AZVOLRIEN

Welcome to my tumblr! It has no theme; here I post random bits and pieces of anything that happens to interest me, from historical manuscripts and scientific diagrams to Doctor Who gifsets and my own directionless musings, as well as the occasional bits and pieces of my own drawings.

[belladonnabedlam]

Okay. I was on my beloved AO3 and I saw something that made me do a double take. So, now I really want to know…

What is your AO3 user ID?

I’m an OG user 5 digits or less

Six figures baby!

I’m in the millions…

Remaining time: 4 days 12 hours

I’m so curious to see how long people have been on AO3! I know some people have been on there since beta/invite only, but I would love to see what the number is on tumblr!

[charl0ttan]

something i actually just realized on call w some friends recently is how crazey it is that your online friends are as many as thousands of feet above or below u right now. like if you teleported to their location without changing your height above sea level, well your fucked in some way basically

[charl0ttan]

How high above sea level are you right now?

0-250 feet

251-500 feet

501-750 feet

751-1000 feet

1001-2000 feet

2001-3000 feet

3001-4000 feet

4001-5000 feet

5001-6000 feet

6001-7000 feet

7001-8000 feet

8001+ feet

Voting ended onJul 19

[nylarac]

ok wait now i am curious

how high are you above sea level: low elevation edition

below sea level

0-25 feet

26-50 feet

51-100 feet

101-150 feet

151-200 feet

201-250 feet

Voting ended onJul 20

[desmolbean404]

QUIZ TIME!! Take this quiz, then come back and answer the poll!

100 REAL or FAKE Pokemon

100 Different 'Pokemon' will be shown to you. Choose if you think they are FAKE or REAL. Goal is to get a high score so you can brag to ever

What Was Your Score?

0%-20%

20%-40%

40%-50%

50%-60%

60%-70%

70%-80%

80%-99%

100%! (You're one smart cookie!)

Remaining time: 2 days 11 hours

[azvolrien]

Old Wolf and Pup

A warm summer's day, and a visit from an old friend.

---

Nobody seemed entirely sure who had first built the old but-and-ben above the beach. It might have been a shepherd’s cottage, if the shepherd was happy to graze a flock on the sea buckthorn and tough, wiry marram grass scattered across the dunes. Perhaps it had belonged to a fisherman instead, albeit one with a boat small enough to draw up on the sand. At any rate, it had been abandoned for longer than anyone could remember, and when a battle-scarred old man had got off the boat at South Blackferry with an equally battle-scarred targe slung across his back, a spear in one hand and a little bundle of blankets nestled in his other arm, no one had objected when he moved into the derelict cottage and began patching up the roof.

At least, not where he could hear them. Bruide knew that villagers gossiped, especially after he had walked into the apothecary at Inchnalinn and bought ten jars of infant milk powder, but as long as it stayed just gossip, he didn’t particularly care. He had more important things to worry about.

“Aye, aye, enough greetin’, it’ll no be long the now,” he said, double-checking the measurements printed onto the label before he stirred some of the powder into a small pan of water heating gently on the stove. Roan was not consoled; she squalled in her cradle by the hearth and angrily waved one fist up towards the wooden mobile hanging above her. Bruide turned away from the stove for a moment to give the mobile a gentle shove with one hand. The crying paused, apparently from sheer fascination as the little painted fish swam in a circle, before it started up again louder than ever. Bruide sighed and tested the temperature of the milk with a drop on the back of his wrist. It would do; with a nod, he tipped the rest into a bottle and attached a rubber teat. “There we go. C’mere, ròn beag, grub’s up.”

Her outrage at being taken from her comfortable blankets was quickly forgotten when he offered the bottle. With a tired smile, Bruide shouldered the door open and, cradling his infant granddaughter in the crook of one arm, sat down on the upturned log beside the front step.

It was quiet outside; nothing but the wind rustling through the marram grass, the occasional cry of a gull, and the distant splash of gentle waves down beyond the dunes. Bruide closed his eyes and leant back against the wall of the cottage, enjoying the feel of the sun-warmed stones against his back. Soon he would have to go and check on the fish traps he had set in the river behind the cottage – Roan might have been happy with a bottle of milk, but he needed a bit more to eat – but for the time being, it seemed he could just relax and enjoy the summer day.

