Tag: copperbadge

copperbadge:

iamshadow21:

copperbadge:

iamshadow21:

copperbadge:

copperbadge:

So, a few weeks ago, on a quest for something else, I tripped over the concept of the 78-card Tarot spread. For those who aren’t into Tarot, the standard deck has four suits of 14 cards each that comprise the Minor Arcana plus 22 extra “face” cards that comprise the Major Arcana, so a 78-card spread would use every card in the deck, which is a trifle unusual in my experience. 

There are apparently a couple of full-deck spreads floating around out in the ether, but the ones I looked at weren’t satisfying to me for various reasons – perfectly decent on their own, but none of them quite what I was looking for. I had been startled by the very idea of a full-deck spread, but once I looked around I decided it would be interesting to try and make one of my own.

I sat down and drafted out a chart (the hand-drawing in this post is the final drafting of that) and built up a structure around it. For the past week or so I’ve been shuffling and writing and preparing to give the reading a test-run. Now that I have (and it was very interesting reading), I’m ready to unleash it on the world in time for Halloween – or Samhain, or All Saints, or All Souls, or Dia De Los Muertos, or whichever Veil Is Thinnest Oh Shit Light The Candles holiday you prefer. 

You can read more about the spread, including an explication of how to read it and a few variances on the reading, at the link below. I hope you all enjoy it and have fun with it. 

The Four Royal Advisors

It’s that time of year again, so I figured I’d reblog, especially since quite a few people I know have taken up Tarot this year. 

This is TERRIFYING.

I mean, cool, seriously cool, but so, so many cards. I have never felt more of a novice than I do looking at this elder god of a spread.

Honestly, it’s only as complicated as you want it to be – The reason each row or column has a general theme is that so you can look at it in very general terms, or you can get super up close with each card. One of the reasons I did my own is that I wanted it to be more accessible than the ones I was seeing – that’s why it has a narrative attached, to pull the whole thing together very simply. 

Admittedly I have been reading Tarot (or some version of fortunetelling cards) for a really long time, more than 20 years now, but that’s been very off-and-on, and I think the most important thing I’ve learned is that there is no single specific right way, no step where if you do something wrong the whole thing won’t work. It’s an intuitive process, so I always think of it as a rather structured improv, like writing to a prompt. You might not be writing what the prompter expected, but you’re combining that input with your own voice to create something. 

This is a guidebook, not a rulebook. 🙂 

I’m just looking at it from an executive dysfunction perspective. I think doing that spread would be POSSIBLE for me, but I think it would literally take me weeks to analyse. Maybe when I have twenty years going for me it’d be easy, yeah, but not right now. 🙂 I’ll probably try it in the future, but it won’t be a Halloween thing due to the current complicating factors: Six cats (mostly mine) and three kids under eight (NOT MINE) in this house right now. Never mind tarot – all my jigsaw puzzles are screaming at my from the shelf to DO THEM and it is a complete impossibility. The seven year old klepto would steal them, the four year old would lose them, the eighteen month old would eat them, and the cats would play with them. I’m only able to do readings because I have a laptable I can lay out cards on when the seven year old is not around.

Oddly enough, I think I’ve owned tarot for twenty years, but my teenage deck got misplaced/destroyed and I didn’t replace it until this year. So I am certainly NOT a fluent reader. I’m a LWB-in-one-hand-while-I-stare-at-the-cards reader. 😀

Yeah, that makes sense – both the executive dysfunction aspect and the more physical “cats and toddlers” factor. I didn’t take notes during my Halloween read, but my trial read I was definitely writing stuff down, because it was a lot of information intake, and I was still working at remembering some of the cards (I have a system for the suits, but there are about six major arcana I can’t keep straight even after working at it). So I can see how it would be difficult to manage that level of data without a mediating factor of some kind. 

I think part of it was I was seeing a lot of people going “Shit this is too complicated for me, it would take hours/days, I’d give myself a headache” and I don’t want it to be that intimidating – I want people know that this is literally something a guy in Chicago made up for fun, and they can take it as lightly or seriously as they want, remix it, mess around with it, do as much or as little as pleases them. 

