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I got a label maker for my small business and am using it for very serious business purposes

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Marta Cors | instagram | prints | more prints

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The Knight of the Flowers (1894)

— by Georges Rochegrosse

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my moon and stars 💫

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i think the worst thing about the whole “anti-woke” culture is how it’s not only dumbing down people (folks are literally forgetting pronouns are an actual word class, an inseperable part of grammar and everyday speech) but also praising meanness and insensibility above all. it has managed to make malice and unkindness synonymous with factfulness and reason as if intelligence didn’t stem from emotions. as if feelings weren’t the very core of human beings. as if knowledge wasn’t achieved through passion, sympathy, and open-mindedness. as if the whole crux of this entire anti-wokeness movement wasn’t rooted in pure unadulterated emotion of hatred and hostility.

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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.

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May you never again get attached to anyone who isn't for you. May you find a love who makes you laugh, never lets the flirting phase end, and gives you unquestionable loyalty. You deserve a love that calms your heart and mind. And a love that never hurts you.

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Sunset, near Le Croisic, by Ferdinand du Puigaudeau (1864-1930) (source)

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They are currently bombing Rafah while the Superbowl is on. They are bombing 1.5million people in tents. Keep your eyes on Gaza

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it’s looking like the iof have officially breached rafah. every palestinian i follow, most of whom have now been displaced to rafah, are posting that there’s non-stop bombing and sounds of clashes between the resistance and the israeli army (x, x, x). the rnn telegram is also reporting that armed clashes are taking place in northwest of the city and israeli bombing is concentrated around al-kuwaiti hospital (x, x). many martyrs already (x, x, x). in palestine, the time is currently just past 2am on 12th february 2024.

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You know that thing where you see a gorgeous view (left) and try to take a picture of it, but your phone camera is a joyless fucking nihilist who refuses to see the beauty in anything and only sees this (right)

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Every time Jack called Sydney… ‘sweetheart’.

requested by @iris-in-the-rain

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a little alias meta up in here

Instead of being unpacked and put back together, the show sort of…unravels Sark. And honestly, I think it’s a sensible way to go with the character. Our interactions with him from the time we meet him are us watching him grow up. And there are two ways to go with that: he can either become a total psychopath, in which case he becomes less compelling as a character; or he can be shown to have a heart of some kind, no matter how deluded it is (which can and does de-fang him a little bit). 

Right now (in season two) it’s believable that he acts the way he does because he’s so young and impressionable. Any child who has been trained as young as he has (because lbr, you don’t get that good at combat/shooting/general nefariousness overnight) is easily indoctrinated and taught to follow. And for the moment (or maybe forever, I sort of forget), he’s loyal to Irina. He claims he’s okay with shifting allegiances but he’s learned from the best. He looks like he operates out of self-interest but I honestly think it’s deeper than that, and it’s out of some kind of weird, fucked up loyalty that only a child with manipulative parental figures and a pretty expansive skill set can have. 

I think the easiest way to look at his character and still remain interested is to see him as a child (which, honestly, 20ish-year old men are. They’re still growing and maturing and learning). They didn’t have to cast Sark as being that young. The suave/debonair aspect could have been easily supplied by a much older actor (and then we’d get a different weird dynamic with him and Irina and him and Sydney). The compelling qualities of Sark’s character come from him being such a child. His relationships and actions are defined by his age, which is why by the end of the show his character has unraveled the way it has (because by then he’s nearing 30). For the first three seasons, though, he’s a boy and he acts like one. 

The view of him being a child really makes his relationships with Irina and Sydney pretty awesome. Because he is Irina’s surrogate son (and you could experiment a ton with gender theory here, because Irina’s always been about molding her children into her form) he and Sydney are far more similar that either of them want to admit. I honestly think that Sark is sort of the answer to the “what if?” scenario of Irina raising Sydney, just as we would have gotten a much different Sark if he were raised by Jack. 

Moreover, the way Sydney treats Sark says a lot about her self-identity and the way she sees herself. She’s not frightened of him, or wary of him - she's dismissive of him. She knows how he works and how dangerous he is - she knew that from the start. Especially since she starts to be the most dismissive of him after she finds out that he works for her mother. Yes, you could attribute that to the fact that he’s a little shit and everyone’s sort of dismissive of him, but Sydney’s attitude is particularly notable. Either she sees herself as being equally ineffectual (which Sark isn’t, really) and/or she’s jealous of his relationship with her mother and refuses to admit it (and why should she? Her mother is a cruel person and Sydney has no reason to feel anything for her other than hate - of course, since she’s Sydney, she desperately wants to love her mother). 

idek if I can tackle the obvious sexual overtones of their relationship. It’s not simply stemming from hatesex, though they’ve made it obvious that they’re more or less attracted to each other (his constant ogling of her, her admission that he’s “cute”); I honestly think Sydney would be turned on by that power dynamic. When it comes to him, she’s always in charge; she’s always her field-agent persona (which is honestly an inherent part of her that she can’t just take off, like she thinks she can). They’re extremely physical with each other (constantly fighting each other in hand-to-hand combat) and are rarely cautious around each other. She touches Sark out in the field more often than she touches Vaughn, at first (of course, they’re completely different kinds of touch). I don’t really know where to go with that, but their relationship is this weird level of comfort that Sydney rarely has with anyone else (of course, that comfort is, “I know exactly the game you’re playing, I’d play it myself if I were you.”)

Moreover, we can see the parallels between them by how Vaughn interacts with them. My friend totally ships Sark/Vaughn and I honestly think that comes from Vaughn’s relationship with Sydney. I think Vaughn has more insight into Sark and Sydney’s relationship than they do, but at the same time is totally confused by his own relationship with the two of them (especially in season three - god, that’s a fucked up threesome, inherently tangled in each other).

So we have a number of people who reflect Sydney and Sark’s relationship: themselves, of course; Irina; and Vaughn (not even getting into Sloane and Lauren). 

I wish I could be more articulate because I’m suddenly giving myself all these feels but basically the tl;dr/thesis of all this is that Sark and Sydney see themselves as the same person and are treated as such by those around them. 

This fucking show is a piece of art. I can’t even. 

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like. remember when jack bristow put explosives in a building his daughter was about to walk into so he could frame his ex-wife for trying to blow up their daughter and thereby convince his daughter not to trust her mother. and then his ex-wife gets sentenced to death because of this framing and he’s just like “well i was protecting my daughter” but then it turns out he was also protecting himself bc he didn’t want his daughter to find out that when she was a child he programmed her to be a spy and he knows that her mother would tell her but then she finds out he framed her mother and programmed her anyway and blows up at him and only after that confrontation does he turn himself in and face trial and take the opportunity to tell the court that he loves his daughter, something he has never told her???? like ok go off emotionally dysfunctional king

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