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Fun Random Facts About the LOTR Soundtrack

Most composers spend just 10-12ish weeks working on a film’s music. John Williams spent around 14 weeks on each Star Wars movie, 40ish weeks total for the whole OT……but composing the LOTR trilogy’s soundtrack took four years

The vocals you hear in the soundtrack are usually in one of Tolkien’s languages (esp. Elvish). The English translations of the lyrics are all poems, or quotes from the book, or occasionally even quotes from other parts of the films that are relevant to the scene

When there were no finished scenes for him to score, Howard Shore would develop musical themes inspired by the scripts or passages from the book. That’s how he got all Middle-Earth locations have their own unique sound: he was able to compose drafts of “what Gondor would sound like” and “what Lorien would sound like” long before any scenes in those places were filmed

Shore has said his favorite parts to score were always the little heartfelt moments between Frodo and Sam

Shore wrote over 100 unique leitmotifs/musical themes to represent specific people, places, and things in Middle Earth (over 160 if you count The Hobbit)

The ones we all talk about are the Fellowship theme, the main Shire Theme, and the themes for places like Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, and Rivendell…but a lot of the more subtle ones get overlooked and underappreciated

Like Aragorn’s theme. It’s a lot less “obvious” than the others because, like Aragorn himself, it adapts to take on the color of whatever place Aragorn is in: it’s played on dramatic broody stringed instruments in Bree, on horns in battle scenes, softly on the flute with Arwen in Rivendell….

Eowyn has not just one but three different leitmotifs to represent her

Gollum and Smeagol both have their own leitmotifs! Whose theme music is playing in the scene can often tell you whether the Gollum or Smeagol side is “winning” at the moment

The melody for Gollum’s Song in the end credits of the The Two Towers is the Smeagol and Gollum themes smushed together (it’s Symbolic)

And then there’s the really obscure ones. Like there’s a melody that plays at Boromir’s death that shows up again in ROTK in scenes that foreshadow a major death or loss

Wikipedia actually has a list of these leitmotifs, click this link and scroll down to check it out if you’re bored

Shore wanted the theme music to grow alongside the characters– so that as the characters changed, their theme music would change with them.

You can hear that most clearly in the Shire theme. Like the hobbits, it goes through A Lot

Like compare the childish lil penny whistle theme you hear in Concerning Hobbits/the beginning of FOTR with (throws a dart at random Beautiful Tragic Hobbit Character Development scene because there WAY TOO MANY to choose from) the scene when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, where you hear a kind of shattered and broken but more mature version of that same theme in the background

I could write you a book on how much I love the way the Shire theme grows across the course of these films

Unlike the hero’s themes, which constantly change and grow, the villain’s themes (The One Ring theme, the Isengard theme, etc) remain basically the same from the very beginning of FOTR to the end of ROTK. Shore said this was an intentional choice: to emphasize that evil is static, while good is capable of change

Shore has said that between all the music that made into the movies and the music that didn’t, he composed enough for “a month of continuous listening”……..where can I sign up

ashfae

Look I studied music composition at uni including a class on Wagner in which I listened to the entire Ring cycle over four times per opera while reading the piano reductions and full orchestral scores and studying the various leitmotifs and I kid you not, the LotR scores are absolutely on that level of complexity and brilliance. They are phenomenal and the more I listen to them the more I find to respect. I hope students nowadays get to study them because there’s so, so much there. So many layers of meaning and foreshadowing and internal references woven together into this incredible tapestry of music.

itspileofgoodthings

I know that Peter’s Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy technically has flaws but also….it doesn’t. It’s perfect.

byjoveimbeinghumble

‘Are these magic cloaks?’ asked Pippin, looking at them. with wonder.

‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”

- Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 8: Farewell to Lorien

This is how I think of Jackson’s movies. Yes, there are serious flaws - Gandalf’s de-powering, Gimli as comic relief, and Faramir, namely - but come on.

Remember when the guys making their chain mail invented a new method for quickly producing large amounts of it by hand? Remember Miranda Otto walking down the street, practicing sword positions? The guys who forged all of the swords - for leads and for extras? The men and women riders who volunteered to be riders of Rohan? The costume designers who designed the inside of Theoden’s armor (which no one would ever see) so beautifully that Bernard Hill said he felt like a king? The friendships between the cast, and their size doubles, and the stuntmen?