I guess I just wanted people to know that a long, intense, detailed reading has its place in this spread, but it doesn’t have to go like that. 😀

I write every card down I draw – the book meaning (or meaning I find on a site, if it’s too ambiguous), and then my thoughts on the spread at the end. So any spread over about four cards takes me ages to write. It’s the way I’ve chosen to help me learn the cards. Writing is one of the ways I’ve found helps me to retain information a little better than just hearing or seeing, but it’s been at least a decade since I did any study, so I am super slow and my hand cramps like crazy and my handwriting is SO BAD it’s a joke. But I’m enjoying it. If I do the 78 card spread, I’ll probably need a whole notebook for it! 😀 Fortunately, cool nice hardback notebooks are pretty easy to find for under $5, so even I can afford that. Maybe if I spread the draw out over a few days, doing a handful of cards at a time, it’d be cool. But not this month. I’m doing #monthofspreads right now, so my reading time is booked.

copperbadge:

iamshadow21:

copperbadge:

copperbadge:

So, a few weeks ago, on a quest for something else, I tripped over the concept of the 78-card Tarot spread. For those who aren’t into Tarot, the standard deck has four suits of 14 cards each that comprise the Minor Arcana plus 22 extra “face” cards that comprise the Major Arcana, so a 78-card spread would use every card in the deck, which is a trifle unusual in my experience. 

There are apparently a couple of full-deck spreads floating around out in the ether, but the ones I looked at weren’t satisfying to me for various reasons – perfectly decent on their own, but none of them quite what I was looking for. I had been startled by the very idea of a full-deck spread, but once I looked around I decided it would be interesting to try and make one of my own.

I sat down and drafted out a chart (the hand-drawing in this post is the final drafting of that) and built up a structure around it. For the past week or so I’ve been shuffling and writing and preparing to give the reading a test-run. Now that I have (and it was very interesting reading), I’m ready to unleash it on the world in time for Halloween – or Samhain, or All Saints, or All Souls, or Dia De Los Muertos, or whichever Veil Is Thinnest Oh Shit Light The Candles holiday you prefer. 

You can read more about the spread, including an explication of how to read it and a few variances on the reading, at the link below. I hope you all enjoy it and have fun with it. 

The Four Royal Advisors

It’s that time of year again, so I figured I’d reblog, especially since quite a few people I know have taken up Tarot this year. 

This is TERRIFYING.

I mean, cool, seriously cool, but so, so many cards. I have never felt more of a novice than I do looking at this elder god of a spread.

Honestly, it’s only as complicated as you want it to be – The reason each row or column has a general theme is that so you can look at it in very general terms, or you can get super up close with each card. One of the reasons I did my own is that I wanted it to be more accessible than the ones I was seeing – that’s why it has a narrative attached, to pull the whole thing together very simply. 

Admittedly I have been reading Tarot (or some version of fortunetelling cards) for a really long time, more than 20 years now, but that’s been very off-and-on, and I think the most important thing I’ve learned is that there is no single specific right way, no step where if you do something wrong the whole thing won’t work. It’s an intuitive process, so I always think of it as a rather structured improv, like writing to a prompt. You might not be writing what the prompter expected, but you’re combining that input with your own voice to create something. 

This is a guidebook, not a rulebook. 🙂 

I’m just looking at it from an executive dysfunction perspective. I think doing that spread would be POSSIBLE for me, but I think it would literally take me weeks to analyse. Maybe when I have twenty years going for me it’d be easy, yeah, but not right now. 🙂 I’ll probably try it in the future, but it won’t be a Halloween thing due to the current complicating factors: Six cats (mostly mine) and three kids under eight (NOT MINE) in this house right now. Never mind tarot – all my jigsaw puzzles are screaming at my from the shelf to DO THEM and it is a complete impossibility. The seven year old klepto would steal them, the four year old would lose them, the eighteen month old would eat them, and the cats would play with them. I’m only able to do readings because I have a laptable I can lay out cards on when the seven year old is not around.

Oddly enough, I think I’ve owned tarot for twenty years, but my teenage deck got misplaced/destroyed and I didn’t replace it until this year. So I am certainly NOT a fluent reader. I’m a LWB-in-one-hand-while-I-stare-at-the-cards reader. 😀

copperbadge:

copperbadge:

So, a few weeks ago, on a quest for something else, I tripped over the concept of the 78-card Tarot spread. For those who aren’t into Tarot, the standard deck has four suits of 14 cards each that comprise the Minor Arcana plus 22 extra “face” cards that comprise the Major Arcana, so a 78-card spread would use every card in the deck, which is a trifle unusual in my experience. 

