Check out “Barry Lyndon”, a film whose period interiors were famously shot by period lamp-and-candle lighting (director Stanley Kubrick had to source special lenses with which to do it).
More recently, some scenes in “Wolf Hall” were also shot with period live-flame lighting and IIRC until they got used to it, actors had to be careful how they moved across the sets. However, it’s very atmospheric: there’s one scene where Cromwell is sitting by the fire, brooding about his association with Henry VIII while the candles in the room are put out around him. The effect is more than just visual.
As someone (I think it was Terry Pratchett) once said: “You always need enough light to see how dark it is.”
A demonstration of getting that out of balance happened in later seasons of “Game of Thrones”, most infamously in the complaint-heavy “Battle of Winterfell” episode, whose cinematographer claimed the poor visibility was because “a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly”.
So it was nothing to do with him at all, oh dear me no. Wottapillock. Needing to retune a TV to watch one programme but not others shows where the fault lies, and it’s not in the TV.
*****
We live in rural West Wicklow, Ireland, and it’s 80% certain that when we have a storm, a branch or even an entire tree will fall onto a power line and our lights will go out.
Usually the engineers have things fixed in an hour or two, but that can be a long dark time in the evenings or nights of October through February, so we always know where the candles and matches are and the oil lamp is always full.
We also know from experience how much reading can be done by candle-light, and it’s more than you’d think, once there’s a candle right behind you with its light falling on the pages.
You get more light than you’d expect from both candles and lamps, because for one thing, eyes adapt to dim light. @dduane says she can sometimes hear my irises dilating. Yeah, sure…
For another thing lamps can have accessories. Here’s an example: reflectors to direct light out from the wall into the room. I’ve tried this with a shiny foil pie-dish behind our own Very Modern Swedish Design oil lamp, and it works.
Smooth or parabolic reflectors concentrate their light (for a given value of concentrate, which is a pretty low value at that) while flatter fluted ones like these scatter the light over a wider area, though it’s less bright as a result:
This candle-holder has both a reflector and a magnifying lens, almost certainly to illuminate close or even medical work of some sort rather than light a room.
And then there’s this, which a lot of people saw and didn’t recognise, because it’s often described in tones of librarian horror as a beverage in the rare documents collection.
There IS a beverage, that’s in the beaker, but the spherical bottle is a light magnifier, and Gandalf would arrange a candle behind it for close study.
Here’s one being used - with a lightbulb - by a woodblock carver.
And here’s the effect it produces.
Here’s a four-sphere version used with a candle (all the fittings can be screwed up and down to get the candle and magnifiers properly lined up) and another one in use by a lacemaker.
Finally, here’s something I tried last night in our own kitchen, using a water-filled decanter. It’s not perfectly spherical so didn’t create the full effect, but it certainly impressed me, especially since I’d locked the camera so its automatic settings didn’t change to match light levels.
This is the effect with candles placed “normally”.
But when one candle is behind the sphere, this happens.
It also threw a long teardrop of concentrated light across the worktop; the photos of the woodcarver show that much better.
Poor-people lighting involved things like rushlights or tallow dips. They were awkward things, because they didn’t last long, needed constant adjustment, didn’t give much light and were smelly. But they were cheap, and that’s what mattered most.
They’re often mentioned in historical and fantasy fiction but seldom explained: a rushlight is a length of spongy pith from inside a rush plant, dried then dipped in tallow (or lard, or mutton-fat), hence both its names.
The “name one thing in this picture” picture got to me SO MUCH until I finally gave up and did a bit of googling.
From knowyourmeme: “The photo was covered by AV Club,[6] The Sun and others. On April 23rd, Redditor mcsabas posted an explanation of the picture to /r/interestingasfuck, writing "This picture is designed to give the viewer the simulated experience of having a stroke (particularly in the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex, where visual perception occurs.) Everything looks hauntingly familiar but you just can’t quite recognize anything.”
