Shadows' Nest

A singer; a writer; an artist; a pagan. Welcome to my nest of randomness. 34 y/o She/Her

[daitheflu-mx]

[tumblingoverstars]

[madkiska]

[marlynnofmany]

[assiraphales]

filmmakers and audiences and critics alike all need to start suspending their disbelief again

[assiraphales]

‘this doesn’t make sense’ so?????

[zoanzon]

important edition

[ecosystem-administrator]

I feel like this one is relevant too

[shadowsfeather]

And so the veil lifts...

[sixpenceee]

Saving Lives With An Iron Fish

When Canadian science graduate Christopher Charles visited Cambodia six years ago he discovered that anaemia was a huge public health problem. In the villages of Kandal province, instead of bright, bouncing children, Dr Charles found many were small and weak with slow mental development.

The standard solution, iron supplements or tablets to increase iron intake, isn’t working. The tablets are neither affordable nor widely available, and because of the side-effects people don’t like taking them. 

His invention, shaped like a fish, which is a symbol of luck in Cambodian culture, was designed to release iron at the right concentration to provide the nutrients that so many women and children in the country were lacking. The recipe is simple, Dr Charles says. “Boil up water or soup with the iron fish for at least 10 minutes”. (Source) 

[shadowsfeather]

*whispers*

guess who isn’t dead

[katienotopoulos]

[sweet-bitsy]

Every picture tells a story but this one asks more questions than it answers

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Women In History

I grew up believing that women had contributed nothing to the world until the 1960′s. So once I became a feminist I started collecting information on women in history, and here’s my collection so far, in no particular order. 

Lepa Svetozara Radić (1925–1943) was a partisan executed at the age of 17 for shooting at German soldiers during WW2. As her captors tied the noose around her neck, they offered her a way out of the gallows by revealing her comrades and leaders identities. She responded that she was not a traitor to her people and they would reveal themselves when they avenged her death. She was the youngest winner of the Order of the People’s Hero of Yugoslavia, awarded in 1951

23 year old Phyllis Latour Doyle was British spy who parachuted into occupied Normandy in 1944 on a reconnaissance mission in preparation for D-day. She relayed 135 secret messages before France was finally liberated. 

Catherine Leroy, War Photographer starting with the Vietnam war. She was taken a prisoner of war. When released she continued to be a war photographer until her death in 2006.

Lieutenant Pavlichenko was a Ukrainian sniper in WWII, with a total of 309 kills, including 36 enemy snipers. After being wounded, she toured the US to promote friendship between the two countries, and was called ‘fat’ by one of her interviewers, which she found rather amusing. 

Johanna Hannie “Jannetje” Schaft was born in Haarlem. She studied in Amsterdam had many Jewish friends. During WWII she aided many people who were hiding from the Germans and began working in resistance movements. She helped to assassinate two nazis. She was later captured and executed. Her last words were “I shoot better than you.”. 

Nancy wake was a resistance spy in WWII, and was so hated by the Germans that at one point she was their most wanted person with a price of 5 million francs on her head. During one of her missions, while parachuting into occupied France, her parachute became tangled in a tree. A french agent commented that he wished that all trees would bear such beautiful fruit, to which she replied “Don’t give me any of that French shit!”, and later that evening she killed a German sentry with her bare hands. 

After her husband was killed in WWII, Violette Szabo began working for the resistance. In her work, she helped to sabotage a railroad and passed along secret information. She was captured and executed at a concentration camp at age 23. 

Grace Hopper was a computer scientist who invented the first ever compiler. Her invention makes every single computer program you use possible. 

Mona Louise Parsons was a member of an informal resistance group in the Netherlands during WWII. After her resistance network was infiltrated, she was captured and was the first Canadian woman to be imprisoned by the Nazis. She was originally sentenced to death by firing squad, but the sentence was lowered to hard lard labor in a prison camp. She escaped. 

Simone Segouin was a Parisian rebel who killed an unknown number of Germans and captured 25 with the aid of her submachine gun. She was present at the liberation of Paris and was later awarded the ‘croix de guerre’. 

Mary Edwards Walker is the only woman to have ever won an American Medal of Honor. She earned it for her work as a surgeon during the Civil War. It was revoked in 1917, but she wore it until hear death two years later. It was restored posthumously. 

