Peter Solarz
Cosmic Funnies
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NASA
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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JBB: An Artblog!
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

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JVL
Jules of Nature
Monterey Bay Aquarium
KIROKAZE

if i look back, i am lost

tannertan36
we're not kids anymore.
Sade Olutola
d e v o n

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@kai-va-vail
I know that Peter’s Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy technically has flaws but also….it doesn’t. It’s perfect.
‘Are these magic cloaks?’ asked Pippin, looking at them. with wonder.
‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”
- Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 8: Farewell to Lorien
This is how I think of Jackson’s movies. Yes, there are serious flaws - Gandalf’s de-powering, Gimli as comic relief, and Faramir, namely - but come on.
Remember when the guys making their chain mail invented a new method for quickly producing large amounts of it by hand? Remember Miranda Otto walking down the street, practicing sword positions? The guys who forged all of the swords - for leads and for extras? The men and women riders who volunteered to be riders of Rohan? The costume designers who designed the inside of Theoden’s armor (which no one would ever see) so beautifully that Bernard Hill said he felt like a king? The friendships between the cast, and their size doubles, and the stuntmen?
When they made that movie, they put all that they loved into all that they made.
#just hundreds of people who went ‘sure let me try this’ #and they made something breathtaking #and then they made it 12 more times in different sizes ( @byjoveimbeinghumble )
Wait tell me more about that chainmail thing
“Kaynemaile has worked tirelessly to perfect the material science behind beautiful architectural mesh, collaborating with architects and designers on projects that embolden urban environments with positive buildings. The company’s patented polycarbonate mesh, inspired by 2,000-year-old medieval chainmail, was initially created for the armor and weapons seen in the The Lord of The Rings movie trilogy and is now used on major architectural projects around the world.
“The film’s art director and Kaynemaile’s founder Kayne Horsham worked with his team to construct each garment from plastic plumbing tubes, coating them in pure silver. Once filming wrapped, Horsham dedicated himself to creating a change to the liquid state assembly process to mass produce the polycarbonate chainmail for architectural applications — products that were light, but strong enough to protect the interior or exterior of a building. Now an industry-leading manufacturer, Kaynemaile produces mesh for everything from small interior screens to large scale exterior façades. Their mesh is easy to install and can be custom created for specialized applications.”
https://architizer.com/blog/practice/materials/kaynemaile-mesh-facade-systems/
Kaynemaile's patented mesh façade systems are incredibly lightweight and easy to install while bringing a bold look to any scale building.
YOU GUYS
they took forced perspective and scaled sets to a new level by adding moving set pieces to create the illusion that the hobbits and dwarves were much smaller than everyone else even when the camera moved.
every scene you see in the 11+ hours of glory that is the LOTR masterpiece is most like ridiculously elaborate or expensive–from model towers to the all-new motion capture technology used for gollum to the costumes and sets to the aerial on location shots of mother-fracking new zealand and the big impressive battle scenes and horse charges.
but then the story and the screenplay too–there is just SO much lore that is there in the background lurking if you want to look for it, yet it still remains simplified for the average viewer. Crazy impressive feat.
And the acting is heartfelt and real and makes you love the characters.
ALSO DON’T GET ME STARTED ON FREAKING HOWARD SHORE AND HIS 100+ HEARTSHATTERINGLY BEAUTIFUL LIETMOTIFS AND BRILLIANT SUBTLE VARIATIONS IN THE FLIPPING 13 HOUR SOUNDTRACK. AND ENYA SINGING IN REAL ELVISH.
I loved the books long before the movies came out and… yes, this.
I disagree with a few choices here and there but they’re really, really good.
Cuddle o’clock (via)
ALRIGHT FINE. Y’all going so gaga for the croc lady here’s more, plus a friend.
Pumpkin season
(via)
Two silly dragon friends!! {x}
So the crow family at work has found a Fun New Game. This game is “peck at the shiny trucks, but SPECIFICALLY only at the newest, shiniest, most expensive ones.”
This has caused, shall we say, some consternation among employees. A pest control service has been contacted. They have deployed traps, bait, and a dude with a BB gun.
None of these have worked even a little. Current score; Corvids 3, Pest Control Dudes 0. Crows just fuck off into the trees and caw derisively the moment they see the distinctive green and white pest company trucks; this company shot one (1) crow here three years ago and now the crows all know the company on sight.
I am, of course, rooting for the crows in this battle, and so far the crows are winning handily.
Oh, I forgot. Actually they first put up a decoy of an owl, which the crows quickly determined was a Fake Owl and started using as a place to sit and survey the parking lot for the Shiniest Trucks.
So that’s actually Crows 4, Pest Control company 0.
