So basically the cylinder that science has used as THE kilogram since 1889 has been losing microscopic weight, like a few billionths of a kilogram. What scientists plan to do is instead of having a physical object set the standard for how much a kilogram weighs, they’re going to express it in terms of Planck’s Constant, a fundamental constant in quantum physics as unchanging as the speed of light in a vacuum. By dividing Planck’s Constant by the Meter and the Second (both already defined by fundamental constants), you get an insanely small weight. Multiply that by a big enough number and you get one kilogram!
So instead of measuring all weights against an object that can change, the kilogram is defined by unchanging physical constants and pure math.
Mother cat with kittens came to meet an old friend.
I can’t believe we’ve already found the best animal video of 2016.
That is too adorable. You can tell the mother cat actually does trust the dog just by her body language. Typically a mother will watch her kittens closely and be very protective of them, here she completely trusts the dog to play gentle with them. This is just too damn cute.
When he bops the kitten and looks up at Mom to make sure he didn’t overstep!
The dog is trying to make himself as non-threatening as possible!!
“This is your Uncle Dog. He is a good boy.”
It got better
I can’t get over the sight of this dog using cat body language!
First the dog greets the cat with a nose touch/possibly a lick to the chin, which is a combination of cat & dog greetings (cats touch noses to say hello to people & animals they love, dogs lick snouts, and licking the chin is often a sign of respect to someone they think of as superior). Then the dog lies down to make itself less threatening to the babies.
But then that ‘roll over & expose tummy’ move? Combined with waving his paws at the kittens? That’s not how dogs usually initiate play. They might roll around once they’re already play-fighting with another dog, but inviting a dog to play is usually done using what’s called the ‘play bow,’ where the dog dips their front half down, front legs stretched out in front of them & hind quarters still in the air. They’ll prance around & do the bow several times, especially to initiate a ‘come chase me!’ type game. Exposing the stomach is usually a sign of submission, or asking for a belly rub, which they would also often be doing towards someone they see as a superior (with exceptions for just like… lying down, of course).
But cats? Cats invite play-fighting by rolling over, exposing their tummy, and waving their paws in the air (again, as opposed to just lying down to relax). It’s why many people are startled & upset when they try to rub a cat’s belly in that situation & get scratched and/or bit. Because the cat isn’t showing submission or asking for a belly rub like a dog might, they’re inviting you to play fight, which for cats means claws & teeth and that ‘rabbit kick’ thing they do which is used to disembowel small prey
– you can see the mama cat doing precisely that at the end of the video, while the dog sticks to more dog style of play by standing above and using his teeth to ‘attack.’ (For humans: waving a string or other favored toy over the cat when they do this, instead of sticking your hand in there, will generally get some good play-hunting action without you losing a limb.)
But so not only is the mama cat’s behavior showing how much she trusts the dog with her kittens, the dog’s behavior also reflects their close friendship, as the dog has apparently paid enough attention to know how to communicate ‘come play with me!’ to the kittens 😀
Fun fact: this is exactly how Tribble behaved with cats when she first got the opportunity to meet some (first a friend’s kitten, then Peter). She still acts that way around kittens and any cat who appears to be afraid of her,
I have no idea where she learned it, because she already knew when she got to me. She doesn’t actually have a ton of interest in interacting with our cats except for Peter, who is her buddy and will play chase with her and swat at her, but she seems mortally offended at the concept of cats being afraid of her except when it suits her (i.e.: do not step on Dog, do not enter Dog’s crate). @nuuuuttmeg‘s kitty Tiberius has decided he wants to be friends and keeps rubbing up on her anyway, much to her astonishment.
But yeah. My dog speaks Cat. I was terribly surprised and pleased when I first found out!
I’ve been getting quite a few asks about the process for the patterns in my stylized artworks, so I decided to put together a couple of tips regarding them.
Firstly, what you need are
— CUSTOM BRUSHES —
Most of the patterns I use are custom brushes I made, such as those:
For the longest time I was convinced making brushes must be super extra complicated. I was super extra wrong. All you need to start is a transparent canvas (2500px x 2500px max):
This will be your brush tip. When you’re satisfied how it looks, click Ctrl+A to select the whole canvas and go to ‘define brush preset’ under the edit menu
You will be asked to name your new glorious creation. Choose something that describes it well, so you can easily find it between all the ‘asfsfgdgd’ brushes you’ve created to be only used once
This is it. Look at it, you have just created a photoshop brush. First time i did I felt like I was cheated my whole life. IT’S SO EASY WHY HASN’T ANYONE TOLD ME
Time to edit the Good Boi to be more random, so it can be used as a Cool Fancy Pattern. Go into brush settings and change whatever you’d like. Here’s a list of what I do for patterns:
– under Shape Dynamics, I increase Size Jitter and Angle jitter by 5%-15%
– under Brush Tip Shape, I increase spacing by a shitload. Sometimes it’s like 150%, the point is to get the initial brush tip we painted to be visible.
– If I want it to look random and noisy, I enable the Dual Brush option, which acts like another brush was put on top of the one we’ve created. You can adjust all of the Dual Brush options (Size, Spacing, Scatter, Count) as you wish to get a very nice random brush to smear on your backgrounds
The result is as above. You can follow the same steps to create whatever brush you need: evenly spaced dots that look like you painted them by hand, geometric pattern to fill the background, a line of perfectly drawn XDs and so on.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
— PATHS —
But what if you want to get lots of circles made of tiny dots? Or you need rows of triangles for your cool background? Photoshop can do all of that for you, thanks to the magic of paths.
Typically, paths window can be found right next to Layers:
Draw whatever path you want, the Shape Tool has quite a bit of options. Remember, paths are completely different from brush strokes and they won’t show up in the navigator. To move a path around, click A to enable path selection tool. You can use Ctrl+T to transform it, and if you move a path while pressing Alt it will be duplicated.
Now, pick a brush you wish really was in place of that path you’ve drawn and go to layers, then choose the layer you want it to be drawn on. Then, click this tiny circle under the Paths window:
Then witness the magic of photoshop doing the drawing for you while you wonder how tf have you managed to forget about this option for the past 2 years
You can combine special brushes and paths for all sorts of cool effects. I mostly use them in backgrounds for my cards, but you can do whatever you want with them.
I hope that answers the questions for all of the people who were sending me inquires about the patterns. If you have any questions regarding this or any other Photoshop matter feel free to message me, I’m always up for complaining about how great and terrible Photoshop is C’:
lanablack 