When they made that movie, they put all that they loved into all that they made.

septembersung

#just hundreds of people who went ‘sure let me try this’ #and they made something breathtaking #and then they made it 12 more times in different sizes ( @byjoveimbeinghumble )

phoxxent

Wait tell me more about that chainmail thing

byjoveimbeinghumble

“Kaynemaile has worked tirelessly to perfect the material science behind beautiful architectural mesh, collaborating with architects and designers on projects that embolden urban environments with positive buildings. The company’s patented polycarbonate mesh, inspired by 2,000-year-old medieval chainmail, was initially created for the armor and weapons seen in the The Lord of The Rings movie trilogy and is now used on major architectural projects around the world.

“The film’s art director and Kaynemaile’s founder Kayne Horsham worked with his team to construct each garment from plastic plumbing tubes, coating them in pure silver. Once filming wrapped, Horsham dedicated himself to creating a change to the liquid state assembly process to mass produce the polycarbonate chainmail for architectural applications — products that were light, but strong enough to protect the interior or exterior of a building. Now an industry-leading manufacturer, Kaynemaile produces mesh for everything from small interior screens to large scale exterior façades. Their mesh is easy to install and can be custom created for specialized applications.”

https://architizer.com/blog/practice/materials/kaynemaile-mesh-facade-systems/

Kaynemaile's patented mesh façade systems are incredibly lightweight and easy to install while bringing a bold look to any scale building.

byjoveimbeinghumble

YOU GUYS

ohifonlyx33

they took forced perspective and scaled sets to a new level by adding moving set pieces to create the illusion that the hobbits and dwarves were much smaller than everyone else even when the camera moved.

every scene you see in the 11+ hours of glory that is the LOTR masterpiece is most like ridiculously elaborate or expensive–from model towers to the all-new motion capture technology used for gollum to the costumes and sets to the aerial on location shots of mother-fracking new zealand and the big impressive battle scenes and horse charges.

but then the story and the screenplay too–there is just SO much lore that is there in the background lurking if you want to look for it, yet it still remains simplified for the average viewer. Crazy impressive feat.

And the acting is heartfelt and real and makes you love the characters.

ALSO DON’T GET ME STARTED ON FREAKING HOWARD SHORE AND HIS 100+ HEARTSHATTERINGLY BEAUTIFUL LIETMOTIFS AND BRILLIANT SUBTLE VARIATIONS IN THE FLIPPING 13 HOUR SOUNDTRACK. AND ENYA SINGING IN REAL ELVISH.

twoflowersdeadwife

Are Eskarina and Simon Rincewind's Parents?

I'm sure someone probably said all this before, but here is my list of clues:

No Experience with Either Parent

Esk says she has a son

Esk can travel through time, so it's possible she went back in time to give birth and left her son there for his own protection, returning to the future (aka: ran away before her son was born)

Esk is from the Ramtops; Rincewind had a sheep plushie as a child

The Dungeon Dimensions

Esk and Simon went to the Dungeon Dimensions, Simon getting taken there and Esk going to rescue him--Rincewind also went to the Dungeon Dimensions, saving someone from there, like Esk, and getting trapped there, like Simon

The Dungeon Dimensions called to Simon, and the Octavo called to Rincewind

Intelligence and Personality Traits

Upon arriving at Unseen University, Simon went immediately to the library-- Rincewind worked in the library

Simon is a booksmart genius and Esk says her son might grow up to be an engineer -- the Roundworld version of Rincewind, Rjinswand, was a nuclear physicist

Esk insists she is a wizard, despite being a girl--Rincewind insists he is a wizzard, despite not being able to do magic

Physical Traits

Simon is tall and gangly, Rincewind is tall and gangly

Esk has brown hair while young, much of the official art shows Rincewind with brown hair

As a child, Esk liked to run around more than most little girls (debatable: most books on little girls are written by men), Rincewind is always running

Anything else I missed? For or against?

summers-pratt

Look. The design for the scythe is so cool, SO cool. She is gorgeous and dope as hell. But you want me to believe this bitch is ancient??

Thousands of years old????

This looks like a weapon an alien warrior race uses in a cheesy sci fi movie. And I say that with affection. Exasperated affection, but affection.

Also. I just. That's not what a scythe looks like.

That is not an agricultural tool, nor does it resemble a symbol of reaping souls. And nor is it a sickle for that matter (and a scythe and a sickle are NOT the same thing; though they are both centuries old agricultural tools, the sickle is one-handed, C shaped, and has come to be a symbol of the agricultural class in post WWI Russia.

