You know in the history lesson, when you see the mural? Turns out it’s floating back stage! If you glitch and get out of bounds in the Broken Bridge, you can find it! You can’t get too close to it though - the screen blacks out. :(
Māori girl, by Gottfried Lindauer, circa 1874. (source)
Commissioned portraits gave Māori control over how they were represented. This portrait was probably painted for this unidentified girl or her whānau [family]. Gottfried Lindauer’s portraits of Māori painted for Pākehā usually feature customary adornment and clothing. But this elegant young woman wears beautifully tailored European clothing – her own choice of personal expression. Lindauer painted many portraits for Māori clients from the mid 1870s. For his sitters, portraiture was another way of representing themselves, in addition to whakairo [carving] and other art forms.
[Image ID: A painting of a young Māori woman in old fashioned Pākehā clothing. End ID]
god i love reading about stupid drama in ancient greece. like there was an athlete named theagenes who was so good at every kind of athletic contest that when he died, one of his opponents would go to beat the shit out of a statue of him out of spite, but then one day the statue fell on the guy and killed him so the greeks took the statue to court for murder, convicted it, and threw it into the sea
actually i left out the best part of this story which is that a plague then struck and when people consulted the oracle at delphi she was like “well you’ve pissed of theagenes” so they had to go dig the statue back up out of the fucking water
I felt compelled to figure out a way to have texting in my D&Desque fantasy story and it’s already getting regular usage as I write, and I included a functional replication of emoji.
It boggles my mind to consider that there are people who might not know this. You mean some people haven’t seen XD or <3 or :-)
And now I’m having flashbacks of texting using T9… Texting without looking because you have actual buttons to press…
And now I am sitting here with a sick toddler on my lap feeling old because things that were cutting edge when I was a teenager have been forgotten :’( </3
No, I mean, before computers
(A speech given by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 has a winky face emoticon in the text)
(A drawn smiley in the signature of Bernard Hennet, an abbot in 1741
(We currently have evidence of what amount to typographic emoticons as far back as 1648, in the poetry of Robert Herrick)
And then, the oldest usage I’m aware of-
(A drawn smiley used to indicate Ján Ladislaides, Notary to the Town of Trenčín, was content with the state of a record, in 1635)
The Ladislades and Hennet examples are more what I’m thinking as I write my story. Not typographic marks, but little hand drawings, because the messaging system is basically hand written letters carried by animal messengers, just expedited with magic and an enterprising mind. I’m using typographic emoticons in my writing to indicate them because I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here. If this ever makes it to print, maybe I’ll actually do more, but as it is, there’s no real reason to get that fussy.
This giant land-roaming spike-tailed horned turtle beast isn’t some reptile from the time of dinosaurs, lost in the deep past. It isn’t even a long-gone memory, known only to the first Homo sapiens, departed since the time of Pleistocene megafauna.
This turtle was still living on the planet with humans over 1,000 years after the construction of Egypt’s great pyramid.
A couple of Meiolania species survived on Vanuatu and New Caledonia in the South Pacific:
I’ll forever be bummed that I missed out on coexisting with these things.
“Didn’t threaten the lives of justices”? Fuck that bullshit.
Justice Blackmun, who wrote the Roe majority opinion, had a bullet shot through his living room window. This after years of receiving letters threatening his life. The bullet occurred right after he had received a particularly concerning letter, and was at the end of a year in which DC-area clinics had been subjected to seven bombings. Not threats, bombings.
Nudie Cohn and His Nudie Suits: The Birth of The Rhinestone Cowboy
“Nudie’s suits pretty much embody fight for the American dream. It’s as if each rhinestone makes up for every minute spent struggling and hustling. And then all the extras are just a middle finger for the haters.” - Messy Nessy
Nuta Kotlyarenko (known professionally as Nudie Cohn) was born in Kiev to a Ukrainian Jewish family in 1902. During this time, organized violent riots known as pogroms were rampant in Ukraine, with the intention being the massacre of as many known Jews as possible. Fearful of their antisemitic homeland, Nudie’s parents made the decision to send he and his brother to America when Nudie was 11 years old.
For approximately 20 years, Nudie moved around the country working various jobs, including shoe shining, boxing, and occasional tasks that honed his skills in tailoring. He made connections with gangsters and performers, cowboys and showmen; regardless of what Nudie was up to professionally or personally at the time, he always seemed able to find a friend.
