my garden of obsessions

meditating (or trying to)

Rare clone request continued: Commander Blitz as requested by @itszerohz and @/_anyadarling_ on IG

He just chillin’, Blitz has chill vibes to me, idk

still love that itty bitty scene in syrup village where luffy and zoro tag team a joke and convince the usopp pirates that they’re cannibals who ate usopp while nami is like GUYS…… makes u wonder how many other bits and inside jokes they’ve been running through the years

Still watching this video about the Marvelization of cinema and 'storytelling entropy,' but I'm definitely nodding along so far.

Incidentally, as someone whose main exposure to Marvel has been through transformative fandom osmosis, I was surprised that the narrator said End Game was 'generally well-received,' but I imagine that opinion is coming from the larger, more mainstream 'fandom' (Which I feel like I need to put in quotes because I just don't think that liking something and buying merch for it counts as fandom. That's called being a fan, but it fandom is so much more than that).

Someone recently posted about how Tumblr clout doesn't actually translate into anything in real life, it just means X amount of people read your post, so what's the point?

I mean besides the fact that some people actually use their posts for good, like activism and combating misinformation, there's just posting for the sake of posting which is its own reward.

But also, sometimes you'll make an impression with your fucked up posting that someone decides to send you a DM to talk to you about elves or a podcast or a podcast about elves or something and now you've made a new best friend :)

Also sometimes you get to teach people about sauna gnomes and that's rewarding in and of itself

PLEASE tell me what a sauna gnome is

Okay, so: it's "saunatonttu" in Finnish. The word "tonttu" gets translated as "elf" sometimes but like as a Finn I emphatically disagree with that shit, these ain't no elves. "Gnome" has its own issues but I think it's funny.

They're basically a type of tutelary spirit of the sauna. Whenever you build a sauna a sauna gnome will eventually move in. I mean you can always expedite the process by going to someone else's sauna and telling everyone there that you've just built a sauna and it's such a shame that you don't have a sauna gnome yet, so the local sauna gnome will put the word on the grapevine that any sauna gnomes in need of a sauna know that there's a new sauna in town.

And they basically take care of the sauna for you, making sure it doesn't burn down and that it works properly. But they're also capricious and vindictive: to stay on their good side you gotta make sure to behave properly in the sauna (the sauna is no place for drunkenness or obscenity, in fact going to the sauna should be treated almost as a somber religious ritual), you gotta greet them when coming and going, and it's customary to leave them a vihta/vasta (a bundle of birch branches with the leaves on, used for cleaning up in the sauna) and to leave them one last löyly (a very specific term for the steam that rises from the sauna's stove, called "kiuas") before you leave so the sauna gnome can enjoy the saunaing.

If you're in breach of sauna gnome etiquette they may turn against you and skin you alive or burn down your sauna.

I find this so incredibly interesting because it reminds me so much of the Norwegian “fjøsnisse”, the gnome (but not a gnome at all, not an elf either, I guess it could count as feyfolk?) that lives in your barn and takes care of your animals for you.

But if you disrespect it or mistreat the animals, neglects the barn or harms the nature around your farm they can get seriously angry. Other than that they are a bit mischievous and are known to hide your tools and move stuff around how they see fit.

Also you need to give them a bowl of Risengrynsgrøt (rice porridge) during christmas or you’ll have a hell of a year.

I actually think the Finnish concept of "tonttu" is connected with the Nordic concept of "nisse," as the same type of creature is called "tomte" in Swedish (and that's where the word probably comes into Finnish). So it's one of those things where Finns picked up a Nordic concept and ran with it. :)

And yeah, as you pointed out they're not really elves nor gnomes, but I personally like the word gnome and I know that the word "tonttu" has been used to translate the word "gnome" into Finnish in many academic contexts (including in the book The Secrets of the Gnomes, or Suuri tonttukirja as it is called in Finnish. That book whips sack).

Also yeah we Finns also have a bunch of different species of tonttu. The saunatonttu is just the most important and "Finnish" one in my mind.

The etymology of the words Nisse and Tomte are interesting too. The first seems to come from Denmark, where the helpful (but tetchy) house spirited was often called "Niels" or variations, of which Nisse is a diminutive.

Meanwhile the Swedish term comes from "tomt" meaning "plot" – so it's a being tied to a demarcated and inhabited piece of land.

Considering there were several taboos around naming otherworldly beings or powerful/important animals, it makes sense that you start using other words for them until they themselves become terms for the thing. And then the idea or terminology spreads to other languages and they evolve: conceptually into sauna spirits in Finland and etymologically into nissar in Norway!

(and beyond of the farms and households, in the wilder areas of Sweden, there were the "rå". They "råder över", i.e. rule, a domain such as the forest or the sea or the mountain. More powerful relatives of the tomte, tonttu and nisse who one should also not insult)

💜🚨💜 BWOOP BWOOP ATTENTION @CLEOLINDA THERE IS A BABY PALLAS CAT 💜🚨💜

@breelandwalker A precious baby for your emergency cats folder!

