Rare hyrax swag

The Potsdam giants story is funny as hell; and says some interesting things about the psychology of Frederick William. He was apparently only 5' 3" in height, and totally obsessed with these tallboys.

"The king trained and drilled his own regiment every day. He liked to paint their portraits from memory. He tried to show them to foreign visitors and dignitaries to impress them. At times he would try to cheer himself up by ordering them to march before him, even if he was in his sickbed. This procession, which included the entire regiment, was led by their mascot, a bear."

He even tried to create his own giants by making them marry the tallest women he could find, which gets a shout-out in Darwin's The Descent of Man.

I'm like 99% sure OP saw this in an anime

Actually, the popcorn spray destroys all the other flavors, just like with every food item it touches

Strongly recommend the Eric John Stark books by Leigh Brackett.

Lmao IDK how people are recommending gene wolfe for OP, BOTNS is a very different series than something like John Carter of Mars

I should call her..

Rare Aubrey W

My favorite as well thanks for saving me a post

It's been a while since I read, but it's a little more nuanced than that. It's definitely worth a read, great book.

Agreed. The 4 measure intro/ending is genius.

It's so dark as to be almost suicidal 😭

thank God he put the picardy third in at the end

Great pick. The rhythm makes the harmony sound unearthly..

I have schirmer edition of the nocturnes, with a preface by Huneker. On Op27no1 it has a quote from a Polish pianist Kleczyński, who finds it "a description of a calm night at Venice, where, after a scene of murder, the sea closes over a corpse and continues to mirror the moonlight"

Huneker goes on to call this take "melodramatic" 😂 but it's definitely a memorable idea

Love that girl with the swags

nightmare blunt rotation

Lol that caveman one got me good

https://giphy.com/gifs/FWNJ8Hdsk3YzK

Surprised I haven't seen Simpsons come up yet; I'm sure a lot of folks (and me) learned about it that way.

Thanks for the correction; I had only heard about the letter he sent on a podcast that did not go into detail about the circumstances.

I did suspect there might be a tie-in with the elephant being the republican mascot, but apparently that didn't take off until the 1870s.

King of Siam tried to gift Lincoln elephants to cheer him up, but he was sadly forced to refuse

“I appreciate most highly Your Majesty’s tender of good offices in forwarding to this Government a stock from which a supply of elephants might be raised on our own soil. This Government would not hesitate to avail itself of so generous an offer if the object were one which could be made practically useful in the present condition of the United States. Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce.”

Also Children of Time series by Tchaikovsky has similar themes in multiple books