The bottle was empty before too long. Bruide had thought Roan would just go back to sleep, but clearly she had other plans and squirmed until Bruide spread one of her blankets on the ground and laid her down at his feet.

“Izzat mair interesting down there, then?” he asked, watching with mild bemusement as she wriggled along on her stomach – crawling was still a little beyond her – to investigate a stone lying in the grass at the edge of the blanket. It was too big for her to pick up just yet, but she reached out with one hand and patted carefully at it. It was a pretty good stone, he supposed, worn into a smooth oval and marked with alternating bands of white quartz and dark, sparkling mica.

Only when Roan leant forwards to try and put it in her mouth did Bruide lean forwards to intervene. “Ah, hup, naw, we dinna bite stones, pup,” he chided gently, lifting the stone out of her reach and placing it on the windowsill. “Try this instead.” He placed one of her toys down next to her, a little seal made from soft white felt with a face embroidered in black wool. Roan inspected it for a few moments, then gummed at its tail in a thoughtful manner, frowning as if she wasn’t completely sure she approved.

“It’s been funny, seein’ a’ the differences ’tween you and yer da when he wis wee,” commented Bruide, propping his chin on one hand as he watched Roan. “He wis a quiet wee soul. Always wanted a nap after a feed, didna go explorin’ much. You, though, ye like to go and check on things, eh? Gonnae have a hard time keepin’ up wi ye once ye learn to walk, I reckon.” Roan mumbled something around the seal’s tail that may have been agreement. “What’s that? Ye’ll go easy on yer old granda? Well, we’ll see.”

He leant back against the wall again, folding his hands over his stomach, only to sit bolt upright when a different sound reached his ears. Three long blasts on a horn, followed by two short and another long. Not a new sound, exactly, but one he had not heard in many years, nor expected to hear again: it was the signal his old mercenary company had used when approaching an allied camp. Soon the horn sounded again, and this time he could hear the rumble of hooves along with it before a small group of horses came into view around the dunes, trotting single-file along the track that led north towards the village.

“Let’s see what this is about, eh, lass?” murmured Bruide, picking Roan back up and checking that his spear was within easy reach, propped against the doorpost at his side.

The horses drew closer. Three of them: a bay and a piebald, each one carrying a rider, and a dun with just a packsaddle. They were little and stocky, not much bigger than ponies and a far cry from the leggy, elegant steeds that were sometimes traded from the south, but their sturdy builds were better-suited for a tough life up in the hills or along the wild coastlines and each one looked healthy and well-groomed. Bruide narrowed his eyes, watching carefully. Only when they drew close enough for him to see the riders properly did he allow himself to relax. He recognised one: a woman of about his own age, as grey-haired as he was and almost as scarred, with the signal horn hung on a strap over one shoulder. The other was unfamiliar, but if the worst came to the worst, he was fairly certain he could handle a teenage boy in a fight.

The woman reined in her horse and climbed down from the saddle. “Bruide MacDovran,” she said as she strode forwards, pulling off her gloves as she went and tucking them into her belt. “Bruide the Brute. We rode all this way to see you, and you couldn’t even be bothered to get dressed?”

Bruide looked down at his clothing for the day: a pair of old canvas trousers rolled up to the knee and belted with a length of rope, his wedding ring on his left hand, and nothing else. “Well, wisna expecting company,” he said with a shrug. Still cradling Roan in one arm, he got to his feet and reached out to grasp the woman’s forearm with his free hand. “Hild Bjarnsdottir. Good tae see ye, but what’s really brought ye out here? And who’s this?” he added, nodding towards the boy.

“Oh – this is Tam,” said Hild with an absent wave of her hand. “Big Wull’s youngest. Wull’s leg’s been bothering him more than usual,” she went on as she tied the horses’ reins to a nearby tree, “so he asked me to take Tam up to the old fort for his first training season.”

Bruide nodded. “What’re they callin’ the old company the now?” he asked. “They were the Winter Wolves when I joined up, the Crow-Feeders when I left, and about half-a-dozen other names in between those.”

Hild rolled another log over to the door of the cottage and sat down. “The Sunset Swords,” she said. “Because – well, it’s looking like Tam’s generation’ll be the last to train at the fort. There’s just less call for hired blades these days, and fewer kids are taking up the life when there’re others that have less danger and better pay.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” said Bruide quietly, looking down at Roan as he sat back down. “So – you really came a’ this way jist for a visit? The fort is that way.” He pointed back the way they had come.

“Well…” said Hild. “We’d thought we’d drop in at your home in the valley north of Inverbeg. That would’ve been on the way from Wull’s place to the fort. But then we got there and…” She paused, looking down at her hands. “And the house was gone. Just burned timbers, fallen stones, and… and three fresh graves. All they could say in Inverbeg was that they’d seen you come back down the valley road and head along towards the ferry over the loch without speaking to anyone. Bruide, what happened?”

There was a long silence before he answered. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and flat, with the kind of steadiness to it that came not from true calm but from rigid control. “I wisna there,” he said. “I’d been away, selling some of our sheep at the market in Inverbeg. Got a good price for them, too, before I set off on the walk home.

“I saw the smoke first. I’d hoped there’d just been an accident. But no. The steading had been attacked. The house and a’ the outbuildings burned, livestock dead.” He closed his eyes; a very, very slight shake came into his voice, before he wrestled it back under control. “Morag, Euan and Lorna a’ killed with them. This wee one here? This is Roan, Euan and Lorna’s bairn. Found her half-buried in the wreckage, a’ by herself. I still dinna ken how she lived when they didna.”

“Do you know who it was?” asked Hild.

Bruide’s eyes remained closed. “Sea People,” he said. “Ship raiders frae the islands tae the west. They’d come over the hills frae the next strath, no up frae Inverbeg.”

“Which clan?” asked Tam. “The Ice Bears? Da told me most of the others won’t raid that far from the sea.”

There was another long silence. Finally, Bruide opened his eyes and stared unseeingly into the distance. His breathing trembled, just for a moment; he pressed his lips firmly together and steadied it. “Eagle Clan.”

Hild swore under her breath. “Gods, Bruide,” she said. “I am… so, so sorry.”

Tam looked between them in confusion. “What’s so terrible about the Eagle Clan? And how can you tell it was them, not any of the others?”

Gritting her teeth in an uncomfortable grimace, Hild glanced at Bruide, who met her gaze for a couple of seconds and gave one small, sharp nod. “There’s… a thing… that the Eagle Clan do to the people they catch on their raids,” she said. “They call it the ‘blood eagle’. I’ll… I’ll tell you more later. But no other clan does it. Just them.” She looked down at Roan, who blinked calmly back. “But even they think it’s dishonourable to kill a baby. Maybe that’s why she lived. They just left and hoped the weather would do the work for them.”

Bruide brushed the fingers of his right hand through Roan’s hair. She burbled some private comment and grabbed at his hand, tiny fingers closing around what remained of his smallest one. “Aye. Maybe that’s it.”

“So… What now?” asked Hild. “We can round up the old guard, what’s left of them. Find a ship. Go after the Eagle Clan. Show them what happens when they mess with an ulfheðinn’s family.”

Bruide let out one mirthless bark of laughter, shaking his head. “I thought about it. That’s what’d happen in the stories, aye? Take up my old spear and hunt them a’ down one by one. But I decided, naw. It wouldna do anything. Wouldna bring them back, wouldna even make me feel any better. Besides, I couldna bring a baby along wi me on some revenge quest, and I’m no leavin’ her to be brought up by strangers.”

Hild nodded sadly. “Are you going to tell her when she’s older?” she asked, nodding towards Roan, who was still chewing obliviously on the tail of her toy seal.