THE MOST WORRIED LITTLE CREATURE

we passed a sign in boring that said their sister city is dull, scotland

oh there's a third! bland, new south wales!

I'm sorry but I just have to appreciate the wordplay on that last sign. It's brilliant.

watching a video about this cargo ship that blew up in texas in the 40’s and it’s like . i know that with a lot of incidents especially older ones like this the reason that the safety standards were so shitty was because they literally did not know that these kinds of disasters COULD happen (and in many cases these disasters are what MADE the safety standards better) but sometimes you just learn about this shit and you think. how could all these people be so stupid

- cargo of the ship consisted of twine (flammable) peanuts (flammable, oily) and cotton (FLAMMABLE) from houston and POST WAR AMMUNITION (OH MY GOD) FROM CUBA

- additional cargo they were picking up in texas city was LOOSE BAGS OF AMMONIUM NITRATE that the dock workers described as being ANOMALOUSLY WARM UPON BEING LOADED INTO THE SHIP ??????

- small fire breaks out in cargo hold, instead of putting it out with water that could damage the cargo the captain decides to close all the hatches to try to make the cargo hold airtight and smother the fire (stupid but you can kind of understand how they got there)

- the heat of the trapped smoke in the cargo hold instead causes the aforementioned LOOSE BAGS OF AMMONIUM NITRATE to undergo a chemical reaction and turn into nitrous oxide, massively increasing the pressure inside of the airtight hold

- one of the hatch covers fails

- mfw all the pressure in the cargo hold is released at once causing an explosion that fucking levels everything in the port within 2000 feet

- mfw the shockwave shatters windows up to a hundred miles away

- mfw on-fire twine and peanuts and fucking grenades are raining down over texas city

- mfw some of the pieces of the ship got launched into the sky faster than the speed of sound

- mfw they found the ship’s anchor inside of a ten foot wide crater over a mile and a half away

- mfw this was one of the largest and most devastating non-nuclear explosions in world history

- mfw this could have been avoided if they’d just taken the L and put the fire out with water

also worth a mention: the SECOND boat that exploded in a very similar manner the next day which was an even more violent explosion, but less devastating because most of the port was. you know. already leveled and evacuated

someone running rescue and recovery after the FIRST boat exploded noticed that the second boat's cargo was on fire and reported it....and this just went. ignored. for several hours. until someone was like "oh shit better get this under control" and tried to move the boat to no avail and they just gave up and evacuated

next day it started raining glowing-hot metal boat chunks all over the city. AGAIN.

Today's problematic ships are the Grandcamp (first explosion) and High Flyer (second explosion).

The funniest part of this is that while the Texas City Explosion was one of the largest non-nuclear explosion, it was not the largest non-nuclear explosion in history. That honour goes to... you guessed it, the Halifax Explosion of 1917, which involved one boat (the Imo) leaving the harbour through a narrow strait while speeding and on the wrong side, and for some ungodly reason they refused to give way for a second boat (the Mont Blanc) heading into harbour on the right side of the channel, meaning it was lined up to have a head-on collision with the Imo.

This was really unfortunate, because the Mont Blanc was absolutely fucking loaded to the brim with benzol and nitrocellulose (extremely flammable), as well as TNT and picric acid (extremely explosive). The two ships trying to dodge each other caused them to instead scrape, and while the Mont Blanc wasn't damaged, the collosion knocked over all the barrels full of benzol they had on deck and spilled it everywhere. And the sparks from the scraping set it on fire. And the burning benzol was leaking into the cargo hold full of explosives.

The entire crew of the Mont Blanc briefly tried to put the fire out, then realized they were past the point of no return, and instead got the fuck off of their time bomb of a ship (meanwhile the crew of the Imo was just standing around wondering why they were all so scared). The abandoned Mont Blanc, still on fire, drifted into the Halifax Harbour, at which point a fair amount of the city started watching the burning ship through their windows, or running down to the harbour to check it out, because it was 1917 and a ship being on fire was the height of entertainment. The crew of the Mont Blanc reached the shore, and promptly started screaming at people to fucking run now. Unfortunately, Halifax is a primarily English city, and the crew of the Mont Blanc was primarily French, so the warnings were not particularly effective. One sailor knew enough English to warn some workers at a railyard, who also began hauling ass... right up until one of them, Patrick Coleman, realized a passenger train was incoming, and turned around to run back to the telegraph station and send frantic messages that shit was about to kick off and they had to stop the train NOW. The train was safely stopped, saving the 300 people that would have otherwise eaten the explosion at point blank range, and it also meant the warning was passed up the lines, causing the first relief efforts to start scrambling before the explosion had even happened. Coleman was killed in the blast, but his sacrifice saved hundreds of lives.