A scythe is a two-handed agricultural tool with a curved blade that is a symbol of death, not as a weapon to bring about death, but carried by Death to collect souls after death occurs, to reap them, as people used to use it to reap crops (tho in mythology and history they have been used as weapons, bc pointy metal hurty and also symbolism)).

But anyway yeah that's not what a scythe looks like!! It's an axe with a stake taped to the other end!!!!! In conclusion it fucks but the way they try to describe it makes me angy. I love her. Her lore is just problematic but it's not her fault, she did nothing wrong <3 but it does annoy me when I think about it. In conclusion (let the weird black goo rock symbolize the bad lore):

takaraphoenix

Personal headcanon - because HARD SAME OP - maybe it helps:

She's a shapeshifter. The moment Buffy stepped down there and laid eyes on her, Buffy dictated her shape.

Because this is not a scythe but it's the most Buffy Summers weapon possible and I trust Buffy to only have THE vaguest of shape of an idea of what a scythe could look like while at the same time applying what she would want out of this.

The design is too modern, to un-scythe-y and too Buffy to be the scythe's "original shape".

She's a magical weapon for a Chosen One, why shouldn't she also choose her shape?

summers-pratt

I LOVE THIS IT MAKES TOTAL SENSE this is canon to me now thank u bestie for your servive and your brain <3

writing-prompt-s

A mark on your forehead identifies the god you must worship to stay alive, usually by joining its local church or temple. Your mark is unknown, meaning an old, forgotten god sponsored you. To survive, you must either find an old temple to worship at, or do the arduous task of building a new one

halcyonhue

Nobody in your small coastal village has ever seen the Godmark that you were born with. It’s a dark russet sequence of criss-crossing lines, with a vertical arrowhead on the left and a circle on the right, just over where your brow meets your temple. Some of the traders who come down from the mountain say it looks like one of the scripts used in the hinterlands, but not a language that any of them recognize.

“If she’s got the temperament for it, she should try her luck inland,” they advise. “No point her starting a temple here if she’d find her people elsewhere, with a little searching.”

At first, your parents are reluctant to send you away. Though you’re well-behaved and diligent in your chores, you’re a sickly child with no God to worship. And besides, you’ve always been the dreamy type–inclined to lose track of time watching the path of rain droplets chasing down the window, or the fronds of an anemone as it sways in a rock pool.

Instead, they send you to the temple of the Storm to learn all you’ll need for your own God. You are happy there, for a time: making up beds and serving food to the castaways who pass through, keeping vigil at the lighthouse, burning incense and praying with the loyal widows and orphans of the drowned.

One such widow, an old, old lady, touches the mark on your forehead. “I recognise those letters. We wrote this way in the town where I grew up, way off past the mountains.”

Your heartbeat quickens. “What does it say!?”

She squints, eyes engulfed by wrinkles and hidden behind smudged glass. “A… Ar… Oh, I can’t remember how to speak it. I left before I learnt my letters properly. There was a war, you know. But I remember,” she says, mistily, “the most beautiful pink and white flowers used to grow, on the borders of the wheat fields…”

You try to ask more questions, but remembering the war distresses her, and so you speak of other things. When she’s drifted off to sleep, you get to your feet, go home and tell your parents: you are leaving in search of your God.

mylordshesacactus

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

mylordshesacactus

I can’t begin to describe how happy and flattered and a little teary I am that this just broke 100k.

I may be the actual only human being on Tumblr with a post this popular that I not only don’t regret making, but am actually HAPPY whenever I notice a surge in its circulation.

I never intended this to gain any traction at all (you’ll notice there’s no sources or anything–this was a personal ramble, prompted in good humor by a friend after I jokingly said that I wished someone would give me an excuse to cry about Carpathia on Tumblr so I could get it out of my system.) I literally expected to get, like, maybe 20 likes and a reblog, from friends, indulging me in my nonsense.

It just….means a lot to me that it’s touched so many people. I see a lot of tags to the effect of “HOW DARE YOU HURT ME LIKE THIS AND MAKE ME CRY ABOUT A BOAT” that are often really funny, but overwhelmingly the tags on this post are from people saving it for a rainy day, or remarking in a sort of quiet awe that they never even really thought about her role in the story–and God knows I never did, I learned it by complete accident much as most of the people who’ve found this post.

And so many of you guys are taking strength and reassurance from the reminder not only that people are capable of amazing things together, but simply that kindness matters and that a simple, tiny act of compassion is never wasted. I’m just really glad to have been able to do that for some folks.

If I can just add one personal note. I need to emphasize something I only touched on in the original post.

