That was a big problem with the Qin dynasty. So many things were punished by death that not only did officers often find themselves on the run and in minor rebellions, but had many willing recruits because the only other option was execution.
my mom is a well intentioned yet nosy mom and she always wants to hook me up with people. it leads to some text message gems so the other day i went through and screenshotted the best. please enjoy.
I just… can’t believe the utter absurdity of someone going “let’s sell some old government furniture” so went into an office where they keep top secret files, saw an old filing cabinet, didn’t bother to check inside of it, organised to have to transported out and sold at a second hand store and at no point did anyone double check any part of this process and go “wait… do you think this filing cabinet designated to hold government secrets might… you know… still contain those secrets?” until SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER! THE ABC FINDS HUNDREDS OF SECRET GOVERNMENT FILES AND GOES “WE CAN’T PUBLISH THEM ALL BUT HEY HERE’S THE HIGHLIGHTS!” Someone is probably sitting in their office screaming into their hands so people in the room over can’t hear them. This is just… how????
Fact: any legend about a holy sword can be improved by 200% by replacing the sword with an axe and making no other changes.
Lady of the lake tosses Axcalibur at King Arthur, killing him instantly
There’s another reblog of this post that implies that knights who wield axes are secretly just lumberjacks, and it combined with this one in my brain to create an AU where the Lady of the Lake is, like, a flannel-wearing lumberjack who lives by a lake. Her role in the story is otherwise unchanged.
odin is like “when thor was born the sun shone bright upon his beautiful face. i found loki on the sidewalk outside a taco bell”
Oðinn spake:
Bright the sun shone | at the time of Þor’s birth, And bathed his count’nance fair. Loki, wolf-father, | the trickster, the liar, I found on the cold pavement While returning in glory | from a grand hunt For a 3 AM quesadilla.
If giraffes were predators they would look both hilarious and terrifying while sneaking up on their prey
I’m afraid you’ve missed the predatory giraffes by about 66 million years mate.
These guys are Azhdarchid pterosaurs, and they were some of the strangest reptiles to ever exist. They were perfectly capable of flight, but their physiology suggests that they may have spent a significant portion of their lives hunting on the ground.
The largest of them could reach over 5 metres tall while standing, and had a 10-metre wingspan. They varied greatly in body type, from the tall, spindly forms of Quetzalcoatlus and Arambourgiania (images 4 and 1-2 respectively) to the heavy brute strength of Hatzegopteryz, a species that may have used its head to bludgeon its prey (images 2 and 3).
There has never been another flying animal before or since to have reached such incredible sizes, nor any predator so intimidatingly tall. Well, not any that we know of yet.
All of these illustrations are by Mark Witton, a palaeontologist and artist who specialises in pterosaurs. This is his blog about palaeontology and the science of reconstructing extinct species. You can find out more about each of these images here, here and here.
my favorite thing about “fbi/nsa agent monitoring my computer” things is it implies that there is at least one agent for every single person on earth with a computer
