Avid Fangirl, Historian, and Full-Time Nerd

Trials of Apollo with a smattering of other hyperfixations | Kitkatbard on Ao3

[kit-kat-bard]

My very first ever YouTube video!

[marian-devotee]

I took my little brother (autistic, mostly non verbal) out and he was using his voice keyboard to tell me something, and this little boy (maybe 4 or 5?) heard him and asked me "Is he a robot??" I tried to explain to him that no, he isn't a robot, he just communicates differently, but my darling brother was in the background max volume "I am robot I am robot I am robot I am robot"

[marian-devotee]

My little brother insisted if I was going to post about him, he wanted a cut of the "profits". When I explained to him that Tumblr isn't monetized, and is pretty pointless, he and my older brother pointed out that he'd still be bringing me "fame and notoriety" if the post got "big". So we agreed, if the post hit 10k notes, which seemed extremely farfetched and silly at the time, I'd take my little brother out for sushi (his favorite food) and let him eat as much as he wants.

I guess God wanted the little robot to enjoy some sushi 🍣 🥲

[thetruerarkher]

[leafstem]

*while sewing*: you are a fabric. you can stay a fabric. you do not yearn to return to being string.

[batbetbitbotbut]

*while spinning*: you are a thread. you can stay a thread. you do not yarn to return to being fluff.

[strikeslip]

*while embroidering*: you are a thread on a needle. you can just exist as thread on a needle. you do knot yearn to become a tangle.

[mawofthemagnetar]

*while turning wood* you are timber on a lathe. You can stay as timber on a lathe. You do not yearn to become a live hand grenade.

[bugbbear]

*while adding chemicals to a reaction* you are a stable substance. you are neither too hot nor too agitated. you do not yearn to explode violently and poison everyone in the building.

[cyclicalaberration]

*Whilst throwing pottery* You are a wonderful mug. You can stay as a wonderful mug with walls. You do not yearn to return to a horrible lump of dirt.

[desertherm1t]

*while doing digital art* you are a paint bucket tool. you will fill only inside these lines. you do not yearn to turn the entire canvas into your color

[the-shade-system]

@stars-says-fuck

[nchntd]

In the club

[vacuously-true]

I think I’m literally never gonna be sick of this masterpiece. I think watching it on a loop for eight hours could fix me. Dancing’s what clears my soul. Dancing’s what makes me whole.

[dimmadoome]

I just love that this very video is an accumulation of thousands of years worth of art made by people who have never met each other. The concept of this video was so completely unfathomable to every single artist who made the sculptures and yet they’ve all put something toward the creation of it.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[byjove]

There was a trend in the 40s and 50s (not sure if it predates that or if there are places that still do it) where you could get your child’s baby shoes cast in bronze or dipped in bronze and use them as keepsakes or have them mounted as bookends. Better than the resin slop of the modern day in my opinion. My great grandma had my grandpa’s baby shoes made into bookends ends because she loved him very much and he was her only child and it is honestly really cute. My mom got her dad’s baby shoe bookends when she moved out and they were in my living room my entire childhood, she had explained how they were grandpa’s shoes covered in bronze and I thought that was cool.

Then I went to an art museum and saw bronze busts of people and my tiny child brain thought the person’s dismembered head and shoulders were in there…

[what-even-is-thiss]

One time I was at a pub trivia night with some writer friends and we almost won but there was a tie. As a tiebreaker they asked us and the other team to write down as many moons of Jupiter as we could in two minutes.

None of us are very into astronomy so at first everyone was like oh we’re gonna lose but there were three of us at the table that night who were either former classics majors or otherwise super well read on Roman mythology and the three of us were like give us that paper right now and we just took turns writing down all of the lovers of Jupiter from mythology that we could.

So of course we won lol

[what-even-is-thiss]

You really never know what random niche knowledge you have will come in handy at trivia night. You really don’t.

[byjove]

I think Odysseus is the guy everyone else makes talk to the cops when they show up to bust the party.

[byjove]

I think he could do a really good “Hello officer, how are you?” if he had to.

[byjove]

YEAH EXACTLY

[byjove]

Athena is standing behind him whispering the bylaws into his ear.

[emptyheadmybeloved]

hold on i need to look this up

[byjove]

it’s been 15 minutes have you finished reading the Odyssey yet?

[byjove]

[mf-dooom]

[yetanothergreyjedi]

that is the face of a man worried he will be next

[ashtraythief]

Good news, he was not next! In fact, she accepted him as her mate, he learned the crane mating dance and now every year, he artificially inseminates her with crane semen to expand the very endangered crane population. True story.