He met Helen “Bobbie” Kruger while living in Minnesota, and married her in 1934. The newlyweds moved to New York City, where they were inspired by the showbusiness of the metropolitan area. Soon after, they opened a shop called “Nudie’s for The Ladies”, which specialized in hand-made custom garments for showgirls.
PICTURED:Bobbie wears one of her personal Nudie Suits, and Nudie wears one of his.
In 1940, the pair relocated to California and began to design and manufacture clothing in their garage. It was at this time that Nudie met a young country singer by the name of Lefty Frizzell, who had met moderate success as a travelling musician in the southern U.S., but hadn’t found the edge he needed to stand out from competition. Nudie offered to make Lefty a suit, on the condition that Lefty promised he’d have “the guts” to actually wear it.
Indeed as promised, Lefty begun to take to the stages of the southern states in Nudie’s design, and more singing cowboys took a cue from the fresh look.
While in California, Nudie made friends with a young Tex Williams, who would go on to become a well respected charting artist, but was at the time no more than another hopeful. Tex acquired some money in 1947 by auctioning a horse, and invested in a sewing machine for Nudie and his business. To repay him for the generous favor, Nudie often made custom clothing for Tex to wear while performing. As Tex gained traction and grew an audience, so did the “Nudie Suits”.
Inspired by his original love for city showgirl fashion and his newfound footing in Western pop culture thanks to Tex and Lefty, Nudie opened a shop in California called “Nudie’s of Hollywood”, which specialized in ostentatious western wear. As the country and polka genres of music were very popular at the time, the look was considered highly fashionable and coveted.
When Tex Williams hit #1 on American charts, the look became iconic among young people striving to stay on trend, and Nudie Suits gained enough traction to keep the business running with some success.
Encouraged by the attention Tex’s #1 had brought to the brand, Nudie gave a suit free of charge to the already-successful country star, Porter Wagoner in 1962. His hope was that Porter would be seen wearing the creation, which would in turn bring more attention to Nudie’s of Hollywood.
His hope turned out to be a prophecy, as demand for Nudie Suits skyrocketed almost immediately. Not one full year after Porter’s endorsement, Nudie and his wife had to again relocate, but this time to a much bigger facility. With the new location again came a name change, “Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors”, which has stuck to this day.
Nudie’s celebrity client list was growing in folds, and his customers included Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons, Hank Williams, The Beatles, Dolly Parton, Cher, Elton John and many more. The Nudie Suits worn by each often came to be considered one of the artists’ most iconic and recognizable looks, which served to further elevate America’s growing obsession with them.
PICTURED:Nudie in one of his own creations, along with superstar Gram Parsons in a custom design. Gram’s suit featured poppies, marijuana leaves, pills and naked women. It is one of Gram’s best-known looks, and ranks as the most requested copy at Nudie’s through it’s history.
After receiving his first suit for free, Porter Wagoner went on record in 2006 to state that he had purchased 51 more outfits from Nudie, each costing upwards of $11,000 USD. Starting in the late 60s and onward throughout Nudie’s life, Nudie Suits were considered a highly desired investment for flamboyant performers.
As Nudie’s fortune grew, so did his generosity. He was known for giving away money to kids who came trick or treating on Halloween, and would regularly donate to group homes and the building or expansion of local playgrounds.
“He came from poverty… He just wanted to see people sparkle.” - Jamie Nudie, Granddaughter
Nudie was known for wearing his own embellished designs almost constantly, but would be seen wearing mismatched cowboy boots to remind him of his humble roots in Kiev, when he couldn’t afford or come by a matching pair of shoes. From those bleak beginnings to the very literal glitz and glam of Hollywood success, Nudie used rhinestones and gleaming threads to embroider a spot for himself in American fashion and showbiz history.
This is all very cool but I can’t take it seriously because I turn into a 5 year old when sleep deprived and I laughed every time I read his name
So now that the bowling stuff pack has been released for The Sims 4 and the topic of game DLC comes up once again in the Simblr community, I feel like I want to sit down and write a post that outlines how the DLC market and the larger gaming market in general has changed how The Sims has been created, marketed and sold over the years. So hold on, this will probably get pretty long.
