The Page of Random

it's actually really tasty

without words under the cut

EXCUSE ME THERE IS A PLANT THAT CAN MIMIC FAKE PLANTS?????

IT'S CALLED A BOQUILA TRIOFOLIOLATA AND IT'S FUCKING WITH MY BRAIN

IT APPARENTLY CAN MIMIC OTHER PLANTS AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE "oh cool man it must take it's genetic code and copy it or feel the roots or something like that!! :3"

AND THEN I READ AN ARTICLE ON IT AND THESE FUCKING PARAGRAPHS HIT ME LIKE A BUS

LIKE READ THIS SHIT

WHAT THE FUCK MOTHER NATURE

I went to find the article. It's fascinating.

In retrospect, consider the number 1 thing every grade-schooler knows about plants is they take in light, the idea they might be able to see should not wreck my shit as hard as it does

clutches my computer screen with iron grip

fucks me up that by total coincidence the sun and moon's size difference is exactly matched to their difference in distance from us, thus making our beautiful total solar eclipses where you can see the silver threads of the sun's corona possible because the moon just covers the sun completely

The stars (literally) aligned just right for this experience to be possible. It's likely that aliens don't have this

The moon is also absolutely gargantuan by moon standards. It isn't the largest moon in the solar system, but it is BY FAR the largest in comparison with its planet. Ganymede is the largest satellite of Jupiter and the largest moon in the solar system. Its diameter is only about 3.8% of Jupiter's. Titan's radius is 4.4% of Saturn's. Callisto and Io are the next largest in the neighborhood, with 3.4% and 2.6% the diameter of Jupiter respectively.

Our moon is number 5. It is smaller in direct comparison to the above moons. The diameter of the moon is 3475 km. That is a full 27% of the diameter of the Earth. More than a quarter. That's ridiculous. It's unheard of. The universe is large enough that the word unique probably doesn't mean a lot, but this might be about as close as you get.

This has had a huge impact on our planet. Other things aliens might not have are significant tides. One of Mars's dumpy little potatoes wouldn't be able to move oceans the way our moon does.

Our moon has also stabilized our axis to a massive degree. Without her up there our axis would wobble all over the place and our climate would be far more chaotic. Aliens might not be quite so lucky.

I guess what I am really trying to say is that the moon is extremely cool. I like the moon.

We love Luna on this blog! She is our bestie our partner our sister and we likely owe her our lives for real

Map depicting which US States legally consider Pluto a planet.

You know what that is a good law

IAU get fucked. Think I can get Minnesota to declare Luna legally a planet?

Me remembering Undertale

Clark Kent finally goes to get therapy but the only person who knows both of his identities AND is in any way actually qualified is Harley Quinn

They're staring each other down in some bland ass room painted a soothing blue like

Clark: ... This HAS to be some sort of conflict of interest

Harley: aww not to worry Supes I'm totally profresh

Clark: that's not actually that reassuring

Clark starting to try and open up even though that usually requires an emotional crowbar: it's just... isolating, sometimes. There's not really any one person that is in the same position as me and it's... Hard

Harley: well that's why we have emotional support networks rather than just one person! I know I'm your position it's especially hard to build that up, but you've done a rather impressive job so far. I mean, you break it down, and Lolo may be your wife, but she's not gonna know everything you go through, nor should she have to. She understands your workplace stresses, the justice league is there for hero stuff, Diana gets being powerful enough to scare people, Kara and J'onn are both in the last survivors boat, and when it comes to the complications of balancing identities, Brucie will be there. The best part of all this is that you also don't have to be everything to any one person, which is something you seem ta struggle with.

Clark: oh. You're... good at this?