I thought the large, dark object in the foreground was a taxidermy baby black bear originally.
Also Tumblr has recently deemed a lot of my posts inappropriate so if you want to read my stuff you can go to the blog HERE<< Thanks :) -Remember the disappearance of of Timmothy Pitzen in 2011? To refresh you on the case, the six year old’s mother took him out of school claiming there was a “family emergency”. she proceeded to take him to a zoo and water park before committing suicide in a hotel room. Timmothy Pitzen was never found. Then, in April 2019 a man found wandering the streets of Kentucky claimed to be the missing boy. (continue reading) -Next up, the murder of Grace Packer. This has got to be one of the most disturbing crimes I think I’ve ever covered. Needless to say reader discretion is advised.Grace was adopted when she was a toddler and suffered abuse at the hands of her foster father. He was jailed for his crime but the abuse would not stop there. Soon after her mother divorced she was introduced to a whole new monster. (read this story) -11 year old Amberly Alexis Barnett went missing from her Aunt’s mobile home in Alabama in March. Neighbors and police searched for the child but failed to locate her. 33 year old man named Christopher Wayne Madison was one of the neighbors involved in the search, but investigators would come to find out that he was much more involved than he first let on. (read the full story) -When Diana Alejandra Keel went missing her husband didn’t seem too concerned. By the time Keel’s body was discovered in a rural area not far from their home, her husband, Rexford Lynn Keel Jr was already several states away. Deeper investigation into the case revealed that the accident that killed his previous wife may not have been an accident at all. (read) -On the 20th of December, 2018, the Effingham county sheriff’s office received a phone call concerning the well-being of a local teenage girl named Mary Crocker. The caller said she “feared” for the 14 year old girl’s safety after learning disturbing information about the child’s abusive home life. The mystery of two missing children from an Effingham County began to unravel. (continue) -The last time anyone saw 19 year old Molley Lanham and 18 year old Thomas Grill alive was February 25th. The couple went missing from Indiana after going out for a drive in their black Honda Civic over a week ago, leaving behind no clues to their whereabouts. But an anonymous tip submitted to the Porter County Sheriff’s Office lead officers to arrest a suspect in what is now considered a possible double homicide.(read this story) -On Friday July 6th 1973, an 11 year old girl named Linda O’Keefe went missing while walking home from Lincoln Intermediate School in Corona Del Mar.Witnesses who saw Linda walk home that day came forward to report a suspicious man in a dark turquoise van. One of her classmates said that she saw the van approach the missing girl, however she couldn’t hear what was said.(continue)
-Ask neighbors and acquaintances of Jerry Arnold Westrom what kind of man he was and they would describe him as a friendly and generous Hockey dad who loved his family and was very active in the local community. But the 52 year old ex- Isanti businessman had a dark history that not many were aware of. Learn how a hotdog lead to the arrest of a man who managed to evade responsibility for a cruel murder he committed in the early nineties. (read here) -On January 4th 2019, 22 year old mother of 4, Savannah Spurlock, got dressed in preparation for a night out at a local bar in Kentucky. She pulled on a figure hugging burgundy red pencil skirt, a black plunge blouse and a pair of stiletto heels before grabbing a cross body purse and heading out to the “other bar” in downtown Lexington, Kentucky.She vanished later that night after being captured on CCTV with two men. What happened to Savannah that night? (continue) -On the 5th of February 2019, a highway worker in Greenwich, Connecticut discovered a large, red, abandoned suitcase in a wooded tract, just 15 feet from the highway. The worker cautiously approached the discarded luggage near Glenville road and unzipped it to reveal the grisly contents. Inside the case was the fully clothed body of a young woman with her wrists and ankles bound. The worker pulled out his phone and contacted the local police to report the discovery (continue)
Brian Shaffer was just 27 years old when he vanished off the face of the earth during spring break in 2006.