An Actual Call I got today;
Me; “Hello?”
Caller; “There is a CROW pecking at _____’s TRUCK!”
Me; “And what would you like me to do about it, exactly? Tell it to stop?”
Them; “I DON’T KNOW BUT IT IS PECKING AT THE TRUCK.”
Me; “Well, they’ve had Plunkett’s out several times and they’re supposed to stop again later.”
Them; “BUT IT’S PECKING NOW.”
Me; “So go shoo it away. I don’t control the crows and I am not qualified to do pest control.”
Them; “Couldn’t you call them now?”
Me; “Do you seriously think that if I called their office, which is a thirty minute drive from here, that they could get a team here before it gets bored?”
Them; “…..”
Me; “Just go shoo it away. Have a nice day.”
Odin, this entire time; *absolute cackling laughter*
Maybe they should just not wash their truck so they’re not as appealing, or throw blankets over the hood and stuff… take precautions.
I mean they know these crows Target the nicest shiniest trucks they’re just asking for it aren’t they
Really, if they don’t want their hoods pecked by crows fascinated by shiny things they would take a little personal responsibility here.
TBH spending 100K on a truck and then strutting around bragging about your brand new expensive fancy truck is just ASKING for tricksters to fuck with you but that’s just my opinion.
Instead of using bait and traps and shooting at them they’d be better off making a bunch of shiny toys for the crows to play with.
Of course the punchline here is that after six months of hearing these douchebags Not Shutting Up about how much money they spent on new trucks after turnaround, mixed with an equal amount of “Trump 2020″, I did in fact make a blood sacrifice to an ancient trickster god associated with corvids and am now absolutely watching the results go down with great glee.
muahahaha. Indirect Witchy Action. Corvids >>>>> rich douches and/or trumpkins
And I didn’t tell a single lie.
I don’t control the crows, but I know the guy who does.
omg this was already brilliant before you revealed the punchline and then it just ascended to a level of amazing I can only dream to reach
UPDATE; the pest control company came in wearing street clothes and in their personal trucks to try and shoot them. No dice. The crows know their faces. They also have not bored of the Shiny Trucks.
Crows; 6. Pest control dudes; 0
Current score, four pest control companies later;
Crows; 20
Humans; 0
Me; delighted
lions are like transgendering lol
Explain
LOL theyre just transgedering :)
Game over, Republicans
Oh!!!! I got to see the first one in person, actually! She’s Mmamoriri from Mombo in Botswana! She was beautiful! And her pride is the group of lions often featured in nature documentaries since their main prey is cape buffalo, a huge and incredibly dangerous animal, resulting in some truly incredible battles between the species.
According to my guide, it was likely she had internal testes along with her external female genitalia, resulting in an increased testosterone level! It’s especially interesting just how dark her mane is, as black manes tend to only present in males with high testosterone. Fascinatingly, it presents not just as a mix of male and female physical traits, but also behaviors!
Here’s a picture I took of Mmamoriri (left) with a male from her pride. As you can see, she’s got the full striking mane, but her face and body are much smaller than the male’s.
Apparently this mix of traits has made her EXTREMELY popular within the pride. She hunts and cares for the young with the lionesses, which helps greatly since her larger stature is a major asset in taking down the formidable buffalo they feed on, but also roars and has a mane, and is therefore able to chase off hyenas (which tend to be stronger than female lions and harass them/steal food/kill cubs) with the males. Mmamoriri has fully diversified her portfolio!
So she’s a kickass intersex lion who says fuck no to gender roles and in doing so has become a major asset to her pride!
It is, unfortunately, probably the result of inbreeding in her pride, which is cut off from wider populations by virtue of living on an island in the Okavango. She is infertile, like the previous maned lioness in the pride, Martina.
anyone else remember being like 13 years old and watching that scene in how to train your dragon (2010) where hiccup carefully navigates the maze of lines toothless has drawn between them without breaking or stepping on any of them and with his back to toothless and eyes shut to demonstrate how he’s willing to put total faith in him not to harm him or run away and to show humility and a desire to establish a natural bond of mutual trust instead of the arrogance to try to force toothless to submit to his will and hearing the music crescendo and fade into silence as he finally crosses the last obstacle so that they’re standing mere inches from one another, tension built on years of bad blood between their two races, so immense it’s almost like a physical barrier, separating them, and after what feels like forever toothless presses his nose gently into hiccup’s outstretched palm and it fits perfectly like it was made solely for that specific purpose, and feeling all the hairs on your neck stand up and a stifling sensation that brought actual tears to your eyes rise in your throat as it touched something profound and full of unspeakable yearning inside you
You just want a dragon
Well of course I want a fucking dragon
one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math
some of my favorite tags on this post
Don’t forget that Frodo also speaks Sindarin, which makes this even worse.