Harley: I fuckin told ya I was

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl 2003 — dir. Gore Verbinski

He learned his lesson

Nah you guys don’t get it. For all that Gandalf complained about Pippin, he better than anyone else knew that Pippin was absolutely crucial. Pippin accomplishes a very impressive feat: not only does he manage to see something in the palantír (most hobbits would perceive nothing, as these stones were designed for use by high elves), but he manages to close his mind against Sauron. That is a seriously impressive feat of ósanwë given Pippin’s youth and almost total inexperience. The only clue Sauron manages to glean from the meeting with Pippin is that he is in Meduseld: which Pippin probably did not even directly give to him. Pippin did not tell Sauron his name, so Sauron is led to believe that Pippin is Frodo. I remind you, in the books, the Good Guys manage to trick Sauron, by making him believe that Aragorn has claimed the One Ring. They can only do that because of Pippin’s ridiculous feat of ósanwë. Far from sabotaging the mission, he is the one who allows it to succeed (albeit, not on purpose). This is why Sauron doesn’t think anything is fishy when Aragorn wins the Battle of the Pelennor Fields by controlling ghosts: that would be consistent with the idea that he is using the One Ring. Which Sauron believes that Pippin brought to him. This is why Sauron pulls out his old “play nice and weak” card from his Númenor days. He first of all believes that Aragorn is a lot more powerful than he actually is, and secondly thinks that the Ring is beginning to affect him.

He should perhaps have remembered that Aragorn is named for Fingolfin. Fingolfin’s mother-name, Arakáno, would properly be translated to Sindarin as “Aragorn”. Most people would not show up to an enemy fortress with an army they knew was far too small, and start a battle they knew they would lose. But Fingolfin famously did exactly that.

When you read the line “fool of a Took!” It is important to understand that in the context of Gandalf calling himself a fool on several occasions. Galadriel too sees beyond the veneer of foolish naivety in Pippin. She gives him and Merry belts that almost definitely were once her brothers’. A golden flower on a gift from Galadriel can only be a golden lily, the sigil of the House of Finarfin. Galadriel, while all hell was breaking loose in Tirion, raided her brothers’ rooms and took their belts from when they were little kiddos, hauled them across the Helcaraxë, and then held onto them for three Ages before giving them to two hobbits she just met. Merry, of course, is comparable to Angrod and Aegnor: his great deed is done in a moment of beserk rage, and it is a feat of strength. This then implies that she is comparing Pippin to Finrod. That’s one hell of a complement coming from Galadriel: but as I just pointed out, entirely warranted. Pippin manages to reproduce Finrod’s feat of radio silence, in the face of torture by Sauron. Which again, is extremely impressive given that Pippin is far younger and less experienced than Finrod was.

You see me <3

LOTR Heritage Post

a house divided will never stand

The inability of a certain subset of blockheaded fans to notice Kris's gender is so. This is a game which places a nonbinary protagonist in a narrative that has them struggling explicitly with how much control they are allowed to have over their own life, whose best friends are a girl who is gleefully unfeminine and a boy who has no idea who he's supposed to be but sure seems to like being pretty, after the first few seconds of the game consisted of us trying to create our own form and then being told point blank "no one can choose who they in this world," where the above three children are all being railroaded into and struggling to escape their roles in a religiously per-ordained questline that we know ends very badly for them. If you think gender is not being employed here in a way that is specific, intentional, and thematically relevant then you are not serious

i love love loved how the martian novel ended. mark doesn't do it alone. he's not a hero who flies out to hermes and rescues himself. after a year and a half of lonely survival he has to (he gets to) surrender and put his life in his friends' hands. they don't throw him a line and tell him to grab it, it's not distant and impersonal like an escape pod docking to a rescue ship. beck gets to go out there and bring him home. when mark sees beck coming down to him he has a startle response, like it's been so long since he's seen another person that his body recoils in fear. it's important that the rescue is so personal. beck holds on to mark with his own hands and tethers their bodies together and carries him back to the ship and mark's only orders are to relinquish himself to being saved

@whoareyoueventhough

I'm not immune to soft cringe teen romance y'all. Hope Kris wins the festival suitor battles...and Berdly's heart :P

Touch