[luulapants]

Sorry, he WHAT? Imagine being this man's boss and having to sit him down like. Listen. Brian. We need you to fuck the bird. You have to act like you're excited about it.

[whetstonefires]

crane husband.....

[roach-works]

this is the diametric opposite of all those awful swan wife stories and i love it.

[alex51324]

(WalWaPo makes you jump through like three separate hoops before you can read the article, so I will share some of the highlights:

Walnut was born in a species-recovery breeding program in the 1980′s.  The program had crane chicks hand-raised by human volunteers, and at that time they did not fully understand the measures necessary make sure that the chicks do not imprint on humans and retain their identity as cranes.  

As a result, her keepers believe, Walnut does not recognize other cranes as members of her own species.  

It has not been proven that Walnut killed her previous suitors; however, there is a persistent rumor in the white-naped-crane-conservation community that she did.  

Because this species is highly endangered, and the gene pool of the captive population is small, it’s pretty important for the survival of her species that Walnut A) mate, and B) not kill a bunch of other cranes.  

The actual name of the keeper is Chris Crowe.

They both arrived at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2004.   

Walnut immediately began paying special attention to Chris--and ignoring the eligible male crane in a nearby enclosure.  

Walnut initiated their courtship, performing the opening moves of a mating dance.  

Chris realized that if he reciprocated the mating dance, it might be possible to artificially inseminate Walnut with her participation and consent.  (The process normally involves restraining the bird.)  

It worked!  

Chris and Walnut have had five children, who were raised by other crane couples at the facility--sometimes the biological dad and his mate--both because it’s unclear whether Walnut would accept the chicks as her own, and because Chris is not equipped to be a Crane Dad.  

However, the Institute provides her with artificial eggs to sit on, and Chris takes his turn looking after them.  (This would not work with real eggs because he can’t sit on them properly, but Walnut seems to feel that he is on the job if he just stands over them.)

Chris accepts that he is pretty much married to this bird.  White-naped cranes live to be about 60, and they mate for life, so he knows he can’t retire while Walnut is alive.  (At the time of the article, Walnut was 36, and Chris 42.)  

[thesylverlining]

Legit cannot pick the funniest part of this

she has not been PROVEN to have killed her exes, but there is a PERSISTENT RUMOR (really officers she's simply DEVASTATED, she sobs, wearing a new feather boa unfortunately resembling her most recent deceased husband)

His name is Chris CROWE. (Mrs. Walnut Crane-Crowe?)

the mental images of a whole human man learning and performing the crane mating dance, and "sitting" on artificial eggs so she thinks he's performing his duties as a husband and father (and apparently OBJECTS if he does not?)

"chris, buddy, you gotta marry the possibly-murderous crane lady for the GOOD OF THE SPECIES." (alternately: "chris, my man! good news! we found you a very interested lady! She's 36, she's very spirited and independent, she holds a very important and rare status in her society! ...Is there a downside? WELL...")

chris sits any potential human partners down, like "my love, you must understand before we wed,,, i am already... Attached" (camera drifts wistfully to the above photo) "Lady Walnut and I have an,, Understanding... the relationship is open, but very committed"

[anais-ninja-bitch]

just had to explain this post to my father bc he thought my stifled laughter was a signal of illness.

well done, everyone, good game. hit the showers.

[largishcat]

[eshlimoriarty]

[lazorsandparadox]

Not only is he 'married' to walnut, this has apparently happened SEVERAL times, so he has MULTIPLE crane wives, none of which know about any of his other crane wives. This man is, for some unknown reason, irresistible to cranes

[queersatanic]

the “this content has been removed for violating Tumblr’s Community Guidelines” notice really adds a lot of flavor to this post and somehow makes it MORE obscene than whatever that actually was

[worldheritageposts-official]

World Heritage Post

[kedreeva]

I regret being the bearer of bad news, but I thought it should be shared that Walnut passed away in January of this year (2024). There's a lot of mixed info about the lifespan of cranes (due to people misunderstanding what a median is...) but the average for most species I know of is 20-30 years (in the wild if nothing eats them/they don't die young), and 30-45 in captivity, with the oldest known white-naped crane having loved to be 46. Given that she was 42, this old gal did good, and I'm certain she will be missed by folks here.