Italian neuroscientist won a Nobel Prize for her discovery of nerve growth factor. She died aged 103. 

EDIT

jinxedinks added: Her name was Rita Levi-Montalcini. She was jewish, and so from 1938 until the end of the fascist regime in Italy she was forbidden from working at university. She set up a makeshift lab in her bedroom and continued with her research throughout the war.  

A snapshot of the women of color in the woman’s army corps on Staten Island

This is an ongoing project of mine, and I’ll update this as much as I can (It’s not all WWII stuff, I’ve got separate folders for separate achievements). 

File this under: The History I Wish I’d Been Taught As A Little Girl

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Part 2

Annie Jump Cannon was an american astronomer and, in addition to possibly having one of the best names in history, was co-creator of one of the first scientific classification systems of stars, based on temperature. 

Melba Roy Moutan was a Harvard educated mathematician who led a team of mathematicians at NASA, nicknamed ‘Computers’ for their number processing prowess. 

Joyce Jacobson Kaufman was a chemist who developed the concept of conformational topology, and studied at Johns Hopkins University before it officially allowed women entry in 1970. 

Vera Rubin is an astronomer and has co-authored 114 peer reviewed papers. She specializes in the study of dark matter and galaxy rotation rates. 

Mary Sherman Morgan was a rocket scientist who invented hydyne, a liquid fuel that powered the USA’s Jupiter C-rocket. 

Chien-Siung Wu was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, as well as experimental radioactive studies. She was the first woman to become president of the American Physical Society. 

Mildred Catherine Rebstock was the first person to synthesize the antibiotic chloromycetin.

Ruby Hirose was a chemist who conducted vital research about an infant paralysis vaccine. 

Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was a pediatrician and microbiologist who developed a remedy for Haemophilus influenzae, and conducted vital research on antibiotic resistance. 

Marie Tharp was a scientist who mapped the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and provided proof of continental drift. 

Mae Jamison is an astronaut who holds a degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University and was the first black woman in space.

Ada Lovelace was a mathematician and considered to be the world’s first computer programmer. 

Patricia E Bath is ophthalmologist and the inventor of the Laserphaco Probe, which is used to treat cataracts. 

Barbara McClintock won a Nobel prize for her discovery that genes could move in and between chromosomes.

That’s it for now, part three will be on its way. (Josephine Baker was requested in the first installment, just know I did not forget her! She’s in a different folder, titled ‘famous people you didn’t know were complete badasses, and she, along with Hedy Lamar and Audrey Hepburn will be in the next installment :) )

[rootfauna-deactivated20180326]

Part 3

Josephine Baker, though today remembered for her dancing, singing, and larger than life personality, actually played a significant role in WWII. She joined Women’s Auxiliary of the Free French Air Force, got her pilot’s license in 1933, and by 1944 she raised 3,143,000 francs for the war effort. She entertained the troops, which was a doubly whammy of justice. She refused to entertain segregated troops, so the French military was forced to integrate the troops for all her performances. She also smuggled secret messages in her music across countless borders. 

Audrey Hepburn is known as one of the most beautiful and talent actresses of the 1950′s, but her contributions to the world started far before her first film and continued until well after her cinematic heyday. In WWII stricken Austria, Audrey, then an aspiring ballerina, would give secret ballet performances to raise money for the Austrian resistance. She even helped smuggle secret messages for the resistance. On one such occasion, she was stopped by an enemy soldier. He asked her what she was doing and she, pretending not to understand, presented him with a bouquet of wildflowers she’d been absentmindedly picking. She was let go and the message was delivered safely. It was her experience in the war which would later prompt her to become one of the founders of UNICEF. 

Hedy Lamarr was an actress well known for her piercing gaze and deadpan wit. What she’s less known for is being a brilliant mathematician who invented the frequency hopping spread spectrum. Without her invention, we wouldn’t have bluetooth or wifi. 

Ching Shih was one of the world’s most successful pirates. At the death of her (pirate) husband, the former prostitute took command of his ships and started her pirating career. At the height of her career she commanded 1800 ships and more than 80,000 male and female pirates. She became powerful enough to challenge every empire’s naval forces in the world and her Red Flag Fleet was feared from the Chinese coast to Malaysia. Unable to defeat her, the Chinese government caved and offered her amnesty. She surprised everyone by taking it and became one of the few pirates in history to retire. She also took care of her crew even after her retirement; most of Ching’s pirates were pardoned. She died a respectable millionaire. 