“I’ll tell her they were killed, aye,” said Bruide. “She should ken that much, at least. But the details, the who and the how of it – naw. Those go with me tae my grave. Like she needs those pictures in her wee heid.” Tam was frowning. Bruide looked at him. “What?”

“Do they not… I dunno. Deserve justice?”

Bruide sighed, squeezing his eyes tightly shut for a moment. Roan squirmed to escape once again; he smiled and laid her back down on the blanket. She made a beeline straight for Hild’s feet and pawed at the tough leather of her gaiters. “Aye. But they deserved a lot o things they never got, and now they’re gone. Roan isna. And what she needs comes first now. Ye ken that? Always, for the rest o my life. Roan comes first.”

Hild looked down at the baby. “You got it from your grandmother,” she mused. “Do you think this one’ll have got it from you?”

“Ach, too early to say. I hope not. Still, if she has, I’ll teach her tae manage it like my granny did for me.”

“Manage what?” asked Tam.

“It’s got a lot o names,” said Bruide. “Warp-spasm. Bloodwrath. The black tide. The Rage, wi a capital an a’. But they’re all a bit poetic, eh? I find battle-madness covers it.”

“You… you’re a…”

“What wis the word ye used, Hild?”

“Ulfheðinn.”

“Aye, that’s the one. Ulfheðnar, if there’s more than one.But usually people just say ‘berserker’.”

Tam swallowed audibly, and shifted his weight where he sat, but said nothing more.

“Got any advice for a young’un just starting out with the company?” asked Hild, adopting a jovial tone.

“Bought at the usual price, aye,” said Bruide with a lopsided smile. “One.” He pointed at the long scars that curled over his ribs and back over his shoulder, still flanked by the pockmarks of old stitches. “Wear yer armour. Two.” He pointed at the notch cut into the outer edge of his left ear, and the fainter scar that trailed forwards from it almost to the corner of his eye. “Wear yer helmet. And three?” He held up his right hand, letting Tam see how the little finger ended at what should have been the middle knuckle. “Dinna parry wi yer hands.”

“Is that something people usually need to be told?” asked Tam.

Bruide’s only reply was to gesture down at himself.

“Not twice, at least,” said Hild. “Oh, fu- no, little one, that’s not a toy.” She bent down and pulled her sgian-dubh from the top of her gaiter before Roan could get hold of it.

Bruide smiled. “So, izzat yous back on the road after this, or were ye plannin’ on stayin’ the night?”

“Not staying the night, no,” said Hild. “There’s plenty of daylight left to at least get back to the ferry and over the loch. But… We wouldn’t say no to a bite to eat, if you’ve got enough to spare.”

Bruide’s smile widened slightly and he got to his feet with a low grunt of effort. “Aye, never did see ye miss a meal. A’right, c’mere, pup. Let’s go see if the fishies have come tae visit.” With one hand, he scooped Roan up and settled her against his shoulder; with the other, he retrieved his old hunting knife from the windowsill and tucked it into his rope belt. “Door’s open if ye want tae get the stove goin’ again,” he added over his shoulder as he set off towards the river. Hild looked at Tam, who took the hint and got up to fetch some more firewood from the pile beside the cottage.

Roan gave a burble that may, vaguely, have had the inflection of a question.

“An old pal frae my warrior days,” said Bruide. “Hild Hammerfist, they used tae call her. Fought alongside her for years – since before I met yer granny, even. But dinna fret – like I told her, I’m no goin’ anywhere the now. I stepped off the spear path a long time ago. My place is here wi you. Always.”

---

Bruide actually isn't that old during this story; he's in his mid-fifties. However, his hair has gone fully grey and he's led quite a physically stressful life, so he does feel old.

I did not make up the blood eagle. Someone else may have; the historical evidence is sketchy and the descriptions in the sagas were written centuries after the events supposedly took place, so it's not clear if it was a real practice, a misunderstanding of something less gruesome, or just a literary invention. But I didn't make it up.

(If Bruide seems unusually calm about having seen something like that... He's really not. He just considers ironclad emotional control to be an important skill for a berserker to have.)