[optimysticals]

Fly on forever Walnut Crane-Crowe

[sqrt-73]

screw ray bradburys 6 word poem. here’s my 2 word one:

Keep reading

[parkchanwoohoo]

[divorcedwife]

look at the republican calendar and see which animal/plant/item is associated with your birthday ok. if you're born january 14 you get the day of the cat

[divorcedwife]

solidarity for everyone who was born on the day of the cistern or the watering can or something like that

[whitepeopletwitter]

[nynehells]

YOU FORGOT THE BEST PART

[rumwik]

Strange haunted photo where Winifred looks like she's a painting

[needs-more-hugs]

I have placed her in a more fitting setting

[bisexual-engineer-girl]

For the first time in my tenure on tumblr, it's "THAT'S A PHOTOGRAPH?" and not "THAT'S AN OIL PAINTING?"

[screamingsquamousthings]

Dash simulator when you follow a bunch of random blogs to add to the ecosystem:

mutual-1: had eggs for breakfast today

mutual-2: this post contains blocked tags

one-smeemble-figure-a-day: Smeeble with Strawberry, Happy Fun Company, 1997

fandom-mutual: does anyone ever think about blorbo’s oedipius complex

fantasy-nouveau: the most gorgeous illustration you’ve ever seen from some book published in 1903

retching-ribcages: a bunch of pictures of a sculpture collection depicting various household objects as meat

mutual-3: i hate this show i hate this show i hate all of you this place sucks

birds-are-cool: Splendid Fairywren (Malurus splendens), Native to Australia

blog-you’re-trying-to-impress: snorkum does NOT give good head hes gonna bite your shit and then start crying

fandom-polls: Who gives better head? (blorbo) (snorkum)

pretty-colors: #857ef4

mutual-4: just snorted a line

[dyke-parade]

rocky should be naked: an anthropological treatise

something maybe controversial that has been driving me BONKERS since the project hail mary book first came out that i finally just had to dig into my anthropology MA to bitch about:

it's fucking batshit that andy weir wrote the eridians as wearing clothes. there is no reason that eridians would ever develop something akin to human clothing.

like. do you know how long humans (not just hairy early hominin relatives of our, but straight-up anatomically modern homo sapiens) were rocking nothing but our birthday suits? LIKE NINETY THOUSAND FUCKING YEARS. HUMANS HAVE BEEN NAKED ALMOST THE WHOLE TIME WE'VE BEEN HUMANS, and we're famously leaky hairless apes, not hard-carapaced crab spiders with piston joints who live in boiling ammonia.

listen to me. the first hairless hominin was homo erectus, about 1.6mya. naked. anatomically modern humans like us evolved 350-270,000 years ago. also naked. when do we first have solid evidence for consistent human use of clothing (bc it's when the clothing lice genome evolves to diverge from the head lice genome lol)? only 170,000-83,000 years ago. before that? BUCKASS NAKED. and even when we did start using clothing? well, as we know from excellent textile archeologists such as elizabeth wayland barber, a LOT of early human clothing was likely more decorative than functional – i.e. the string skirts that you see on some of the 'venus figures' from the upper paleolithic, which were solely decorative but would NOT do anything for warmth.

now consider eridians, whose bodies are functionally impenetrable unless they're actively eating (which is a private activity anyhow), who are carnivores (thus having no need to cultivate plants – aka the source of most textiles – like humans do), who live on a planet with no sun exposure (so probably nothing like earth plants anyways) and no fucking seasons (no need for rain/snow protection!), who evolved to exist ONLY in very specific & stable temperature ranges (like most life on erid, per andy weir), who have five fucking hands to hold things, are famously so good at multitasking that doing just one activity sucks for them, and CANNOT FUCKING SEE!!!

so where the FUCK is eridians' evolutionary or social impetus to develop ANYTHING akin to clothing supposedly coming from? N O W H E R E. you heard me.

decoration like the celebration jewelry, absolutely – though notice that was clearly designed for its auditory qualities and ability to show up on sonar, not anything approaching the level of coverage that human clothing has. rocky's engineering lederhosen (leather! bc again, carnivores!) as a (evolutionarily speaking) modern development to help hold tools, yeah, totally. carapace carvings, 100%.

BUT THERE IS NO FUCKING REASON FOR THAT ROCK TO WEAR A SHIRT. in fact, it's way the fuck weirder that he DOES wear a shirt in the book! the movie was completely right to have a buckass naked rocky, there is no goddamn reason eridians would ever develop clothing, and the idea of a five-legged spider rock trying to put on a sleeved shirt makes me want to have a stroke. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[valentinetheeviljester]

Maybe lean out

[valentinetheeviljester]