Sophie School was an active member of the White Rose non-violent resistance group in WWII Germany. In 1943 she, along with her brother and the rest of the White Rose were arrested for passing out leaflets encouraging passive resistance. She and her brother were beheaded by guillotine just a few hours later. Her last words were “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

(Written by Emporer-of-nerds) Constance Markievicz (was a) Very important figure in the Irish independence movement, first woman elected to the British House of Commons, and one of the first women to hold a cabinet position in government (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic (which was a short-lived revolutionary state predating the current Ireland/Éire))!

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English ambassador to Turkey in the early 1700s, and documented her experience carefully. When she saw the Turkish perform an early method of small-pox vaccination, she urgently wrote home. She is responsible for the first variolation small-pox vaccinations in Europe. 

Marie Curie is fairly well known. Unfortunately she’s often known as the ‘assistant’ to her husband. She was a pioneering physicist and chemist, who’s work with radiation was groundbreaking. She was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the only one to win one in two fields for her discovery of polonium and uranium. It’s also notable that she was the first woman in Europe to receive a doctorate degree. Her discoveries made the x-ray machine possible, and Curie immediately put it to work. She invented a small, mobile type of x-ray machine and worked with her daughter at casualty collection points in WWI, using the machine to locate shrapnel and bullets in wounded soldiers. She died of pernicious anemia, a result of years of radioactive exposure. Many of her notebooks are still too radioactive to be read. 

Margherita Hack was an Italian astrophysicist and became administrator of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory, bringing it to renowned respect and fame. She was a prolific science writer and was awarded the Targa Giuseppe Piazzi for the scientific research, and later the Cortina Ulisse Prize for scientific dissemination. Asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honor.

(This installment was a little all over the place as far as achievements go, and short, since it was mostly requests! Hypatia of Alexandria was also requested but she, along with Sappho and others, are getting their own installment. The next installment will center around women of the literary world!)

[friendlycloud-blog]

Great respect for this!

Note that there were many many more, both before and after photography was invented.

Don’t ever let some fuckboy tell you that women just cleaned and cooked until very recently.

[ranged-weaponry]

So important.

[cute-thangsss]

This killed me on sixpenceee’s instagram

[sixpenceee]

instagram.com/sixpenceee

for those lookin

[fairyuniverse]

[socialjusticesummoner]

say it with me

1) minimum wage was originally intended to be a living wage

2) most people making minimum wage are NOT teenagers looking for spending money

3) real world application shows higher minimum wage does not cause super inflation

4) every human being deserves food and shelter

[itty-bitty-markipoo-deactivated]

Nailed it.

[pugking-deactivated20200807]

[naomhan-deactivated20160103]

[angelicxi]

