#n'est

[vhscorp]

Je veux croire à l'idée que jamais rien n'est écrit, que je décide de ma vie et qu'à chaque aube qui se lève, je peux croire en mes rêves…

V. H. SCORP

[lcasr]

[secondbeatsongs]

[fibrefox]

Paused King of the Hill on an interesting frame

[fan-ship]

As I am sad to be sick and not to see my friend, I watch The mazer Runners, And i notice that they are all gay lmfao

[dyclan-seed]

Dyclan seed is collection seeds, extraordinary cannabis varieties currently selected genetics, adapted to the temperate climate, resistant to difficult conditions, drought, humidity, insects, moreover the flavor is preserved and improved by the genetic process on several years by our teams of breeders, all fans of the guerrillas in France, but that's a secret, moreover, germination is prohibited in France, only the purchase and sale of seeds for conservation or collection and authorized, we don't incite anyone, everyone is responsible for their actions, for variety here in this video we will see our outdoor specials

[amiracleilluminated]

If there's anyone that can get to the bottom of this kind of thing, it's me.

[kami-ships-it]

I'd like to think that perhaps Havers is a doodler

[twig-tea]

screencap stolen from linked post by @burnsuncomet ; I was going to reply to your post but then I just kept writing and I didn't want to fully derail so I made this separate post instead!

I've skimmed the tag now and I'm going to need more people to be as obsessed with this mostly-unsmoked-cigarette-in-the-cake shot as I am. Mork quit smoking because the smell bothered Day, and we've since seen how much emphasis Day puts on scent so we know it really did matter to him. And when Mork was in an emotionally vulnerable moment after playing matchmaker for the man he's in love with to get together with someone else, he asks for a cigarette in a moment of weakness. But this shot shows us that he mostly resisted, and went for a walk instead, and it was the thought of Day's happiness (the birthday party and his relationship with August, as represented by this birthday cake slice) that helped him suppress his craving even as it drove him to emotional distress in the first place. Even while Day was worrying about him regressing, Mork was thinking about Day and doing what he thought was best for Day's happiness. Day didn't actually need to find Mork to help him stop smoking.

Plus just like, it's a cigarette put out in a cake slice. Rendering both unconsumable. Nobody will want to eat that cake now, and that cigarette cannot be relit. I can't stop thinking about it. It's fantastic. It's such a tiny and non-disruptive tantrum while simultaneously being an act of care. The ash tray is right there, but Mork said no, I'm ruining both of these things at once, because I can't have anything I want and I don't want anyone else to have them either and I'm mad that they will but I won't stand in their way so I'm taking it out on this symbol instead [because it's the merging of two symbols: what August did for Day (throwing the surprise party; performative) and what Mork did for day (quitting smoking; truly meeting Day's needs/wants)].

And as a visual bonus, it kind of looks like a candle, except it's a cigarette AND the wrong way round! Like the world's saddest and most disturbed birthday celebration.

And of course because Day is blind, he wouldn't be able to see it, and so he wouldn't know that Mork had signalled that he didn't actually smoke much of the cigarette.

OB.SESSED.

[alphynix]

Crystal Palace Field Trip Part 3: Walking With Victorian Beasts

[Previously: the Jurassic and Cretaceous]

The final section of the Crystal Palace Dinosaur trail brings us to the Cenozoic, and a selection of ancient mammals.

Image from 2009 by Loz Pycock (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Originally represented by three statues, there are two surviving originals of the Eocene-aged palaeotheres depicting Plagiolophus minor (the smaller sitting one) and Palaeotherium medium (the larger standing one).

The sitting palaeothere unfortunately lost its head sometime in the late 20th century, and the image above shows it with a modern fiberglass replacement. Then around 2014/2015 the new head was knocked off again, and has not yet been reattached – partly due to a recent discovery that it wasn't actually accurate to the sculpture's original design. Instead there are plans to eventually restore it with a much more faithful head.

These early odd-toed ungulates were already known from near-complete skeletons in the 1850s, and are depicted here as tapir-like animals with short trunks based on the scientific opinion of the time. We now think their heads would have looked more horse-like, without trunks, but otherwise they're not too far off modern reconstructions.

There was also something exciting nearby:

The recently-recreated Palaeotherium magnum!

