reginaldkoettlitz

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The Time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Had A Pet Sea Snail

I've been reading the diary Doyle kept of his time as a ship's surgeon aboard an Arctic whaling vessel in 1880, and you all deserve to hear the tale of John Thomas, Doyle's pet Clione limacina, which he drew in the above picture.

Doyle, then 21, found John Thomas on June 3rd, 1880:

Brought up a most beautiful Clio or Sea Snail, a couple of inches long, looking like some weird little fairy. I have stuck him in a pickle bottle and christened him "John Thomas." I hope he will live, we have put some butter and pork into his house.

The following day, Doyle attempted to feed John Thomas and wrote a short poem about the snail:

John Thomas is in an awful passion. We left the pickle bottle far from the fire, and as there are 11 degrees of frost it froze up and John has caught cold. He is sitting in a corner with his tail in his mouth, just as a sulky baby sticks its thumb into its potato box. I have drawn John's attention to the butter & pork and he took a hurried breakfast, but seems to have business of importance down at the bottom of the bottle. He's thinking perhaps of Where his rude shell by the Gulf Stream lay, There were his little Sea Snails all at play, There their Amoeboid mother, he their sire Butchered to make a whale's holiday.

On June 5th, Doyle reported that "John is well and hearty," and on the 6th, he wrote:

John was up before me and took a heavy breakfast. He is now gyrating round the top of his bottle surveying his new kingdom apparently and meditating a map. I put him in a bucket every evening where he wanders fancy free for an hour or two.

Unfortunately, on the 10th, Doyle reported that John Thomas had departed the mortal plane.

John Thomas died on the 8th of June, regretted by a large circle of acquaintances

He wrote a touching eulogy for his tiny friend:

He was a right thinking and high minded Clio, distinguished among his brother sea snails for his mental activity as well as for physical perfection. He never looked down upon his smaller associates because they were protozoa while he could fairly lay claim to belong to the high family of the Echinodermata or Annulosa. He never taunted them with their want of a water vascular system, nor did he parade his own double chain of ganglia. He was a modest and unassuming blob of protoplasm, and could get through more fat pork in a day than many an animal of far higher pretensions. His parents were both swallowed by a whale in his infancy, so that what education he had was due entirely to his own industry and observation. He has gone the way of all flesh so peace be to his molecules.

John Thomas' descendants still live in the Arctic Ocean today, and they look pretty cool!

[reginaldkoettlitz]

eurostar needs to make the brussels - london connection cheaper or even better open up a direct germany - london route AND make it not horrendously expensive. this isnt just for me personally but for the good of humankind.

[reginaldkoettlitz]

seneca lucilio suo salutem. yesterday, as I sat upon the metal carriage we call "tram" on my way home, I saw a young woman with body hair and an eccentric hairstyle, wearing a pin that said "this pussy is vegan". yet how, I asked myself, can a pussy be vegan? was this woman declaring she is not an animal, as we all humans are? the speciesist implications are many and baffling. vale.

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made little folded zines for a terror watch with friends a few months ago! (i didn't post them till now bc they were only formatted to be printed and i was too lazy to flip things around..)

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do you ever think about how if cherry hadn’t written wojo we would have NO idea how bad the winter journey was. if you only read wilson’s and birdie’s accounts of it it reads like a slightly tiring hike

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endless night

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What a 55″ Rifle Tells Us About the Height of Fairholme’s Brother

As my first post here, I wanted to share a small piece of research from my long-running interest in James Walter Fairholme and the Franklin Expedition.

In these two 19th-century studio portraits, we see Fairholme’s older brother William, confirmed through family identification. In the right image, he is standing beside a Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-musket — a weapon with a known length of 55 inches (139.7 cm).

The rifle rests flat on the ground and reaches to about mid-chest, which typically corresponds to ~72% of adult male height.

So by proportion:

139.7 ÷ 0.72 = 194 cm (~6′4″)

That would make Fairholme’s brother exceptionally tall for the time — and it directly supports this earlier Tumblr post that estimated James himself was very tall, based on how the sleeves of a shared coat fit him compared to James Fitzjames. Huge credit and thanks to @cockroachesunite for that brilliant piece of visual analysis — it inspired me to look closer at the portrait and rifle.

With both the coat sleeve comparison and this rifle-based scaling pointing to similar results, we can say with confidence:

The Fairholmes were a remarkably tall family.

[reginaldkoettlitz]

Alright, i may be crazy, but look

they’re both wearing the same coat (Fitzjames lent Fairholme his for the picture)

There’s actually another picture of each of them

now look at the SLEEVES

using this table (which I tested out with my brother for scale: he’s about half a foot taller than me, but his forearm’s only about 2cm longer than mine)

This is by no means exact, (and please correct me if I’m wrong) but I think it’s very probable that Fairholme was something like half a foot (at least!!) taller than Fitzjames

[reginaldkoettlitz]

two characters: flirty banter, clearly getting off on the power dynamics between them

people who are scared of going to hell for masturbating: he loves him like a son

me, hauving covid: can he call him that while they fuck

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Physical therapy is wild because they're always like "hey do this weird little movement" and you're like "hmm my brain doesn't seem to know how to activate that movement" and then they'll like trick your brain into doing it by making you do other movements first or making you resist against them moving you or some shit and your brain is like oooooh ✅ new movement unlocked. And then they tell you to do that movement 20 times a day and you do and it makes some part of your body you didn't even know was related hurt less. What the fuck.

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my mutuals can use me as a reference on their resumes at this point I don’t even care

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are you even enjoying summer if you arent going to bed at 8pm while its fully middle of the day bright outside. feels like polar day the sun is never going to set

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MILV (mutual id like to visit)

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can’t believe I forgot to snap a closer picture of the shipwreck but I was judging a Lego costume competition and got to see some of the displays and had to snap a few pictures of this one for beloved mutual @swanfloatieknight

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The Cutty Sark

Photo by Roland J. King

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happy scurvy thursday everyone thank you wilson