I need to emphasize that Carpathia failed.

A lot of the tags and comments have a tinge of…despair, or guilt, or wistfulness about things like this happening so rarely. Or inadequacy, or just being overwhelmed or unhappy about not being in a position to step up in a comparable way. And I want to gently bring up the fact that this is still the sinking of the Titanic.

They did not get there in time. They did not save the ship. It can be argued that they may not even have saved a single life; we have no way of knowing. This was still a horrific maritime disaster mired in arrogance and incompetence and a lack of care.

If the response to this story shows anything, it shows this: It matters that they tried.

Even though they got there too late, even though the ship still sank. It matters that they tried. The difference between making the best reasonable speed after confirming the seriousness of the situation, and the miracle they pulled off–it matters. It makes all the difference. Even if it made no difference at all. Not one of you read this and concluded that I was stupid for caring so much when the Titanic still sank and all those people still died.

You don’t have to fix the world. You’ll likely be cold and sick and miserable and testy and scared, and unprepared, and in over your head, and entirely too small to be of any real use. It feels stupid, passing out blankets and coffee in the middle of an ice field knowing what just happened. It’s hard to feel anything but useless when all you can do is tap a wireless transmitter and promise help that you know will come too late.

It matters that they fought for those people. It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried. It matters that they didn’t stop. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have read this far.

comradesummers

when buffy summers said “you have a choice. you don’t have a good choice, but you have a choice!” I felt that

comradesummers

No, but fr, that line is so important to understanding Buffy’s character. It’s not just about making the right choice, it’s about owning your choices. Ford tells Buffy that he doesn’t have a choice, that the deaths of the people in the vampire club are beyond his control. But Buffy doesn’t buy that shit. Ford chooses to let these people die, and as much as Buffy is trying to convince him to change his mind, I think she’s also repulsed by the idea that he’s trying to justify himself by minimizing his responsibility to these people. Because Buffy is someone who often has extremely limited choices, and is also hyper-aware of her responsibility to others. She constantly has to make decisions that can and have resulted in people’s deaths, and the only way that she knows how to handle that is to take full responsibility for every single choice she makes. She rarely allows herself to opt out of responsibility, to diminish her role in any given situation (even when that’s often the healthy thing to do) because in her mind, to do that would be to relinquish all control and all morality, just like Ford is doing in this scene.

That’s why Buffy is so insistent on taking responsibility for Allan Finch’s death, even though it causes irreparable harm to her and Faith’s relationship. It’s why she admits to having killed Ted to the police, even when Joyce is making excuses for her. It’s why she is so horrified with her choices in season 6, why she begs Tara to please tell her that she’s wrong. It’s what she means by her “I am the law speech” in season 7. Buffy simply can’t make excuses for herself, can’t give herself the easy way out. She always considers herself present in whatever situation she’s in, and always responsible for the choices she makes, no matter the mitigating circumstances. There’s no such thing as not having a choice, in her eyes. There’s always a choice, even if it’s not a good one. And this one singular line just captures so much about who Buffy is and how she sees the world and herself within it.

m0unta1ndude

dr who’s on first, doctor strange is on second and doctor house is on third. theres no way theyre getting through a single inning

four-rabbits-in-a-trenchcoat

so who’s on first?

you-say-that-so-often

That’s right 👍🏻

four-rabbits-in-a-trenchcoat

that’s strange

you-say-that-so-often

No, he’s on second.

four-rabbits-in-a-trenchcoat

Well how’s he on second if he’s on first?

you-say-that-so-often

No no no, House is on third. Second base is Strange.

supreme-leader-stoat

Well this whole darn thing is strange but what I’m asking is who’s on first?

Naturally.

Who?

Naturally.

So Naturally is the first baseman?

tornadointhetundra

No. The first baseman is Who.

supreme-leader-stoat

Well I don’t know that so how’s about you tell me?

tornadointhetundra

House is on Third.

supreme-leader-stoat

I’m not asking you about third base I’m asking you about first base.

tornadointhetundra

Who’s on first!

supreme-leader-stoat

This is horrible

tornadointhetundra

Dr Horrible is the pitcher, not first base

supreme-leader-stoat

That’s not what I’m asking about! No!

kactusnz

Dr No is up to bat.

lets-steal-an-archive

When B. Dylan Hollis started making lost-to-time recipes like broiled humdingers and pork cakes, he had no clue he was on the path to TikTok

this part seemed relevant to this blue hellsite ⤵️

It's safe to say that a bunch of people bonding over 100-year-old recipes is not what typically comes to mind when you imagine TikTok food content. But, also, Hollis's current online popularity isn't solely thanks to TikTok. He's also attracted a sizable fandom on the sometimes forgotten, but immensely powerful corner of the internet known as Tumblr. In fact, he's so popular that, in April, he entered into the site's top-20 list of web celebrities, according to Cates Holderness, head of editorial at Tumblr. Holderness told Eater the spike was likely because Hollis did a live video where he finally acknowledged his growing fandom on Tumblr.