This sculpture went missing sometime after the 1950s, and its existence was almost completely forgotten until archive images of it were discovered a few years ago. Funds were raised to create a replica as accurate to the original as possible, and in summer 2023 (just a month before the date of my visit) this larger palaeothere species finally rejoined its companions in the park.

Compared to the other palaeotheres this one is weird, though. Much chonkier, wrinkly, and with big eyes and an almost cartoonish tubular trunk. It seems to have taken a lot of anatomical inspiration from animals like rhinos and elephants, since in the mid-1800s odd-toed ungulates were grouped together with "pachyderms".

———

Next is Anoplotherium, an Eocene even-toed ungulate distantly related to modern camels.

(Apparently the sculpture closest to the water is a replica of a now-lost original, recreated from photo references in the same manner as the new Palaeotherium magnum. I can't find a definite reference for when this one was done, though – I'd guess probably during the last round of major renovations in the early 2000s, at the same time as the now-destroyed Jurassic pterosaur replicas?)

Anoplotherium commune is a rather obscure species today, but it was one of the first early Cenozoic fossil mammals to be recognized by science in the early 1800s. Depicted here as small camel-like animals, the three statues are positioned near the water's edge to reflect the Victorian idea that they were semi-aquatic based on their muscular tails.

Today we instead think these animals were fully terrestrial, using their tails to balance themselves while rearing up to reach higher vegetation. Their heads would also have looked a bit less camel-like, but otherwise the Crystal Palace trio are still really good representations.

———

Next is a sculpture that's very easy to miss in the current overgrown state.

Who's that peeking over the bushes?

Going all the way around to the far side of the lake reveals a distant glimpse of the Pliocene-to-Holocene giant ground sloth Megatherium.

A better view of the Megatherium | "Tree Hugger" by Colin Smith (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Fossils of Megatherium americanum had been known since the late 1700s, but the 1854 Crystal Palace statue was still one of the first life reconstructions of this animal. Its anatomy is actually very close to our modern understanding, depicted with correctly inward-turned feet and sitting upright to feed on a tree with its tail acting as a "tripod".

However, we now know it didn't have a trunk-like nose, but instead probably had prehensile lips more like those of a modern black rhino.

Something weird also appears to have happened to the Crystal Palace Megatherium's hands. Early illustrations of the sculpture all consistently show it with the typical long claws of a sloth, but today it's missing its right hand and its left has only a strangely stumpy paw – suggesting that at some point in the intervening 170 years there was an unrecorded crude repair.

———

And finally we end the trail with three Megaloceros, the Pleistocene-to-Holocene "Irish Elk" that's actually neither exclusively Irish nor an elk.

A closer look at the second stag and the doe.

There was originally a fourth giant deer sculpture in this herd, a second resting doe, but it was destroyed sometime during the mid-20th century. The stags also initially had real fossil antlers attached to their heads, but these were removed and replaced with less accurate versions at some point by the mid-20th century.

One of the stags' antlers suffered some damage in 2020, ending up drooping, and since then one antler has either fallen off or been removed.

In the 1850s Megaloceros giganteus was thought to be closely related to deer in the genus Cervus, and so the Crystal Palace reconstructions seem to be based on modern wapiti – specifically in their winter coats, fitting for ice age animals – since both the stags and the doe sport distinctive thick neck manes.

The stags from the other side.

We now know Megaloceros was actually much more closely related to modern fallow deer, and so probably resembled them more than wapiti. Cave art also shows that it had a hump on its shoulders, and even gives us an idea of what its coloration was.

———

…But wait!

There's actually one more thing.

A small statue sitting on the far side of the deer herd, missing its ears, and seemingly representing a Megaloceros fawn.

Except it's actually something very different and very special.

Ceci n'est pas un cerf.

Some recent investigation work revealed some surprising information about the Crystal Palace mammal statues – much like the nearly-forgotten large Palaeotherium, there was originally an entire group of four small Eocene-aged llama-like Xiphodon gracilis that had disappeared from living memory.

There was also no historic record of a fawn with the giant deer, but instead a suspiciously similar-looking sitting sculpture is illustrated among what we now known are the four missing Xiphodon in early records.

An 1853 illustration of the sculpture workshop. The four Xiphodon are shown in the center, directly in front of a Megaloceros stag and doe. (public domain)

Somewhere in the late 19th or early 20th century three of the Xiphodon must have been completely lost, and the remaining individual was misidentified as a fawn and placed with the giant deer herd.