Lets climb into our wayback machine and head to the year 2000, when The Sims was originally released for PC. The Sim City franchise had been around for quite some time, debuting in 1989, which was cool because you could run a whole city, but Will Wright had this crazy idea about making a game where you could build houses and control mini people. What most people don’t know is that this game was rejected by Maxis once, before being picked up for distribution by EA. So yes, Maxis developed it, but the much-hated EA has been a part of the franchise since the very beginning.
Now, in 2000, we had the internet, for you young people out there. But, there was absolutely no way to download large files in any kind of timely fashion. One song could take hours to download, and a cool show from Japan could take days. Also, at this time DLC was not really a thing. You bought a disc, and that was it. Expansion packs also had to be physically bought, and due to limitations and costs, it just wasn’t worth it to make smaller DLC rather than just putting everything into one big expansion pack. Yes, custom content and mods did exist for TS1, but were still limited by download speeds and bandwidth costs.
The Sims 2 was released in 2004, a mere four years later, and yet a lot of things had changed very quickly. Technology was rapidly expanding, and things that could never, ever have been done on a year 2000 machine were possible. That means the game was richer and fuller than the original, and sims were way more customizable. DLC as a marketed product was still in its infancy during the TS2 years, and while some games were starting to get a lot of paid extras, there was backlash from the gaming community, who felt that everything should be included in the product as shipped. The Sims 2 kept to the same release type as TS1, meaning instead of smaller DLC scattered throughout, each expansion pack contained a large amount of content, and was priced accordingly. This also meant that some expansion packs were thematically all over the place, such as Apartment life, which included apartments and witches. Maybe witches prefer apartments?
This is also when the big controversies over paid custom content created by fans became a huge issue. EA included language in the terms of service agreement which allowed fans to charge money in order to recoup bandwidth costs, but stipulated that the content itself was still owned by EA. EA also chose to stay out of the massive conflicts brewing in the fan community over mod creators generating profits and charging large sums for fan made content. It is worth noting that in the larger gaming community, it is extremely rare for anyone to charge for mods for other games.
In 2009, The Sims 3 was released. For some this caused cheering, for others it was more of a wet fart noise. Reactions were mixed, is what I’m getting at. It was pretty ambitious in the customization department, using the CAST system, which used quite a bit of CPU power to accomplish. Now, digital download sales were starting to really catch up with physical copy sales, and download times were much less painful. EA also started to run into the PC game maker’s dillema; they can develop for high end computers, pushing the graphic capabilities to the max, and creating gameplay that is smooth and buttery on high end of computers, or they can make a game that looks good and runs well for the majority of customers. Given the popularity of the game among non-hardcore gamers, they clearly went with route two, though at high graphic settings the game could still be quite beautiful.
EA also ran into a second problem with TS3. DLC sales were exploding in other games, where players could opt to pay only for the content they actually wanted, while still relying on expansion packs for larger content upgrades. Think of this in terms of modern MMOs, you can buy a pretty mount for your character to ride around on, but a huge new continent and quest line will be reserved for expansion packs. Obviously, they wanted to try this out with one of their most profitable games, The Sims. Unfortunately for them, many Simmers were not impressed with either the quality or the price of those DLC offerings. They were largely ignored or shared via piracy.
EA also continued to offer large expansion packs, which could cram disparately themed items into one expansion pack. A lot of simmers wanted more flexibility in choosing the things they wanted in their games. For example, a lot of people loved the idea of cities, but didn’t want the vampires that came lumped in with it.
The Sims 4 arrived on the scene in 2014, and it was instantly either loved or vehemently hated. It returned, in style anyway, to the cartoonish graphics of The Sims 2, and were clearly designed to get the most out of mid-range PCs. They also abandoned the CPU intensive CAST system introduced in The Sims 3. EA also started to push smaller DLC packs in a big way, which has stirred up controversy in the Sims community.
On the one hand, the DLCs created for TS4 are largely viewed as an improvement over the overpriced DLC from TS3. These Game Packs and Stuff Packs include new gameplay and, in the case of Vampires, a new lifestate, things that have previously been solely available in expansion packs. They do allow gamers more freedom in selecting the content they want in their individual games, and allow EPs to focus more tightly on one theme. For some gamers, this pick-and-choose format is preferable to the content dump style EPs of the past.
