kingjaffejoffer:

miraculoushufflepufftrash:

mapsontheweb:

The flags of every U.S. state made out of their county lines.

Each state has a flag?????

Reading the last reply made me realize that some people have said the name “United States” their entire lives but not understood the literal description of the name and how it applies to how the government works.

drrarythings:

lullabyknell:

bigenderbeatnik:

nentuaby:

bigenderbeatnik:

Do you think Ravenclaws ever argue with the door to their tower? I bet they do. Like, the eagle says their answer to the riddle is wrong, but they argue the point and the eagle eventually comes around to their side and lets them in. 

Heck, I bet there’s a special, secret lounge accessible only to students who convincingly give the door an answer it hadn’t had in mind.

You’re a good egg. 

Okay, but I actually think about this all the time. Ravenclaws and their problems with their dormitory door. 

Like, imagine Su Li and Lisa Turpin coming back from dinner having some conversation or another about how they have some Herbology essay due tomorrow and neither of them did it because they were too distracted with a tangent they got on while doing their Potions homework. And Lisa’s going, “Alright, Su, Tony’s already got the books, so we just have to buckle down and do this. We got this. It’s fine. We’ll just go in and work our asses off.”
They get to the door and knock, still talking, entirely on muscle memory. They’re barely listening when the eagle asks them, “Where do Vanished objects go?”
Lisa’s brain is a little too fried with worry to think at the moment, but she’s not too concerned about getting in because Su looks calm and thoughtful about this one.
And then Su turns to her and goes, “Where DO Vanished objects go?”
Damn it all to hell, Lisa knows that look.
“Su. Su, no. It’s a riddle, Su. It’s just a riddle.”
“Yeah, I know it’s a riddle, but it’s also a legitimate question. I mean, Vanished objects have to go SOMEWHERE, right? For you to Conjure them again afterwards? Or are you just creating an identical object out of nothing? Or maybe not nothing… what are Conjured objects made of, do you think?”
“Su, we really have to write this Herbology essay.”
“I know. But it’s an interesting question. I bet somebody’s done a study on this. I heard Padma say that Conjured objects are different to real ones. Do you think that there’d be a way to tell if your Conjured object was the same one you’d Vanished? Like, if you bespelled it with a charm and it came back with the spells?”
“Well… I once heard an upper-year say that Vanishing bespelled objects is tricky. They were looking into it for their Curse-Breaking apprenticeship. But it might be possible. I definitely don’t think it’s possible to Conjure bespelled objects from nothing.”
“It might be. I read this book where somebody talked about conjuring a Sneak-o-scope and those are definitely enchanted objects.”
“Was it a Gilderoy Lockhart book? Because that sounds like bullshit to me.”
“No, I can show you. It was in a Auror’s Memoirs. I just returned them to the library this morning, so I bet nobody’s taken them out yet. And-”
“That sounds like an unreliable source.”
“AND I was reading this Charms book the other day that referenced a book on the specifics of Vanishing objects that had an author who was an expert in their field and a retiree from the Department of Mysteries with the same last name as the book by the Auror.”
“I’m not believing this until I see a source.”
“Fine, come on!”
The eagle knocker has long since settled back into its resting state by then, Su and Lisa immediately run off to the library, arguing the whole way, and the next day, Professor Sprout gives the extremely apologetic students an extension on the essay while sighing, “Ravenclaws.

Or imagine there’s some Muggleborn student who has an astrophysicist for one parent and a biologist for the other, and they think magic is amazing, but they’re also really into Muggle science as well.
“Which came first,” the eagle knocker asks them at one point, “the phoenix or the fire?”
And they’re immediately like, “the fire.”
While their friend is like, “Benny, no, that’s not how this works. My brother told me about things like this, it’s one of those paradox questions.”
“What? No way. Fire came first.”
“Benny…”
“Fire is a chemical reaction and, as far as I can tell, phoenixes are a fiery bird that probably evolved just like everything else did on this planet. We’re a really small speck on the cosmic calendar, Raleigh, and I’m saying that unless phoenixes are actually aliens – which would be AWESOME, you-”
“Benny…”
“-have to admit – fire came first. There are trillions of stars that haved burned and died billions of years before our sun was even born. This is just like that chicken and the egg question, in that it sounds like a paradox but it’s actually not, because the egg existed long before the bird we know as the chicken ever evolved-”
“Benny!”
“What?”
“You… the door opened.”
“What? Oh cool. Finally, someone who recognizes science in this nutty place.”
About a week later, Benny completely disrupts and derails their Astronomy class by arguing with Professor Sinestra about the school curriculum (that hasn’t been updated in more than fifty years or more) being “WAY TOO OUT OF DATE, PROFESSOR! THIS TEXTBOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 1910! THESE TELESCOPES ARE RIDICULOUS! WHEN’S THE LAST TIME A WIZARD WENT TO AN ACTUAL PLANETARIUM?! OH MY GOD, DO WIZARDS EVEN KNOW THAT THE AMERICANS HAVE GONE TO THE MOON?”
And the wizardborn kids are like, “The Americans have WHAT?” While poor Raleigh has his face in his hands and isn’t even surprised.

Or imagine other things. Like that time the first years has to stand around for two hours after the Welcoming Feast because their Prefects gave them a short speech, a small tour, and then got into an “academic disagreement” (as the house of Ravenclaw has come to call them) over the riddle. So there’s this group of eleven-year-olds playing party games in the hall while their fifteen-year-old “mentors” yell at each other over the riddle. And they only got inside in the end because someone actually managed to notice that the first years never came in and “Hey, that’s sort of weird”, and sent some second year to go look for them.