———

Rediscovering a whole extra species among the Crystal Palace statues is exciting, but it also demonstrates just how much of these sculptures' history has gone completely undocumented. 

The mammal statues especially seem to have suffered the most out of the "Dinosaur Court", being often overlooked, neglected, disrespected (at one point the Megatherium was inside a goat pen in a petting zoo!), and subjected to cruder repairs. A total of five original statues are now known to be missing from this Cenozoic section – the original large Palaeotherium, the three other Xiphodon, and the second Megaloceros doe – compared to the two pterosaurs lost from the Mesozoic island.

Hopefully the excellent recreation of the lost Palaeotherium magnum is the start of a long overdue new lease of life and conservation attention for all of the Crystal Palace sculptures. It was disappointing seeing them all in such an overgrown state, and with signs of ongoing disrepair in places such as the plant growing out of the big ichthyosaur's back.

But there has been some resurgence of interest and public attention in the Crystal Palace sculptures over the last few years, so with any luck these historic pieces of early paleoart will survive on to their 200th anniversary and beyond, to keep on reminding us of where things began and how far our understanding of prehistoric life has since come.

[itsbeenliketenyearsitsprettywild]

y'know people were saying before that the green apple in Kazui's first music video was a reference to one of the surrealist René Magritte's famous works (The Son of Man), but the second video is just really doubling down on his stuff as a theme huh

[soeurdelune]

si vous tombez sur des ressources, des citations, des guides, des avatars, des gifs, des icons ou quoi que ce soit d'autre qui vous plaise, pensez à les reblogger! 🌟

les likes ça fait plaisir, mais sur tumblr hormis pour se souvenir qu'on a déjà vu un billet ça ne sert pas à grand chose, ce site est avant tout conçu pour partager les choses que vous voyez et que vous aimez!

je reblog souvent les avatars, rp prompts etc. que j'apprécie ou qui m'inspirent et c'est bête mais quand je vois après dans mon activité d'autres gens liker/rb ces billets, je me dit que c'est super d'avoir amené tout ça dans leur feed, et que ça peut potentiellement faire découvrir des créateurices, des univers, des fandoms à d'autres personnes! c'est à ça que servent les reblogs, les likes ne boostent pas les billets et n'aident pas vraiment les créateurices sous-côté.e.s à se faire connaître! ce sont les reblogs qui font la différence!

si vous avez peur de reblogger quelque chose parce que vous pensez que ça fera hors-sujet avec le thème de votre blog, sachez que vous pouvez faire autant de sideblogs (blogs secondaires) sur tumblr que vous le souhaitez sans nécessité de créer un nouveau compte. c'est quand même bien fait ✨

[gavroche-le-moineau]

I'm feeling SUPER NORMAL about Jean Valjean using the exact phrase Éponine does in the Original French Concept Album's version of her death scene: Ce n'est rien (translation: It's Nothing)

— Mourir ! s’écria Marius. — Oui, mais ce n’est rien, dit Jean Valjean. “To die!” exclaimed Marius. “Yes, but that is nothing,” said Jean Valjean.

— Ce n’est rien de mourir ; c’est affreux de ne pas vivre. “It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.”

Some chosen lyrics from Ce n'est rien, which has the same tune as A Little Fall of Rain:

Ce n’est rien, Monsieur Marius / It's nothing, Monsieur Marius Ce n’est rien, non ce n’est rien / It's nothing, no, it's nothing qu’un peu de sang qui pleure / more than a little blood that cries

If you're interested in listening:

[iphigeniacomplex]

selections from natalie baxter's 2017-2019 "alt caps" series.

Alt Caps explores the culture of online commenting and gender.  Pulling text from reactions to a negative article written about me and my work on Glenn Beck's website, The Blaze, I use sewing and quilting techniques to turn the numerous reactions that question my gender, sexuality and sanity into banners that echo those made by suffragettes or recent protest signs. 

[je-suis-ronflex]

Mon tatoueur avait un flash magnifique mais j'étais triste parce qu'il n'était plus disponible et il se trouve que la cliente n'est pas venue au rendez-vous donc il est à nouveau disponible !!! Et la personne financièrement irresponsable que je suis a envie de se faire tatouer à nouveau

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Henri-Guillaume Schlesinger (French, 1814-1893) Ce n'est pas moi, 1872