I’m the designer, developer, and author of Tolkienists, the Tolkien Art Index, LR Citations, Anduin™, and TolkienMoot. my interests include the works of J.R.R. #Tolkien, classical music, espresso, #cartography, linguistics, keyboards (for typing), #Macintosh (the Apple computer), cider-making (with lower-case apples), #typography, &c.
Cartographer @kennethfield posted a blog entry last month calling out several news organizations' top-flight maps detailing stages in Ukraine's defense against Russia. Worth your time to look at this #cartography / #mapping !
https://cartoblography.com/2023/02/24/ukraine-conflict-one-year-on-in-maps/
I'm a little late to the frustration-at-Roald-Dahl-being-censored party. Just saw this most excellent response from McSweeney's. The f-word features prominently (be warned!).
> If you don’t want censorship from the right, you can’t have it from the left. Here’s how art is supposed to work: Someone writes a book. They write it with passion, with abandon, with honesty and lyricism and even a bit of recklessness. It is of their time, using the words of their time.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/fuck-you-you-fat-headed-roald-dahl-censoring-fuckers
@dreamword Yes! The Internet Archive is not only a true library, it is an exemplary library. It provides a vital service in preserving and disseminating information and creating knowledge.
I am a published author with a library degree, and was a library software developer, and I stand with @internetarchive in the #BattleForLibraries!
OK, so how is George Winston’s 1982 “Ocean Waves” not just a New Age rendition of 1967’s “Gentle on my Mind”?
I just heard a let's player say "maybe we can feed two birds with one scone here" and it has made my day
Oh wow, hypothes.is lets you do shared annotation on local .pdfs, that's pretty awesome
On #LongCovidAwarenessDay I want to remind you all to be kind to one another. You don't know what someone is carrying.
This is me on my bike in 2020 before I developed #LongCovid
Cycling is pretty much off bounds for me right now - my heart wouldn't cope and the cognitive load is difficult too.
I miss cycling and hope to return to it at some point
This description of a cursed magic rock from an old issue of Dragon Magazine is basically just a cell phone.
"The Doctor, Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian (William Russell) realize they have materialized in ancient Rome on the Ides of March just in time to witness the assassination of Julius Caesar (Michael Gough). Can they survive the ensuing chaos and make their way back to the TARDIS?" https://publicdomainreview.tumblr.com/post/711861870522433536/tfw-when-you-pay-no-heed-to-the-ides-2066-yrs
@puffer I've been using https://kagi.com for about a year, and cannot recommend it highly enough. They charge (a little), and so we users will never become the commodity. Full boolean searching, bang-shortcuts like DDG, geography-based (or -blind) searches, .... I'm never looking back! Oh, and see also:
@kendraleonard It does look calm, doesn't it? In fact, the wind is wuthering loudly in the trees and eaves. Winter is long here, but we love it!
Back home in #Vermont, wistfully remembering last week's daffodils and magnolias in Columbus.
Me: "Tolkien's plotting is bad, his narrative structure clumsy and his political imagination embarrassing to behold"
Also me: "Hmm...in an Old English translation of LOTR, should the onomasticon of Dale be just kept in Old Norse, or should I 'regress' it into Proto-Norse but spell it in West Saxon graphemes?"
Ayuh, this is about right.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/when-to-turn-your-heat-on-in-new-england-a-decision-guide
🌟 Near my house, there's an apartment building with a courtyard. Big deal, right? But if you walk up the steps a little bit, there's something about this courtyard that you might find really truly wonderful… https://cabel.com/2023/02/25/the-courtyard/
“The obligation for towns and cities to accommodate people with disabilities and the electoral process is not a new thing, it’s something that should have been happening all along,” Owen said. “What we saw from COVID was, we made this accommodation shift for everybody, not just for people with disabilities. so that people could be safe and could still participate in the voting process." #Vermont #DisabilityRights #DisabilityLaw
Tom Bombadil's chapter in Fellowship feels like a complete fever dream, but it's a really delightful moment of joy and mirth before the folk-horror darkness of the Barrow-downs
even though it's been a decade since i listened to the audiobook, this tune for Tom's singing still sticks in my head, it's a very catchy little ditty
also, has anyone else caught that all of Tom's speech follows the same rhythm as his songs?
Here, @gruber is so right; I long for the clarity of older Mac operating systems: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/03/06/rogue-amoeba-historic-screenshot-archive
I’ve always felt that PJ’s _LotR_ movies were over-praised and that the Rankin-Bass _Return of the King_ was unfairly panned. (Note I’m carefully not saying that either is better than the other!)
Matt Skuta has posted a brilliant side-by-side shot-by-shot comparison of the two movies which has been undeservedly neglected on YouTube. If nothing else, it shows that PJ owes at least some of his “vision” to R-B:
