elvenavari reblogged
If you like frogs. Or possums. Or cool builds. Or happiness. This is the video for you.
elvenavari reblogged
do kids these days know about glomping?
What is that?
hehe…. *glomps you* OwO
:3
What the fuck?
The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it.
elvenavari reblogged
The skirt I got is awesome and fits perfectly but more importantly my cat has claimed the box it came in!
perfect :’)
OH MY GOD
elvenavari reblogged
Sarahs ballgown in The Labyrinth in 4k
elvenavari reblogged
its been 6 months and im still not over this. easily best and most hilarious play in baseball history
for those who dont really understand:
-the first baseman had no reason to chase Baéz, if he just stepped on the bag he was automatically out
-theres two outs, so if hes out, the inning is over. even if the runner on second base gets home, the run doesnt count. its not until hes safe at first that the run scores
-theres no specific rule in baseball about running backwards from first, just that you “cannot retreat to home base” meaning so long as if you dont touch the plate, its fine
-Baéz ran backwards to kill enough to get the run to score, and then stole and extra base on the base on the bad throw
-HE TOOK THE TIME TO UMPIRE HIS OWN PLAY AND CALL SAFE
what a fucking sport yall
dyketrickfoot
Javier Baéz’s nickname according to those announcers is El Mago which is spanish for The Wizard
Well earned
antifrance
love how the explanations do not help at all
Let me see if I can break this down a little more.
Javier Báez (the batter, a Chicago Cub, wearing blue) has just hit the ball. His job is now to run around the bases - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, back to where he started (“home”), at which point he will have scored a point. In practice, he will probably stop partway, wait for the next batter to get a hit, and try to make it home from there.
The Pittsburgh Pirates (in white) are fielding. Their job is to stop the Cubs from scoring by getting them out, by various combinations of catching the ball and tagging people or bases with it.
The scoreboard (top left) shows that one Cub has already made it to second base, so he will resume running now that Javy has a hit. It also shows that two Cubs are out. If a third Cub gets out, their turn to bat will be over, it will be the Pirates’ turn to bat, and the Cubs can’t score anymore (for now, but that’s not relevant).
The Pirate at first base (the first baseman) has the ball. All he needs to do is step on first base while holding it before Javy gets there, and Javy is out. This is probably the number one most common thing a first baseman has to do.
He does not do it.
For some reason he starts chasing Javy, presumably trying to tag him with the ball directly. This is a perfectly legitimate way of getting him out, but also completely unnecessary.
This has never happened to Javy before. Unsure what else to do, he just kind of… jogs backwards away from him.
Meanwhile, the Cub who was at second base (Contreras) has made it all the way back to home. Because the Pirates’ first baseman has helpfully walked the ball back home, he can easily toss it to the Pirate at home (the catcher) who will tag Contreras out.
The catcher doesn’t tag him in time.
The umpire signals that Contreras is safe (not out).
Javy also signals that Contreras is safe, just for fun. He’s never been nearby when a teammate makes it home before, and he’s enjoying himself.
Notice that the score has not changed, even though Contreras made it home. That’s because Javy is still technically running to first base. If he gets out before he reaches it, the Cubs’ turn to bat is over, and nothing else that’s happened since he hit the ball matters.
Javy remembers this, and heads back to first base. The catcher throws the ball to another Pirates fielder, who is frantically running to do the first baseman’s job.
He doesn’t catch it.
Javy is safe at first. Contreras scores (although the scoreboard won’t change for a second).
Javy notices how far away that ball landed, and decides he can make it to second base before anyone picks it up and tags him out.
An offscreen Pirate throws the ball to second base, where another Pirate is ready and waiting to catch it, tag Javy out, and end the Cubs’ turn to bat.
He doesn’t catch it.
Javy is safe at second. The video doesn’t show it, but he will go on to score as well.
This should have been a very easy out for the Pirates, but through two dropped catches and one truly bizarre decision from the first baseman, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and turned it into two points for the Cubs.
The Cubs won this game by two points.
HAPPY OPENING DAY OF BASEBALL 2022 YALL. LETS PRAY FOR MORE OF THIS BULLSHIT
I know I’ve reblogged this before, but here’s a version with an explanation for folks unfamiliar with the game* and this amazing comment:
Never change, Pittsburgh
Happy Opening Day 2023 to our wonderful national pastime!
As someone who grew up in Pittsburgh in the 2000s, the last time I saw a Cubs v Pirates game was on a middle school field trip in 2007, and that game solidified in my mind that baseball is so fatally boring, a middle school kickball game would be more interesting. (The Pirates lost that game btw, and because of where we were sitting in PNC Park, none of us could actually see what was going on on the field, and half my class got sunburn and the other half were freezing to death in the rafters.)
I read 90 books in 2022. There were some really good ones, I'm looking at you Under the Oak Tree & Dark Highway and there were some really bad ones... I won't call those out. I listened to quite a few audio books, Barak Obama reading his book A Promised Land was really awesome because the man is a great orator, no doubt about that. The Queen's Gambit got me in trouble at work so now if I want to listen to an audio book at work I have to wear an earbud. Ah well, there are worse things.
I'm 5 years or something late but I joined the Hamilton craze.
elvenavari reblogged
Riftan quote.
Extract from under the oak tree season 1(5)
elvenavari reblogged
“If I were to be reincarnated, I want to become your hair. If only I could sway against your back, touch your cheeks from time to time when the wind blows, perhaps even your lips, then I would be…”
elvenavari reblogged
You are going to laugh until your stomach hurts again. You're going to be in awe of a sunset. Watch your favorite show while you eat your favorite food. Find money on the street. Discover a great band you haven't heard of before. You will find your way back.
elvenavari reblogged
Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.
wow okay i’m crying now
“And even as he watched the rescue unfolding that morning, he would have understood that for the living, everything which could have been done had been done: not a single survivor was lost or injured being brought aboard the Carpathia. For those who had gone down with the Titanic, save for reverencing their memory at the service later that day, there was nothing more that he or anyone could do. Rostron’s duty now was as he always saw it: to the living.”
I looked up a bit about this because the post is so movingly written that when I read it aloud to my husband and mother they both wept like babies, and something else really struck me about this story.
So Carpathia was not a top-end luxury liner. Her reputation was for being Jolly Comfortable - she was very broad in her proportions, and not super-duper fast, and the result was that she didn’t rock so much on the waves and you couldn’t particularly hear/feel the engines. She was solid and dependable, and lots of people liked using her, but she therefore occupied a lesser niche than Titanic or Olympian or whatever - and crucially, as a result of that, she only had one radio operator on board. This means she only had radio ops for a certain window in the day, unlike Titanic, which had 24 hour radio ops.
So on that night, when Titanic went down, Carpathia’s wireless operator - one Harold Cottam - clocked off his shift at midnight, and went to bed. While he was getting ready for bed, though, he left the transmitter on for the hell of it, and therefore picked up a transmission from Cape Race in Newfoundland, the closest transmitting tower sending messages to the ships. They told him that they had a backlog of private traffic for Titanic that wasn’t getting through. So, even though his shift was over, and it was now 11 minutes past bloody midnight, and he just wanted to go to bed, Harold Cottam decided that nonetheless, he’d be helpful, and let the Titanic know they had messages waiting.
And that’s how he received the Titanic’s distress signal. In spite of no longer being on shift to receive it, and therefore in order to send Carpathia galloping to Titanic’s rescue, and thus saving 705 people.
All because Harold Cottam decided one night to be kind.
I dunno. That’s just really stuck with me.
armoured-escort
Cottam also ended up staying awake for something like 48 hours straight trying to send survivors messages and a list of survivors home, but due to Carpathia’s limited radio frequency range and with no other ships to act as a relay, this was rather patchy. However, he tried his damn best to make sure the survivor’s messages got home, and was also bombarded with incoming messages of bribes to spill the details of the disaster to the press.
Rostrum had ordered that no messages to the press be sent out of respect to the survivors, for they would have their privacy destroyed as soon as they reached New York. Cottam respected this order, even under extreme duress of fatigue, stress, and the knowledge that in some cases the bribes were almost three times his annual salary.
He eventually went to bed but not before working with one of the rescued Titanic’s radio operators, Harold Bride, to transmit as many messages as possible. Bride was injured (his feet had been crushed in a lifeboat) and had just passed the body of the second of Titanic’s radio operators aboard (Jack Phillips), so neither of them were really in the best shape to keep working, but they did.
In the face of extreme adversity, both men refused to do anything but their duty (and exceeding their duty) not just because Rostrum had ordered it, but because it was the right thing to do. They could have profited considerably from the disaster and they refused for the dignity of the survivors.
This is hopepunk. This is what we can be, what we are, when instinct takes over. This is what we are when we choose to care about each other. We’re not profit machines or units of production or lone fierce wolves in a bitter wilderness. We are people, and we care about people.
This is human nature. Don’t give up on it.
Hopepunk is best punk.
mother-entropy
this always leaves me sobbing. fuck.
I wrote a post a couple of years ago, wondering why there hadn’t been a documentary or docu-drama about the ‘Carpathia’ rescue run.
There are probably sound reasons why not, one of which is probably that getting yet another ‘Titanic’ project greenlit is far easier - name recognition, pre-sold property, multiple conspiracy theories to play with (all discredited, but when did that stop the “History” Channel?)
Here are a couple of stories about ‘Carpathia’:
As @mylordshesacactus has already said, her boilers and engines were rated for no more than 14 knots and, when she managed 17.5 for the only time in her life it’s said (I hate the phrase but I have to use it) that the Chief Engineer hung his hat over the main pressure gauge so no-one - including himself - could see how far its needle was into the red.