"It was really funny to see people freaking out in an excited way, like, 'Oh my gosh, this guy that we love has acknowledged us and thanked us in this really sweet and sincere way'," she said. "He's aware that the Tumblr audience is there, but he's very nervous to interact with it."

Hollis's videos are regularly downloaded from TikTok and re-uploaded on Tumblr, where they have long, very viral second lives, which is actually common for popular TikTok, in general. But, according to Holderness, the thing that really ignited Hollis's fandom on the platform was a text post from 2021 written by a user named @thestuffedalligator. It was shared 25,000 times and reads:

The main thing I get from Dylan Hollis cooking old recipes is this:

Recipes from the 1910s and the Great Depression are great, and I suspect it's because they were made by someone with limited resources. But they found a way to make something good, maybe even something fantastic with those limited resources, and they wanted to write it down and share with their friends so that they could also make something out of saltines and potatoes. Recipes from the 1910s and the Great Depression are written down and shared in love.

The recipes you should fear come from the 1950s and 1960s, which I'm pretty sure are written down and shared as a form of McCarthyism.

"The history side of Tumblr is a very large community," Holderness said. "So it's kind of not surprising that a lot of the recipes that he makes, the older recipes, from the '20s, from the Great Depression, tend to be very popular. The recipes that are either extremely good or extremely terrible, in general, get the most traction."

For what it's worth, Hollis agreed with @thestuffedalligator's post, saying the Great Depression recipes are his favorite and the ones from the '60s are his least favorite; though he doesn't think that McCarthyism is to blame for why recipes from that era are so inedible. Instead, he thinks it was because bringing Jell-O to a potluck was a way to signify that you had enough money to own a refrigerator, and gelatin was marketed to women as a way to stay slim.

thatgirlnevershutsup

the sometimes forgotten, but immensely powerful corner of the internet known as Tumblr

westbrookwestbooks

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”

garrettwrites

Follow me on Twitter for more vampire nonsense

shrike-dyke

human: dude you've been in our d&d group for literally like three years, you don't need to keep asking if you're invited every time

vampire: i knowww, i just get anxious ok?

human: oh fair

lastsonlost

I feel personally attacked. Lol

gothiccharmschool

IT’S CALLED AN AESTHETIC, SUSAN.

gallopinggallifreyans

we figured out Roman concrete btw. This is the only thing on my mind

nongunktional

Oh? Do tell?

gallopinggallifreyans

HOKAY. Doing this in layman’s terms because I could not explain the chemistry in detail if I tried. Pls forgive if I’m a little off in the explanation because idk chem lol

So we’ve been trying to figure out why the fuck Roman concrete has held up so long, right? Our concrete lasts maybe like ten years before it looks like it took a wrecking ball to the face. And even then, our roads suck in general. Universally. Potholes. Everywhere.

Roman concrete has lasted two thousand years. Or more. Depends on where you go.

Now a bunch of scientists took chunks of concrete and threw a bunch of waves at it to figure out the composition, and turns out the concrete has lime in it. At first they were like “Huh, that’s weird, why are these imperfections in this super durable long-lasting concrete?”

So anyways they dismissed the lime, and they also figured out that Roman concrete is suuuuuper strong in water. Like it gets stronger in water. Compare that to our shitty ass concrete. Our concrete suffers in water. It’s shit. Our concrete is a middle-schooler’s newspaper bridge project compared to the Bifrost that is Roman concrete.

Now, because chemical composition is fairly easy to figure out, they found volcanic ash. We don’t have volcanic ash in our concrete (as far as I know), so idk I guess they thought that was the differential factor that made Roman concrete so strong. To my understanding, the Romans used hydraulic mortar rather than aerial mortar. Hydraulic mortar could harden with hydration and reactive silicates, whereas aerial mortar needed exposure to the air and was weaker.

Now, remember those imperfections I mentioned earlier? Lime is very, very weak. You ever felt limestone? Yeah. You get it. So it’s not hard to figure out why we thought these were actually imperfections in otherwise amazing, god-like, S-tier concrete. We used to think it was slaked lime, which is just lime paste.