There are apparently a couple of full-deck spreads floating around out in the ether, but the ones I looked at weren’t satisfying to me for various reasons – perfectly decent on their own, but none of them quite what I was looking for. I had been startled by the very idea of a full-deck spread, but once I looked around I decided it would be interesting to try and make one of my own.

I sat down and drafted out a chart (the hand-drawing in this post is the final drafting of that) and built up a structure around it. For the past week or so I’ve been shuffling and writing and preparing to give the reading a test-run. Now that I have (and it was very interesting reading), I’m ready to unleash it on the world in time for Halloween – or Samhain, or All Saints, or All Souls, or Dia De Los Muertos, or whichever Veil Is Thinnest Oh Shit Light The Candles holiday you prefer. 

You can read more about the spread, including an explication of how to read it and a few variances on the reading, at the link below. I hope you all enjoy it and have fun with it. 

The Four Royal Advisors

It’s that time of year again, so I figured I’d reblog, especially since quite a few people I know have taken up Tarot this year. 

This is TERRIFYING.

I mean, cool, seriously cool, but so, so many cards. I have never felt more of a novice than I do looking at this elder god of a spread.

copperbadge:

lannamichaels:

It’s a very distinctive handicraft.

It’s very telling about the kind of roles Christian Kane is cast in that I thought this was a legit subtitle for a minute and couldn’t tell if it was Leverage or The Librarians (outside chance it was Angel, honestly). 

*pokes you*

Make it fic for me, Sam. If not now, then next time you’re doing a Midnight Theatre. I’m putting my order in now because I am NEVER awake when you ask for prompts. Pretty please?

copperbadge:

copperbadge:

deannafanafofana:

copperbadge:

I’m not gonna say I was looking for something else entirely because I was in fact trying to find a gif of Chris Evans when I came across this, but this is not what I was looking for. And yet it is possibly the best thing I’ve ever found. 

What the hell even is Chris Evans. What the hell. 

Pumpkin Spice Evans

Reblog Pumpkin Spice Evans for a bountiful harvest and a large glass of ginger ale

Watching the tags pile up on this post gives me faith in humanity. It’s like being wrapped in a warm autumn blanket in front of a toasty fire with wholesome friends.

image

And then….there’s you degenerates.

image

copperbadge:

dame-of-dames:

copperbadge:

innytoes
replied to your post “AAAAAAAnd my temporary crown cracked and half of it came off. But only…”

Sam honestly if you go to baseball you will probably get hit in the jaw with a baseball that will knock the rest of your crown out.

I mean, I would probably get a nice autographed ball out of it, and the crown’s loose anyway….:D

tehnakki
replied to your post “memprime
replied to your post “AAAAAAAnd my temporary crown cracked…”

JOIN ME IN HOME OWNERSHIP SAM, ADULTING IS TERRIBLE AND GRAND

I’M TRYING. TRYING SO HARD. BUT I AM POOR AND THE BANK IS SUSPICIOUS. 

If I get my place you can pick out one (1) piece of Star Wars merchandise that I shall purchase and place in my home. 😀 

srprincess
replied to your photoset “amemait: @copperbadge @scifigrl47, what did you two do?!
TOO MUCH…”

Must be alternate reality accounts bleeding through. I wouldn’t worry. Should be fine…

Oooh! I wonder if one of the other mes has a goatee!

katestamps
replied to your photo “Stress baking!”

Chocolate gingerbread with ginger ale? Recipe please.

Here ya go! I didn’t do the frosting, and I substituted a half cup of maple syrup for a half cup of the white sugar, and I used diet ginger ale, but it came out great. Super moist, almost more like a bread pudding. I’m thinking rather than frosting I might do icing, since drizzling icing will be easier than spreading frosting on it. 

A friend of mine is living full time in her RV at her Mom’s place and taking Regional Rail to get into work.  Would you ever consider alternate options such as a mobile home or RV to live in?

