the most romantic thing ever to be honest with you. i think statues and carvings in klingon culture run a really cool and compelling parallel and make a fantastic aid to the function/beauty of storytelling and poetry and song. there's a few examples of the importance of stone carving in the show/beta-canon, including of course worf's statue of kahless and morath, but there's also a famous historical statue of the lady lukara on qo'nos that was personally carved by kahless with a bat'leth, and the hall of heroes on qo'nos/hall of warriors on ty'gokor are full of statues that serve as a really proud reminder of their history

i think that sculpture work and carving being a big part of klingon culture really fits into the ideas that were introduced in the paq'batlh by marc okrand- according to him, in klingon music, beauty is the result of two forces opposing eachother, and the blurring of the line between the audience and the story is a natural part of klingon opera- the audience is encouraged to join in the narrative and become part of it.

i can see this being a natural result of the sculpting process- the sculptor and his material, the story he's trying to tell through the carving, the shaping and the molding- he shapes the material, and the material shapes the story, and in that way the line is blurred- the sculptor becomes part of the story he's trying to tell because he has to form it, and the opposition between the two of them- the material vs the sculptor represents this honorable challenge and this potential and this battle, because it needs to be shaped into the kind of narrative you want to tell the way you'd like it to be told. and the end result is organic in that same way, it evolves and changes as you work (or in the case of oral storytelling, as it's retold and shared), and just. i don't know if this is intentional across the whole show/franchise but i can really see the way this art form in particular might become a big part of klingon culture and history

good lord

Anna Boberg (Swedish,1864-1935)

Northern Lights, c. 1901

oil on canvas

Roswell T. Weidner - Upstream (1981)

so… I’m watching the original series…

Star Trek: Voyager Parallax

Just remember, Torres, I'm the senior officer and I speak for Engineering. Try not to say anything unless someone asks you a question.

In the sunlight in the center of a ring of trees Lev sat cross-legged, his head bent above his hands. A small creature crouched in the warm, shallow cup of his palms. He was not holding it; it had decided or consented to be there. It looked like a little toad with wings. The wings, folded into a peak above its back, were dun-colored with shadowy streaks, and its body was shadow-colored. Three gold eyes like large pinheads adorned its head, one on each side and one in the center of the skull. This upward-looking central eye kept watch on Lev. Lev blinked. The creature changed. Dusty pinkish fronds sprouted out from under its folded wings. For a moment it appeared to be a feathery ball, hard to see clearly, for the fronds or feathers trembled continually, blurring its outlines. Gradually the blur died away. The toad with wings sat there as before, but now it was light blue. It scratched its left eye with the hindmost of its three left feet. Lev smiled. Toad, wings, eyes, legs vanished. A flat mothlike shape crouched on Lev’s palm, almost invisible because it was, except for some shadowy patches, exactly the same color and texture as his skin. He sat motionless. Slowly the blue toad with wings reappeared, one golden eye keeping watch on him. It walked across his palm and up the curve of his fingers. The six tiny, warm feet gripped and released, delicate and precise. It paused on the tip of his fingers and cocked its head to look at him with its right eye while its left and central eyes scanned the sky. It gathered itself into an arrow shape, shot out two translucent underwings twice the length of its body, and flew off in a long effortless glide toward a sunlit slope beyond the ring of trees.

The Eye of the Heron, Ursula K. Le Guin

A reminder in the year of our lord 2024 that Tumblr has an option to report posts for “election integrity”…. since there’s already a ton of propaganda on here featuring false or misleading info by people who openly say they want Biden/Democrats to lose or Trump to win, maybe consider doing that next time you see some of it on your dash.

(Especially important to do with people who are downplaying the human rights violations of the Russian and Chinese governments, demonizing Ukrainians or Uighurs or Hong Kong democracy activists, or currently, delegitimizing the security concerns around TikTok as “Sinophobia” or something. Be extremely skeptical *especially* of anyone whose issue with Biden is that he’s not pro Russia or pro China enough. Just unfollowed someone for reblogging this crap and blocked and reported the OP.)

The Song of the Cell, S. Mukherjee

Parts of California’s scenic Highway 1 have been collapsing into the Pacific Ocean in recent days, as bouts of rain lead to landslides. Today, state officials temporarily shut down a stretch of the road near Big Sur and urged local residents to evacuate since more rain is expected through Friday. Around 2,000 people live in the Big Sur area year-round.

36.380383°, -121.901453°

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Sattar Bahlulzade - Mardakan view (1969)

me when I'm definitely joking so I (softly) say "I know how you're feeling"

(From "Star Trek Scriptbooks Volume Two: Becoming Human")

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

Gregory Hardy (Canadian, b. 1950)

Road Summer Zoom, 2020

Acrylic on linen

[image id: two panels from the comic "Spock: Reflections". Spock is facing T'Pring against a red-brown background.

(First panel)

Spock: And how is Stonn?

T'Pring: Stonn... is Stonn.

(Second panel)

T'Pring: He is no better or worse than I anticipated he would be when I chose him.]

T'Pring truly is just Like That uh