Aries — oh, my sweet, sweet child, what has the world done to you? you were a bright promise, the tomorrow we had hoped for, holding flowers in your mouth without crushing them and trusting blindly in those around you. and then came the blood; and now your fire is a quiet thing, a crackling murmur hidden in the shadows. you’ve curled into yourself like a newborn babe, held your heart tightly to your chest and began the tedious healing. and all the salt in your tears made the deep wounds sting; was it this what kept you pure? I wonder, oh, I wonder. before you, I had never seen an anathema so full of innocence. (the world tried to cast you down from paradise; and it succeeded. but the fall couldn’t maim you, for fire cannot kill fire – it simply shrunk you, much like a mimosa bloom. I hope one day you’ll feel safe enough to flower, for there is so much beauty in you.) Taurus — I wish I could wrap my hands around your shoulders and hold you close for a while, because oh, what sad things they are, your bones. I am so sorry, beloved; so very sorry. and I am well aware these apologies cannot change anything, but I want you to know that there is someone who sees you as you are – even when all the others see is your superfluous frivolity and your desire for riches, I see the thoughtful mind, the gentle gestures, each and every of your heartbeats. the song of you is imprinted into my memory as the change in seasons is; you are unforgettable, something so precious and so very dear. (don’t let them shame you for your greed – those who try to do so cannot wrap their all too little minds around the fact that sin is not necessarily negative. your love for gold has root in the same place as your love for others; you only want it so you may share it.) Gemini — it’s lonely, isn’t it? not being the way all others are. they tell you you’re a forgery, that your smile is a mask and your composure an act, simply because they cannot accept the idea that people are supposed to be multidimensional. on and on they go, pinning their ignorance to you under the name of blame, seeing in you only that which they wish to see. sometimes, you wish you were like them. I know you do. you shouldn’t. it might be lonely where you are, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing; lonely doesn’t mean secluded. there are others like you, with minds like diamonds. others like you, who are only habitual in their tendency for change. (you will find someone who can make sense out of you, one day, you know. they’ll know you better than you yourself do – every single aspect of you, every single frantic facet and feeling. and when you do, the wait will be more than worth it. I promise you won’t die nor live alone.) Cancer — you poor, poor, poor thing. it’s been a thousand years since you’ve curled into yourself, hid your heart deep in the cradle of your ribs and let yourself sleep; then the time came for you to awaken, and you found the world unchanged – it was as if everything had stood still. reality swept into you like saltwater into gaping wounds, and every fiber of your soul wept. fearful, you took the broken glass road still, walked it fully aware of what laid in waiting; like a bride the night she is wed to a stranger, you swallowed your terror and saw it through. often, those ignorant make you out to be such a bumbling coward. you’re not. you just aren’t. (in fact, you’re on of the bravest people I know; it takes so much courage to let the world see you weep – and it takes even more of it to wipe your tears and keep moving forward. above all, it takes immense courage to allow yourself to love even when you know it’ll hurt.) Leo — the size of your heart puts to shame both Jupiter and your own pride and ego; to this day, I am not sure if you would have been better off with one much smaller, but I know for sure the world would have been emptier by far. you see, your touch is one of gold; whomever you decide to invest your time and love into grows the size of Atlas, and so, without you as you are now there would have been much less in the world. that is your downfall, isn’t it? always has been. the way you’ve always put others first, giving them all of you, never asking for anything to be given to you in return. you are a gardener, dearest, and people are your roses. (it breaks my heart that all your selfless effort was almost always repaid in hurt and sorrow; know that you are not to be blamed for any of it. you have done nothing wrong – sometimes, things simply fall apart. don’t shut your heart. I’d hate to see your love rot and turn to hatred.) Virgo — you have endured well the contempt of others, my dear; you have taken every blow with open arms. they have called you frigid and prude and arrogant and everything in between, but you knew better. tell me then: if you can endure so well the slander of others, if you don’t care what they make of you, why do you worry so? why do you see only blemishes when you look at yourself in the mirror? your hesitance to trust others stems in your fear that if you let them in they’ll see your ugliness, all the imagined imperfections you see in your reflection. you can’t trust others because you don’t trust yourself; and I wish so badly that you would have a little more faith in who you are, in your beauty. (being unable to forgive, jealousy and lust do not make you terrible. hate is human nature as much as love is; emotions, be they bad or good, are intrinsic to mankind. you are such a passionate being, despite your outward delicacy, and that, my dear, is simply stunning. please try to love yourself.) Libra — darling child, didn’t the gods tell you the mob sees dancers as something of the devil, especially when their preferred stage is the sharp edge of a sword? few in this world love truth, and fewer still are fond of things like righteousness and justice. your ability to remain indiscriminate in the face of contradictory realities and deny none of them is both a blessing and a curse. your mind, I fear, is the Pandora fate has crafted specifically for you; a beautiful gift that hides such doom and sorrow. and you are aware of all of this – how