Rebekah Peppler on Julia Child and cooking in the south of France: "The kitchen remains as one imagines it did when Julia Child built it. Tart rings, copper pots, measuring spoons, and whisks line the four walls, with outlines marking a designated spot for every single item. Market baskets pile high in a corner; the screened door bangs shut in a way that feels like many have entered through it. And many have."

Julia previously, previously, previously, and so on.

English Heritage's Properties Curator, Win Scutt said: "These finds reveal a fascinating insight into the lives of those at Tintagel Castle more than 1,500 years ago. It is easy to assume that the fall of the Roman Empire threw Britain into obscurity, but here on this dramatic Cornish cliff top they built substantial stone buildings, used fine table wares from Turkey, drank from decorated Spanish glassware and feasted on pork, fish and oysters." 2016 excavations report. Guardian article about a truly extraordinary window ledge inscription from the 7th century. More about Tintagel for folks who've never heard of it.

This post brought to you courtesy of the Secrets of the Dead 2019 episode on 5th-7th century Britain. Arthur previously.

Edward Hopper - Haskell's House - 1924. The house IRL. Haskell's House at Hopperhead. Haskell's House for the Hopper fan. Hopper previously.

"Storytelling has been a social activity since the dawn of time. Board games can add another level to it with nuanced strategies for decision-making and objectives with epic stakes."

People like to make lists of storytelling board games. Designing a narrative board game is a distinct form of game design. TV Tropes, weirdly, covers Narrative Board Games. There are, of course, books about the stories built into boardgames. Board games have a robust history of recreating and validating imperialism, genocide, and slavery, which David Massey takes on in "Slave Play, or the Imperial Logic of Board Game Narrative." [SLPDF] Flanagan and Jakobsson take on the future of the board game in their book Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games. Storytelling has, of course, appeared on MetaFilter previously.

"Lissyelle is a photographer and art director based in Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles, California. She grew up in rural Ontario where her interest in photography began at the age of 12, spurred by an obsessive fear she would one day forget her entire life were she not to document it. Her body of work is often still inspired by this compulsion to photograph, as well as by the vivid colors of early childhood, reoccurring dreams, the blurry way we see things when we are either too happy or too sad, and the soft hands of the high renaissance." [NSFW]

"In terms of sheer kinetic wow factor, the most impressive Gundam to date is the full-scale moving one at Gundam Factory Yokohama..."

"Gundam Factory Yokohama has closed as of March 31, 2024." More about the life-size Gundam. More about construction of the life-size Gundam. Previously, on Not A Gundam But Damn, Girl

"We took it to the streets and asked both hardcore and novice tabletop gamers." Meanwhile, on another forum... A loosely related blending of physical and digital. Some feel that It's The Apps That Are Wrong. A D&D-focused list of dice apps. There's also Elmenreich's "Game Engineering for Hybrid Board Games" [SLPDF]. Previously

Research article citation: Elmenreich, Wilfried. "Game Engineering for Hybrid Board Games." W: F. Schniz, D. Bruns, S. Gabriel, G. Pölsterl, E. Bektić, F. Kelle (red.). Mixed Reality and Games-Theoretical and Practical Approaches in Game Studies and Education (2020): 49-60.

"Bias occurs in many algorithms and AI systems — from sexist and racist search results to facial recognition systems that perform worse on Black faces. Generative AI systems are no different. In an analysis of more than 5,000 AI images, Bloomberg found that images associated with higher-paying job titles featured people with lighter skin tones, and that results for most professional roles were male-dominated. A new Rest of World analysis shows that generative AI systems have tendencies toward bias, stereotypes, and reductionism when it comes to national identities, too." CW: stereotyping of peoples, nations, cuisines, and more

This October 2023 article by Victoria Turk was shared at a library instruction conference I attended over the last couple days.

Multiversity Comics is saying goodbye, with many parting thoughts from many editors, columnists, etc. From Matthew Meylikhov: "If you don't have time for yet another self-indulgent thousand word essay on the internet (and who can blame you?), then just skip ahead to the end where the last image break is and read the last few paragraphs alone. Everything else in this farewell piece was written after I wrote those, and the end sentiment is the only thing I really wanted to convey. I'm just a sucker for a long road to a simple point (it's the journey, not the destination, right?)." Multiversity has appeared previously on the blue.

I've read over at Multiversity off and on over the years, especially the Mignolaversity Hellboy reading order post. <3 .

"Colorado publishers have experienced double digit year-on-year rises in printing and delivery costs, with the sharpest increases in the past two years. This has been exacerbated by decreasing supply of printing options across Colorado. The state's unique geography, with mountain passes closed over the winter, and distance from printers decrease the affordable options available to many publishers." A white paper on the future of printing from the Colorado Media Project. Previously.

"Rise in paper prices is major hit for Maltese publishing industry" [2024] "Not-for-profit scholarly publishing might not be cheaper – And that's OK" [2024] "Global Book Publishing - Market Size, Industry Analysis, Trends and Forecasts (2024-2029)" [2023] "Rising costs force more digital innovation" [2022] "Pulp friction: Why paper has become a huge headache for publishers" [2022] "Publishers' paper costs cause concern" [2018] Discussion of paper+print+mailing costs is common in my everyday life and professional circles. I assumed it had appeared on the blue before, but I couldn't find a post specifically about it. Happy to have someone add a better Previously in comments.