Or when NEWTs season came around, and there was a seventh year SO STRESSED that they came back from the library at three in the morning and when the eagle knocker asked them a riddle, they just burst into tears and sobbed against the door for ten minutes before the eagle awkwardly declared, “Nicely answered!” and let them in anyway.

I mean, Ravenclaws… they’d be a mess.

This is so funny, cute and I totally accept those headcanons

A Few of My Favorite Russian Proverbs (with their literal translations)

dsudis:

tsumeghost:

phoenixwaller:

elliottholt:

  • Большой секрет — знает весь свет.    Big secret—the whole world knows.
  • Борода не делает философом.  A beard doesn’t make a philosopher.
  • В темноте все кошки серы.  All cats are gray in the dark.
  • В Ту́лу со свои́м самова́ром не е́здят. No one brings a samovar to Tula. (Tula is famous as the city where samovars were manufactured. This is the equivalent of “Don’t bring coal to Newcastle.”)
  • Волко́в боя́ться — в лес не ходи́ть. If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go to the woods.
  • Говорить правду — потерять дружбу.  Tell the truth—lose friends.
  • Доверя́й, но проверя́й.  Trust, but verify.
  • Долг платежо́м кра́сен.  Debt is beautiful once it’s repaid.
  • Доно́счику — пе́рвый кнут. The informer is whipped first.
  • Друг познаётся в беде́.  You get to know your friend in trouble. (A friend in need is a friend indeed.)
  • Дру́жба дру́жбой, а де́нежкам счёт.  Friendship is friendship, but count money.
  • Знать всё — значит не знать ничего. To know everything is to know nothing.
  • И у стен бывают уши. And even walls have ears.
  • Когда́ де́ньги говоря́т, тогда́ пра́вда молчи́т.  When money talks, truth shuts up.
  • На чужо́м го́ре сча́стья не постро́ишь. One can’t build happiness upon another’s grief.
  • Назва́лся гру́здем — полеза́й в ку́зов. If you called yourself a mushroom—get in the basket. (Sort of like, “don’t just talk the talk—walk the walk.”)
  • Не ошиба́ется тот, кто ничего́ не де́лает. He that does nothing makes no mistakes.

NB: any translation mistakes are mine

USEFUL!!!

Very Important Addition, my favorite

Любовь не картошка, не выбросишь в окошко. LOVE IS NOT A POTATO YOU CANNOT THROW IT OUT A WINDOW (that is, love is not a small thing that is easy to get rid of)

!!!!!!!!!!!

For about TWENTY YEARS I have been wondering why, in the English-translated Chekhov play I read because it was on the summer reading list for my AP English class, someone says with no particularly enlightening context, “Death is not a potato.”

BUT THAT’S WHY, ISN’T IT. HE’S REFERENCING THAT PROVERB. LOVE IS NOT A POTATO; DEATH IS NOT A POTATO.

Ship’s Bells / Watch System

imperialtactician:

This is a random PSA to hopefully help out anyone who is confused about what the fuck it means to say I’ll see you at eight bells then, for example. Maybe you are just getting into Age of Sail RP or fiction, or maybe you’re playing crew on a Star Wars ship that uses the bell system (the Chimaera does, for example) and want to use and understand them. 

The bells are how mariners measure time on a watch system. It’s hundreds of years old, but it’s actually still in use today. Not all ships use time-keeping bells, but about two-thirds of the ones I’ve worked on do, and it’s traditional to give a captain a ship’s clock when he retires, so he’s never without the chimes. Essentially, it’s old-school, but still relevant. 

There are eight bells – one for every half hour of a four-hour watch. So, for example: 

0000 – eight bells 
0030 – one bell
0100 – two bells
0130 – three bells 
0200 – four bells 
0230 – five bells 
0300 – six bells 
0330 – seven bells 
0400 – eight bells 

0430 – one bell 
0500 – two bells… 
 

And so on and so forth throughout the day. Every ship I have worked on has been split into three navigational watches (although deck working hours are not determined by the watch). These are

8-12: 0800-1200 & 2000-0000
12-4: 1200-1600 & 0000-0400 
4-8: 1600-2000 & 0400-0800 

So each of those watches consists of eight bells. Thus, six bells could be three o’clock in the morning or eleven o’clock at night, for example. 

Anyway! I was just talking to a friend about it this morning and realized how confusing it might be for non-mariners who’ve seen it referenced once or twice but never really had anyone explain it to them before. I’m sure plenty of these posts already exist explaining it, but I also know that one of my first attempts at writing anything Age of Sail was years ago, before I became a professional mariner. I was trying to do a Master & Commander RP with someone who was extremely, ah, snooty about her Age of Sail knowledge, to put it as nicely as I can, and wouldn’t (or secretly couldn’t) explain it clearly. Since I didn’t understand them at that point, it really felt like one of those little details that can be overwhelming in a niche fandom, and put me off of trying to RP anything like that again. So, hopefully this helps prevent something like that from happening to other people ❤ 

The bell system really is simple and easy, and once you understand it, it can make writing characters on a navigational (or engineering) watch a lot more fun.

jeza-red:

probablyasocialecologist:

Neglected pastures thrive under solar panels

Solar panels could increase productivity on pastures that are not irrigated and even water-stressed, a new study finds. The new study published in PLOS One by researchers at Oregon State College finds that grasses and plants flourish in the shade underneath solar panels because of a significant change in moisture. The results bolster the argument for agrovoltaics, the concept of using the same area of land for solar arrays and farming. The idea is to grow food and produce clean energy at the same time.

oh god, it’s almost like large open plains with no shade or tree cover aren’t very friendly for plants/animals=_=