[3liza]

do you live in seattle (the american city)?

yes

no

Voting ended onJul 10

please reblog to get this poll out of my bubble, i want reach

[3liza]

so ive been meaning to do this poll for a while because my hypothesis is that seattle is the most Tumblr city, likely in the entire world. tumblr has a huge american majority userbase obviously, but just for comparison going forward, only 0.22% of the american population lives in seattle. as of this reblog, this poll is showing 4% of respondents are seattleites. given, this isnt scientific at all, because my blog just has a lot of seattle connections and seattle followers, but it's still an impressive bias

[azvolrien]

This may be a thing that already exists, I dunno, but today I am considering the possibility of: e-wheelchairs. So you know how you get e-bikes these days? The sort where you do still have to pedal them, but they've also got a little motor for additional propulsion. I kind of feel like That, But A Wheelchair would be useful for people who don't necessarily need or want (or can't afford) a fully-powered chair but could still use a bit of extra oomph for going up hills.

[daloy-politsey]

If you're not Jewish, tell me how many of these words you know without looking them up. Kvetch Klutz Schmooze Shlep Nosh Mensch Chutzpah

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Voting ended onJul 3

[smllscallywag]

reblog if the first musical you listened to was not Hamilton

[apolladay]

Hyperspecific poll but it's all common things that are just rare on Tumblr

cishet and neurotypical

have an active sex life

gym at least once a week

consider yourself completely untraumatised

not interested in creating any form of art/storytelling

none of the above

multiple of the above

Voting ended onJul 6

[eightdaysofdiana]

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by @Rebecca Fraimow and Emily Tesh

JOKES are against the rules. A tour of nineties Fantasyland, with stops along the way in California, Minnesota, Shannara, Valdemar, Derkhol

A tour of nineties Fantasyland, with stops along the way in California, Minnesota, Shannara, Valdemar, Derkholm, Dalemark, and the 'Maggots' entry in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997).

Transcript available here, and our next (and last) bonus episode for the season will be our overview/Q&A, which we'll be recording in early July!

[an-ruraiocht]

what time is sunrise where you are atm

the sun doesn't set here at this time of year

before 4am

4-4.30am

4.30-5am

5-5.30am

5.30-6am

6-6.30am

6.30-7am

after 7am

Voting ended onJun 29

idk if these options are wide enough but i looked up a few different places for ideas and i guess people who are the Outliers will probably trip over themselves to tell me in the tags anyway

please look it up if you're not sure rather than just guessing. also if you're at either end of the spectrum i would be interested to know whereabouts you are!

[an-ruraiocht]

while we're here I guess

what time is sunset where you are atm

before 7pm

7-7.30pm

7.30-8pm

8-8.30pm

8.30-9pm

9.30-10pm

10-10.30pm

after 10.30pm

the sun doesn't set here at this time of year

Voting ended onJun 29

obviously, it starts getting light before sunrise, and it stays light after sunset. for example, where I am, sunrise is currently 4.40am and sunset is 9.25pm, but sunlight hours are approximately 3.52am-10.13pm. but the poll just asks about sunrise and sunset as it's more easily accessible info

[eisenkrahe]

"For decades, wolf researchers believed ravens followed wolf packs to find food. Every biologist who flew aerial surveys over Yellowstone saw the same thing.

Wolves moving across the snow with ravens overhead, black shapes trailing the pack like a shadow with wings. The assumption was simple. The ravens were following the wolves. The wolves would kill. The ravens would eat. A study published in March 2026 using GPS transmitters on wolves, cougars, and ravens in Yellowstone proved the assumption wrong.

The ravens were not following the wolves. They were remembering where kills had happened before and flying over those locations looking for new carcasses. The relationship between the two species is real. The mechanism is not what anyone thought it was.

Bernd Heinrich, a University of Vermont biologist who spent years studying ravens in Maine and Yellowstone, first documented the scale of the association. His data showed ravens present near wolf packs 99.7 percent of the time during winter in Yellowstone. Not occasionally. Not frequently. Essentially always. On Isle Royale, researcher John Vucetich observed the same pattern from the air.