Faramir: Hey, don’t go up the Spider Stairs.
Frodo: Why? What’s up the Spider Stairs?
Faramir: We don’t know, Frodo. We just don’t know.
to be fair, you’d assume the name means “there’s a lot of spiders here,” not, “there is one spider the size of a draft horse here.” so you go up expecting to have to shoo a lot of skeeter eaters out of your tent, and instead you have to figure out how to rope and shoe godzillarantula.
Hmmm…
They do live in a world where godzillarantulas feature prominently in mythology and history (Ungoliant plunged the world into darkness, scared the crap out of Sauron’s old boss, etc) and existed within the last century in Mirkwood. Assuming they ever talk to anyone who’s been to Mirkwood. They… probably know they were giant spiders in Mirkwood pretty recently? It’s hard to figure out how much anyone in Middle-earth has been talking to anyone else when we didn’t actually see it.
On the other hand – what if it’s the giant evil spiders’ prominence in history/mythology that’s causing trouble? What if lots of evil/nasty things/places get called “spider” just to indicate how nasty and evil they are, rather than any association with literal spiders, and it’s just… overloaded? Maybe the bad part of town in Minas Tirith is the Spider District. Maybe every tavern trying to be edgy calls itself the Spiderweb.
Actually spider/Ungoliant references could be really appealing to Gondorians trying to be edgy. They’re dark and evil! Plunged the world into darkness! But they AREN’T involved in the war they’re actually fighting, they aren’t directly associated with Sauron at all, so getting too interested in them would be creepy without being potentially treasonous. Because no one’s ACTUALLY going to worship those dangerous but not epic spiders up in Mirkwood, and no one’s heard anything from any proper spawn of Ungoliant in ages and ages.
In fact, spider/Ungoliant references might be appealing to ORCS trying to express that something is nasty and creepy! Nobody likes Ungoliant.
Maybe Faramir’s been to fourteen different Spider Caves across Ithilien, and half of them he didn’t even see regular spiders in, they’re just dark and damp and may have had orcs at some point, or something, and at some point in history someone got spooked. So you know, it’s POSSIBLE Spider Pass has something to do with spiders? But really it just means people don’t like it.
(The problem with this theory is we never actually SAW anyone overusing spider references. But it’s plausible they would!)
“The average spider on Middle Earth is the size of a dinner plate” is a statistical error. The average spider on Middle Earth is smaller than a coin. Cirith Ungol (lit: Spiders Gorge), which contains a spider larger than a horse, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
OH MY GOD
@dendritic-trees
Come for the Tolkien linguistics, stay for the Spiders Georg reference
he has not yet figured out that sticks go under not on top
his wife looks so done with his bullshit
Continuation of the latest comic!
Swordfish’s frog hoard saves the day through a commonly used, yet adorable fairy tale trope! Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!! 💙
the conqueror… an unstoppable force
the fool…..
/oh my god./
Okay, but consider this...
Modern fantasy creatures and people being exposed to new lifestyles and developing dreams and goals that don’t fit with their species or their culture in the slightest.
A dwarf who was born in a mine, grew up in a mine, and can count the number of times they’ve been surface-side on both hands. One of these times, they witnessed an airshow. They go home and tell their parents: “Mom, Dad, I want to be a pilot.” “What’s a pilot?” “We’ll, y’see…” And a brief explanation later… “YOU WANT TO DO WHAT? WHERE DID WE GO WRONG? DAMN IT, ROK, I TOLD YOU THAT THE SUN WOULD GO TO HIS HEAD. NOW HE THINKS HE CAN FUCKING FLY, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!
An elf who has a deep interest in geology and underground exploration signs up for a dwarven digging mission. Shows up first day all long limbs and being seven feet tall, and has to become a 90 degree angle to get through the door. “Hey guys! Who’s ready to look at some rocks? Am I right? Well, it’s a tight fit, but I bet I can do it if I squeeze. Ooh, I know some great digging songs by the way.” The dwarves immediately try to find a way to fire the elf without being sued for racial discrimination. “I told you we should have been more careful about the ad.” “I put in it Gold and Gems Monthly, Brek, how was I to know elves read that kind of thing?” “OHMIGOSH, GUYS COME SEE WHAT I FOUND!” “Your turn, Nik.” “I swear to God, if it’s another goddamn stalagmite again…”
A centaur whose herd migrates to a coast area and sees the ocean for the first time. “Greyhoof, I’m going to be a fisherman.” “What?” “I’m going to sail the seven seas; I want to be a sailor.” “Blackmane, you’re half horse, you can’t sail.” “I can learn.” “You can’t climb their weird ropes things. What would you even do on the ocean?” “It’s called rigging and I’d be a fisherman, obviously, like I told you.” “YOU’RE A CENTAUR, YOU CAN’T SAIL!” “YOU DON’T KNOW THAT. DON’T TRY AND DESTROY MY DREAMS, GREYHOOF, I CAN DO ANYTHING I SET MY MIND TO. I BELIEVE IN ME.”