Shaffer, who was a second year medical student at Ohio state university, went missing after a night of bar hopping with friends on Friday March 31st. 2006. Before hitting the town with friends that night, he went out to dinner with his dad and brother to celebrate. His father did not notice anything off about his son other than the fact that he seemed fatigued which he thought was probably due to one too many late nights of studying for his exams. Around 9:50PM Brian made a call to his girlfriend. She had no idea it would be the last time she heard his voice. After the family meal Brian met with a friend named William “Clint” Florence at around 10PM . The two met a local bar named “The ugly tuna saloona”. The bar was on 1546 north High Street in Columbus, but Google it these days and you’ll notice it’s recorded as being permanently closed. The Ugly Tuna Saloona has an average rating of 2 out of 5 stars on Yelp- “They have one of, if not the best happy hours on campus being $1 any well drink from 8-10 Monday-Saturday” says one customer. “How can you hate a place that sells Jell-o shots in a big plastic syringe and puts a plastic alligator in your huge fishbowl o’ alcohol???” another user writes.
From there Brian and Clint visited multiple bars throughout the course of the evening, slamming a shot at each establishment with the aim of ending up at Arena district. The Arena district is a neighborhood in Columbus that is easy to walk to on foot. It has everything from bars and restaurants to malls and sports facilities.. Arena district would be around a 40 minute walk from the Ugly Tuna Saloona in North High Street.
Brian and Clint reached their destination at around midnight after stopping at various bars along the way. They hitched a ride back with a female friend of Clint named Meredith Reed. The three drove back to the Ugly Tuna and had one last drink together.Surveillance footage from the bar confirms that the three did indeed go back to the Tuna and they were recorded arriving at 1:15AM. At some point Clint noticed that Brian was missing. Despite their repeated attempts to call and locate him he was nowhere to be found. Clint and Meredith were eventually ushered out of the bar at closing time, around 2AM. Although they continued to wait for their missing friend outside of the bar, he never showed up. They did tell police that Brian went to talk to the live band after they finished their set that night, but the members couldn’t offer up any helpful information. Brian had two sides to him, on one hand he had been training his whole life to become a doctor, and on the other hand he wanted nothing more than to be a musician and song writer. He was a fan of Eddie Vedder and Jimmy Buffett and had a tattoo of the artwork from the Pearl Jam single “Alive”.
What happened to 10 year old Alaska girl Ashley Johnson-Barr?
Ashley Johnson-Barr disappeared from a playground in Kotzebue, Alaska on September 6th, 2018. Her parents called her cellphone repeatedly when she failed to arrive home for dinner that night and although it rang, nobody answered. The phone had been ringing in the pocket of a 41 year old man named Peter Vance Wilson, who claimed to have found the device on the ground. The truth, however, was far more disturbing…(CONTINUE READING) What happened to missing Barron County Teenager Jayme Closs?
The bodies of a husband and wife were found in their home in Barron County after a panicked phone call to the police. An unknown assailant had seemingly forced their way into the home, murdered every adult in sight and taken a 13 year old child. What happened to Jayme Closs? (READ HERE) The murder of Utah University Senior Lauren McCluskey
It was September 2nd 2018, Lauren McCluskey got chatting with a the bouncer at a local bar. He was fit and muscular and introduced himself as Shaun. He told her he was 28 years old and was studying computer science. They dated for a month before Lauren found out the truth, but getting away from Shaun would be a deadly endeavor. (CONTINUE) The torture and murder of Anthony Avalos
On June 20th, 2018, at 12:15PM the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department received a phone call regarding an unresponsive child due to what they were told was the result of a fall. Teachers had been reporting signs of abuse for a long time, but CPS neglected to remove little Anthony from his situation. (READ HERE) Pensioner may be America’s most prolific serial killer
Samuel Little, who is now 79 years old, was originally convicted four years ago for a string of murders in the LA area in the eighties. At this stage in the investigation it has been said that Little has been linked to at least 30 unsolved murders and police believe him when he confessed that there is many, many more. (READ THIS POST) Suspected serial killer Felix Vail
Between the early 1960’s and mid-1980’s six women dated and married a man named William “Felix” Vail. One drowned, two are still missing and several more divorced him almost as quickly as they had married. Find out about the life and crimes of this ruthless man (CONTINUE READING) Cyntoia Brown granted Clemency
Cyntoia Brown shot a man in his bed when she was just 16 years old. Although still a child at the time and a victim of child sex trafficking she was tried as an adult and sentenced to 51 years in prison. Many advocates campaigned for her release, including celebrities, and she has recently been granted clemency. Read this mega post about the case (HERE) Where is Missing Woman Kelsey Berreth?