Not in this case. I wouldn’t say no to living in a mobile home/trailer in theory, like I’m not against it by policy. But it would mean living outside the city and commuting in, as your friend does, which I have a lot of reasons for not wanting to do – it’s hella inconvenient, it’s expensive (and also inconvenient, given the times the Metra runs) to commute in on Metra, and in order to afford a lot for the mobile home or be in an area where there’s a hookup for the RV, I would be living in the exact opposite of the kind of situation I’m trying to attain (in the deep urban area, close to the center of the city). Also I specifically designed my life around not owning a car, let alone an RV. 😀 I hate driving passionately. The further outside the city you go, the more inconvenient it is not to have one. 

I’ve been looking and waiting for a place in this neighborhood because I want to live in this area, since it’s convenient to the city itself and to transit to my work. You can’t really park an RV in the city, at least, not for long or with any level of convenience. 

I did actually consider a houseboat, since there are marinas close to public transit, but there are other inconveniences involved in that which I didn’t want to deal with. 

My friend Kevin, who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, lived in a trailer for years. (He lives in a house now.) Highlights of trailer life included needing to keep a space heater going under his house in the winter months so the pipes wouldn’t freeze and burst. So, I know you’re in a different state, but it’s not THAT far away, and being in an actual building has its perks.

Oh, so he’s probably a Heinzer. (57 varieties!)

copperbadge:

gallusrostromegalus:

Some great names for Mutts to confuse people:

  • Heinzer/Heinz Hound/Funfundseben Hund
  • Kitchen Sink Dog
  • (adjective normally reserved for ornithology or Botany)+(lesser-known craft profession)  i.e.  Plileated Cooper, Spotted Milner, Variegated Millwright etc.
  • Un-knee-kway Dog.  When asked for the spelling, it’s U-N-I-Q-U-E
  • (region)+(suspect activity)+Dog Ex: Arizona Loitering Dog, Jersey Arson Dog, Tahiti Treason Dog.  Be sure to make up a GREAT story for WHY.
  • Son-Of-Many-Fathers
  • Small Dogs: Cat Breeds. 
  • Large Dogs: Horse Breeds
  • Weird Dogs: Python Breeds.
  • (The longest German word you can pronounce without passing out)+Hund
  • (ridiculous British name)+(improbable game)+Hunting-Dog.   Cudginton’s Elephant-Hunting-Dog, Humphrey’s Whaling Dog.
  • “What is he?” “A Dog.”  
  • Act confused when asked to elaborate. Deny that breeds exist as anything other than a social construct and that you refuse to participate in a system that discriminates based on heritage, how dare they, throw a tantrum, get kicked out of the dog park.  Never have to speak to Karen and her bratty, inbred cavalier spaniels again.

When I asked my buddy R what he figured his obvious mutt was, he said “American Brown Dog”. 

I started using this two weeks ago with my parents and birdwatching. “Sam, what is that bird!”  “North American Grey Bird. And that’s a special Canadian Two Footed Bird, you don’t see those that often this far south.” 

Out here, you call them a ‘Bitzer’, as in, ‘bits-a-this and bits-a-that’.

New ABC show ‘Cleverman’ is about an Aboriginal superhero and we’re already hooked off the trailer

themyskira:

maliwanhellfires:

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my fucking god you guys I am so fucking excited.

There’s a new sci-fi series coming out, and it looks so fucking amazing I want to cry. I’m not kidding, there’s tears in my eyes right now I am so excited.

“The show revolves around Koen, played by recent NIDA grad Hunter Page-Lochard, whose uncle is the tribal ‘Cleverman’ (which means he possesses superpowers that are passed on when he dies). Koen belongs to a persecuted minority, the treatment of which mirrors that of Australia’s Indigenous population. It’s Koen’s job to come to terms with his powerful destiny, mend his relationship with his older brother – and try to do the same for his broken society.”  

-Jenny Noyes, Daily Life

The story looks amazing. There are obvious parallels to not only the injustice Aboriginal people face in Australia, but also our treatment of refugees (the references to walls and camps are entirely purposeful). The visual effects look stunning, the cast is amazing (DEBORAH MAILMAN, UNCLE JACK CHARLES, AHHH), and 80% Indigenous. 

It’s coming out June 2. I am so fucking excited. 

Oh my god oh my god oh my god!!

Ahhh I am so excited to see this, the trailer looks so rad. And not only does it have an 80% Indigenous cast, it was created, developed, written and directed by Indigenous people as well!

