sparrowhawksshadow

[sparrowhawksshadow]

sorry, i thought we all liked that fictional woman because she sucks

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You don't have to look in the Unfinished Tales. Gandalf says it pretty explicitly in Fellowship Chapter II:

"Even Gollum was not wholly ruined. He had proved tougher than even one of the Wise would have guessed -- as a hobbit might. There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as through a chink in the dark: light out of the past."

When you consider that Gollum is an extremely old man who's spent most of his life in solitary confinement with heroin being injected directly into his brain every day, he's really not that unreasonable

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Reblog to cast heal on prev

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"You can say that [orangutans] are not dependent on social support and approval, and if you admire this in them, that an orang is irredeemably his own person, 'the most poetic of the apes', researcher Lynn Miles told me once in an unguarded moments. What she had in mind was the difference between orangs and chimps in the way they carry on their discourse with the world.

Chimps are much admired for their tool use and for their problem-solving relationship with things as they find them...the orang is, let us say, not so replete with enterprise. Give an orangutan the hexagonal peg and the several shapes of hole, and then hide behind the two-way mirror and watch how he engages with the problem.

And watch and watch and watch--because he does not engage with the problem. He uses the peg to scratch his back, has a look-see at his right wrist, makes a half-hearted and soon abandoned attempt to use his fur as a macramé project, stares dreamily out the window if there is one and at nothing in particular if not, and the sun begins to set. (The sun will also set if you are observing a chimp, but the chimp is more amusing, so you are less likely to mark the moment in your notes. An orang observer has plenty of time to be a student of the vanities of sunset.)

You watch, and the orang dreams...when casually and as if thinking of something else, the orang slips the hexagonal peg into the hexagonal hole. And continues staring off dreamily."

Vicki Hearne, "The Case of the Disobedient Orangutans"

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i love watching an extremely famous tv show 6-60 years after its peak popularity and being like "whoa this is pretty good. has anyone heard about this"

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humiliation - william ian miller

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i really enjoy looking through reddit threads related to death metal because the replies sound like a groupchat for cartoon villains

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It's funny how american guys who got "73% Scandinavian" in a mail order DNA test once will be like "I have Viking blood coursing through my veins, I'm a natural-born warrior and I've got +5 poison resistance and I'm immune to frost damage", while the average Norwegian guy is just some guy named Lars who works in IT, rides a bicycle to work, and looks like this.

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i'm reading this collection of essays about tenochtitlan and it is really very hard being a scholar of the Mexica. like. you are locked into defending against the worst most bullshit accusations imaginable of fantasy bloodshed as a justification for very real unimaginable bloodshed and conquest and destruction. on the other hand, they were an expansionist warring empire that murdered like a lot of people over the course of their conquest of the peninsula, and then built giant skull towers to display those conquests. it's a pickle

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I've always been fascinated by cooperation and communal living in the animal kingdom. There's so many reasons that species will live communally, and not all of them are because they particularly want to.

Maras, a large rodent species, are monogamous but will put their babies into a creche. One couple will stay to look after the babies whilst the rest of the parents go and graze for the day. If the sentries spot danger, the babies run into the burrows, safe and sound. It's a really effective system!

ID: A baby and adult mara touching noses with each other. They are rabbit-like in body shape, with fur that is a gradient from grey to reddish-brown.

The thing is, maras hate each other. They really, REALLY loathe being around other maras that are not their mate. They are NOT very sociable animals.

So when it's pickup time at the daycare, things can turn ugly very quickly. Whilst they may tolerate being in the same vicinity as another adult mara, there's only so much they can take before things go south. Punches. Kicks. Even the yeeting of babies. Their commensalism hangs by a thread, and they are constantly gnawing at it. But the creche system is so effective that they will continue doing this, litter after litter, year after year.

I think this is a really interesting example of how social behaviours can arise even when the animals are themselves not very tolerant of each other. It goes to show how useful working together can be, even if the thought of being in the same geographical area as someone else can send you into a blind rage.

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Straight guys who use tumblr are the funniest people ever literally how did you end up here

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Every time someone tells me they hate Shakespeare (which is frequently, bc people who hate Shakespeare r usually very proud of it and they need to tell me immediately when they learn that I'm a Shakespeare actor) I enact a sort of self contained stoic ritual where I remind myself that I do not need to be defending the most read and lauded and hegemonic English writer of all time even though I KNOW that they've only half-read Romeo and Juliet when they were 14 in a lame English class and formed a grudge and never changed their opinion. I have that knowledge and I allow it to wash over me and leave me undisturbed

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It's wild that third wave feminism is now seen as unfashionable and cringe, because the backlash to it has completely vindicated its strongest claims. The Christian Right has thrown its full support behind the self-confessed rapists now running the federal government. These same men are shredding the foundations of American power and influence because they think the State Department is woke. Media and tech billionaires have bent the knee to an objectively pro-depression policy in hopes that #MeToo can never happen again. The rulers of the world will commit planetary murder-suicide before they will accept the end or even the diminution of patriarchy.

Fortunately, these guys are all idiots so we have a decent chance of getting the country back before the nukes fly. Let's swing for the fences. Abortion and birth control free on demand, child marriage illegal and no-fault divorce legal in all 52 states*. Informed consent for HRT but you have to get two different psychiatrists' approval to invest in crypto.

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i always convince myself i dont sound that weird and then i go out in the world and get involved in anything longer than transactional small talk and its like ohhh thats right ive only been hanging out with gay people who speak in riddles

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Rümeysa Öztürk ordered free on bail!