Consider this: You can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.” The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photo-receptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it.
— NASA Lunar Science Institute, 2012   (via aconstantache)
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries most direct protests against social injustice were in prose. They were reasoned arguments written in the belief that, given time, people would come to see reason, and that, finally, history was on the side of reason. Today this is by no means clear. The outcome is by no means guaranteed. The suffering of the present and the past is unlikely to be redeemed by a future era of universal happiness. And evil is a constant ineradicable reality. All this means that the resolution – the coming to terms with the sense to be given to life – cannot be deferred. The future cannot be trusted. The moment of truth is now. And more and more it will be poetry, rather than prose, that receives this truth. Prose is far more trusting than poetry; poetry speaks to the immediate wound.
— John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
(via jacobwren)

notanoveltyaccountok:

somewhatgreatexpectations:

naked-mahariel:

zeplerfer:

weeping-wandrian:

why the fuck does english have a word for

image

but not for “the day after tomorrow”

???

Because you’re not looking hard enough! ;)

Overmorrow = the day after tomorrow

Ereyesterday = the day before yesterday

Example: I defenestrated my brother ereyesterday. I shall defenestrate my sister overmorrow! Because I hate my family and also windows.

english has some of the best examples of stupidly specific words, tbh

Rhotacism (n): excessive use of the letter “R”

Lingible (adj): meant to be licked

Whipjack (n): a beggar, specifically one who is pretending to have been shipwrecked

Yerd (v): to beat with an object with a stick

Roddikin (n): the fourth stomach of a cow or a deer

Balbriggan (n): a type of fine cotton, most often used in underwear

and my personal favorite

Cornobble (v): to slap or beat another person with a fish

This makes the English nerd in me extremely happy.

Who even made these words I’m going to cornobble them

fun latin word of the day

its-caesar-bitch:

apicula, -ae, fem. (ah-pee-coo-lah) – little bee

i really just adore latin diminutives. for all of u who want to embrace ur inner vergil, here’s the cutest term of endearment ever because bees are the most adorable

image

apparently this is a picture of a bee sleeping which is the best thing so enjoy

elucubrare:

I am trying to love poetry again.
My love is not like a muscle, that withers
if you let it lie unused, or a vegetable,
rotting unseen in the refrigerator.
It is more like one of those rivers
that is renewed only by snowmelt,
or a bear, that, waking after hibernation,
struggles to recall why it left its cave,
blinking its eyes against the pallor of the sun.

I am not content with this winter.
I’ve skimmed my books too long, untouched
by lines that would have touched me
with that thin fire beneath the skin
that a lover feels on seeing their beloved.
The fire lies dormant in me. I stoop
to rekindle it, blowing out a stream of words,
fine and clear and delicate as air.

Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them.
— Mary Oliver, from section one “Upstream,” Upstream: Selected Essays (Penguin Press, 2016). (via asuncame)

I try to write the ghost into my poem
by writing like the ghost,
but that’s not it either.

Unable to write the poem I dream,
I follow the ghost home.

I whisper to the ghost.


I whisper to the ghost.


I whisper to the ghost.

— from “Poem for All My Old Best Friends” by Dobby Gibson (via wildfairy)