Captain Rostron, a religious man, was seen on several occasions standing privately on the exposed bridge wing with his own hat raised and his mouth moving in silent prayer, and when daylight revealed the extent of the ice-field his ship had passed without harm, he only said “There must have been another Hand on the wheel than mine…”
There’s another problem-of-sorts about a screenplay set aboard ‘Carpathia’ - an astonishing lack of that easy dramatic tool, conflict. Captain Rostron decided he was going to the ‘Titanic’s assistance, and that was that. AFAIK not a single passenger or crewman - not one - questioned the wisdom of his decision either then or afterwards, even when…
…‘Carpathia’ headed at more than full speed, in the dark, through dangerous waters where an iceberg had apparently just sunk an “unsinkable” ship.
It’s easier to write - and sell - a story about pride, arrogance, stupidity, rich against poor and lives lost through hubris, than it is to write one about people who rallied round and did the right thing at the right time, not for reward but because it was the right thing to do.
Here’s Rostron and his officers…
…the ‘Carpathia’ stewards and cabin crew….
…some of her passengers…
…and some of the people they helped.
I will always reblog one of the few posts to GUARANTEE leaving me in an ugly sobbing heartfelt mess.
Godspeed Carpathia and your crew, your memories live on.
elvenavari reblogged
Help me out here, Tumblr.
If you read my book BOY TOY and it helped you at all, please respond here. The book's been banned by a school district in Texas and we're gathering stories in its defense.
If you'd rather be anonymous, use the form at https://barrylyga.com/about/contact-me/!
Please share this!
elvenavari reblogged
The funniest thing about LOTR is Aragorn constantly overstepping the Elves’ personal boundaries. They come from a race where touching your heart is one of the highest signs of affection and he’s over here pulling them into bear hugs and slapping shoulders like a brawny middle-aged dad
LMAO wasn't Aragorn raised by Elves? He knows what he's doing
True, but the momentary panic in Haldir’s eyes here is hilarious
Okay but what this potentially says about Elrond and the rest of the elves he was raised by is absolutely heartwarming. Because IRL humans need a certain amount of touch and affection and hugs and stuff. It’s particularly important for things like brain development and while it varies from person to person it’s still more than what elf kids need
And it honestly looks like Aragorn is not only comfortable with this kind of physical affection, he’s used to it.
Which makes me think that instead of looking at young Aragorn, and asking him to be more like an elf to fit in with those around them. Elrond looked at this kid and and thought to himself “how can I be more like what this child needs to thrive”
Aragorn has been raised by Elves since he was only 2 years old. So if we’re going by Piaget’s theories of child development, that puts Aragorn, (who would have been called Estel at the time) in the pre-operational stage. Or somewhere thereabouts. So Elrond is raising this kid when he’s learning to talk. When he’s constantly asking “why?” about everything.
Young Estel would have grown up surrounded by elves and elf children and just by virtue of not being an elf, he probably would have had to deal with feeling less capable than those around him. He wouldn’t have been able to do things like run across snow, and didn’t have the ability to see as far as they did with their “elf eyes” and I am imagining all manner of bruises and skinned knees as he tries to keep up anyway.
And it would take some getting used to his new surrounding, but I can’t stop picturing the first time tiny little Estel runs full tilt across the room and hugs Elrond’s leg.
And instead of scolding him or asking him to be more like an elf to fit in, Elrond consciously sets aside his own discomfort in the face of what this child needs to thrive. And if what Estel needs is hugs, then hugs he shall have.
Elrond picking up itty bitty Aragorn in a great big hug, and being just as uncomfortable about it, but hiding it well because this child was entrusted to his care and he will not let the boy grow up feeling unwanted or unloved.
And so Aragorn grew up surrounded by elves, but he grew up to be someone who naturally and unselfconsciously displays affection.
I think that speaks volumes about Elrond.
He raised this kid from age 2 to age 20 (so the majority of his formative years and well through his teens) and it was around then that Elrond’s own daughter gets back form visiting her grandmother Galadriel and meets this boy for the first time.
So I have NO IDEA what the various stages of child development would be for an elf, but I doubt their exactly the same.
Sure, Elrond might seem distant now, but there is no way Aragorn became the guy who is constantly overstepping elves personal boundaries to display affection without Elrond choosing to sacrifice his personal boundaries for the sake of a child’s well being.
This is the best possible addition to this post
elvenavari reblogged
this man unlocked the beast’s cage and walked into it himself after bathing in raw meat juice. i have no sympathy for what happens to him as a result
didn't those kids crash a Trump rally really fuckin hard? dude. kpop fans have a better track record for winning wars than the DoD. Tucker Carlson might literally die and we'll have Korean musicians and their fans to thank for it. godspeed, y'all. get him.
Googled this man and all the news outlets are like RIP man but you did ask for this
elvenavari reblogged
alwaysadolphin
who’s putting washing machines in their kitchen
fairy-isle
British people, apparently
tag with where you live and where your washing machines reside
