“Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.” @lost-in-the-shelves - Tumblr Blog

tbh i'm feeling lonely on this website but i wanna make some friends 🥺👉👈

**a gentle fyi: if you don’t have a header/icon or any posts, I’m assuming you’re a bot and blocking**

So, whoever reads this, you can ask me questions or chat with me. :)

#about me #intro post #i know this is way too long #but i have a lot of interests #please forgive me

1five1two

worldhistoryinayear

World History in a Year – Extras (200s BC, China)

Some photos of the Terra Cotta Army!

Here's what they would have looked like in their original state, painted (an archer and a general):

A chariot:

Not just soldiers: a terra-cotta bureaucrat:

The scale of the Terra-Cotta Army:

cherryhatter-deactivated2015072

KICK THE CAN!

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

To kick the can, reblog it. I wanna see how long this can go on for.

daysleftofsecondterm

kickin’ the can on 1,021 days left

kevytmaitohorsma

Reblog this photo of a käpylehmä to have a käpylehmä in your blog

It's a trick! If you reblog you get TWO käpylehmäs in your blog!

kevytmaitohorsma

They're traditional Finnish toys, little cows made out of spruce cones, on their way to see the world from one tumblr blog to another

books-bread-and-brigandage

@elodieunderglass not horrible, but things with legs?

elodieunderglass

I’ll send them on their lovely journey, thank you!

xanaxfarts

Cat Series a series of cats placed on flatbed scanners

#cat? caaaaaat.

maureen2musings

Blooming heather in the Highlands

merlins_mind

mjalti

david-goldrock

Smart woman next to an unbelievable achievement is a picture niche that will never get old

awnerd

Then you’re gonna love this photo of Annie Jump Canon.

Working at Harvard in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s as a “Computer”, Annie Jump Cannon cataloged stars using their spectra from photographic plates, in an effort to understand the mysteries and peculiarities of stellar spectra.

This was hard, detailed, nuanced work. By 1889, three years into her work, she had classified over 1,000 stars. By 1913, she could classify 200 stars an hour. She could classify three stars a minute, just by sight. Using a magnifying glass, she could classify stars down to 9th magnitude, 16 times fainter than the human eye can see. And she did this all with exceptional accuracy.

Over the course of her career, she personally classified more than 350,000 stars, accounting for a mind-boggling 98% of all contemporary stellar spectra classifications, a feat that wouldn’t be bested until the 1990’s with automated digital sky surveys.

Cannon used these classifications to develop the Harvard spectral classification system (O–B–A–F–G–K–M), organizing stars by surface temperature and physical properties.

It is hard to overstate just how foundational her work was to modern astronomy and astrophysics. Her classifications have enabled more than a century of breakthroughs in stellar structure and evolution, including the understanding of how stars change over time and how temperature, luminosity, and composition are related. The system underpins the Hertzsprung–Russell (HR) diagram, one of the most important tools in astrophysics, and remains embedded in modern research, from stellar population studies to galaxy evolution.

The immense scale of her work was itself a massive contribution to astronomy. For comparison, before Cannon, star catalogs contained between 600 and 4,000 stars. Her work single-handedly proved that large-scale stellar classification was both feasible and scientifically valuable. She helped establish systematic star catalogs as a core method of modern astronomy and laid the groundwork for astrophysical research on stellar structure, evolution, and populations that continues today.

kelila

Annie Jump Cannon was also deaf, having lost most of her hearing from scarlet fever.

She wasn’t the only woman human computer at Harvard at the time (there were about 80), though she stands out for her contribution and for having already had an education in physics and astronomy.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt was one of her coworkers. She also had progressive hearing loss due to illness and was also deaf when she started working at Harvard.

Here’s some more pictures.

Cannon and Leavitt

the human computers and their boss Pickering. May 1913

and the short little article i got the pictures at

feefal

Oyster mermaid~

feefal

ah shit-

lost-in-the-shelves

@jewishbarbies

aeschylus-stan-account

reblog this to place a small, rotund ceramic animal in the palm of the person you reblogged it from

thebristolboard

“The Militarization of the Police Department – Deadly Farce,” an original painting by Richard Williams from “The 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2014″ in Mad magazine #531, published by DC Comics, February 2015.

spaceraptor

Here’s the original, for comparison. And here’s a bit more about the artist and why he created the piece above for MAD Magazine.

pennamerequired

Richard Williams on Norman Rockwell:

“For most people, he was the painter of ‘America,’” he added. “But even he said his vision was what he wanted ‘America’ to be. It was a mythical ‘America,’ a place where all people were decent, honest and full of good will. His work was full of gentle humor that made you feel a little better; even if you knew it wasn’t really true… you just wished it was. My parody of Rockwell’s painting simply says, ‘That myth is dead.’”

