Thia Wen

[thiawen]

My Writing Master Post

Writing Event Calendars

Star Trek

General Fandom

Star Trek

Gold Silk

From the Shores of Eridanus (poem)

Captain’s Announcement

Dynasty

Shadowhunters

The Blessings of a Curse

DC

Extraterrestrial

A Promise Kept (Sequel)

A Crow of Triumph (WIP)

Anastasis

Ghost of Tomorrow

The Torment of Tantalus

Farewell

Marvel

Hyperferremia

Fire and Fury

Events

Febuwhump 2024

1 - Helpless (Star Trek AOS)

2 - Solitary Confinement (The Martian)

3 - “Bite Down On This” (Star Trek AOS)

4 - Obedience (MCU)

5 - Rope Burns (Star Trek AOS)

6 - “You Lied To Me” (Star Trek TOS)

7 - Suffering In Silence (Star Trek AOS)

8 - “Why Won’t It Stop” (Star Trek AOS)

9 - Bees (Star Trek AOS)

10 - Killing In Self Defense (Star Trek AOS)

11 - Time Loop (Star Trek AOS or TOS)

12 - Semi-Conscious (Star Trek AOS or TOS)

13 - “You Weren’t Supposed To Get Hurt” (Star Trek AOS)

14 - Blood-Stained Tiles (Star Trek AOS)

[memecucker]

[yourreddancer]

The European Union already forced Apple to abandon its proprietary charging port and adopt USB-C across its entire iPhone lineup. It just did something bigger. A new EU mandate requires every smartphone sold in Europe including Apple devices to feature a battery that can be replaced by the user without specialist tools, without voiding a warranty, and without sending the device to a manufacturer approved service center. Batteries must maintain a minimum capacity threshold after a set number of charge cycles and replacement parts must remain available for up to ten years after a model goes on sale.

The consumer electronics industry built its current business model around batteries that degrade, cannot be replaced at home, and create a natural upgrade cycle every two to three years. The EU just legislated that model out of existence in the world's largest regulatory market.

Apple, Samsung, and every other manufacturer now faces a choice between redesigning their devices for the European market or accepting that their current hardware architecture is no longer legally sellable there.

Given that no company walks away from European consumers voluntarily the phones are going to change and once they change for Europe the rest of the world will ask why theirs still do not.

[dreamsrunfaster]

[maimonideznuts]

Making Batteries Removable and Replaceable: a closer look at the new EU Guidelines - Right to Repair Europe

The EU published new guidelines for removability and replaceability requirements under the Batteries Regulation. Some progress was made, but

Portable device batteries that maintain at least 80% of their capacity after 1000 cycles are exempt. Meaning that most Apple and flagship Samsung Galaxy phones are likely unaffected.

Regrettably, a huge opportunity was missed to make all smartphone and tablet batteries removable and replaceable by end-users. After several changes of direction by the Commission throughout the legislative process on the matter, the guidelines state that for portable batteries covered by the Ecodesign regulation for smartphones and tablets, the latter will prevail over the Batteries Regulation, allowing an important exemption from removability and replaceability requirements for devices meeting certain battery longevity and waterproofing requirements. Not only does this run directly against the aim of the Batteries Regulation itself, but it also risks setting a dangerous precedent ahead of future product-specific Ecodesign requirements, reinforcing a false dichotomy between durability and repairability.

[queen-of-crows]

Not trying to victim blame or anything but you’d think with all the times necromancers have tried/succeeded in raising undead armies the people of Tamriel would’ve stopped burying their dead fully armed and equipped for battle.

Like, I know your great grandpa’s sword was A Part Of Him and all but maybe you could bury SuperDeathblade somewhere not right next to SuperDeathbladeMan. Just in case.

[karhs]

oh, what, so he can get his ass kicked when he inevitably gets raised from the dead?? you want to make great grandpa into a loser? a chump?? if his corpse is going to be puppeteered into battle by a sick and twisted sorcerer then by the nine he is going to do it well

[br1ghtestlight]

spent MONTHS looking for this stupid tumblr post bcuz i constantly want to reference it and it wouldn't come up no matter what i searched despite it being (what i thought) was a popular well-known tumblr post only to find that the original blog turned off reblogs and deactivated and that it only got 12k notes total. but im posting it anyway to preserve its legacy

[just-another-cat-blog]

pride month!!!

[lemonsharks]

Is that a miette?

[jeanjauthor]

Pride for you!  Pride for a thousand years!!

[lost-and-cursed]

you COME OUT to miette? you come out to her as queer? oh! oh! pride for mother! pride for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!

[penny-anna]

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:

[penny-anna]

~*~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.

[penny-anna]

#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: :)

[storywonker]

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

[ramshacklefey]

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*

[reformedkingsmanagent]

@ghostriderofthearagon

[cryptidscrypticcrosswordclub]

dYinGggGggg…

[whetstonefires]

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.

[whetstonefires]

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!

[bowditch]

Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.

Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*

[linguisticparadox]

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.

[sainamoonshine]

Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man

Boromir, from beyond the grave: j e s u s

[esser-z]

Tolkien would be SO PROUD of this post

[runiaimperii]

It got better

[peaceheather]

there may come a day when i do not reblog this post, but it is NOT THIS DAY

[icecreamwithjackdaniels]

Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (Dutch–Belgian, 1821–1909), "Study of Eleven Cats" (details), 1904

[cruxiu]

A visual physics lesson at 80 km/h.

Enthusiasts launched a man from a moving truck in the opposite direction - at the same speed the car was traveling.

The experiment spectacularly showed how relative speed works

[the-haiku-bot]

The experiment

spectacularly showed how

relative speed works

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

we gotta get back into revolving bookcases i'm begging

truly we allow the pinnacles of human achievement to wither and collapse into ashes in the wind

[senatortedcruz]

I am in fucking tears

[thiawen]

My childhood dentist literally committed suicide guys 😭

[spacewonder19]

NGC 2359 Thor's Helmet ©

[requiem-on-water]

Robert Gruszecki

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[animentality]

[animentality]

[frontmansdefender]

RIP to the legend

[silvermoon424]

This goose fucking rocks and had a crazy life!

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

Before and after his death, Thomas has been celebrated as an icon of the LGBTQ+ community for obvious reasons.