Kelsey Berreth went missing from Colorado in November of 2018. There was no sign of a disturbance at her home nor had she packed to go somewhere for an extended period of time. Police interviewed her fiancé who lived nearby on his mother’s farm and although he cooperated with them, the lingering question of why he didn’t report his own fiancée missing still loomed ominously over him. (CONTINUE READING) American student murdered by roommate in the Netherlands
Sarah Papenheim moved to the Netherlands when she was just 19 years old. She was a psychology student at the Erasmus University in Eindhoven and an accomplished drummer who met and bonded with local musician, Joe Schelling, over their mutual love of music. Schelling had been dealing with anger issues but Papenheim was confident that he wasn’t dangerous. (CONTINUE READING)
Whang! [X] My new favorite. What can I say, I love whang. Dude covers weird and forgotten mysteries of the internet. Doesn’t drag out stories, is informative and entertaining.
LordanARTS[X] This guy goes in depth about cases in his “Brainscratch/searchlight series He covers true crime, cold cases and missing people.
Reignbot[X] I really like Reignbot’s channel, she’s great at analyzing mysteries and conspiracies and the like. Her voice is also really easy to listen to and she often does in depth horror movie reviews as well as lists.
Shrouded Hand [X] Paranormal / creepy / Aliens and UFO’s
NightmareExpo [X] Another great channel. Reminds me of Reignbot in a way. Reviews and analysis of various web-series and creepy content gone viral along with scary story times and a “disturbing things from around the internet” series.
NightMind [X]I like Nightmind a lot. Good creepy channel with analysis of mysterious online videos and coverage / reviews of creepy online content from around the internet. Really worth subscribing to.
Rob Dyke [X] specifically his series “seriously strange” / twisted tens and the anatomy of a serial killer.Rob’s channel has a lot of good quality content and since he’s been around for a while now, he’s got quite a few to binge on. His channel covers everything from unsolved mysteries, serial killers, and twisted top ten lists.
Elders Vault [X] EV dives into unsolved mysteries with his “Beyond the vault” series and it’s very, very interesting. Really like the guys voice, easy to listen to, well worth a sub.
OrderoftheGoodDeath[X] …more commonly known as “Ask a mortician”. It’s all in the name, the presenter of the channel is a mortician, and her channel features morbid and interesting content surrounding death and everything about it.
Caylleigh Elise [X] Another great channel, especially the “Dark matters” series.Features topics along the lines of true crime, missing people, unsolved murders, and the odd list video.Very respectful and informative.
Gloomy house[X] As the user name suggests, pretty gloomy content. From “videos that will make you lose hope in humanity” to “The euthanasia roller coaster” and even “the Mickey mouse sex tape”Hmm.
Crime documentary [X] It’s all in the name. This channel has a lot of true crime documentaries, usually 40 minutes and longer.
I thought I’d also make a little sub-list of scary story channels I like, because I do listen to a bunch of them. If you don’t know, scary story channels are basically people reading either listener submitted, or online sourced real life terrifying experiences. These are good playlists for just before you go to sleep or whatever. Some of the readers have branched out to do lists and cover crime or paranormal stories too.