you were meant for greater things, with your noble mind and your true heart, yet on you dance, fighting against the windmills of adversity. how brave you are. (know that your effort will not go without reward. know that you won’t be forever unloved, nor will you be forever misunderstood. there will be those whom, like you, have the makings of just men, and they will understand. keep your eyes open and search the crowd; that is what you do best.) Scorpio — I look at you and my heart grows small; there is so much sadness in you, from the flower of your eyes to the slouching arch of your shoulders. you have been misjudged and falsely accused for so long: whore, they said; monster, perverter, sickness of the soul – and all of it because you like sex, as if somehow they are the virgin mary reborn, the goddamn hypocrites. this, too, is something they have misunderstood; it is not sex that you crave or are interested in. it is intimacy: it is the vulnerability that comes with having your soul completely bared and lain before another; you crave love, in its’ purest of forms. (and I know they have convinced you that someone of your kind is not “worthy”; fuck that. your love is priceless, and one day someone will call your battle scars a masterpiece. one day someone will love you as wholly as you deserve to be loved. they will love all of you.) Sagittarius — there is such wanderlust in you – you’ve made a home out of the long, long roads, walked the earth to its’ ends and bathed in the oceans of the horizon; the sky was your sole companion, its’ stars your map, the wind a spellsong to ward off the passing sadness and melancholia that threatened to dim the flame of your heart. oh, my child; how very wonderful you are, a barefoot nomad forever in awe of the world. the feeble minded call you rootless; how wrong they are. having a voyager heart does not make you afraid of commitment. it simply means your roots lie elsewhere, splat across the world. (do not let their malice plant doubts into your mind’s garden; your gypsy heart is worth more than all their empty ones combined. keep daring the world, sate your thirst for journeying; only exploration can ever lead to discovery, so let your feet and head both walk the world.) Capricorn — good god, you’re so tired. life has worn you down to the marrow of your bones, took everything from you until you were bare-handed; and yet. and yet you’re still here, standing before me, your spine hardened to titanium, a delicate thing that can withstand even the most apocalyptic of sieges; you still find it in you to smile, bitter-bloody-all-teeth and still happy, somehow. know that I am proud of you; of your bravery, of your resilience, of how you’ve clung to life by the skin of your teeth. I am proud of you. (and know that you deserve happiness – you may feel like you don’t, you may feel that it is above the likes of you, but you deserve it; you have earned it. know that one of these days, the sun will shine down on your lane, too.) Aquarius — there’s so much of you inside your skin I am often surprised it has yet to come apart at the seams; there’s so much of everything inside your skull I am left in awe of your bones – often I wonder, how are they strong enough to contain the exploding universe inside? my god, this world of ours has seven wonders and you are all of them. the fortitude of your bright mind ceaselessly surprises me; I know what to expect, and yet I am still thrown off by your ingenuity and your ability to remain rational in your abstract ways. nobody but you is open enough to accept it all; nobody but you can see through the prism of all eyes and walk away with their sanity intact. (I know they call you “cold”, an ice queen of the Siberian tundra. let them be. those who cannot see your white-hot warmth are not worthy of your brilliance. you are the brightest star, my dear, someone accepting and embracing of it all. do not settle for anyone that is blind to your light.) Pisces — and how terrible it must be for you, who lives always halfway, to be stuck in a world that demands certainties which you will never have to give. it is not to say you don’t want to be resolute – you simply cannot. your world does not have truth, nor does it have falsity; all that your world has are colors, swirling, forever mingling anew like the clouds in the sky. one day you are overflowing with everything that blooms inside of you, and lilies are spilling out of your ribs; the next, you’re empty, and you can’t for the life of you find something that is all-encompassing enough to fill the growing abyss south of your sternum. (know that it is okay. the most humane thing you can be is full of contradictions; as maddening as it can be, each paradox gets you closer to the entity your peers call god. it was never the devil that built his home on the crossroads, you know. embrace your nature.)

poetry for the signs: the “you’ve done well” edition,

L. Schreiber

(via haramdaddy)

this made me cry tears of joy

(via rainshading)

[openmarginalis]

271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book

"In 1692 an artist known only as "A. Boogert" sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors."

“Spanning nearly 800 completely handwritten (and painted) pages, Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau, was probably the most comprehensive guide to paint and color of its time. According to Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel who translated part of the introduction, the color book was intended as an educational guide. The irony being there was only a single copy that was probably seen by very few eyes.

It’s hard not to compare the hundreds of pages of color to its contemporary equivalent, the Pantone Color Guide, which wouldn’t be published for the first time until 1963.”

The entire book is viewable in high resolution here, and you can read a description of it here (it appears E-Corpus might have crashed for the moment). The book is currently kept at the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France. (via @erikkwakkel)” - via Colossal 

[satorugoojo]

L E M B A S

[sheswanderlost]