If on a winter's night a tumblr

"If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave - what story down there awaits its end? - he asks, anxious to hear the story." - Italo Calvino

[dollymyfolly-deactivated2026032]

'I exist.' In thousands of agonies — I exist. I'm tormented on the rack — but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar — I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (via dollymyfolly)

[cosmicomicas-blog]

[kateoplis]

NY Magazine: 50 Runny, Yummy, Crumbly Cheeses to Eat Now

[photos: Bobby Doherty]

[hirohamada]

[cosmicomicas-blog]

The Chinese landscape painter ZHANG BU was born in 1934. He started as a newspaper editor and became, over the years, one of the best known painters of this genre.

[cosmicomicas-blog]

I sampled Jeff Goldblum's bizarre laugh from this scene In Jurassic Park. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlOx9738iyw I hope you enjoy it! Free Download Here: http://www.mediafire.com/listen/do43v6qw4d1rryk/hahahrawrrahaha.mp3

THIS IS MY JAM

[antediluvianechoes]

Carboniferous forest scenes by Heinrich Harder, Bruce Horsfall, & W. C. Smith

The Carboniferous is a panoply, an exhibition, a theater of increasing complexity, a demonstration of verdant braggadocio in which amphibians lurk and arthropods achieve hallucinatory measurements. The animals sing and chirp and croak and bellow, splash in the water and feed on each other, they grow and mate and fight and die, but their part in the forest is only a fraction of the symphony here. The green kingdom has its own drama, its own conflicts, kinships, and hymns; it is not passive. Its members also grow and mate and fight and die, but at speeds an animal cannot see and with means an animal cannot notice. Instead of songs, the plants communicate with chemicals—three thousand of them—in a vocabulary unknown and unsensed by eyes and ears, but felt on the tongue when leaves turn bitter or saps run toxic, invisible messages made of methanol, formaldehyde, tannins, caffeine, and terpenoids released into the air to dissuade herbivores, attract plant-eater predators, or alert the forest in a botanic siren that spreads between leaves and branches, roots and buds—a system of communication without sight or sound, where compounds are signals and chemicals are words.

[philipchircop]

ENGOLDENED

I learnt a new word and I love the sound of it: kintsukuroi. It is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with seams of gold. Kintsugi repairs the brokenness in a way that makes the container even more beautiful than it was prior to being broken.  Not a very common idea in western culture!

Instead of diminishing the bowl’s appeal and appreciation, the “break” offers the container  a new sense of its vitality and resilience. The bowl has become more beautiful for having been broken. One can say that the true life of the bowl began the moment it was dropped!

Imagine you are that clay pot: celebrate your flaws and imperfections. Remember that you being you is what makes you uniquely beautiful.  

And remember: “The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway

An interesting essay on the art of kintsukuroi can be found in Flickwerk, The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics.

Photos source | Kintsugi Japan

[teacup-warrior]

I’m pretty sure that I’ve reblogged this before, but its actually one of my favorite posts on tumblr. The idea that something can be more beautiful after being broken is so moving to me. I kind of want one of these someday, or to make my own. It’s an amazing concept, and I love the fact that it’s an artform.

[fuzzyimages]

Beautifully broken. 

[ms-mess-deactivated20161203]

“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (via ms-mess)

[aatombomb]

Without any questions, you’ve given me a blank canvas. I’ll only address what’s on my heart. Next month, the State of Texas has resolved to kill me like some kind of rabid dog, so indirectly, I guess my intention is to use this as some type of platform because this could be my final statement on earth.

Read this. Abolish the death penalty. (via mentalextensions)

[fables-of-the-reconstruction-de]

When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears. Like that sky. It’s rain and sun both, noon and midnight… I think of the lips I’ve kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I’m all those things at once. I’m sure there are times when you wouldn’t even recognize me. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness — I can’t say it.

Albert Camus, A Happy Death  (via charmed-hour)

[nevver]

The best place to be is somewhere else.

[odditiesoflife]

Mount Roraima

The incredible top of Mount Roraima, the 1.8 million year old sandstone plateau. It is also called Roraima Tepui or Cerro Roraima. The geological marvel is one of the oldest formations on Earth, a natural border between Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana in South America. The mountain is part of Venezuela’s Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Angel Falls is also part of this beautiful park. Roraima’s highest point is Maverick Rock at 2,810 meters (9,219 feet). For nature and landscape lovers, Mount Roraima is said to have some of the most fascinating hiking trails in the world.

[neairamartell]

ASoIaF castlescapes according to Ted Nasmith (they’re all paintings)

[wicnet]

1 The Red Keep 2. Casterly Rock 3. Dragonstone 4. The Eyrie 5. Harrenhal 6. Highgarden 7. Riverrun 8. Storm’s End 9. Sunspear 10. Winterfell

He’s also done:

Castle Black and the Wall

Eastwatch-by-the-Sea

Pyke

The Hightower at Oldtown

The Twins

[rhaegartargaryen-moved-blo-blog1]

holy shit

[toomuchhorrorfiction]

Guy N. Smith’s infamous pulp-horror “classic” Killer Crabs series, Dell reprints from the 1980s.

[aplacebothwonderfulandstrange-d]

This is so great.

[aninventoryofthepossible]

Find that thing you’re passionate about, and do that for the rest of your life.

[twinfountain]

I can’t stop thinking about Garth Marenghi.

[bigredrobot]

CRABPLACE.

[theisb]

“Bigger And Crabbier Than Ever” is a t-shirt I would pay good money for.

[cosmicomicas-blog]

Tastes like crab, talks like people?

[britneyaddiction]

[cookingwithkyle]

This makes me laugh every time

[theremina]

FOREVER REBLOG.

[nevver]

Resolution

[biomedicalephemera]

Much more recent a figure than my other Important People, I feel Carl Sagan deserves a mention today. His birthday was November 9, 1934.

I am not nearly eloquent or knowledgeable enough compared to others I know to comment on his amazing works and his pioneering the concept of making science accessible (and cool!) to the public, but I appreciate them and love the works all the same.

He was not just a television figure, a host of a TV show, as captivating and renowned as Cosmos was. He was a real astronomer, an astrophysicist, a man who worked on real satellites, and looked through telescopes in laboratories, and realized things like the fact that Venus is, in reality, a hot and dry hellscape, and not a balmy paradise as once imagined.

From the beginning of his career, Sagan was the advocate that science needed. In a time that scientists and officials scoffed at the notion of bringing science to the masses, Sagan realized how important it was for the general population to, at the very least, be interested in and value science, even if they didn’t understand the deeper concepts involved. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see the value of learning about our planet from a perspective we’ve never seen before.

Before his death in 1996, Carl Sagan designed the plaque and record that traveled on the Voyager satellites, that represented all of humankind to any civilization or species that might intercept them, millions or billions of years in the future. He was also involved in establishing SETI -the institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. He also authored Contact, which would later be made into an award-winning movie starring Jodie Foster, and many books regarding humanity’s presence in the universe and the possibility for extraterrestrial life. He was a pioneer in promoting skepticism and scientific thinking in day-to-day life, and showed people how amazing and fantastical their own world was, their own planet was, how much more wonderful reality was than anything we could ever dream up.

Images: Quote from Cosmos, “Pale Blue Dot” - The Earth, as it appears from Pluto, photographed by Voyager 1 Allen Radio Telescope Array at SETI Carl Sagan portrait by Pat Linse - “An Awful Hole, A Wonderful Life” by Michael Shermer via Skeptic “Sounds of Earth” - the golden record carried on Voyager 1 and 2