Minerva's Miscellany @minervasmiscellany - Tumblr Blog

gandalf palaeography moment

^ tolkien's illustrations of this btw

Seeing these, for the first time I realize that in writing this chapter Tolkien was probably channeling some of his own frustrations from having to decode manuscripts this beat up in his actual real life career

ltwilliammowett

Bark Europa - Antarctica

🎥 @bydrealeon

#ships

wholesome-animal-images

spatort

@sinnsenke couldn't leave this in the tags

knightwithahundredkings

My apologies to people named Gareth.

ltwilliammowett

Hamburger Richfische

These silverfish are designed as charming perfume containers. They are stuffed with cotton wool or fabric and filled with perfume or scented water.

Altonaer Museum, Hamburg, photo by Thomas Schwarz

The object is a fish-shaped pomander, which was widely used in Hamburg, Germany during the 18th and 19th centuries. It was worn on the person, particularly by wealthy merchants and other individuals of high social standing. Whenever the wearer’s nose was bothered by an odour, the pomander could be opened directly at the head and the scent inhaled.

batrachised

love the phrase "but I digress." yes I temporarily got lost in the moors I wander in my mind but don't worry I'm self-aware about it

clove-pinks

Sailors aloft on Skongen, the Danish Fifth Thule Arctic Expedition's ship, in Hudson Bay, 1924.

akindplace

oh wow you’re not gonna believe this but turns out i was unnecessarily anxious for no reason. how unexpected

ducissatenebrarum

Who can relate?

i-suggest-larp

I can relate!!

xxspacevampirexx

Starting to think some of y'all don't even want to go on a doomed polar expedition with me

enba-and-luka

mokopirirakaugalaxias

we have more than two green parrots.

We have Kea, Kākā, Kākāpō, and Kākāriki (of which there are 3 species).

Kākā are more olive brown than green but are really neat and beautiful birds and are growing in numbers thanks to conservation efforts.

Kea are mostly green with red underwings and b will pickpocket you, but then again so will weka. The bit about them stopping traffic is absolutely true - I have a friend who has witnessed this.

Kākāpō are, in the words of my ecology professor, “really bad at being parrots”. They suck, but endearingly so. They are so bad at being alive and climbing things and reproducing but you cannot help but love them. Again, they are green, but in a shambling moss pile sort of way.

Kākāriki are much smaller and are kept as pets internationally. The three kinds are the red crowned, the yellow crowned and the orange fronted. Of these, the latter is the rarest (currently critically endangered).

There are also several other species endemic to various outlying islands. We have, in total, nine surviving endemic parrot species and several subspecies of those.

If you see ANY of these at all, regardless of whether or not they pickpocket you, all of them are are very cool and very worthy of respect.

onioneyez

Stephen is the roving indoor/outdoor cat of the Surprise. You never really know where he’s been and he comes back smelling weird or in mysterious disarray, but as long as he returns home to his kibble and purrs it’s gauche to look into it too deeply.

He’s also probably not great for native bird and small animal populations

#aubrey maturin

nemfrog

A record player used to introduce penguins to music. Ice bound in the South polar seas. 1925. Illustration by Olive Lofts.

Internet Archive

howlerbat

you ever listen to a song 47 times in a row and every time you’re like wow what a good song. I’m gonna play it again.

natalieironside

Mad At You Island is where the events of William Shakespeare's The Tempest take place

cbk1000

So, I lurk in some writer subreddits, and a frequent topic of discussion is prose: what constitutes good prose, how do you write it, how do you improve it, etc. And yesterday I stumbled across one topic about the difference between good descriptive prose, and purple prose. OP asks people to share some of their favourite authors who they think write beautiful prose without tipping into purple. No problem; people are happy to oblige.

One person says that Steinbeck is one of their favourite authors for prose, and then they share an example of what they would consider purple prose. It is so violetly awful that I think the poster must have written it themselves as a kind of parody of purple prose. Other people assumed the same.

But as it turns out, they are quoting from a book written by a YouTuber whose channel ia dedicated to talking about writing (namely, their own writing, which is genius, but often not comprehensible to the drooling plebs).

Naturally, I read the free sample of their book in awe and horror, and I'd like to share some screenshots with you. If you also have trouble defining or understanding what purple prose is, it's this.

Yes, every single fucking page is written like this.

cbk1000

Reading some more of the preview for this book, and I realise this is by far not the biggest problem, but I'm begging this guy to just use 'shadow' instead of 'umbra'. I promise I will not accuse you of being a philistine.

cbk1000