The story behind it is pretty cool; it was conceived by Ryan Griffen, a Kamilaroi man, who wanted to create an Aboriginal superhero for his son. Griffen and his cowriters consulted with four Aboriginal communities to obtain permission to incorporate various stories and traditions (like that of the cleverman) into the show, ensuring that the subject matter was handled respectfully and that traditional stories weren’t changed without consultation:

“It’s a very sensitive topic, men’s business, stuff that not everyone likes to talk about. So I dealt first with two countries that are very close to the show, which is my country and writer Jon Bell’s country. We felt we needed to get permission from our own people first, before we continued.”

The show also features the languages of the Bundjalung and Gumbaynggirr people. The creators chose to have the Hairypeople (brutally persecuted beings inspired by various traditional stories) speak an Indigenous language rather than an invented one because, as Griffen points out,

“We have people who speak Klingon or Elvish but no Indigenous languages, and those languages are dying with the older aunties and uncles. … We hope that will make people want to learn, because as we lose language, we lose stories.”

tl;dr it’s dystopian future sci-fi based around Aboriginal storytelling and culture, with what looks like some cutting commentary on both historical and present-day racism/discrimination/“border protection”, and it’s got a ridiculously talented cast and crew and I am pumped for it.

Reblogging this because EVERYONE should watch this and that cast is crackingly good.

@copperbadge
New ABC show ‘Cleverman’ is about an Aboriginal superhero and we’re already hooked off the trailer

andrusi:

barlowstreet:

thewinterotter:

animalsandtrees:

A new species is evolving before scientists’ eyes in the eastern United States.

Wolves faced with a diminishing number of potential mates are lowering their standards and mating with other, similar species, reported The Economist.

The interbreeding began up to 200 years ago, as European settlers
pushed into southern Ontario and cleared the animal’s habitat for
farming and killed a large number of the wolves that lived there.

That also allowed coyotes to spread from the prairies, and the white farmers brought dogs into the region.

Over time, wolves began mating with their new, genetically similar neighbors.

The resulting offspring — which has been called the eastern coyote
or, to some, the “coywolf” — now number in the millions, according to
researchers at North Carolina State University.

Interspecies-bred animals are typically less vigorous than their parents, The Economist reported — if the offspring survive at all.

That’s not the case at all with the wolf-coyote-dog hybrid, which has developed into a sum greater than the whole of its parts.

At about 55 pounds, the hybrid animal is about twice as heavy as a
standard coyote, and her large jaws, faster legs and muscular body allow her to take down small deer and even hunt moose in packs, and the animal
is skilled at hunting in both open terrain and dense woodland.

An analysis of 437 hybrid animals found that coyote DNA dominates her
genetic makeup, with about one-tenth of its DNA from dogs, usually
larger dogs such as Doberman pinschers and German shepherds, and a
quarter from wolves.

The animal’s cry starts out as a deep-pitched wolf howl that morphs into higher-pitched yipping — like a coyote.

Her dog DNA may carry an additional advantage.

Some scientists think the hybrid animal is able to adapt to city life
— which neither coyotes or wolves have managed to do on their own —
because her dog ancestry allows her  to tolerate people and noise.

The coywolves have spread into some of the nation’s largest cities —
including New York, Boston and Washington — using railway corridors.

The interbreeding allows the animal to diversify her diet and eat
discarded food, along with rodents and smaller mammals — including cats,
which coywolves eat skull and all — and they have evolved to become
nocturnal to avoid humans.

The animals are also smart enough to learn to look both ways before crossing roads.

Not all researchers agree the animal is a distinct species, arguing
that one species does not interbreed with another — although the
hybrid’s existence raises the question of whether wolves and coyotes are
distinct species in the first place.

But scientists who have studied the animal say the mixing of genes
has been much faster, extensive and transformational than anyone had
noticed until fairly recently.

“(This) amazing contemporary evolution story (is) happening right
underneath our nose,” said Roland Kays, a researcher at North Carolina
State.

Watch this report on coywolves.

Raw Story

THIS SHIT IS SO WILD AND IT’S ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING. If you’d like to watch the entire Nature documentary referenced in that “watch this report” link, you can find the whole thing on Youtube. It’s a terrific documentary and a really interesting look at an animal most people don’t even seem to realize exists. The extent to which coywolves have adapted to urban life and the ways in which they’re very distinct from the species they’ve sprung from is pretty incredible.

Okay but it kind of looks like it’s covered in maple syrup

coy wolf

@copperbadge