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#pwhl boston #pwhl #pwhl playoffs

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Mobility assistance

#signal boost #accessibility

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The hobbits invent a fun game called ‘how close can we get to our friends before they notice us’

easy mode: Gimli (makes a lot of noise himself, very easy to sneak up on)

medium mode: Boromir (challenging enough to be great fun)

hard more: Aragorn (VERY attentive to his surroundings)

expert mode: Legolas

#lord of the rings #lotr #analysis #hobbits

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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.

#always reblog #rms carpathia #carpathia #hope for humanity

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I wish people would lay off the refs. Many years ago, I did some refereeing for fencing, and it. Is. Difficult. Sports are fast, rules are complex, and ambiguity is real. Refs are knowledgeable and highly trained, but they’re also human and make mistakes, even at the highest levels. Video review is great because you can remove a lot of bias, but you’ll never please everyone. By definition, one party will always emerge disappointed from any contested call.

I love seeing fans bitch about the refs in both directions like claiming it’s rigged in both directions rather than the more likely possibility they’re humans who make mistakes

#pwhl #pwhl boston #refereeing #my thoughts #pwhl playoffs

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#it me #gpoy #pwhl boston #pwhl playoffs #pwhl montreal #smile rule

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In light of the sad news about Bernard Hill, I feel like we should take a moment to really appreciate the acting performances in the LOTR trilogy. The fact that none of the cast got Academy Awards is well-known and I think even now the sheer visual spectacle of the trilogy can overshadow everything else, but the performances were SO crucial to what made the films great.

It’s easy to take the success of the movies for granted now, but that was never a guarantee. Aside from the practical aspects of portraying such an epic fantasy onscreen, the series is peppered with dialogue that is fine on the page but unbelievably difficult to deliver. As Harrison Ford famously remarked to George Lucas re Star Wars “You can write this stuff, but you can’t say it.”

From Gandalf’s “To the Bridge of Khazad-Dum!” to Elrond’s “It must be cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came!” it would be so easy for the whole thing to collapse into farce. The only reason it doesn’t, is because of the talent and conviction of the actors.

Bernard Hill was tasked with one of the most objectively ridiculous lines in the entire trilogy. “The horn of Helm Hammerhand shall sound in the deep one last time!” And he delivered. BOY, did he deliver. He gave it all the gravitas and emotional weight of Shakespeare, he made it truly rousing instead of ridiculous, he took the audience with him to that moment, that place, right into Middle Earth with its people and its history, and made it REAL.

And for that, I thank and salute him. RIP, sir. Go now to the halls of your fathers. You earned it.

#Bernard hill #lotr #may his memory be a blessing #time for a rewatch #maybe

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me whenever desbiens makes a save

#pwhl montreal #pwhl #ann renee desbiens #smile rule #let’s go lesbians!! #meme

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"Frickin' Frankel" - My Dad

#heck yeah #aerin frankel #pwhl playoffs #pwhl boston #goalie love

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#pwhl boston #pwhl montreal #pwhl playoffs #whoa #ice time #taylor wenczkowski

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We’re really going into triple overtime

#pwhl playoffs #pwhl boston #pwhl montreal

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this is the game that never ends and it goes on and on, my friends-

#post that aged well #pwhl #pwhl boston #pwhl playoffs #pwhl montreal

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Can’t spell Boston without O-T

#pwhl boston #funny #pwhl playoffs

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😳😳

#pwhl #pwhl playoffs #pwhl boston #pwhl montreal #hockey fights #@dancinglibrarian

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Ok but has Boston ever heard of winning in regulation are they trying to kill me

#pwhl boston #pwhl #pwhl playoffs

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That looked like a really difficult call. I’m glad it went Boston’s way, but this means OT and I would like to sleep at some point.

Also, the Francophone crowd chanting in accented English is a delight. “Layts goh, Mun-ryahl, layts goh!”

#pwhl boston #pwhl montreal #pwhl playoffs #no goal

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“Back in the day my father knew a space ship captain, real good with the ladies. He used to say, “that Captain Kirk, he was as smooth as a Klingon forehead.” Well, I always thought that was odd, ya know?”

#star trek #st:tng #peter falk #detective columbo #smile rule #columbo