I knit stuff. Sometimes I even post about it. But usually I just watch movies. And I'm currently on a serious Hobbit streak, so . . . watch out.
[x]
“Where is your brother!?”
The majordomo was at the end of his wits, and as much as he did not want to admit it, it was affecting Thorin as well. Most of it had to do with the fact that he had been explicitly put in charge of himself and his two siblings, and what they were to do for the occasion. Initially he had protested; he was the oldest and the heir, and he was old enough to be in charge of things like logistics and scheduling and preps, wasn’t he? Not a glorified babysitter for his two siblings, this was nothing serious.
Molly Ivins on Texas Ort
“Most of our ort is found in front of courthouses, so as to let folks know it’s official.
“Here we see a statue of a peanut.”
Stonehenge is in this picture if you know where to look. The bend in the river at Amesbury helped me find it.
Howl’s Moving Castle: animation → reality
credits for cosplayers:
↳ howl & sophie | [x]
↳ howl’s castle | [x]
↳ howl & calcifer | [x]
↳ sophie & calcifer | [x]please do not remove cosplayer sources
No consort he was, but he might as well have been; for the King Under the Mountain had traveled all the way West to seek out one Bilbo Baggins, the only one he trusted to be his Hand. Him, and no-one else; not anyone from his Company, not his cousins in the Iron Hills or the Blue Mountains.
Dwarven culture forbade Bilbo from being Consort, but there was no clause in stone to say about the Hand. And there had been Hands of the Kings that weren’t entirely dwarrow, in the past. Hadn’t Durin the Deathless himself awoken a lone dwarf, but certainly not alone?Ssshhh I am mixing things I love together. I know a GoT x Hobbit thing has happened in the Dothraki setting, but this is a bit Westerosi I suppose.
Thorin travels south for a council with the other kings with regards to Sauron’s growing evil. Bilbo runs Erebor. Everyone (but the Company) underestimates him; what does this little thing know about politics?
Well. Nothing will disrupt Thorin Oakenshield’s rule under his watch. Not even talk of a dragon, born of Smaug, amassing an army from the East.
WiP! Again! /rolls away/ OTLLL
What Makes Rain Smell So Good?
Back in 1964, a pair of Australian scientists (Isabel Joy Bear and R. G. Thomas) began the scientific study of rain’s aroma in earnest with an article in Nature titled “Nature of Agrillaceous Odor.” In it, they coined the term petrichor to help explain the phenomenon, combining a pair of Greek roots: petra (stone) and ichor (the blood of gods in ancient myth).
In that study and subsequent research, they determined that one of the main causes of this distinctive smell is a blend of oils secreted by some plants during arid periods. When a rainstorm comes after a drought, compounds from the oils—which accumulate over time in dry rocks and soil—are mixed and released into the air. The duo also observed that the oils inhibit seed germination, and speculated that plants produce them to limit competition for scarce water supplies during dry times.
These airborne oils combine with other compounds to produce the smell. In moist, forested areas in particular, a common substance is geosmin, a chemical produced by a soil-dwelling bacteria known as actinomycetes. The bacteria secrete the compound when they produce spores, then the force of rain landing on the ground sends these spores up into the air, and the moist air conveys the chemical into our noses.
“It’s a very pleasant aroma, sort of a musky smell,” soil specialist Bill Ypsilantis told NPR during an interview on the topic. “You’ll also smell that when you are in your garden and you’re turning over your soil.”
Because these bacteria thrive in wet conditions and produce spores during dry spells, the smell of geosmin is often most pronounced when it rains for the first time in a while, because the largest supply of spores has collected in the soil. Studies have revealed that the human nose is extremely sensitive to geosmin in particular—some people can detect it at concentrations as low as 5 parts per trillion. (Coincidentally, it’s also responsible for the distinctively earthy taste in beets.)
(via Surprising Science)
Drowning out my family with this song on a constant loop. Not sure why I never thought of this before.
(Or why I chose this song. It came up on shuffle and I was down with that.)