A mermaid who gets really interested in those land mountains that touch the clouds and meets an extreme mountain-climber on the beach, then decides they’ve found their calling. “I’m going to be the first mermaid to climb Mount Everest.” “What? Bluefins, that’s ridiculous.” “No, no, I’m gonna do it.” “You can’t breathe air.” “I’ll bring a tank of water, like what the humans do with air when they dive.” “YOU DON’T HAVE LEGS.” “I know, that’s what’ll make me the first mermaid to do it. I’m going to have to work around that, but” “FOR FUCK’S SAKE, BLUEFINS. WE’RE TROPICAL.” “No, see, there are these human things called coats. I’ve got it all figured out. Look, I drew plans.” “WITH WHAT?”
This speaks to me today.
Centaur pirates who build their own ship to be centaur accessible and it looks a lot different than human ships - the doors are high and tall, they don’t need bunks bc they can sleep standing up, wooden ladders wide enough to put your hooves on, living on hay and fish mostly while on sea-
Dragon microbiologist.
DRAGON MICROBIOLOGIST
there is no part of this that is not brilliant
today in “things i’m disproportionately emotional about”:
it’s facial reconstructions of prehistoric humans!!
like, look at this part-homo sapiens, part-neandertal man from well over 30,000 years ago:
doesn’t he just look like a dude you’d wanna hang out with? like he probably washes dishes in the kitchen with you, and has excellent weed
what a charming fellow. what stories he probably has to tell. i’d definitely go shoot the shit with him on Contemplation Rock after i’d finished my day’s work carving a bone flute for the autumn hunting ceremony, or whatever
people have been people ever since people first became people, i tell you what
they all had lives and histories and families and friends and dumb gossip and games they played and total bullshit in which they believed wholeheartedly
they all argued about the nature of the world, and of themselves
they all sang songs
they all drew pictures
they all buried their dead in graves, and they buried their dead in graves well before they did a lot of that other stuff. they buried their dead with flowers, with panther claws, with the bones of animals they’d killed, with the bones of family members who had died at the same time or earlier. they buried their dead with their arms folded across their chests
they fell in love
they took care of their old and their sick and their disabled, even when it cost them
they made new things, and worried about what the new things meant for people everywhere, as a whole
Oh I like him he looks like he would appreciate my jokes
This dude would have great stories at a get-together and would bring some really great homemade dip.
I feel like he really digs Lo-Fi Music
This guy was sculpted by Alfons and Adrie Kennis, and their Neanderthal reconstructions are all delightful.
I love the kid in the last picture a lot- they look like a kid, just a little kid who’s done some mischief and is trying not to laugh about it.
I also adore their Lucy- they’ve struck a wonderful balance between the falling angel and the rising ape.
And their Turkana boy- there’s something precious and wistful in those eyes.
But my favorite has got to be their reconstruction of H. floresiensis.
Just look at her. That’s a face of someone who’s lived and seen a lot, but also a face that’s known love and joy and laughter. That’s a face with a soul.
They are all beautiful
What an amazing work, Kennis & Kennis!
why… why is Lucy looking at me like she’s my granny?…
she is your granny.
Okay, I’m sorry but I just feel so restless about the bushfires, I made a mini-comic. Maybe it will get a few more people to donate. I wish I could do more. Please see http://wires.org.au if you want to help. :(
Fuck. As an Aussie, this hit hard.
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
Merry: I mean you could do that but consider
Merry: you can only tell him ONCE
Frodo: Merry. You’re absolutely right. I’ll wait.
#legolas’ hick accent vs #frodo’s ‘i learned it out of a book’ accent #FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT
Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible
Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK
Frodo: :)
Frodo: Hello. My name is Frodo. I am a Hobbit. How are you?
Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve
Frodo, crying: please I can’t understand what you’r saying
Ok, but Frodo didn’t just learn out of a book. He learned like… Chaucerian Elvish. So actually:
Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.
Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.
Aragorn: *laughing too hard to walk*
@ghostriderofthearagon
dYinGggGggg…
i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.
english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.
they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.
so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.
plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.
so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.
to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.
so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!
considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.
…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.
which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.
this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!
Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.
Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*
Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now
Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?
Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?
Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.
Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.
Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y'all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.
Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man
Boromir, from beyond the grave: j e s u s
Literally canon