(Also according to some annecdotes, at least one sailor from the Mont Blanc who only spoke French realized nobody could understand his warnings, and came up with a method that surpassed language - he found a woman holding a baby, ripped said baby out of its mothers arms, and started running like hell, prompting a furious crowd to chase the kidnapper as he ran away from the burning ship. Not sure if it's a true story, but it's certainly A Story.)

The collision took place at 8:45 AM on December 6th, 1917. At exactly 9:04:35 AM, the Mont Blanc detonated. Which we know, because that was the exact time that most of the clocks in town stopped at, including the clock on the city hall building (to this day, Halifax city hall still has one of its clocks frozen at 9:04:35, in memory of the explosion). The Mont Blanc's forward gun was launched almost 6 km, landing near Albro Lake, while her anchor was thrown for over 3 km in the opposite direction, and the Imo was thrown onto the far shore of Dartmouth. The explosion was felt over 200 km away. Every building within a 2.6 km radius was destroyed or heavily damaged. The explosion displaced enough water to expose the harbour's seabed, before the resulting 60 ft tsunami struck the docks and killed anyone who had survived the explosion.

Also, it took about an hour for anyone to start organizing rescue efforts, because it was WW1, and everybody reasonably assumed the devastating explosion was intentional, so the majority of people were too busy reporting to military posts and running around looking for non-existent invading Germans to rescue anyone. They sorted it out before long, which was good, because they were on a very tight schedule to save anyone - it was Canadian December, everyone had stoves going to heat their homes, and so now those were knocked over and everything was on fire. Some relief trains reached the city on the first day... and wound up being the ONLY relief the city got for awhile, because the next day a major blizzard buried Halifax in heavy snow, blocking any relief trains from reaching them, and also ensuring anyone still trapped that hadn't died in the fires was now at serious risk of freezing to death. Because Canada.

As for how big a boom this was, the general estimate is the Halifax Explosion weighed in at about 2.9 kilotons of TNT equivalent. For context, second place on the list of largest non-nuclear explosions is the Beirut explosion of 2020, which is estimated to have been somewhere between... 0.5 to 1.2 kilotons of TNT equivalent. Yeah. Over a century later, and nobody's managed to fuck up badly enough to get even half the blast size of Halifax.

The moral of this story is always drive on the right side of traffic, don't store all your explosives on the same boat, and if you need to get a crowd moving despite a language barrier, just steal a baby and see what happens.

My husband just walked up to me and showed me this on his laptop lmao

I’ve been saying I’m so tired and didn’t sleep last night all day and am now just sitting here with my cat, scrolling

Enikő Katalin Eged (Hungarian, b. 1992, Budapest, Hungary) - Angry Chili Kitten and Angry Chili Spices, 2022, Paintings: Digital Art

puppy eyes.

It is really important to me that all of you learn about Al Bean, astronaut on Apollo 12 and the fourth man to walk on the moon, who after 20 years in the US Navy and 18 years with NASA during which he spent 69 days in space and more than 10 hours doing EVAs on the moon , retired to become a painter.

He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.

Like, look at this stuff????

It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!

Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.

And then there's this one:

The Fantasy

For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.

The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.

But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.

Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.

This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.

"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.

"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.

"We often fantasized about Dick's joining us on the moon but we never found a way. In my paintings, though, I can have it my way. Now, at last, our best friend has come the last sixty miles." - Al Bean, about The Fantasy.

There’s also Alexei Leonov, writer and artist and first person to conduct a spacewalk!

This is his art.

You can't forget this, the first art made in space.

March 1965, Alexei Leonov made this drawing only moments after narrowly surviving the very first space walk.

Clone Medic Kix in 4.10 Carnage of Krell

Before I became an author, I was terrified of reaching out to authors to tell them I loved their work. They had already given me so much, and I felt I was adding to their workload having to read and maybe reply to my comment. Now, of course, I know better 😉

Vode An

Captain Keeli for @blackat-t7t

“Sunny with a chance of blaster bolts,” Keeli mutters to himself. “You karking asshole.”

“Show some respect to your superiors,” Cody’s voice rings from the comm in the data pad, all serious and oozing smug.

“Fuck off. Don’t you have a systems army to harass?”

“Inspection day, Captain. The longer I wait, the more they’re shaking in their boots.”

Fucking sadist with the regs. Keeli should try that one himself.

“Any day now, Keels.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let a man think, Star’s sake.” They should call this Words With Foes. At least there’s less bloodshed than when they all played One.

The Clone Wars // Ahsoka

#SCENE OF ALL TIME

+ BONUS

Where's the option of "business and cars" and shit like that? Economy vroom vroom!

According to Wikipedia it headquarters Mercedes-Benz Group, Schwarz Group, Porsche, Bosch and others.

Illustrated by this image

so now ofc I associate BW-land with