Hello, hello and welcome to our book club @ill-be-book - Tumblr Blog

“When they were little girls, they decided that they would be best friends forever. A whale never forgets a promise.” -Anneliese Juergensen

heatherbat-deactivated20130526

i have now died. of joy.

kakaphoe

I don’t think I’ve seen art of an old mermaid (mermatron? mergranny?) before.

I love it!

boxlunches

Oh look it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen

startrekrenegades

This is really amazing but I have to say, I read “mermatron” not as “mer-matron,” but as “merma-tron“ and I was just like MERMATRON. AUTOWHALES. SWIM OUT. and I’m ruined my brain is ruined I’m so sorry

i-homeostasis

dude seeing these Mega high quality images of the surface of mars that we now have has me fucked up. Like. Mars is a place. mars is a real actual place where one could hypothetically stand. It is a physical place in the universe. ITS JUST OUT THERE LOOKING LIKE UH IDK A REGULAR OLD DESERT WITH LOTS OF ROCKS BUT ITS A WHOLE OTHER PLANET?

i-homeostasis

LIKE THIS JUST LOOKS LIKE IT COULD BE A PERSON’S BACKYARD. LIKE YEA A LITTLE DUSTY MAYBE THERE WAS A SANDSTORM BUT THAT’S COOL I’M JUST GONNA WALK DOWN TO THE STORE P S Y C H YOU’RE ON MARS BICH!

schro-dingus-deactivated2023030

i hate to be rude and intrude on this post but we have decent pictures of the surface Venus too!

jumpingjacktrash

#venus has a low render distance

thecraftychemist

See also below Saturn’s moon, Titan. Mars has a blue horizon at sunset so it looks even more Earth-like in this image:

Source

Also: Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

strawberry-crocodile

That last comet picture really gets me. I dunno about you but I’ve always conceptualized comets as, like, big chunks of ice about the size of a rock. Like you’d stand on one and it’s be big and icy.

But no, holy shit, that’s a PLACE. That’s somewhere you can stand! You could put on a suit and walk around on a comet! What the fuck, dude?

#preparation for monday....?#space

medievalthymes

whoever is running the sparknotes twitter account needs a raise

residentgayfriend

so my english teacher put up new posters in her class and

aide-factory-blog

Breathtaking The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings illustration by Jian Guo also known as breathing2004

jeannette-m-deactivated20180607

DUDE!!!

vardaelcntari

That’s it, the Professor is truly the King of Sass

nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui

The letter didn’t come from the Nazi party, but from the publishing house which had expressed an interest in the German translation of The Hobbit. Tolkien’s response really is a thing of beauty, though, so it deserves to be quoted in its entirety:

25 July 1938 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. … I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearings whatsoever on the merits of my work or its suitability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully

J.R.R. Tolkien.

(Letter 30)

The Hobbit wasn’t published in German until 1957.

correspondingnerd

This might just be the politest “fuck you” ever written.

geekandmisandry

W.h.a.t.

bramblepatch

Not just “I wish I had Jewish ancestors, but I don’t,” but also “you do realize that’s not what ‘Aryan’ actually means, right,” and “you guys are making it pretty hard to be proud of my German heritage.”