

2023 03 28 day 278 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

This is loosely based on a Joel Create tutorial, but in my head, the dinosaurs were having a bad day, back when Earth had a few other much, much, much closer planets hanging around. Or maybe this is a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. Either way, I’ve got it covered.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/moons-and-meteors/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
Earth-like terrain in the foreg…

Red Field

2023 03 22, 26-27 day 272, 276-277 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

No tutorials. Just me and Procreate and my trusty Apple Pencil.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/red-field/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
A digital painting. A field fil…

Stylized Owl

2023 03 24-25 day 274-275 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

I followed a Tatyworks tutorial, but went rogue. Of course. I’m not entirely happy with it, but whatever. It’s done.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/stylized-owl/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
An owl in greens and blues with…

Iridescence

2023 03 23 day 273 of doing art every day for a year (mostly – I took sick days off).  

Today, it’s a Joel Create tutorial. It was fun! A bit tedious in some respects since there’s a fair bit of repetition in the steps, but it was all necessary to get this effect.

For more info, including seeing the time lapse, follow this link: https://lmashton.com/iridescence/

#ArtMatters #AYearForArt #Procreate #DigitalArt #WomensArt #ArtistsOnMastodon
A fish, black everywhere except…

Egg with a pearl earring.

The artist is Aravis Dolmenna.
https://instagram.com/aravisdolmenna

It's a beautiful day here today. Here are some flowers from the yard. Wild violets (which grow everywhere here) and tulips. #Floraspondence

A Telugu movie I watched recently has had me thinking about unreliable narrators …

I can see how an unreliable narrator would work easily in fiction — if the book is in first-person perspective, then we rely on the narrator for all the information we receive and so, if the narrator misleads us (either intentionally or unintentionally) we’d be none the wiser.

But in movies, while the whole movie might follow a single character, we still get a slightly more omniscient viewpoint — while we do see what the character sees and who they interact with, given the medium, I’d expect the reactions of others to be not filtered through the character’s own viewpoint.

The most memorable unreliable narrator movies that I can think of are “The Sixth Sense”, “Fight Club”, “The Usual Suspects”, and “Memento”. And most of these work because the narrator themselves does not know that they are unreliable — what we see is what they “know” at a given moment. The only exception would be “The Usual Suspects”, but since the story there is narrated by someone, what we see is what they say. So that works.

The movie which prompted all these thoughts had somebody being portrayed as a kind and generous human being — they weren’t motivated by money, they help people, they don’t drink or gamble, and so on. But later on, we learn that the person is not at all what they seemed originally.

Now, I do realize that people sometimes hide their true-selves. They show one face to the world while hiding who they really are. But I would expect there to be some clues if you look close enough — especially in a movie since that involves the viewer more and makes them feel satisfied at having spotted the clues when the big reveal comes 😛

For example, if somebody pretends to love a person, of course, they’d call that person and declare their love all the time. But unless they both had a common circle of acquaintances, I wouldn’t expect the person pretending to be in love to go around telling everybody how much they are in love. That’s just too much work in my opinion 🙂

This particular movie had certain elements like that which made no sense later on when the big reveal came. They positioned one person as good, as somebody who wanted to help people. They positioned another person as bad, as somebody who would do anything for money. And then at the end they just go ahead and say, “Oh, the good guy is bad, and the bad guy actually would do anything to help someone in trouble.” It just didn’t work for me …

Yes, this might not make much sense to anybody reading since some context is missing — it probably is just too much of a stream-of-consciousness thing. But since I’m thinking so much about it at the moment, I figured I’d just jot it down … 😛

#Movies #Structure #Reflections