Sherbet Land - Mario Kart Double Dash (with Chiptune Cover!)

A green cat spider guarding its nest of tiny offspring in the mountains of central Taiwan.

Photo by Lung Tsai Wang

Close-Up Photographer of the Year Awards

You are going to laugh until your stomach hurts again. You're going to be in awe of a sunset. Watch your favorite show while you eat your favorite food. Find money on the street. Discover a great band you haven't heard of before. You will find your way back.

thinking about the woman next to me at the self checkout earlier today who tapped my shoulder and whispered "hey look at this" and when i turned around she had the biggest grin on her face as she held up an enormous strawberry that was shaped exactly like a penis

New Zealand's Goblin Forest

Honoured to have received some wonderful results from this year’s @greatwalksmag Wilderness Photographer of the Year competition, including a win for ‘Creatures in the Shadows’ (photo 1)

benjamin.maze

I was wondering last night if it was at all possible to translate sign language poetry into writing, when translating poetry from one spoken language to another that uses the same communication devices is already a headache. So I found a book about sign language poetry (by Rachel Sutton-Spence) and it is a delightful read! At one point the author describes a poem by Clayton Valli about a boat, in which the rising and falling pattern of the words he chose (which are located at different heights in the signing space) evokes the bobbing motion of a boat on the water as it approaches a bridge. And, okay, it will never be the same thing but you can tinker with written words to create similar effects, like how Victor Hugo’s poem The Djinns uses rising and falling line length to convey quietness then frantic action then a return to stillness.

Then the author analyses a Christmas ASL poem by Dorothy Miles and at first you’re like, this is translatable—she lists things children ask for Christmas, and includes signs like “pets” and “cake” which both involve touching the back of one hand with the other, creating a visual rhyme. The English translation pairs “pets” with “candy cigarettes” to preserve the rhyme. The author adds that symmetry in signed poetry is comparable to assonance: instead of signing ‘2 people walking’ with one hand the poet might sign ‘1 person walking’ with the right hand and ‘1 person walking’ with the left hand, for poetical effect. As English doesn’t have this opportunity for symmetry, you can translate the intent behind this deliberate, aesthetic symmetry as a rhyme. But then the author goes on to describe how Miles uses gentle, fluttering-open ‘5′ handshapes to convey a feeling of magic and excitement, and adds extra finger-wriggling or fluttering to some signs to make them ‘sparkle’, so the poem goes something like magic-shivers-up-arms, magic-run-downstairs, magic-feel-bumps-through-stocking and as a translator, how do you not ruin the specific charm of this poem?? You would have to draw actual sparkles around every verse to convey a similar effect.

I really love poetry for how great it is at making us aware of all the resources and hidden treasures of our own language, that we often overlook in everyday life, but I also love the other side of the coin, how poetry in translation gleefully makes us aware of all the cool things our language lacks.

just remembered this old clickhole video i used to be obsessed with

this is going to sound like such a little sibling ass take but i genuinely believe that being a little bit annoying is actually a greater sign of maturity and self awareness than being universally likeable and on good terms with everyone

近藍蓋小菇 Mycena Subcyanocephala fungi translates to the "blue-head" and measures at only a single millimeter.