Statement begins...

One funny aspect to the (probably only one person) "Swifties vs Lestat" feud is that Taylor and Lestat probably would date and then write mean songs about each other.

It’s easy to forget JRR Tolkien was a fairly prolific academic translator with an interest in early medieval literature and philology. It’s so inspiring that he found time to write The Hobbit while fighting for his life over Beowulf.

JRR Tolkien’s introductory notes for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are like “This is a superb little poem. I really enjoy the author’s ability to weave existing narratives within folklore into one cohesive tale. This was fun!” and his lectures and notes on Beowulf are lowkey like “Translating and analyzing this was my Waterloo. I have been looking at it for 40 years. I am Sisyphus and this poem is my burden. All of you are misinterpreting it. Me too probably. God help us all.”

I read his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and even though it was correct, his translation of "midgard" as "middle earth" made me double-take every time.

Herzog was real for this

cottagegore is totally a thing.

Hiroyuki Sanada for Shōgun 82nd Golden Globes, Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama

vampire that corrects all the historical inaccuracies on wikipedia

vampire that’s responsible for all the historical inaccuracies on wikipedia

The fact that there's an actually functional website for the library of Babel is one of those things that fucks me up more and more the more I think about the implications.

So, if anyone hasn’t encountered the concept of the library of Babel, the idea comes from a story of the same name by Jorge Luis Borges, which is set inside a seemingly infinite library which contains every possible combination of letters, periods, commas and spaces that fits within 410 pages.

So like... It isn’t THAT out there that someone was able to make a digital version of it. Making an algorithm that randomly generates every possible combination of those 29 characters within that space and making a website that lets you explore those combinations are things that are pretty squarely within the scope of things you’d expect someone to be able to make a computer do.

But it begins to get pretty out there when you start thinking about all the things that are technically contained there (and that someone randomly browsing it could THEORETICALLY stumble upon) just by virtue of being one of those possible combinations of letters, spaces, commas, and periods.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that specifically mentions me by full name before giving an accurate, excruciatingly detailed, 410-page long physical description of me. There’ also many more books that SEEM to be that but are actually factually inaccurate. There’s also versions of all of those containing every possible combination of every possible typo, spelling mistake, and grammatical error.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that’s a perfectly accurate prediction of how and when I will die narrated in third person over the course of 410 pages. There’s also a book that contains the exact same events narrated in first person. Not only for me, but for every person in the world. There are many more that claim to be that but are actually inaccurate.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that’s completely blank except for the world’s funniest dick joke written right at the end of the very last page.

But chances are no one browsing that website is EVER going to see any of that because for every book we would consider useful, interesting, or even intelligible there are millions upon millions upon millions more that are just completely full of gibberish from cover to cover.

Every single thing I will ever write (barring punctuation marks that arent periods or commas and the letter ñ) is already contained somewhere on that website.

I have a volume from the Library of Babel! it's one of my most treasured books.

on the second to last page, about halfway down it reads "OH TIME THY PYRAMIDS" a singular grain of order in the sea of chaos.

The library of babel contains every book to ever exist and moreover it contains all information that can be encoded in a finite string of characters from its alphabet.

I cannot overstate how much I love the Library of Babel. it's wonderful, it is my heart and soul.

at last we created the perplexing nexus, from the novel "wouldnt it be weird if there was a perplexing nexus?"

yeah it would be weird wouldn't it

I’m a little upset because my husband (stressed out little Englishman, old as balls) had never heard Welcome to the Black Parade. What do you mean you’ve never. Like never heard it ever. You’ve heard it, though?? and it turned out that - NO.

And he said: well i wasn’t an American child during the millennium or indeed at any point in my existence now was I? So of course I had to explain about welcome to the black parade, I mean, REALLY. Really? Really!

Anyway unbeknownst to me it CLICKED for him and he liked it in quite a normal, I-will-hear-that-song-again way and he added it to his playlist of what he fondly believes to be similar-sounding songs, which in context affected me like a blow to the back of the head. Sir; your brain. Explain it to me please.

And he was like wdym. Sounds like Queen.

And the thing is. If you are a virgin to MCR and don’t give a damn about anyone or anything and you’re a highstrung little guy who is not an American and is a million years old, and if you spent your ENTIRE teens in a healthy outdoors attitude of underage drinking and smoking and banging other teens on unsupervised hiking trips while being attacked by swans, and other worldly and mentally healthy adventures that did NOT involve being on the internet too young, so that you genuinely wouldn’t know who Gerard Way was if he leapt out from behind a mailbox and bit you suddenly;

If MCR means nothing to you at all, net zero context, net zero interest, genuinely no nostalgia or cringe or judgement or admiration because you are NORMAL,

fuck me. Sure. It DOES - fuck me: okay. You win this Dr Glass. It does - yeah actually you’re right. It’s - it sounds like Queen.

We’ve sent our bravest warriors to report thanks @sashayed

“don’t eat honey because it exploits the bees and they can’t consent!!!” bees are literally unionized and will walk out if they don’t like being in the beekeeper’s hives

It's true.

I worked with a beekeeper (not at beekeeping, guy had a day job as a machinist and kept bees as a side thing). One day there was a swarm in the parking lot and people were freaking out because, y'know, BEES EVERYWHERE. Beekeeper guy went to his truck. Pulled a swarm-catching box out. Put it on the ground and walked away. Bees went in the box after a while. Guy put the box back in his truck and drove home with them.

You cannot prevent bees from leaving a hive they don't like the conditions of, without also preventing them from being able to make honey. The latter is dependent on them being able to come and go as they please. If they don't like their hive THEY WILL LEAVE.

Beekeeping is probably the single most non-exploitative animal agriculture in the entirety of human history. I don't know how it's even possible to exploit bees. They answer only to their queen.

They absolutely do not answer to the queen. If she sucks they will kill her and make a new one.

there was another post like this that I saw that included the memorable phrase "if I see a Balrog sitting in an unlocked kennel, I can only assume it wants to be there" (the Balrog here being the bees).

that phrase has lived in my head ever since, and I think of it every time I see a vegan getting all weird about "abusing bees"

BLACK SAILS + historical pirates

The #AllLivesMatter degenerates love the two-tier style of justice and complete disregard for children.

filter on ao3 that only shows fic by women in their 40s who has a degree and works an office job and probably leaves authors notes that are like “sorry for the wait on the chapter guys! i had to give birth to my third kid😂”

we've all become the erotica writing secretary from 10 Things i Hate About You.

gif by @joliecomer

excuse me she is the erotica writing guidance counselor.

from 2 years ago, still hits. happy new year kids

apparently I need to start listening to the mountain goats because they appear to get me

Book about the Cetagandan occupation of Barrayar: Vor and Peace

and if yes pls respond/put in the tags with what you’re reading and whether or not you like it i need new books for the new year <3