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Hal Duncan @halduncan@bsky.social Profile picture
@Hal_Duncan
Jul 13, 2020 • 15 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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Today in #Rakesden...
The astilbe is getting intense. ImageImageImage
So is the hydrangea. Image
The hollyhocks are profuse this year. ImageImage
Japanese anemones in Smolsneuk and Undercherry adding to the range of pinks and purply pinks. ImageImage
The pigeons are getting a bit gallus. ImageImage
They were virtually begging. One came up while I was topping a pot with grit and stared at me, clearly convinced it was seed, like a pet dug waiting for its tea.
Heh, seems I'm not the only one being tempted by plants. I'm guessing the neighbours from the next door close have plans for these. Image
The hydrangea is well out of shape from its battering but its flowering Image
Lastly, a new find in Undercherry. App suggests a couple of sorbus matches, but I can't tell. Image
It's directly under the rowan, but it's clearly not *that* kinda sorbus. Sorbus intermedia, Swedish whitebeam, looks the closest match to me. Wikipedia says hybrids are common in the genus, so I'm wondering if it's possible the rowan's been crossed with some other sorbus.
Damn though! It kinda looks like an Arran whitebeam. Which is incredibly rare, it seems, only found on Arran. Which makes it seem hugely unlikely it actually *is* that, of course but we're close enough to Arran, it's a tantalising fancy: woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-an…
The Arran whitebeam is a hybrid of rowan and rock whitebeam, so I'm gonna guess this is a happenstance hybrid that's hit on a similar look due to similar parentage.
Until such time as I am sadly disillusioned by someone with actual expertise, I am referring to it as a Rakesden whitebeam and regarding it as a precious hybrid that's not just rare but, nay, veritably *unique*.
Wait, wait, WTF?!? They do have some Arran whitebeams on the mainland, specifically in North Ayrshire, specifically in Ardrossan and Eglinton Park. The latter being in Kilwinning.

MUM! MUM! KILWINNING IS CHASING ME AGAIN WITH WEIRD COINCIDENCES! TELL IT TO STOP!

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More from @Hal_Duncan

Hal Duncan @halduncan@bsky.social Profile picture
Mar 29, 2021
I need to go to fuckin bed now, like a normal person, but I may have Some Tweeting to do later about how I think I've inadvertently redeemed Ptolemy's bugfuck bonkers map of Scotland. Well, not *entirely*, but to a pretty significant extent for the Lowlands at least.
OK, so this is Ptolemy's map of Scotland. As you may notice, it's... a little wonky. Like WTAF levels of wonky, bent over at a 90º angle (and then some) like someone came at it from behind, stuck a knee in its back & snapped its frickin spine like a supersoldier getting creative.
It's absolutely batshit. You only have to look at it with the remotest idea of what Scotland looks like to think "wildly inaccurate."

BUT...

OK, so here's a good site with a translation of the textual instructions Ptolemy gave for drawing this madness: topostext.org/work.php?work_…
Read 60 tweets
Hal Duncan @halduncan@bsky.social Profile picture
Nov 4, 2020
The message: take your civility centrism out to the desert, put a bullet in the back of its head & bury it in a shallow grave. "Decency" will not prevail when fascism's unleashed just because it's decency. Bourgeois propriety is exactly what the fascists are radicalised against.
Fascism is fuelled by ressentiment and related pathologies. Like narcissism (because arguably it *is* a mode of narcissism, narcissism on a societal level,) when challenged by realities you'd expect to make a reasonable person see reason, that shit just *powers the denial*.
More people didn't vote for Trump *despite* the shambolic shitshow he's made of the last four years. They voted for him--and I include in this *his murderous mishandling of Covid-19*--because of that. Because it causes *narcissistic injury* that makes them double down & lash out.
Read 12 tweets
Hal Duncan @halduncan@bsky.social Profile picture
Nov 3, 2020
I hate the prequels, but I will consider them worth it for McGregor being given a chance to do Kenobi again but, fingers crossed, in a series with good stories & a proper Star Wars visual style. Like rough drafts I can bin from my memory, needed on the way to a finished product.
Him being ages with me, I find the tale of him making the lightsaber noises with his mouth during the fights just so identifiable with, & you can see the love he put into it. I've always been gutted for him that he got a childhood dream only to have it turn out... like it did.
All I want for Christmas 2021 is one nine episode season that sneakily divides into three distinct stories, three episodes per story, ideally with flashbacks woven through retelling the backstory so it functions as a covert reboot of the prequels.
Read 5 tweets
Hal Duncan @halduncan@bsky.social Profile picture
Nov 2, 2020
Bob and Sally are still friends because Bob and Sally are both cunts.
If Sally wasn't a brunching centrist fuckin tool, she'd take her friend Bob aside & have a friendly fuckin word with him about him being a fascist. If she was anywhere near open enough to get through to him, you can 100% guarantee he'd break the friendship off, him being a cunt.
Sally, the establishment Dem, whenever anyone asks her pointedly about her friendship with fascist Bob:
Read 4 tweets
Hal Duncan @halduncan@bsky.social Profile picture
Sep 30, 2020
"I think he's ready to go. I believe it now." Even if one extends Trump the most charitable reading--that the gobshite vpidly sought to posture a calming stance while not alienating the fash--it's worth saying that there's no way he'll back out of the leadership role he's now in.
I mean, it's a real fuckin stretch being that charitable, but I don't wanna underestimate just how much his narcissism can and does drive him to just speak without actual intent at all, without real thought, just opening his gob & spewing extemporized drivel that pushes buttons.
I can kinda imagine, tbh, that even as he was voicing his basic desire for his bootboys to await his command, he's so lacking in self-awareness he'd actually think this was him telling them to chill as required, just "cunningly" finding a way to say that while keeping them sweet.
Read 4 tweets
Hal Duncan @halduncan@bsky.social Profile picture
Sep 30, 2020
All you really need to know, AFAIC, fiction-wise, practically speaking is past perfect versus simple past and the idea of "continuous" that gives us, like, simple present versus present continuous.
(In fiction, present continuous can read kinda floaty & distanced, which can be put to good effect, but because of that it gets used to slather a contrived air of import in lieu of actual effective import, & that can grow old as fast as every sentence being its own paragraph.)
The thing about continuous is that "is running" conjures a state whereas "runs" conjures an action, & if you conjure everything as a series of states, surprise surprise, all the action takes on a sort of static quality, a detached ruminative air as of a tableaux being mused upon.
Read 4 tweets

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