Last year, something pretty incredible happened:
And guess what??
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Hello!
First of all, I am honoured to become a co-author together with voyager, Giliell and Charly, and most especially honoured to be doing it from this platform, Affinity. I know Caine asked me a couple of times to join the team and I dithered, and I am sad that I didn’t take the opportunity then. In any case, I hope to continue a fine tradition of diversity and random interesting stuff.
Most of you are familiar with my comments and probably have some idea of where I’m coming from, but just to recap: I am an ex-patriated Canadian re-patriated to Latvia (long story which will come out in bits and pieces), I work in the forensics field (nothing particularly gross), I have three kids, two cats, one dog and a husband, and all the assorted issues that come with co-ordinating life with several people. I am a martial arts practitioner – which sounds fancy until I tell you that I’ve only been doing tae kwon do for a year and a half or so, and also an amateur musician (classically trained in piano and violin, but a returning chorister as well). Most of these things, in some combination or another, will be my chosen topics. I hope to focus on the culture that I know (so expect a lot of Latvian music and arts), music (suggestions welcome) and, if I feel brave enough, bad poetry.
I’m glad to be here, and as much as I miss Caine and her distinctive voice, I’m happy we’re all here to carry on, because what else is there?
So, to start things off on a suitably impressive note, here’s a shortened video of a grand event that occurs once every five years – the final concert of the Latvian Song and Dance Festival, specifically the folk dancing concert. In July 2018, more than 18 000 (not a typo, so about 1% of the Latvian population) got together and performed in the soccer arena, making shapes and dancing their hearts out. If anyone wants to watch the extended version, I’m sure you can find a link, but the camera work was atrocious – the whole point is to view things from above. Seeing it in under a minute – wonderful. Here’s the high note to kick things off:
Yesterday I took the kids grocery shopping and found this:
I have no words
Metatron is not my favourite YouTuber, for some reason he rubs me the wrong way and on occasion he made me cringe when he opened his mouth about feminism (but to be clear, there was no obvious malice there, just cluelessness). But some of his videos are relatively good and I consider this to be one of them. Partly because my sister in law and her family are all heavy smokers who nevertheless looked at me in the past with derision for “wasting” money on books and time on bonsai trees.
Hello everybody and welcome to my first post here on Affinity.
In case I need an introduction, I’m Giliell, I’m German, a teacher, mum, crafter, and hunter-gatherer with a camera.
As I was uploading a metric ton of pictures from my recent holiday I offered Caine to run them as a series with explanations about the sites and sights and she kindly accepted.
Disclaimer: This is a tourist’s perspective on the city and its surroundings, and while I speak Spanish and kinda understand Catalan, I cannot claim deeper insights.
Having said that, let’s start this journey like I start every trip to Barcelona:
Maps crated by reddit user generalscruff.
Click for giant size!
The 12 maps above are a tongue-in-cheek look at the various ways the UK is divided besides Brexit or how to pronounce scone.
And before anyone complains, they are meant to be humorous and should not be taken too seriously.
You can see each map in more detail below: click over for this!
Map created by reddit user generalscruff.
Click for giant size. You can see more of this here.
From Voyager & Jack, so very sweet of you! I was momentarily afraid Rick was going to just drink the maple syrup, then I tasted it…ohhhh. I’m gonna be wanting pancakes. And I just ran out of Burt’s Bees! I could never go wrong with Wonder Woman at my side, and my thanks for the tea! And all the rest – Rick gave me the raspberry & orange chocolates, and oh, I don’t even have words for how utterly om nom nom it is. Thank you so very much.
Foundation is a grid-less, sprawling medieval city building simulation with a heavy focus on organic development, monument construction and resource management.
The game features in-depth resource management akin to the Anno (Dawn of Discovery) series, expertly mixed with city building elements from Settlers, SimCity, and Pharaoh all topped with narrative encounters inspired by Crusader Kings II to create the ultimate medieval ant-farm simulation!
In this strategy city-builder economy simulation game, players must create a prosperous settlement as the newly appointed lord of a region untouched by man.
Setting to redefine the city-builder genre, Foundation puts the emphasis on the organic aspects of urbanism in the cities of old, powered by Polymorph Games’ in-house game engine, Hurricane, which allows for full mod support and is optimized for the thousands of moving parts that come with building humongous cities.
Among other things, the engine provides the player with robust building tools to create countless unique monuments that can then integrated into your settlement.
With medieval architecture and urbanism at the forefront of its design, Foundation’s vision is to allow players to recreate cities of that period as they envision them or even as they really were.
You can read and see more about Foundation at Medievalists, or just head straight to the Kickstarter, which has garnered much more than the initial ask.
