A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic.
Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day.
Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 egg 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.
Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy. Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour.
Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick. Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.
Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.
So I tried this recipe.
And it is GREAT.
It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them they’re sugar cookie bars.
Just in case you needed a reminder of how big wolves actually are… because sometimes when there’s no context for size, I tend to think of them as a lot smaller than they really are.
btw, for people bugging out for Hurricane Irma who are making it to the metro Atlanta area - Happy Tabby Cat Cafe is offering free boarding for cats.Just bring proof of vaccination and food/meds (and come pick up your cat after).
Back in the summer of 2006, exciting things were on the horizon for Nintendo fans. Nintendo’s new console, the Wii, was just a few months away, and with it would come The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. On the more immediate horizon, however, was the Japanese release of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl.
Munchlax and Bonsly had appeared in the anime and the side game Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, and rumor had it that for the first time the starters would deviate from the Grass/Fire/Water formula. There were a few minor leaks, such as Lickitung and Magmar getting evolutions, which a few people drew their own interpretations of. These images being used in hoaxes such as fake leaks ultimately lead to what those who were there call The Summer of Fakemon.
It felt like new fake leaks were appearing every day. It was pretty easy to recognize most as being fake, but for some it was hard to be sure, while others were completely convincing. At that point, I’d been drawing and editing sprites for a Sailor Moon web comic for about two years, so I was mostly interested in the pixel art aspect of all the fakes. Granted, I wasn’t very GOOD with pixel art, but I still enjoyed it. When I threw my hat into the hoaxing ring, it was with something that I thought would fall into the “obviously fake” category.
It was picked up by several major Pokemon fan sites, particularly Spanish-language ones for some reason, and got around enough that Serebii added it to their Fake Pokemon page. I think the reason a lot of people believed it was real might have been because it was just too ugly. If someone were trying to pass off a fakemon as real, they would make it cute or cool, not ugly and weird, right?
My fondest memory of people reacting to it was one person, who seemed to believe that it was real, referring to it as “Cthulhu’s dog”.
I didn’t bother making it look convincing, since I didn’t think anyone would buy it and it was going to be in a small distorted image anyway. As you can see, it’s crudely cobbled together… but what exactly are we looking at here? As luck would have it, I never delete my working files.
The head is actually that of a Beautifly, with a single smoothed-out Articuno wing mirrored to serve as both ears (…or whatever those things are), which also seems to be where I got the blue color palette.
The body is an Espeon’s. You can actually see those lines, left over from the legs, in the final design.
The fins are the leg-wing-things of a Crobat, recolored but otherwise unedited.
Needless to say, when I started I just thought that Beautifly’s head would look interesting, and had no clear idea what direction I was going with the design.
Next up was a Gorebyss tail, and this is where things went a little… experimental. I knew that I didn’t want that purple fan on the end, but I really didn’t know what the end of the tail SHOULD look like.
I ultimately settled on the tail in the bottom-right, which is actually the feathers from the top of a Swablu’s head. I considered leaving it like that, but felt like it was still a little too simple. I decided to add part of a Magikarp tail, to make it more similar to the Kingdra design in the top-right.
From there, for whatever reason, I had the idea to shape the tail into a fishing net, hence the creature’s name, Tsurigu (Japanese for fishing tackle). I honestly have no idea if anyone but me ever saw the tail as a fishing net.
Finally, the adornments! I used the rear part of Lanturn’s antenna, editing it just enough so that the ball portion looked like it was in the foreground. I removed the bottom (earlobe?) parts of the modified Articuno wings, and drew on some gold rings just to add a few points of visual interest.
There you have it! Eleven years later, the full truth of Tsurigu’s creation. It’s hard to say how far it spread or how many people saw it, considering it’s been so long and most of the sites that posted it have disappeared. Over the years I’ve seen the design used in a few different ways, including things like reinterpretations and a creature made in Spore that I can no longer find.
It was never that well-known, and at this point has been almost entirely forgotten, but the terrible amalgamation once called Cthulhu’s dog is a highlight of The Summer of Fakemon, and one of my favorite memories of 2006.
oh my god I can’t believe the person who made that is right here
Okay, you need to make sure you play this game at some point. Maybe not today or anything, because you’ll need about thirty minutes and a serious willingness to understand how it works, but - it’s so worth it. It’s basically an answer to our occasional frustration - why do assholes always come out on top? - and the beautiful thing about it is that not only does it explain how that happens, but also how we can change it.
“In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game.”
This is fascinating if you’re into math or sociology or computer programming or all of the above.
I wish my 200-level game theory course had gone this in-depth on the prisoners’ dilemma! running multiple simulations on different strategies is a super intuitive way of demonstrating the implications over time, and that’s a big piece missing from a lot of (most?) discussions of it
this is every marvel trailer ever im sobbing ont he floor i can literally envision steve rogers narrating while tony stark punches something in rhythm of the beat
We are excited to announce our plans for a zine about our favorite Swiss doctor and cyborg ninja! Titled Where the Wind Takes Us, the zine will follow Angela and Genji as they travel across the world of the Overwatch universe, visiting various locations featured both in lore and in game.
If you wish to be part of this zine please fill out this form. We will be accepting applications until the 24th of September.
Our current estimation is around 22 creators working within 36 pages. This is just an estimation and may change in the future.
This zine will be a collaborative effort between both fan artists and fan writers. There will be various formats including classic illustrations and fics, letters, postcards, photographs, notes and social media posts. There will also be an option to work alone if you wish.
We firmly believe in supporting content creators but all money left over after paying our participants, production, and shipping will be donated to rebuilding areas and helping victims affected by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma.
This zine’s main organizer is Squiddy ( @squiddyart ). Squiddy is an artist and moderator for the Gency Never Dies discord server. Her main inspiration to become a mod was her interest in organizing events within the talented artist community.
Many members of the server have shown their support for this project. One member, Bookworm ( @the-bored-bookworm ) has accepted the role of managing our social media presence, a task Squiddy didn’t feel comfortable with, and has since become a vital part of this effort.
More information can be found here or by clicking on the info link in the sidebar. We also have a Twitter.
If you have any questions feel free to send them in!