Just showing off some of the details on the larger shock unit. It’s a lot bigger than the Dogtra IQ, and that definitely translates to more power! The larger unit has the ability to bring me to tears which can be pretty hot in the right situation.. especially when used in conjunction with the pussy shock belt heheh.
The remote has a digital readout (127 is the max level), and Sir loves making me see the number before giving me a shock. He’s the meanest.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
This collar can be found in the Discerning Specialist store:
I feel so stupid. Here I was going along thinking that phones and tablets handled application updates the same way computers do. Either overwriting the old data with new or uninstalling the old and installing the new, thus maintaining the size of the application or program. But no. Apparently phones and tablets just install the new data alongside the old thus bloating the size of the app to a ridiculous degree. I couldn’t understand why Instagram and FB Messenger were about 4gb each, when my sister, who recently bought a new phone, said her Instagram app was only 700mb. So I uninstalled both of them and then reinstalled them from the app store and lo and behold Instagram and FB Messenger are now both under 200mb. I don’t know if it works the same on iOS, but I would bet it does. Planned obsolescence is annoying AF.
So I was re-reading Dressrosa earlier and I just kinda blew my own mind.
First I need to get something out of the way, otherwise the thing I’m proposing will sound very controversial.
Rebecca’s gladiator outfit. It’s fanservice, bad fanservice. It’s skimpy, it’s not tactical. Hell, it’s not even realistic female armor. It’s just Oda trying to show as much of Rebecca’s body as possible, which is gross considering she’s 16.
We’re on the same page, yes? Yeah? Cool. Now with that out of the way, I’m going to say something almost entirely contradictory.
What if I said there’s an in-story explanation. A reason outside of fanservice that she’s dressed like this?
You see, something that struck me a bit odd while re-reading this chapter is that Kyros’s statue is described as “a half-naked man”. Not really the first thing I notice about him, but ya know, whatever. It’s an accurate description.
Except this is how his statue’s described several times. A nearly-naked man.
I’m thinking to myself “ok, Oda clearly wants me to view the statue with this imagery. But why?” And that’s when my brain made the connection:
Rebecca idolizes this statue. Even though she can’t remember Kyros is her father, she is subconsciously drawn towards his figure and is fascinated. The same can be said for all the people of Dressrosa. Even though they can’t recollect Kyros, or even verify the information on the statue is correct, they’re inclined to not remove it.
She is clearly trying to- without even realizing it -match her father’s image. It’s quite an interesting use of symbolism.
Let’s come back down to Earth real quick. Is this a bit of a stretch? It’s a huge stretch. Should she have had better designed armor? Absolutely. But that fact that there’s even a semblanceof in-story justification for her armor blows my mind, and I’m baffled that I didn’t make the connection any of the other times I’ve watched or read Dressrosa.
The tragic irony of Lucy writing earnestly about how married people should tell each other everything while Jonathan is being forced to write fraudulent letters to Mina is really heartbreaking.
He longs to be honest with her, but he’s not in a place where he can.
It’s also interesting because the two are not juxtaposed in the original book. The change to emails created something rather tragic.
To the people in the notes asking what order the original book is in:
The entirety of Jonathan’s journal comes first in the book, which goes until the end of June. After [redacted] happens, Jonathan’s journal from Transylvania ends.
Only then do we get Lucy and Mina’s letters and the assorted documents from the suitors. Which does go backwards chronologically. The emails have interspersed these with Jonathan’s journal.
There is also a slight back and forth in July between chapters 6 and 7 since two sets of simultaneous events happen in separate chapters in the book.
Once we get to August everything will proceed chronologically as it does in the book.
today I learned that in 2008, the city council of florence overturned dante’s sentence of execution if he returned from exile. yes, dante’s inferno dante, who died in 1321.
but the funniest part of this is not that they were debating the exile of a man who has been dead for over 500 years.
the funniest part is that the vote was 19-5. five people voted to uphold dante’s exile.
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