thebeardedbelgian

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“One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest.”  – J.R.R. Tolkien

Samwise Gamgee aesthetic

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Lidded ritual wine container (zun) in the form of a bird. Eastern Zhou dynasty (770 - 221 BCE) #china #wine #art #history #museum #archeology

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Happy new year!

Goodbye:

Hello:

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This fucking thread 😂

Source: Twitter Account @onlxn

[thebeardedbelgian]

This exactly!

one of my favorite things about Sam Vimes’s character arc is that it’s literally your classic “gruff cop with ideals gets worn down by reality, descends into cynicism and booze” journey in reverse. 

I mean, it happens the normal way around the first time, but we don’t really see the first time- in Sam’s first introduction, he’s literally lying in a gutter. He’s already been chewed up and spat out, already seen the ugliness of the world and bent beneath it.

And then every book from there on out has him getting back up. It’s not a straightforward road, but he takes it anyways, and sure, he’s still cynical and still worn down, but he’s still got his ideals (though I’m not sure he’d like to call them ideals- maybe standards would do) and he cleans himself up and bit by bit, he works on cleaning up the world around him, too. He gets a family. He learns to accept others more openly than he had before. He still sees the ugliness in the world, but he confronts it instead of accepting it as just the way things are. Because there’s a way things should be, and he cares about it.

Sam Vimes, gruff cop with standards, ascends from cynicism and booze, starts wearing down on reality.

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been thinking about this au a lot

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“Five damn days, that battle took,“ said Truckle, ”‘cos the Duchess was doing a tapestry to commemorate it, right? We had to keep doing the fights over and over again, and there was the devil to pay when she was changing needles. There’s no place for the media on the field of battle, I’ve always said.“ "Aye, and I mind you makin’ a rude sign to the ladies!” Hamish cackled. “I saw that ol’ tapestry in the castle of Rosante years later and I could tell it wuz you!”

Terry Pratchett - The Last Hero (via terrypratchettparadise)

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you can tell a lot about someone based on their phone background. it shows what’s most important to them

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Civilizations from Antiquity we should learn more about

This post is an appreciation to those cultures who are not usually taught at school, or even study at academic levels. It is intended to cause curiosity overall, rather than give many details. What are those civilizations we know little (or anything) about? There are dozens, but here you have only five, as a fresh start.

Urartu (860–590 BCE)

Let’s start with this iron age kingdom. Urartu occupied much of what today is Armenia and part of southern Georgia. For a considerable time, these people were able to confront the great Assyrian Empire, which is a lot to say. After they were finally conquered, it still caused may problems to their rival. We know that a single dynasty ruled the kingdom through its history. The capital city was Tushpa (also, Van). It was a fortress, that assured regional control and defense from the enemies (photo)

According to our sources, Urartu was famous for its metalworks, which were highly appreciated at that time.

Kingdom of Aksum (100– c. 940 CE)

Covering parts of what is now northern Ethiopia and southern and eastern Eritrea, Aksum was deeply involved in the trade network between India and the Mediterranean (Rome, later Byzantium), exporting ivory, tortoiseshell, gold, and emeralds, and importing silk and spices. Aksum remained a strong, though weakened, empire and trading power until the rise of Islam in the 7th century.

We can count many achievements from this culture. They developed their own alphabet (Ge'ez script) which was used to write a vast ecclesiastical literature. Aksum is also famous for the enormous obelisks, used to indicate the presence of underground tombs (see picture). To this day, the Aksumite stelae still stand in the deserts.

Moche (100–700 CE)  

This civilization flourished in northern Peru many centuries before the well-know Incas arose. The technical and economic advances surpass those others from the region, and many scholars think that the Inca Empire owes a lot to this previous culture. A highly complex irrigation system, a central religion role in the zone and an amazing development of ceramics, textiles, and metalworks, all that reveals us an extraordinary ability to organize society. By the way, they weren’t an empire or a single state. On the contrary, it is believed that elite culture was formed by many cities that shared a common ideology and religion.

If there is something I must insist on is the quality of their art. Just look at these beautiful gold earrings.

Bosporan Kingdom (438 BCE–c. 370 CE)

This was probably the first “Hellenistic state”, as long as we understand Hellenistic as a mixture of Greek culture and another one (in this case, Scythes). During the 7th and 6th the first Greek colonies were settled in the south of today’s Ukraine, and after some centuries of convivence with the tribes of the steppes, Satyrus (431 – 387 BC) established his rule over the whole region and created a true kingdom. This State survived for a long time, and finally, it became a client state of the Roman Empire, protected by Roman garrisons.

The citizens appear to have lived in a culturally diverse society with free mixing and mingling and cross-fertilization, opposite to the opinion of outposts of Hellenism in a hostile, uncivilized region. Despite this, little is known about this kingdom, situated just in the limits between the classical world and the northern nomads.  (Picture: Plaque ‘Head of Medusa Gorgon’)

Chavín culture (900–250 BCE)

Finally, Chavín de Huantar culture. It is not properly a state or any political entity. More probably, we are talking about a number of peoples gathered around a religious center because of a shared ideology. And so, even when its origin is the northern Andean highlands of Peru, it extended its influence on other civilizations along the coast.

Warfare does not seem to have been a significant element in Chavín culture. The archaeological evidence shows a lack of basic defensive structures in Chavín centers, and warriors are not depicted in art. In fact, effective social control may have been exercised by religious pressure, and the ability to exclude dissidents from managed water resources.

Religion was central in Chavín culture, so we found its presence in every single aspect of this civilization, from a sacerdotal elite controlling the whole society to the exclusivity of religious figures in gold-works. (Picture: a gold figure of a condor)

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Name

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THIS IS AWESOME!!!!

My Traveling Book Project book arrived in the mail (Unwind by @nealshustermanreal)! I’m having so much fun going through and reading everyone’s comments, this is the BEST, and this is now my favorite book that I own.

Special shout-out to @readaroundtherosie for coming up with the absolutely brilliant concept of a Traveling Book Project in the first place and being so nice and helpful about letting others host TBPs as well! And of course to @librarianlucy and @brittsreadery for hosting the project with me and for annotating my book! :D

Tagging everyone else on my team who annotated my book: @-thebookdragon-, @kaybee1216, @meowlish, @abundanceofamy, @bookwallflowers, @tornbetweenmusicandbooks, and @senatorsorgana. And everyone on the blue team, so that you can get a glimpse of our group’s annotations: @argentconflagration, @makingthegrintgrunt, @tamaraniac, @pickpocketsanonymous, @yesthatbookishnol, @busybooklr, @infinitelarryfeels, @natsbookshelf, @deadstump, and @bookscoffeeandbooks. Thank you so much for participating, everyone!!! This has been so much fun, especially seeing everyone else’s TBP reveal posts! I’m already thinking about maybe (co?)hosting another one after I move this summer. :D

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So I made a drawing for the kids at school to colour in. It’s a reward for doing their homework in homework class. After they did their homework they can choose, go out and play or stay until everyone is done and silently colour a picture I drew. I liked this so much that I scanned it, cleaned it up a little and uploaded it. So with this, I present to you the MEGABURGER DELUXE(TM) ;) The more I look at it, the more I see my little mistakes, like perspective, shaky lines, etc. But ... good enough for a 20 minute drawing.

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Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flower, not thunder.