Every wolf pack had ravens with it. The birds were just always there.

The numbers at kill sites are staggering. The average number of ravens documented at a Yellowstone wolf kill is thirty. The maximum recorded at a single carcass is 135.

A wolf pack brings down an elk in the Lamar Valley, and within hours over a hundred ravens have materialized from across the drainage to feed. They do not wait politely. They land on the carcass while the wolves are still eating. They grab chunks of meat and cache them in the snow and in tree crotches for later retrieval. Research estimates that ravens can consume up to forty percent of a carcass, which means a wolf pack that kills a seven-hundred-pound elk may lose nearly three hundred pounds of it to birds.

That loss is so significant that one study proposed a theory that reshapes how we think about wolf pack size entirely. If a pair of wolves can take down an elk, why do wolves hunt in packs of four, six, eight, or more? The per-capita meat return decreases with every additional mouth. A pair gets the most meat per wolf. The answer may be ravens. Two wolves cannot eat fast enough to outpace a hundred ravens stripping the carcass simultaneously. A larger pack can post guards, feed in shifts, and physically dominate the carcass long enough to retain a greater share of the kill. Wolves may hunt in packs not because they need more teeth to bring down prey, but because they need more bodies to defend the kill from birds.

The ravens pay for their meals. Heinrich documented in his book Mind of the Raven that ravens serve as an early warning system at kill sites. Ravens are more vigilant than wolves. They perch in trees overlooking the carcass and scan the horizon in every direction. When a grizzly bear approaches, or a rival wolf pack, or a mountain lion, the ravens see it first. Their alarm calls alert the feeding wolves to the incoming threat before the wolves' own senses detect it. The wolves get airborne sentries. The ravens get an animal with the jaw strength to open a frozen elk carcass that no raven beak can penetrate.

That is the core of the mutualism. The raven cannot open the hide. The wolf can. The wolf cannot see a threat approaching from a mile away while its head is buried in a rib cage. The raven can. Each species fills a gap in the other's capability, and the result is a partnership so consistent that L. David Mech, the most published wolf researcher in the world, wrote that each creature is rewarded in some way by the presence of the other and that each is fully aware of the other's capabilities.

The play behavior is the part that makes biologists uncomfortable because it implies something beyond transactional mutualism. Wolves and ravens play together. Not at kill sites. Not during feeding. During downtime. Yellowstone observers have documented ravens diving at resting wolves, pulling their tails, and flying away. Wolf pups chase ravens across meadows. Ravens steal sticks from pups and hold them just out of reach. The interactions look like the cross-species equivalent of two bored kids messing with each other because there is nothing else to do.

Doug Smith, the retired lead biologist of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, had watched this relationship from the air for decades. Wolf researchers have believed forever that ravens follow wolves, he wrote after the 2026 study was published. Every wolf researcher has seen it. I have seen it routinely from the plane while wolves are chasing an elk in Yellowstone Park, numerous times. Ravens are just always there. This is an age-old observation. But it has never been rigorously tested until now.

The 2026 study, which used 2.5 years of GPS data from transmitters on wolves, cougars, and ravens simultaneously, revealed that ravens were not tracking wolf movements in real time. They were patrolling known kill sites. A raven that fed at a wolf kill in a specific drainage in November would return to that drainage repeatedly over the following weeks and months, flying over the exact location where the carcass had been, checking whether a new kill had appeared. The ravens were not following the wolves. They were following the memory of where wolves had killed before.

That distinction matters because it changes the raven from a passive follower into an active strategist. A bird that follows a wolf pack is reacting. A bird that memorizes kill locations across an entire landscape and patrols them systematically is planning. The raven is not tagging along. It is running a surveillance network across hundreds of square miles of Yellowstone, checking sites where food has appeared before, and showing up fast enough when it appears again that every observer since the 1995 reintroduction assumed it had been following the wolves the whole time.