One of the labs involved in the research developed a chemical mapping technique that allowed them to determine the exact makeup and type of lime present in the concrete. They figured out that this particular form of lime might have been quicklime, which is extremely brittle and very reactive. Quicklime forms at extremely high temperatures. We mix our concrete cold. Another common modern L.

In short, the Romans engineered preferential pathways for faults in the concrete to pass through the lime, which would react to hydration and recrystallize as more lime (calcium carbonate) and heal itself.

This is groundbreaking. I’m so amazed. Here’s the MIT publication, and here’s the journal article.

nongunktional

Ah, I see, road fuseboxes.

gallopinggallifreyans

Basically yeah! Especially if those fuseboxes are filled with quick hardening foam and look like they were left there by accident, except they’re everywhere so they couldn’t possibly be an accident.

therobotmonster

Apparently they’re already working on methods of adapting this kind of concrete for modern use. We could potentially fix the US’s crumbling infrastructure and simultaneously upgrade to vastly superior long-lasting materials.

gallopinggallifreyans

@corrodedcoffindisbanded it’s 8:30am this made me laugh so hard I woke up

lovely-kittens-blog-blog

wicked-naughty-diva

Look at the center of this image for 30sec, then watch Van Gogh’s *Starry Night* come to life

(via TumbleOn)

stealinghiswife-blog

Whoa..

unculturedandproud

What the actual fuck, I thought it was gonna make the lines in the painting kinda wiggly and stuff but holy SHIT.

spikedru

as much as i love sprusilla i love the way they break up bc its just. objectively really funny. whoops

spikedru

tfw my psychic girlfriend saw the future where i eventually sacrifice myself to save the world because my love for the slayer alters me on such fundamental level i fought to change myself to become a better person for her but right now the idea that i could ever fall in love with my mortal enemy hasnt even broken thru my subconsious yet so im going to scream and cry and throw up

levianity

dreamduality

diamond-hoo-ha-man

i thought this was a hospital drama why does he have a shotgun?!??!?

ulysseus

It’s a really, really good hospital drama

elkian

I’m so glad I turned on the Audio bc it turns out this is set to Boney M’s Rasputin and is basically perfectly synced

cappuccinoandglitter

I’m glad to see the ancient art of vidding is alive and well.

thegingerpowers

bogleech

As someone around for 9-11 and the "NEVER FORGET NUMBER #1 GREATEST TRAGEDY EVER IN HISTURY" response to it I am in thrilled and invigorated by the fact that younger people just make amogus memes and TikTok nonsense about it. A huge chunk of America cared more about it than any entire genocide and thought you would cry learning about it. They hoped it'd make every generation patriotically angry forever and ever and want to join the military. Instead you Photoshop the towers into squidwards house and shit. Never stop lol

gay-jesus-probably

I’m physically unable to take 9/11 seriously, entirely because my grade 9 english teacher was bizarrely obsessed with it. We basically had an entire unit on 9/11. We watched that documentary from those students that were doing a documentary of firefighters and wound up getting the only footage of the first plane hitting. We did a novel study of a book about some kid being in one of the towers for take your kid to work day and him and his dad squeezing past the wreckage of the plane to escape in time. We watched that Nic Cage movie of him being a firefighter during 9/11 that gets stuck in an elevator shaft when the place collapses. I am dead fucking serious, we had to make up fictional people that died in the attack, write an obituary for our 9/11sona’s, and then write and deliver a eulogy as their grief-stricken parent. At one point in the unit the teacher clarified that she hadn’t personally lost anyone to the attack, nor was she anywhere near New York when it happened. She never bothered to ask if any of us had actually lost someone in the attack, which kind of seems like a thing you should do before making us invent fictional victims to give eulogies for. The unit began with her demanding to know where we all were on the day of the attack and what we remembered, and she started crying when we told her that 1. we were two years old at the time and couldn’t remember shit fuck, the closest thing was one of the older kids kind of thought they remembered being very confused at adults freaking out over the TV but that could have been literally anything, and so this meant that 2. we were the last class she would ever teach that could possibly remember 9/11. Probably didn’t help that someone pointed out that we were the class born in 1999, so in two years she’d have students that hadn’t even been born during 9/11. That may have contributed to the teacher crying over the whole thing.

We’re Canadian.

cherishedproperty

That last sentence KILLED me. Jesus fuck.

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