My Cat Is So Helpful...

A lion decides he’s had enough of being photographed - and tries to steal a photographer’s camera. The lion and his pride had been followed by a film crew in Okavango Delta, Botswana, for days - and obviously decided it was time to have his turn behind the camera. The lion broke away from the pride and ran up to the camera before trying to drag the camera and tripod away. The photo was taken by British photographer and tour guide John Sobey, who runs horseback safaris for photographers throughout Botswana. He said: “He had a good look down the lens and we watched, amazed. It was only when he decided to try and bite them camera that the film crew got worried, and shouted at the lion, scaring him away.”

Your annual reminder to not donate to Salvation Army!

Variety

Disney Censors Same-Sex Affection in Pixar Films, According to Letter From Employees

In a statement attributed to “the LGBTQIA+ employees of Pixar, and their allies” obtained by Variety, employees of the animation studio alle

"We at Pixar have personally witnessed beautiful stories, full of diverse characters, come back from Disney corporate reviews shaved down to crumbs of what they once were,” the letter states. “Even if creating LGBTQIA+ content was the answer to fixing the discriminatory legislation in the world, we are being barred from creating it.”

To date, Pixar has only included a tiny handful of LGBTQ characters in its feature films, most prominently in the 2020 fantasy film “Onward,” which features a cyclops police officer named Specter, voiced by Lena Waithe. The character’s sexuality is only acknowledged in passing, when Specter says, “It’s not easy being a new parent – my girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out, okay?” But the movie was still banned in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia due to the scene, and in the version released in Russia, the word “girlfriend” was changed to “partner.”

Day Seventeen - My Favourite Gif

Had to go for a classic, reminds me of my cat tbh

Stand up for what is right.

hey please for the love of god when youre hearing news about gas prices and increasing oil production:

remember that there are people still fighting against pipelines poisoning indigenous land and water. do NOT forget about us in the midst of all this.

qadashdinex, zisan! chin'an shida!

listen to me, stand up! thank you, friend!

i think a lot about Angua ad Carrot’s personal arcs in Feet of Clay, and as part of how the book seems a lot about identity or claiming your identity via Dorfl and Cheery (Dorfl being declaring that he OWNS himself, and Cheery being the first Discworld dwarf to say ‘I am She’, and both of them starting cultural revolutions by simply saying “I am who I am”)

and the relevant point is that they start out on opposite sides of sympathizing.

Carrot’s reactions to Cheery speaks for itself. And they’re bad, and worse for the fact that it’s Carrot doing it. He comes off as very much the tradtionalist dwarf he was raised as, with quietly acidic comments like ‘I’m pretty sure my mother is a woman but at least she has the decency not to show it’ and other, even nastier things. It might not have been written as transphobic but it sure as hell reads like it. Most notably, it actually gets Angua pretty steamed, given that she keeps things close to the chest and conceals her feelings. It gets her genuinely pissed. It’s unsettling, like his Men At Arms bigotry towards the undead.

But. Carrot is the only one, throughout a large chunk of the book, to treat golems as people. Everyone else considers them mindless machines, and even Nobby and Colon, who are usually totally harmless, flat out try to use Detritus’ crossbow to kill Dorfl when he is offline; nobody trusts golems, who can do nothing but endlessly labor forever and suffer in silence, deprived of even a voice for themselves, and no one admits they are alive. And as Vime later thinks, that the real reason people are so scared of them is that they know they would deserve it if the Fantasy Robot Revolution came for them, after the way they mistreat the golems.

Carrot is the one to believe in Dorfl, to fight for him, and who believes that what is happening to the golems is wrong.

Angua is Cheery’s only friend at first. She’s the one who helps Cheery accomodating herself to more feminine things that are extremely new for a dwarf, she’s even protective of Cheery and desperately hides that she is a werewolf, knowing that Cheery hates people like her. She inspires Cheery towards what becomes the bedrock of the dwarfish openly female-presenting movement, and its a very humanizing and good thing from their friendship.

She’s also, put bluntly, a vicious and even cruel figure whenever golems are around. She openly regards them as non-sentient machines, hates them effectively because it helps her to have someone to look down on as an undead, and she rationalizes their horrific treatment and endless servitude as ‘being accepted’. She even gets mad at Carrot for empathizing with them and not her, specifically, though she does note that she is asking him to be unfair.

Much of their respective character development in Feet of Clay is their subtle growing over the worst aspects of themselves in this particular book. Carrot grows into less of a traditionalist with knee-jerk reactions, and Angua grows to empathize with the golems and view them as people.

Perhaps most relevant is the capstone to both their character arcs?

Using the pronouns Dorfl and Cheery prefer.

Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a great and glorious nation. Favourite amongst his subjects was the court painter of whom he was very proud. Everybody agreed this wizzened old man pianted the greatest pictures in the whole kingdom and the king would spend hours each day gazing at them in wonder. However, one day a dirty and dishevelled stranger presented himself at the court claiming that in fact he was the greatest painter in the land. The indignant king decreed a competition would be held between the two artists, confident it would teach the vagabond an embarrassing lesson. Within a month they were both to produce a masterpiece that would out do the other. After thirty days of working feverishly day and night, both artists were ready. They placed their paintings, each hidden by a cloth, on easels in the great hall of the castle. As a large crowd gathered, the king ordered the cloth be pulled first from the court artist’s easel. Everyone gasped as before them was revealed a wonderful oil painting of a table set with a feast. At its centre was an ornate bowl full of exotic fruits glistening moistly in the dawn light. As the crowd gazed admiringly, a sparrow perched high up on the rafters of the hall swooped down and hungrily tried to snatch one of the grapes from the painted bowl only to hit the canvas and fall down dead with shock at the feet of the king. ’Aha!’ exclaimed the king. ’My artist has produced a painting so wonderful it has fooled nature herself, surely you must agree that he is the greatest painter who ever lived!’ But the vagabond said nothing and stared solemnly at his feet. ’Now, pull the blanket from your painting and let us see what you have for us,’ cried the king. But the tramp remained motionless and said nothing. Growing impatient, the king stepped forward and reached out to grab the blanket only to freeze in horror at the last moment. ’You see,’ said the tramp quietly, ’there is no blanket covering the painting. This is actually just a painting of a cloth covering a painting. And whereas your famous artist is content to fool nature, I’ve made the king of the whole country look like a clueless little twat.

Banksy, Wall and Piece (via thedailyblock)

Nik's Birthday Wishlist (12 Days to go! ^^)

As requested by many many people, I am now making a birthday list... 

PC Games:

Portal 2

Dwarfs!? (Steam)

Magicka (Steam)

Dawn of War II - Retribution

WoW 60 day game time card

XBAWKS 360:

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

Dynasty Warriors 7

Burnout Paradise (my copy is borked :( )

Books: (hardback please!)

The Rincewind Trilogy: A Discworld Omnibus: Sourcery, Eric, Interesting Times

The Death Trilogy: Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music

The Gods Trilogy: A Discworld Omnibus: Pyramids, Small Gods, Hogfather

Any other Discworld books that I haven't already got :P

Roleplaying Stuffs:

d10's, lots of d10's!

Dark Heresy - Radical's Handbook

Dark Heresy - Blood of Martyrs

Death Watch - Rites of Battle

Warhammer Stuffs:

Grey Knights Dread-Knight - must be Orkified.

Ork Battleforce / Boyz Squads - let the green tide commence!

Huge things that I probably won't get but it's worth hoping for anyway

Novatech N-Tablet (With Win7 home premium)