"Books are an important part of our lives but many of us still struggle with what to do with old books. When we decide it's time to part with them, we want to know they are going to a nice home where they can continue to enrich and improve other people's lives."

This topic frequently has appeared on Ask. For instance.

After yesterday's rosin-fest, I thought it would be useful and uncontroversial to post definitive information about how* to bake a potato.

* This is not how I bake potatoes. I set the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, scrub the potato clean, either wrap it in foil or don't wrap it in foil, and put it in to bake for 60-75 minutes, depending on size.

"Nevertheless, we have shown that a candle flame at roughly 2.6 km would have an apparent brightness comparable to a 6th magnitude star. Could the keenest human eyes on the planet see a candle flame at 10 miles? We have provided strong evidence that the answer is No, for it would be as faint as a star of apparent magnitude 10, and that would require a pair of 7 X 50 binoculars mounted on a tripod, even for experienced observers with good night vision."

I'm sharing this article after encountering it this morning while trying to figure out how far away a character in a story could see a flame. If this has ever been published outside of arXiv, I couldn't find it on a quick search. CITATION Krisciunas, Kevin, and Don Carona. "At what distance can the human eye detect a candle flame?." arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.06270 (2015).

Many authors have written stories or novels inspired by RPG campaigns. There is debate about whether or not tabletop RPGs should be used as writing tools. Plenty of folks give the idea a thumbs-down, but save some room in your heart for the LitRPG. B&N has you covered with, of course, a list of novels that started life as RPGs.

P1: The Rule of Law P2: The Dark Dimension P3: The Chaos-Born Tiara P4: The Paper Victory

"All this leads to the inevitable question, which one – perceived randomness or true randomness – should a GM aim to use in his [sic] games? After careful consideration, I don't think there is any one right answer to this question; depending on the circumstances, either could be correct." A neat previously featuring random maps.

"The influence of pareidolia has often been anecdotally observed in examples of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, where topographic features of cave walls were incorporated into images. As part of a wider investigation into the visual psychology of the earliest known art, we explored three hypotheses relating to pareidolia in cases of Late Upper Palaeolithic art in Las Monedas and La Pasiega Caves (Cantabria, Spain)." [SLPDF] Pareidolia previously, back in '03.

CITATION Wisher, I., Pettitt, P., & Kentridge, R. (2024). Conversations with caves: The role of pareidolia in the Upper Palaeolithic figurative art of Las Monedas and La Pasiega (Cantabria, Spain). Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 34(2), 315-338. ABSTRACT The influence of pareidolia has often been anecdotally observed in examples of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, where topographic features of cave walls were incorporated into images. As part of a wider investigation into the visual psychology of the earliest known art, we explored three hypotheses relating to pareidolia in cases of Late Upper Palaeolithic art in Las Monedas and La Pasiega Caves (Cantabria, Spain). Deploying current research methods from visual psychology, our results support the notion that topography of cave walls played a strong role in the placement of figurative images— indicative of pareidolia influencing art making—although played a lesser role in determining whether the resulting images were relatively simple or complex. Our results also suggested that lighting conditions played little or no role in determining the form or placement of images, contrary to what has been previously assumed. We hypothesize that three ways of artist–cave interaction ('conversations') were at work in our sample caves and suggest a developmental scheme for these. We propose that these 'conversations' with caves and their surfaces may have broader implications for how we conceive of the emergence and development of art in the Palaeolithic.

"Stories about a submerged land named Lyonesse abound in culture traditions of Southwest Britain and plausibly derive from memories of land loss within the Scilly Isles. We review Lyonesse stories, their links to Arthurian romances and Greek/Roman accounts of the Cassiterides, and trace their divergent evolution. From this region's history of land-sea movements and human occupation, we propose Lyonesse stories originated more than 4000 years ago when rising sea level divided a single inhabited island in the Scilly group." Lyonesse previously.

Nunn, Patrick D., and Rita Compatangelo-Soussignan. "The drowning of 'Lyonesse': early legends of land submergence in southwest Britain and geoscience." Folk Life (2024): 1-17. ABSTRACT Stories about a submerged land named Lyonesse abound in culture traditions of Southwest Britain and plausibly derive from memories of land loss within the Scilly Isles. We review Lyonesse stories, their links to Arthurian romances and Greek/Roman accounts of the Cassiterides, and trace their divergent evolution. From this region's history of land-sea movements and human occupation, we propose Lyonesse stories originated more than 4000 years ago when rising sea level divided a single inhabited island in the Scilly group. The comparable antiquity of similar stories is a compelling reason for supposing Lyonesse stories originated from observations of submergence encoded in cultural memories through oral traditions that endured in intelligible form for several millennia to reach us today.

John Sell Cotman was known for his paintings and drawings, especially watercolor. Wikipedia has the bio and suggested further readings, as well as information about others in his artistically-inclined family. Likely most people who know the name "Cotman" know it in the context of watercolor paints available from Winsor & Newton, which have appeared previously a number of times in discussion on Ask.