Im moving to Connecticut at the end of this year. I am looking forward to joining (one of) the local groups there, now that I know of the sport. Fencing and Kendo have always been too 'restrained' for me. This is most likely due to not understanding certain, set customs on my part, but from my perspective if my nature, and what I perceive as natural, oversteps some organizations predefine ruleset, I can't see it as a test of actual ability. You can most certainly find examples for and against that, but that's how I look at a particular structure prior to empirical evidence.
If I were to translate that to human understanding it would probably be: In the majority of competitive events throughout my life, when questioned on the 'why' of rules, 'just because' has been the overwhelming answer, rather than a rational understanding/explanation of the sport.
Anyway, I'm going to longsword some mother-fuckers in a few months, and I can't wait for that final joust and the claiming of the princess, silhouetted against that raging castle fireplace (Defender of the Crown reference, FYI).

>> ^cybrbeast:

This is definitely going into my watch when tripping folder


One of my fondest hallucination memories: sitting under a tall tree in a park late at night, the only sound was that almost magical white noise rushing through leaves, and I was at the peak of an LSD trip, having just inhaled some nitrous oxide. I lay down and looked up, and the canopy of the tree was silhouetted against the sky. The entire view turned into a 3-dimensional animated fractal set for a good minute or so.

Words probably can't convey the amalgamation of sensory experience that made that moment so exhilarating, but a part of this video triggered that memory quite strongly for me. Makes me want to trip again (it's been a long time).

Tags for this video have been changed from 'daft, punk, bandy, toaster' to 'french, justice, phantom, daft punk, bandy, toaster, sunset, 00s, sophie merry, silhouet' - edited by Eklek

A million miles from planet Earth, last weekend the STEREO B spacecraft found itself in the shadow of the Moon. So, looking toward the Sun, extreme ultraviolet cameras onboard STEREO B were able to record a stunning movie of a lunar transit (aka solar eclipse), as the Moon tracked across the solar disk. Each frame of the movie is a false-color composite of images made through four different filters that highlight temperature regimes and structures in the upper solar atmosphere. In this frame, large bright active regions, seen as dark sunspots in visible light, flank the Moon's silhouetted disk. The Moon appears small, less than 1/4th the size seen from Earth, because the spacecraft-Moon separation is over four times the Earth-Moon distance. Tonight, the Moon will find itself in planet Earth's shadow in a total lunar eclipse.