On the other hand, expansion packs containing the largest amount of new content are slower in being released, which is making some simmers a bit more impatient for new content. The expansion packs are also not any cheaper, despite the fact that content is being spread out over smaller DLC releases. And unlike many other gamers, many simmers are completionists, meaning that they are spending more money on DLC than they were previously spending on expansion packs only.
It is also worth noting that the controversy over paid custom content has died down in the era of The Sims 4, largely because the community in general will not pay for content.
I personally do not see the DLC system changing much for the release of The Sims 5 (whenever that happens.) Love it or hate it, DLC is a prominent and very profitable part game development. EA is also notorious for loving their DLC, so I can’t imagine that they would ever willingly stop selling it.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
(Please refrain from turning this into a hate-fest over games you dislike.)
For this Memorial Day I give you an obit from my Grandma Alice’s scrapbook. She clipped a good number of them from friends and family that passed over the years. In this instance we have one for Pvt. Joseph Janzer, whose wife apparently worked with my Grandpa George. (I’m guessing it was with him because of the “Dept. 61” listing.) While the obit gives us some cursory, and rather sad background on Pvt. Janzer, I decided to see what else I could find.
Joseph Janzer was a member of the U.S. Army’s 141st Field Artillery, which is known as the Washington Artillery. According to a Cook County genealogy site he was killed in action on February 4, 1945. At that time his unit was fighting in what became known as the Colmar Pocket in Northeast France. This pocket was created by a Nazi offensive that in turn created a bulge into the Allied line. It is not far from the location of this battle that his remains are interred at the Epinal American Cemetery in France.
While it is impossible for me to know, I do hope his wife was able to make it out there at least once to visit him. With that said, someone cared enough to lay these flowers and flags at his gravesite as you can see in this Find A Grave photo. My guess is that Pvt. Janzer has family out there that remember him.
Wrapping up my WWII rations collection are coupons for the grocery store. While the initial thought would be that this was to make sure food was available for the troops (which in some cases was the fact), the real reasoning went beyond the actual food stuffs. It actually had to do with the processing and delivery. Like I had mentioned in my earlier rations posts, a big driving factor was the use of rubber. Hence limiting the amount of stuff you could buy meant that less stuff would have to be transported = less wear on precious tires. There was also the thought that less tin would be consumed by cans if people couldn’t buy as much. While true, I have read that the tin shortage wasn’t really as bad as the public thought. Either way, the rations did help cutback on cans.
This is by no means all of the paperwork involved with rations. As a matter of fact there was a War Ration Book No. 4 issued later on that I don’t have, and plans for a Book 5 as well. I like how over time the rations became more stylized, as you can see comparing Book 1 stamps with Book 3. (And Book 4 was even more so.) Besides the graphics the other thing I really like is the slogan that was used throughout the war years. “If you don’t need it, DON’T BUY IT.” Words that I still live by today.
Rationing was a way of life during WWII. From gasoline to pantyhose, it seemed like everything was limited. In old photos you can see the ration stickers on car windshields (the green “B”), which was there to show the attendant how much gas you were allowed to purchase. With this you received stamps and other various paperwork that had to be filled out in order to get your fuel. An “A” sticker was issued to the general public. The “B” my Grandpa Ehemann received was because his job was considered vital to the war effort. This meant he was allotted up to eight gallons a week. There were six different window stickers and even a “R” one for farm vehicles. These were a part of everyday life. So much so they became part of popular culture, like at the end of this classic Bugs Bunny when his crashing plane doesn’t crash because it runs out of gas. Why, because he only had an “A” sticker.
An interesting yet lesser known fact is that the rationing wasn’t really created to control fuel consumption, but was there to help save on tires. Gasoline could be made domestically, but rubber trees don’t grow here (at least not in mass quantity). That raw material came from Asia, which of course was controlled by Japan at the time. That’s why if you look closely at the paperwork you’ll see a lot of references to mileage and tire inspections. There was even a national speed limit of 35 MPH put in place to help curb tire wear.
Here’s an example of some of the ration paperwork one had to keep track of to fill-up at the station. The photo is of my Grandfather’s 1942 Studebaker that is referred to in paperwork. There were some other ration related items I’ll get to later.
