Quotes: Gwladys or Ysobel or Ethyl

Erik

Complaining about “kids these days” with strangely-spelled names is a well that never runs dry. It’s also an older habit than many who indulge in it would think. Here’s a bit from a 1930 P. G. Wodehouse story where Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia chides him for falling in love with a young lady with an eccentrically-spelled name.

‘Yes, Aunt Dahlia,’ I said, ‘you have guessed my secret. I do indeed love.’

‘Who is she?’

‘A Miss Pendlebury. Christian name, Gwladys. She spells it with a “w”.’

‘With a “g”, you mean.’

‘With a “w” and a “g”.’

‘Not Gwladys?’

‘That’s it.’

The relative uttered a yowl.

‘You sit there and tell me you haven’t enough sense to steer clear of a girl who calls herself Gwladys? Listen Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia earnestly, ‘I’m an older woman than you are – well, you know what I mean – and I can tell you a thing or two. And one of them is that no good can come of association with anything labelled Gwladys or Ysobel or Ethyl or Mabelle or Kathryn. But particularly Gwladys.’




P. G. Wodehouse, “The Spot of Art”

The next time someone gets in a snit about Kaytlynn, Jaxson, or Alexzandre, you can let them know they’re part of a tradition at least a century old.

Wodehouse, P. G. “The Spot of Art.” Very Good, Jeeves. First published 1930. Reprinted in The Jeeves Omnibus. Vol. 3. London: Hutchinson, 1991, p. 460.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

World’s First eVTOL Taxi Is Now on the Market

Eppu

According to Reuters, Chinese drone maker E Hang Holdings has started selling an eVTOL taxi on Taobao, a Chinese online shopping platform. EHang was certified for traffic by China’s aviation authority in October 2023.

EHang 216-S Airborne

The model, EH216-S, is an unmanned vehicle with 16 rotors and capacity for two passengers. Its maximum speed is 130 kilometres per hour and range 30 kilometres. It retails for about €300,000 (depending on exchange rates).

At first glance, around 300,000 euros sounds quite steep. Then again, in the U.S. market at least, pickup trucks can go for almost $100,000. That’s not even mentioning exotic cars, sports cars, and other specialized vehicles.

The bottleneck at the moment surely is the combo of safety regulations and pragmatics (the lack of infra). It seems that charging points for electric vechicles are being built so slowly, I cannot imagine what it would take to try and fit the maintenance facilities and parking spaces for flying cars, let alone flying electric cars, into our cities in a larger scale. Plus, what it would take to figure out how, in practice, they would fit into existing traffic patterns. It looks, though, that we might have to resolve those questions sooner than I thought.

Image by EHang

Happy Midsummer

Erik

Midsummer will be upon us at the end of this week (or midwinter, depending on your hemisphere). In Finland, this is one of the most important holidays of the year, and we’ll be taking time out to relax and enjoy the long, light days. Whatever your midsummer plans may be, we wish you all a very happy one, whether you’re out reconnecting with nature, staying home to read a good book, or just going about your business as usual.

Image by Erik Jensen

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A Wondrous Jaina Proudmoore by Ibelinn Cosplay

Eppu

Ibelinn Cosplay from Norway made an absolutely astoundingly accurate cosplay outfit of Jaina Proudmoore. Take a look:

Imgur Ibelinn Cosplay Jaina Proudmoore

Everything looks like an exact match: the layers, the embellishments, the shading, the shapes—down to the stupid-awkward blocky shape of the World of Warcraft cloaks. It’s almost uncanny!

She shares more photos of her version of Jaina on Imgur, including the staff for the outfit, and more Ibelinn cosplays on Instagram. I highly encourage you to visit and admire!

Image by Ibelinn Cosplay via Imgur

In Making Stuff we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

Quotes: Her Backstory Unfolded Pretty Much as I Typed It

Eppu

In the acknowledgements for her novella Thornhedge, author T. Kingfisher talks a little about the process of writing this particular story.

“Many characters bolt off with the story, and I am left staggering behind them, frantically trying to take notes, but Toadling was very polite. Her backstory unfolded pretty much as I typed it. I learned she was raised by greenteeth as I wrote the sentence about them; I learned that she could turn into a toad when she did it on the page—all the little discoveries that you always make writing a book, of course, but happening at my usual typing speed, without sitting and staring at the wall for an hour, or nearly rupturing my wrist tendons trying to keep up.”

–T. Kingfisher in the acknowledgements for Thornhedge
Kingfisher Thornhedge

I’m not a fiction writer, but I do recognize the phenomenon of suddenly uncovering details from role-playing. It’s delightful to just suddenly realize a pertinent, obscure, or particularly distinguishing detail about your character.

(This kind of serendipitous discovery also makes me think any algorithmically generated (“AI”) content won’t be replacing the most original types of human-generated content terribly soon, nor will machine translation replace human translators in a hurry. Oh, make no mistake, people will try to replace human creators with machines. But at least thus far we’re still more sophisticated when it comes to pure innovative leaps or getting smoother translations.)

