Sunflower Room

Mozart (Currently shredding Violin Concerto No. 1 on the guitar, having figured it out within 30 seconds): What other music can be made from harnessed lightning?

my skateboard to science so

they can do sick tricks

it's not a hot take to say that the mass amnesia about fiberwork is linked to the belittlement of women's work in geneal, but i do think there's a special kind of illusion that is cast by "cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children." you hear that and think "well i cook and clean and take care of children (or i know someone who does) and i have a sense of how much work that is" and you know of course that cooking and cleaning were more laborious before modern technology, but still, you have a ballpark estimate you think, when in fact you are drastically underestimating the work load.

A simple dress or robe that covers an adult from shoulders to mid-calf will usually take about two yards of fabric.

Do we count this as a passive rickroll?

Sometimes crashing, breaking

Storming against the harbor wall

Dark secrets well up from depths 

Once explored, refuse to be ignored

And the harbor wall never knows

What it is to be pulled by the moon

Changing without choosing

Giving endlessly, 

refilled by tears and warmed snow 

Riptides battle against my 

Daughter, the beach, 

Who refuses to be still

Each day giving what she will

He really articulated something about women and men that I found beautiful. My husband is the harbor wall in our home and I am somewhere between a crashing teenager and a deep ocean woman.

Neuschwanstein, literally the inspo for the castles in Disney's Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella

Hohenschwangau, the practical castle

Linderhof, the final, the smallest, and the MOST fab.

Every room is incredible and the park is beautiful, but shoutout to The Bedroom, the biggest room

The Hall of Mirrors, which he probably wandered by candle light because he was a serious night owl

The Dining Room, with a wishing table that lowers to the kitchen, and rises with a crank, returning magically full of food

The Venus Grotto, constructed for the sole use of Ludwig to larp to his heart's content

A full artificial cave, it features a waterfall, fake stalactites, and a custom-designed swan boat floating on an artificial lake. The first electricity in Bavaria was generated here, to change the colors of the stage lights and to power Ludwig's fountain and wave machine.

the public paid for zero of his fairytale castle hobby

Ludwig II then proceeded to build Neuschwanstein (left) on the next hill over from his parents' castle (right), a little bigger and a bit higher up:

You can walk from one to the other, quite a nice daytrip if you happen to find yourself in Bavaria.

While Hohenschwangau wasn't built by him, Ludwig II did build quite a lot of castles. Besides the already mentioned ones, there's also Schloss Herrenchiemsee:

It's modelled after Versailles. The gardens are lovely.

There's also the more modest Königshaus am Schachen:

The "Turkish Room" still packs quite a punch.

He also planned castles that were never built, such as a Neuschwanstein-style one at the site of the ruined Burg Falkenstein, not far from Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

This was contemporary theatrical painter Christian Jank's first rendering of that one:

Architects were engaged, but by that point Ludwig II was already in pretty significant financial trouble. A tiny bit of the infrastructure was put up, but nothing more. You can find some of the design sketches in the museum at Herrenchiemsee.

Shortly before his passing, Ludwig II also had plans for a castle inspired by a palace in Beijing, likely to be built in Tirol, and one that was to be more Byzantine-styled, likely near Linderhof.

He also did some lush royal apartments in Landshut and Munich, as well as other new additions to existing buildings, though a lot of that was cosmetic and/or leftovers from his bigger projects.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.