A lesson from David Lynch Teaches Typing (image via rhinostew.itch.io, used with permission).
Have trouble typing? Perhaps this surreal typing game with David Lynch will help. Or perhaps not.
Super Mario tried to teach me how to type correctly when I was a kid, as did a required semester of typing at my high school, yet I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that I continue to always look at the keyboard and only use about half my fingers (unevenly favoring my right hand). So when I found out there’s a new typing game taught by a pixelated version of filmmaker David Lynch, I thought this might finally be my chance to learn.
Available as a free download for both Mac OS and Windows, David Lynch Teaches Typing is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based filmmaker Luke Palmer — “no relation to Laura,” he clarified in a phone interview, ensuring me that Palmer is, in fact, his real last name. Palmer and his collaborator, developer Hyacinth Nil, used to work at an after-school program together, where they came across a ridiculous game called Cooldog Teaches Typing. Later, when Palmer spotted a video game where one of the levels took place inside the Red Room from Twin Peaks, he had an “aha” moment. Palmer and Nil worked on the game for about five months before releasing it earlier this month.
You can read and see more at Hyperallergic.
You’ll love these, amazing animals and plants, from Masayoshi Matsumoto!
Head on over to Isopresso_Balloon to see much, much more!
“Game of The Star-Spangled Banner, or Emigrants to the United States” (1830), published by Edward Wallis.
Look how nice Turtle Island was before all the invaders showed up.
“Science in Sport or the Pleasures of Astronomy, A New Instructive Pastime” (1804), published by Edward Wallis.
“The Royal Pastime of Cupid, or Entertaining Game of the Snake” (1794), published by Robert Laurie and James Whittle (all photos by Antoine Bootz/©Pointed Leaf Press).
Fascinating board games here, and you can see so many more, and read about them at Hyperallergic. I love the Elephant, but I have a thing about them.
Image: res.cloudinary.com
I love taking the silly quizzes at Medievalists, and I’ve missed a bunch. Naturally, I went for What Medieval Torture Method Would You Use on Your Enemies? first. I truly am evil, I got rats:
Rats
You are a creative thinker, and your enemies would be wise not to underestimate your imagination. Your preferred torture method is to restrain your victim on a flat, horizontal surface, then use inventive ways to trap rats so that their only means of escape is through the victim’s body. Not a pretty picture.
Well, I am certainly well armed with rats. :D I wouldn’t be able to torture them though.
The Gay Bob doll in all his glory. Harvey Rosenberg/Gizmo/Museum of the City of New York/93.83.A-J
I can’t be the only one who remembers Gay Bob. If you don’t remember Gay Bob, perhaps you remember the lunatic reaction, starting in 1978, which Anita Bryant climbed on top of, screaming her hatred of all things queer to the skies.
A 1978 magazine advertisement for the Gay Bob doll. Joe Wolf/CC BY-ND 2.0
I think it’s time for Gay Bob to come out of the closet again, along with his family, and some new additions, as well.
Gay Bob, who was meant to resemble a cross between Robert Redford and Paul Newman, was blond, with a flannel shirt, tight jeans, and one pierced ear. The doll gave anti-gay organizations plenty to fear; intrinsic within it was a celebration of gay identity, evidenced by Gay Bob’s programmed speech. “Gay people,” Bob said, “are no different than straight people… if everyone came ‘out of their closets’ there wouldn’t be so many angry, frustrated, frightened people.”
In a cheeky move, the box in which Gay Bob was packaged came in the outline of a closet, so that when he left his box, he was literally coming out of the closet. Gay Bob explained: “It’s not easy to be honest about what you are — in fact it takes a great deal of courage… But remember if Gay Bob has the courage to come out his closet, so can you.”
The affirming message was no accident. The doll’s creator, Harvey Rosenberg, a former advertising executive who developed marketing campaigns for various corporations, wanted Gay Bob to “liberate” men from “traditional sexual roles.” He created the doll soon after a series of shocks rocked his life: in quick succession, his marriage fell apart and his mother became seriously ill. He decided that his next projects would need to be of great personal significance.
[…]
Initially sold through mail-order ads in gay-themed magazines, Gay Bob soon expanded into boutique stores in New York and San Francisco. Rosenberg even pitched it to major department store chains, one of which liked the idea (but ultimately did not purchase it). And, it turns out, those consumers who feared the introduction of more “disgusting” dolls were partially correct—Rosenberg soon gave Gay Bob a family of his own, with brothers Marty Macho, Executive Eddie, Anxious Al, and Straight Steve (who lived in the suburbs and wore blue suits), and sisters Fashionable Fran, Liberated Libby, and Nervous Nelly.
If this is all new to you, you can read all about Gay Bob at Atlas Obscura.