There have been many times I’ve wished to be able to tap into the unconscious mulling process or consciously force a creative leap, but of course it doesn’t work that way. It makes the moments when it does happen all the more precious, doesn’t it? 🙂

Kingfisher, T. Thornhedge. London: Titan Books, 2023, p. 122.

Image by Eppu Jensen

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Second Trailer for Star Wars: The Acolyte

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The second trailer for Star Wars: The Acolyte is out, and the premier is only a week away. Let’s have a look at the trailer:

The Acolyte | Official Trailer | Disney+ by Star Wars on YouTube

“I sense this is only a small part of a larger plan. Some sort of shift to tip the scales.” Now, that sounds interesting—is it a nod to some sort of a loooong-time change in the force whose end we see acted out in the three movie trilogies? I have no idea.

Perhaps more interesting to me is the whodunnit portion of the story, however. I wish a little more about that was included in the trailers.

There’s also a behind-the-scenes clip:

The Acolyte | Creating the Acolyte | Streaming June 4 on Disney+ by Star Wars on YouTube

Sadly, it’s quite short. I’d be happy to have a much longer piece to whet my appetite.

Joonas Suotamo is still listed at IMDB for SW:TA, but unfortunately only for two episodes. Maybe that’s why I haven’t spotted him in either trailer. Looking forward to seeing more of him.

The two-episode opener for SW:TA premiers on June 4, 2024.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

One (or More) Rings to Rule Them All

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For an artifact as iconic as the One Ring from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, it’s not surprising that people have come up with some creative versions of their own. Here are a few interesting ones that could be yours if you want!

If you want a classic ring that you can wear on your finger or as a pendant, TimJewelerCo makes them, both in gold and in silver. As a bonus feature, the Elvish writing on the band glows in the dark!

Glow in the Dark Elvish Ring Necklace by TimJewelerCo via Etsy

For a different take on what you can do with a ring, 3DMadeGifts makes a scaled-up version as a shallow planter. Now your potted succulents can enjoy the power of everlasting evil.

Gold Ring of Power One Ring Succulent Planter by 3dMadeGifts via Etsy

Or roll for initiative with this ring-themed dice set from DracaenaDraco. One die to roll them all!

Lord of the Rings Dice Set by DracaenaDraco via Etsy

All these products are available on Etsy, if you want to get a good head start on holiday shopping.

In Making Stuff, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

Living Vicariously Through Social Media: Flowering Cacti

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Just look at the mass of flowers on these cacti:

Tumblr mutant-distraction Flowering Cacti

I grew up essentially on a flood plain. While I have visited a few, and know that a lot of deserts are not mostly smooth sand dunes like the Tatooine and Dune stereotype would have us believe, I’ve never actually experienced deserts as a living environment. This is a fabulous glimpse—especially after the long and cold winter Finland had this year.

Image via mutant-distraction on Tumblr

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Quotes: Women Have Also Painted

Erik

The ancient Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote a good deal about painting. His interest stemmed from curiosity about which plants and minerals were used to make make pigments, but he also recorded the names of famous artists and some details about their paintings.

Unlike the stretched canvases we are used to today, ancient painters worked on wooden panels, of which extremely few survive, or on plastered walls, a few of which have survived in places like Pompeii and Dura-Europus. Most of the famous painters of antiquity were men, but Pliny makes sure to note that women also took up the brush.

Women have also painted. Timarete, daughter of Micon, created the very old panel painting of Artemis of Ephesus. Irene, daughter and student of the painter Cratinus, painted an Eleusinian maiden, Calypso, Theodorus the juggler, and Alcisthenes the dancer. Aristarete, daughter and student of Nearchus, painted Aesculapius. Iaia of Cyzicus, who was a lifelong virgin, painted and engraved ivory at Rome during the youth of Marcus Varro [late second century BCE]. She mostly made images of women, including a large panel painting of an old woman at Naples, as well as a self-portrait made using a mirror. Nobody had a faster hand for painting than she did, and in fact she was so accomplished an artist that the prices for her works far exceeded those commanded by Sopolis and Dionysius, who were the most celebrated portrait painters of the time and whose paintings fill the galleries. A certain Olympias was also a painter, but all that is recorded about her is that Autobulus was her student.


Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.147-48 (=35.40)

(My own translation)

Women created famous works, were paid well for their craft, and taught others. It is unsurprising that some of these women were daughters of well-known male painters, since art was often a family business in the ancient Mediterranean.

Wooden panel paintings were among the most highly-prized forms of art in ancient Greece and Rome. Thanks to writers like Pliny, we know more about the famous painters of antiquity and their paintings than we would ever know from the few examples that survive today. It is good to have evidence that women, too, took part in this prestigious art form.

Image: Women preparing for a ritual, cropped from a photograph by WolfgangRieger via Wikimedia (Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries; 1st c. BCE; fresco)

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.