Cool Pictures 12: "Every picture tells a story!"

[Samson]

Photos have been released for the first time in years showing a group of rare gorillas in the mountains of southern Nigeria, conservationists say.
Only 300 Cross River gorillas are known to live in the wild, making them the world's rarest great ape.
But the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) says this sighting raises hopes that the animals at risk of extinction are actually reproducing.
A number of infant gorillas are visible in the shots taken earlier this year.

I am generally of the opinion that we should focus on habitat preservation, rather than the survival of large famous species, but there has to be something special about our close relatives that they deserve particular attention. I think this is a great bit of news in a dark time.

Spoiler More pics :

 

[Kyriakos]

41 minus 1 month?

42 could be anything from the Answer to the Ultimate Question, to the number of slices that was best for that size of statue, or it could be spookily related to Aphorism 42. Shrug.

Indeed, it was 41 minus one month.
So now I have no idea why there are 42 pieces, unless it is a mechanical issue (maybe they had to be divisible by 3 or whatever)...

 

[Birdjaguar]

I am not familiar with console controls, but clearly our distant ancestors favored play actions requiring use of the left side buttons.

 

[Ferocitus]

Indeed, it was 41 minus one month.
So now I have no idea why there are 42 pieces, unless it is a mechanical issue (maybe they had to be divisible by 3 or whatever)...

Aphorism 42 from The Zürau Aphorisms:
To let one's hate- and disgust-filled head slump onto one's chest.

 

[Kyriakos]

Aphorism 42 from The Zürau Aphorisms:
To let one's hate- and disgust-filled head slump onto one's chest.

But why tie this to the statue? (I mean ok, if the sculptor did, but otherwise it is a pretty trivial kafkaphorism ).

A couple more notable ones:

-The meaning of life is that it stops.
-To believe in progress does not mean to believe any progress happened.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I would play that game, but I don't have a PlayStone. Is there going to be a PC version?

 

[warpus]

Textmode art from an Australian friend of mine (and an American artist)



edit: If you like this sort of thing, check out the artist profiles of the 2 artists who drew this:

Avenging Angel

The Creep Fever

 

[Cutlass]

 

[Lexicus]

Sunset the night before (Thursday night) the tropical storm...

...And sunrise the morning after (Saturday morning) the tropical storm:

 

[Takhisis]

Hm, 42 I suppose due to how old he was when he died (41 and one month, iirc).

41 minus 1 month, as has been amended, but in Eastern counting it's the current year instead of only completed ones.

 

[Kyriakos]

41 minus 1 month, as has been amended, but in Eastern counting it's the current year instead of only completed ones.

Yes, so that would make him 40 or at most 41 (btw, I also use only completed ones, cause it is the west way, not because it makes one a year younger)
Then again, maybe 41-1=42, using the same logic as in the aphorism that goes something like
"One should not trick Evil, by not using it against oneself"

By the way, it does feel strange for me to be now older than Kafka. Given I was so interested in his work since I was 16.

 

[Kyriakos]

 

[Kyriakos]

Two types of DIY coronavirus masks:

1) Stupid



2) Awesome

 

[AdamCrock]

 

[Ferocitus]

Yes, so that would make him 40 or at most 41 (btw, I also use only completed ones, cause it is the west way, not because it makes one a year younger)
Then again, maybe 41-1=42, using the same logic as in the aphorism that goes something like
"One should not trick Evil, by not using it against oneself"

By the way, it does feel strange for me to be now older than Kafka. Given I was so interested in his work since I was 16.

I keep finding many similarities to two of your favourite authors (Borges and Kafka) and my favourite scifi author, Stanislaw Lem who I first read when I was about 16.

Lem wrote a book called A Perfect Vacuum: Perfect reviews of non-existent books.
Actual reviews of that book (from wiki)...
Lem is a Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age, who plays in earnest with every concept of philosophy and physics, from free will to probability theory. (The New York Times).
Lem is Harpo Marx and Franz Kafka and Isaac Asimov rolled up into one and down the white rabbit's hole." (The Detroit News)

Also, Lem won the Austrian literary Franz Kafka Prize in 1991.

 

[warpus]

A lot of Lem's sci-fi is a satire of communism, written in a way that the authorities wouldn't catch.. which they didn't seem to at the time. I suspect he would not even write any sci-fi if had grown up elsewhere (but who knows)

A lot of his stories seem.. well, silly. I remember one story in which an astronaut piloting a spaceship throws a steak out the window in an act of frustration. Then throughout the rest of the story the steak orbits the spaceship and occasionally blocks out the sun, reminding the character of the steak. The way this was described in the book was just, perfect. And hilarious.

One of his stories is about a robot that can build everything starting with the letter N. It relies in many ways on wordplay.. in Polish.. many of Lem's stories are like that, and yet the translations work so well.

Lem is a great read, but it's not for everyone. One of his detective stories (The Investigation) is.. strange. It's not sci-fi.. or is it? It's very different from his sci-fi themed satire.. but you can tell it's him when you're reading it, even though I read an English translation.

I believe Lem also drew many of the doodles you see published in his books, although I am going by memory here. His books always have cool drawings inside, or at least the copies I have.

 

[cardgame]

Spoiler NEOWISE COMET PICS :

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I remember one story in which an astronaut piloting a spaceship throws a steak out the window in an act of frustration. Then throughout the rest of the story the steak orbits the spaceship and occasionally blocks out the sun, reminding the character of the steak. The way this was described in the book was just, perfect. And hilarious.

He threw the steak out the window?

So he was wearing a space suit in a vacuum?

The rest of your description reminds me of a Babylon 5 episode in which Sheridan wanted to get rid of a teddy bear so he had it thrown out an airlock.

The bear came back.

Spoiler NEOWISE COMET PICS :

Ooh, gorgeous!

 

[Cutlass]

 

[AdamCrock]