1-420-666-6969

I think it’s relevant to add that even Norman Rockwell chose to leave his cushy job at the Saturday Evening Post because he wanted to make artwork that was more radical. The Post had rules that wouldn’t allow him to do artwork depicting black people as anything other than servants. The job paid really well and that was a huge reason he continued on. But he wanted change that and so he moved to Look magazine.

A lot of people know about the very first piece he did when he left the post which was the The Problem We All Live With which depicts Ruby Bridges walking to school under federal protection.

But I don’t think enough people know about Murder in Mississippi which depicts three real civil rights activists who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and sherriffs. The magazine ran the sketch instead of the finished piece because they felt it had a more striking statement to accompany the article. Norman Rockwell would finish that version after publication which is here

Rockwell’s legacy is sanitized because he decided to maintain his job at the Post for so long despite his frustrations with not being able to express himself. The civil rights movement was just his final straw to change what he could with the little time he had left. Look magazine received a lot of hate for Rockwell painting these as well.

Another favorite piece of mine is The Right to Know which depicts an integrated populace questioning their government. In 1968, the year of Vietnam and the year the Fair Housing Act only just got signed in months prior:

But I think it’s important to include the caption Rockwell originally wrote for the piece as well. I think it represents how a 74 year old Rockwell felt about the America he believed in and the people in it:

We are the governed, but we govern too. Assume our love of country, for it is only the simplest of self-love. Worry little about our strength, for we have our history to show for it. And because we are strong, there are others who have hope. But watch us more closely from now on, for those of us who stand here mean to watch those we put in the seats of power. And listen to us, you who lead, for we are listening harder for the truth that you have not always offered us. Your voice must be ours, and ours speaks of cities that are not safe, and of wars we do not want, of poor in a land of plenty, and of a world that will not take the shape our arms would give it. We are not fierce, and the truth will not frighten us. Trust us, for we have given you our trust. We are the governed, remember, but we govern too.

batboyblog

I’d just like to briefly say even Rockwell’s seemingly feel good Americana pieces are often more political than people today realize for example

likely the most famous picture of a Thanksgiving dinner ever painted and you see it all the time.

What you may not know is its actual title

“Freedom From Want” it’s a part of a series of 4, including this now famous meme

“Freedom of Speech” These paintings were illustrations of FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech where The President laid out a vision that would become what the Allies were fighting for in WWII universal human rights that became a part of the UN charter.

So this homey American Thanksgiving scene was also a bold statement that no one in the world should go hungry

Rockwell’s work was very political, he used that Americana small town America vibe of his work to make what he was saying feel very close to the viewers he was trying to reach and also his optimism of the human spirt but for sure not blind to the need to build a better world.

vintage-ukraine

Taras Shevchenko and Ira Aldridge by Heorhiy Melikhov, 1963

Famous Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko befriended the African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, while the latter was on tour to the Russian Empire in 1858. Shevchenko did his portrait in pastel. It is recounted that the two men got along very well. While posing for the portrait, Aldridge sang African-American songs to Shevchenko and in return, the artist taught him Ukrainian songs.

nastywizard

The portrait in question:

Portrait of Ira Aldridge by Taras Shevchenko, 1858. Pastel on paper.

kleeklutch

rikusqueenofhearts

vaspider

As always, Happy Pride to Mama Lynn.

fuckyeahchinesefashion

traditional chinese firework huohu火壶 by 江寻千

gnars-house

hollowedskin

This is beautiful. Is this the same lady that learned the iron fireworks technique too?

cazador-de-sirenas

Once in a lifetime I find so absolutely stunning things that leave me speechless ÔoÔ.

cherryhatter-deactivated2015072

KICK THE CAN!

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

To kick the can, reblog it. I wanna see how long this can go on for.

visibun

the oldest reblogs for this post that i can find are from january 2nd of 2013. this can has been getting kicked around tumblr for almost 13½ years now