*heavy southern accent*: terfs aint got no friends
Jurassic Park (1993)
hungry hungry dungeoneers
Ilia fucking Malinin’s world record breaking free skate
Oh my God every bit of this is wild
-when he does the first big jump the announcers start screaming. I don't understand enough of what I'm looking at to get what about this is breaking records but the announcers screaming was a pretty big clue
-He's dancing to music from Succession????? I don't recognize all of it but some of it is definitely the theme from Succession. At one point the audience claps along to the music. And I'm not sure if it's out of support for the skater or because they like the song 🤣
-when he finishes he just lays down on the ice incredible
THAT'S MY BOY!!! I SKATE AT HIS RINK!!!
- That first big jump is a Quadruple Axel. It's 4.5 rotations in the air (you take off forwards rather than backwards, which is the extra half rotation). Nobody else in the world can do this jump it's so hard. He is the first and only person to ever land it cleanly, much less consistently. He had to land it cleanly here to have any hope of winning the World Champion title.
- Yes, he's skating to music from Succession! The audience is clapping in support because he was doing so well (also because it was hosted in Montreal and the audience was very supportive of all the skaters that evening).
- He lays down on the ice because he just broke multiple world records. He landed all 6 types of quadruple jumps cleanly, which no one has ever done at all (again, because he's the only one that can do the quad Axel), much less in a single program like this. This was an insane feat of athletic ability! If you go watch the other guys who competed against him, Yuma Kagiyama was in second place by 20 fucking points, and Yuma skated with no falls. This is Micheal Phelps / Katie Ledecky levels of smashing the competition (sorry the only other sport I know is swimming).
Some other notes for everyone:
- Ilia listed that first jump as a Triple Axel on the sheet you give to the judges, meaning that he wasn't committed to doing the Quad Axel. (Technically you're not committed to anything on the sheet but it's generally your "plan" for the program.) He also doesn't do a quad axel in the 6-minute warmup beforehand when he does go and do it in the program, so it was a complete toss-up as to whether he was going to go for it. It's incredible that he manages to land the jump so perfectly without warming it up first!
- He was 3rd coming into this skate from the previous short program. (All skating competitions require you to skate 2 different programs, 1 short and 1 long.) In order to win the title, he was going to have to skate without any falls, especially because his one strong point is his jumps and other skaters are stronger in other areas. There are many, many skaters who fall on their quad jumps, even when they're just doing one. It is so fucking hard to do even one of the 6 types of quad jumps. And he just does all 6! In one program! Insanity!
- He did a 4 Lutz - 3 Flip at the halfway point of his program. Almost no one puts a Flip on the end of their combos, it'll usually be a Salchow instead because it's much easier. The only other skater I can think of to put a Flip on the end of a combo is Shoma Uno (who was also at these championships but didn't have a good skate).
- His last jumping pass was a combo that was supposed to be a 3 Lutz - 2 Axel. He decided, in the moment, to change the 2 Axel to a 3 Axel. Nobody else has ever attempted this, much less succeeded. It is orders of magnitude more difficult to do another rotation to the second jump in a combo, at the very end of a 4.5 minute sprint no less.
In short, this kid is wild, had the performance of a lifetime, and I had the blessed opportunity to witness it.
there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral
STUMPY MY BELOVED!!!!
For added context on what rehabilitating the area means: there are structural issues with the Tidal Basin seawall that cause flooding like this independent of rainfall. Big portions of the sidewalk in Stumpy’s section are regularly submerged, which is bad for the land and the trees themselves, not to mention an accessibility issue for visitors.
It’s sad that Stumpy and many other trees in the area will need to be cut down, but it will ensure the continued survival of the other trees in the area, and Stumpy himself will live on in his cuttings!
I believe Stumpy will be taken to the national arboretum and his clones will return to the tidal basin after the rebuilding.
Someone left him a bottle of bourbon as an offering.
The Japanese Embassy came to pay him honor this week.
Stumpy and his cohort are part of the original gift from Japan more than 100 years ago, and many have lived this long bc the National Parks takes care of them. Normally the trees live about 40-50 years.
here's my holding out for a hero xenk edit <3
so appropriate, so true
REBLOG if you are old enough to remember what a VCR is.
Cats are like "how dare you pay attention to something that isn't me"
My cat will get Actively Annoyed if I'm on my phone while he's in my lap. Pay no mind to the fact that I was on my phone before he crawled in. No, now that he's here, any nanosecond my eyeballs are on my phone is a nanosecond lost where they could have been on him instead. It doesn't matter if I'm petting him. I could be talking to him too. I've also tried moving my phone to behind his face so I'm looking at both at the same time. Mr Gandalf is displeased at all of these fake solutions. The only solution is to look at him And Only Him, At All Times.
The Mr G in question
Paws AND face tucked into my hand for at least three hours every day.
I have this problem with Tiny Tim. He doesn't want me even touching the computer when it is Pay Attention to Tim Time
(by bellamarkovna)
The sacrificial chair (all my chairs are sacrificial)
I have horrendous amount of work currently, so I decided that I need to do personal project, even tiny, to keep myself from going nuts.
Fortunately it's February, what means a lot of big cats with FebROARy. I'm planning to do at least 15 of them during this month, let's see how this will turn out!
yeos im comfortabule here. no im willn't be nappinge elsewherem.
cat please get off my lap i need to go to work
no