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enough about taylor swift already. reblog and tag the smallest, least known artist you listen to

#valeries

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It IS true that being on here gives you a tumblr accent. This morning my mother asked me something and i replied "i don't know i've never heard these words in that order" and she nearly choked laughing. It wasn't even that funny

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Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

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tumblr will never count as social media to me. This shit a secret hideout and we just all happen to see each others thoughts

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my final designs for both Jeremy and Jean!

(still not finished reading, i'm about 65% through!)

#aftg

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I need a way to say this character makes me feel insane amounts of lust but not in a sexual or romantic way

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kevin's the court queen and neil's the court jester

#aftg

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AU where Neil never joined the Foxes, but ended up an Exites employee. He plays short one-on-one games with players who want to test their new racquets, and has inadvertently honed his skill against so many different types of players with different expertise. Andrew's group goes to get Kevin some new equipment, and Neil knows better than to play well against him. But Kevin forgets himself and gets a little too excited about testing out a new racquet, whipping the ball at Neil so fast that Neil instinctively slams it back hard enough to light up the goal on the opposite side of the court. Kevin is slack-jawed that some random retail worker scored against him so quickly and so easily and shuts down for a minute while his brain reboots. From a distance Neil swears he hears someone mutter "Interesting". Then Kevin's brain is back online and starts begging him to try out for their team. Neil realizes their is one thing worse than being recognized by Kevin Day and dragged back to his father: not being recognized by Kevin Day and trying to convince the grown ass man to get up off the floor and stop clinging to his legs and holy shit jackass, can you pretend to have some dignity??

#aftg #op please this is so fkn funny

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"In eight years on the run, Neil had been through sixteen countries and twenty-two name."

#aftg #!!!!!!!!!!

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it's terrible but also so hilarious to me that kevin in trk wants neil to stay in the closet for exy bc it's just... so kevin and that's exactly how things work for him

#the dragon breathes fire #aftg reread

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#abortion

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love to see him direct his efforts towards important things

#thats so omg #enstars

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I never want to hear conservatives go on about repressive censorship in China, North Korea, and Iran ever again

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The best piece of advice I ever got was not meant as advice, but as an edict. If I was going to threaten people as a joke, it had to be so far out of proportion with what happened that it would be obvious I was joking. This changed how I expressed frustration with others. It then changed how I expressed frustration with myself.

Not “I’m going to hit you” but “I am going to buy a tuna sub from the gas station and hide it under the seat of your car”

Not “I’m going to kill myself” but “I am going to walk into the desert and let the scarabs take me”

The other side then happened. When I mess something up, instead of saying it’s bad and perpetuating negative thoughts, swing hard the other way.

Not “this art is terrible” but “this shall be framed and mounted on the wall in my museum exhibition as testament to the suffering I had to overcome”

Have been doing this since high school. It was my drama teacher who asked me to please stop scaring the actors. The other half of the edict was that I had to say it in a polite tone, and end it with either please or thank you.

Life changing. 10/10 Mr Muëller. Highly reccomend.

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Acheron in a suit.. Something i designed my self though added elements of her actual outfit into it too!

#honkai star rail #star rail

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Okay listen, I completely understand where the shippers are coming from but as an a-spec person I think it would be a hundred times funnier if LQG is aromantic and his loyalty to SQQ is completely platonic but it's so fucking intense that it bleeds to near-devotion. Like, that would be hilarious I think.

#hard agree #like i love liushen as much as the next person but im also such a sucker for intense platonic relationships #and aro characters ofc #scum villain #mxtx