"Fire" by Efim Volkov
Style: Realism
Accompanied by "Phantom Chapel" by William Grant Still [https://youtu.be/AnJ5U6aAYeg]

[“A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen]

#Art #mastodonart #mastoart #fire #EfimVolkov #Realism #WilliamGrant #Beaudelaire #ParisSpleen

◀️ I've always been (at least partially) a downright sinister person. Well, not in the modern sense (I hope), but in a much, much older one.

◀️ In everyday usage "sinister" means "that arouses feelings of fear, of horror", "suggesting or threatening harm or evil", "dangerous, lugubrious, criminal", and the first time this word appeared with a similar meaning ("false, dishonest, with ill will") was in the 15th century, in France, being taken from Old French from the 14th century ("contrary, false, unfavorable, on the left side").

💬 "PAROLLES. ... you shall find in the regiment of the Spinii one Captain Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of war, here on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword entrench'd it." — William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well [Act II, Scene I] (1623) 💬

◀️ In the end, it all comes from the Latin word, also called "sinister", which means "left" or "on the left side". How did an adjective that meant "left" come to signify "evil, criminal, dangerous"? According to the Merriam Webster website, most likely the modern meaning evolved due to the predominantly right-handed population (about 10% of the population is left-handed) and probably due to the clumsiness that people have when making movements with the left side of the body.

◀️ Now, the Celts of Antiquity did not see the left as something diabolical, associating the left side with femininity and the fertile womb. But once Christianity gained momentum in Europe, the idea that "left = immorality" was also fixed.

📸 Photo: I reveal my "sinister" self in a session of Dominant Species, a board game whose action takes place at the beginning of the last ice age (in 90,000 BC). Each player represents a "genus" of animal (insects, arachnids, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and tries to dominate various "ecological niches", adapting to various types of food. It is a eurogame-wargame-abstract, whose theme, however, is felt in all components and all game mechanics. It is a complex, strategic and extraordinary game.

#sinister #lefthanded #shakespeare #WilliamShakespeare #DominantSpecies #linguistics

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the city center park

#park #photography #everydaylife #cityscape

"Winter's end" by Paul Gauguin
Style: Post-Impressionism
Accompanied by "Impromptu in E major (Allegro ma non troppo)" by Clara Schumann [https://youtu.be/K7g-VeD2kkU?t=25m4s]

["Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush." — Doug Larson]

#art #mastodonart #PaulGauguin #gauguin #ClaraSchumann #Schumann #DougLarson #ClassicalMusic #Music #Winter #PostImpressionism

🃏 Now THIS is how you properly put to good use a pack of Tarot cards!

🃏 Yesterday I had the pleasure of discovering "Battle of Tarot", a game created by @denmanrooke@makertube.net (@denmanrooke) which is a "combat game" in the style of Cuttle or even the more modern Magic: The Gathering (and other TCGs) and Star Realms (and other deck builders like it).

🃏 So I invited @paulexandru.bsky.social over and started to play. This game is very tactical and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I especially enjoyed the fact that the Trump Cards (Major Arcana, for all you divination people out there) are special spells each with its own effect.

🃏 One of the challenges when it comes to combat games that use standard packs of cards is that you have to remember or always have a list at hand with all the special abilities of all the special cards. As opposed to combat games such as Magic: The Gathering where the cards are specially created and the people creating them can list their effects on them. This is a moderate minus, but not of Battle of Tarot per se, because as stated it's a characteristic of all such combat games.

🃏 Other than that, I do still have some questions regarding some rules (I'll make a list, although the How-To-Play video provided by the designer and rules FAQ should be enough, they do a great job), but I really enjoyed this game and will definitely play it some more soon. I'm very enthusiastic about it because I love the fact that people are still looking to innovate this very old pack of cards and I hope it will soon catch up with the standard pack of cards in terms of modern games for it.

🃏 Now, Denman Rooke designed this game with a pack of Rider-Waite in mind and I think it's because of the illustrations that line up with the theme of the game. However, if you don't have a Rider-Waite pack (or a de Marseille one), I think you can safely play with a normal 78 cards Tarot deck (such as French Tarot, Tarot Nouvelle). You'll just be missing out on the eye candy.

🃏 I also enjoy the layout of the rules manual. The rules for the game are free to download from the site https://battleoftarot.com/ and I highly recommend for you guys to take a look.

#tarot #tarotcards #boardgames #cardgames #trumps #combat #combatgames
#gamestudies

💭 One of the reasons I opted to join Mastodon instead of other "fediverse"-ish services (i.e. BlueSky) is that I wanted to be (if possible) on a European server (at least I was on ohai.social) and also interact more with people from Europe. My Facebook feed was very silent about the massive protests in Germany for the past few weeks (as opposed to what I've been seeing and reading on Mastodon), because apparently nobody is interested on what happens next to us (I'm from Romania), which I think is kind of tragic.

💭 In these troubled times, I think it's more important than ever to have interactions with people from other European countries not necessarily about politics, but also about everyday life and hobbies. I know my nation has had a very different evolution versus, say, France, Spain, or the UK, but we're all still members of the same species, and I do view a German, or Belgian, or Croatian as a brother from another mother.

💭 I also do want to be more independent from the USA, and to be more exposed to the European culture, services and tech. Not because I have something against the American nation, but because we do need to rediscover ourselves as a group of people that live on the same (sub)continent and understand each other even more. I don't know what the situation is in other European countries, but for too long I was exposed to too much American news, too little of European news. (I'm talking about passively being exposed, the problem being that it's far easier to be passively exposed to one, than the other.)

💭 I have been holding this thought for quite a while and the bottom line and the main idea of this post is that all in all I'm greatful for the people I found here on Mastodon and that we can get a sneak peek into each other's lives in order to understand each other better.

#europe #eu #hopefulprospects #unity #europeanunion #europeanpeople #thoughts

"The Tube Train" by Cyril Power
Style: Futurism
Accompanied by "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin [https://youtu.be/ynEOo28lsbc?si=s_fQgsFqkuRw2LQX]

[Exactly 101 years ago, on 12 February 1924, George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" had its premiere.]

#TubeTrain #classicalmusic #classical #jazzmusic #jazz #music #CyrilPower #GeorgeGershwin #Gershwin #Rhapsody #rhapsodyinblue #USA #America #art #futurism #futurismo #mastoart #citylife #bigcity #bigapple

I have two cats. One of them is named Ursa (Minor). You can clearly see why.

#Space #constellation #UrsaMinor #cat #CatsOMastodon #cats #catsofmastodon

⚙️ Star Trek The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Doctor Who, The X-Files, etc. How much we love sci-fi series! I don't know if we would have enjoyed them as much if the BBC hadn't gotten involved about 83 years ago, when on February 11, 1938, it broadcast the first sci-fi film in history on TV (more specifically, the first sci-fi program-film-whatever made specifically for TV).

⚙️ Initially, I wanted to call it a series, but it was simply a 35-minute adaptation of a part of the play "R.U.R." by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. "R.U.R." stands for "Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots)" and was first staged in 1921. It's about humans who create robots (more closely related to the idea of "androids," "replicants" from Blade Runner, or "cylons" from Battlestar Galactica) that eventually rebel against their creators.

⚙️ The most important thing is that in "R.U.R." the term "robot" was used for the first time.

📸 Photo: a sequence from the BBC adaptation of the play "R.U.R." for the small screen (1938)

#History #Culture #TV #SciFi #Robots #Android #RUR #Czech #czechrepublic #europe #KarelCapek