The wolf and the raven share almost identical geographic range across the Northern Hemisphere. Everywhere wolves live, ravens live. The association is not a Yellowstone novelty. It is a continental relationship between two of the most intelligent species in North American wildlife, running continuously across boreal forest, tundra, mountain, and prairie, built on meat, memory, and a mutual awareness that neither species has ever needed to be taught."

Sources: Heinrich, B. "Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds." / Stahler, D. et al. (2002). Animal Behaviour. / Mech, L.D. "The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species." / Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Living Bird, 2020. / Bozeman Daily Chronicle, March 2026.

[lauralot89]

okay, so poll round two because I'm an idiot

Choose the best villain song from the films below:

"The World's Greatest Criminal Mind" - The Great Mouse Detective

"Poor Unfortunate Souls" - The Little Mermaid

"Gaston" - Beauty and the Beast

"Prince Ali - Reprise" - Aladdin

"Be Prepared" - The Lion King

"Mine, Mine, Mine" - Pocahontas

"Hellfire" - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"Friends on the Other Side" - The Princess and the Frog

Voting ended onJul 1

[souperluminal]

These prints and more from this May are now available in the shop!

[azvolrien]

If anyone was wondering? This is what 1 o'clock in the morning looks like on the summer solstice in Edinburgh. That's not light pollution. That's just the sun.

[amnhnyc]

Today's Exhibit of the Day is a blast from the past! This archival image, snapped in 1938, depicts Museum preparators sculpting a model Triceratops. This large herbivore could reach lengths of 28 ft (8.5 m). The model pictured here isn't on display today, but Triceratops fans can spot a fossil skeleton in the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs.

Photo: AMNH Library / Image no. 315711

[butchhamlet]

shakespeare's english kings ranked by how bad they should have been at the club, by someone who is not a historian and has never been clubbing

henry v: the thing is that hal was at the club and it didn’t change anything. hal was at the club and it didn’t save him. but it matters. it matters that he was at the club. and kingship simply isn’t proper hal husbandry. you can’t keep a killer whale in a zoo. did nobody see free willy. yes he’s the mirror of all christian kings and he has the incredible rookie win streak of lightning mcqueen in the first cars movie but look at him he’s a shell of a man he needs 100ccs of EDM right now

richard ii: i need you to understand that richard ii died at age 33. he became king at age 10 and he was deposed at 32-ish and he died at 33. this motherfucker should NOT have been doing ANY of that he 100% should have been at the club. are you kidding. in shakespeare it’s not like he was actually running anything anyway. and the historical r2 was wayyyy more into art than governance or war, so really everyone would be better off. man should’ve been doing uppers to olly alexander songs and sponsoring new up-and-coming DJs, maybe one of whom is working on a 24-track album themed around a bunch of clubgoers telling their life stories while they all try to navigate public transit

edward iv: all this guy ever really wanted to do was drink, eat, and fuck. i know he would be taking fat bong rips if he could. however he did die at age 40 which is tilting past the point where i think, “wow, you shouldn’t have been doing that shit.” still, he would have enjoyed having stand-up sex with someone in the bathroom

henry vi: i know what i just said, and i know henry vi died at 49, but let us be for real: he absolutely should not have been in the government. he should have been anywhere else. however we must also be for real in acknowledging that henry vi would not like the club and would not want to be there

henry iv: i don’t think henry iv would particularly like the club either, but as i understand it, he was a pretty sociable and likable dude before he got himself into all of that. nevertheless, he’s a step below h6 because he got himself into all of that, whereas h6 needs some kind of rescue intervention

richard iii: richard iii died at 32, which does incline me toward thinking he would benefit. but he said himself that he isn’t shaped for sportive tricks, so maybe being at the club watching everyone else dance and flirt would simply fuel his deep-seated resentment toward society. at least the club is 18+, so there are no killable or marriageable teens in the vicinity, and perhaps doing some lines behind the bar would have fixed him

king john: nobody liked king john and he didn’t have fun. i don’t think the club would have helped

henry viii: henry viii was basically already at the club for his entire tenure as king and there were casualties. people died because of the tudor court’s levels of At The Club. i firmly believe he would get thrown out for drunken sexual harassment