Winter weather in northern latitudes sometimes brings with it unusual phenomena like this ice disk spinning in the
Middle Fork Snoqualmie River in Washington state. Photographer Kaylyn Messer ventured out to capture photos and videos of the event over the weekend. There are a couple theories as to how such disks form, but swirling river eddies are a key ingredient. One theory posits that chunks of ice forming on the river get caught up by the spinning eddy and slowly freeze together to form the disk. Another theory proposes that the disks occur when an existing chunk of ice breaks away, gets caught in the spinning eddy and slowly has its edges ground down into a circle. Personally, I lean toward the former explanation, though there is likely grinding at the edges either way. See more about this ice circle over at Messer’s blog. (Image credit: K. Messer; GIF by @itscolossal; via Colossal)
ok a followup from my irony post: one of the things i love most about steve rogers as seen in the mcu is that he doesn’t do the thing that ‘feels right’ or looks most virtuous or american or whatever, he’s not sentimental, he knows what hell is like because he has been there and it’s called the western front. he grew up sick and poor and irish catholic when there was no kindness for those things in the american narrative, he is not the kind of guy who thinks everything will turn out okay if you just believe in yourself.
he doesn’t do what he feels is the right thing, he does what he decides is the right thing. and sometimes it feels terrible, and has terrible consequences. at no point in ‘civil war’, for instance, does he seem to think his decision is The Right Choice and tony’s is Wrong. he knows there was no right answer, only two wrong ones, and he picked the one he could live with. and people bled for it.
i wouldn’t say he’s a ‘logic’ character, he’s not that trope, but he is secretly, subtly, ruthlessly thoughtful.
so when he does something like, say, become a fugitive from the entire world within minutes of hearing there’s a shoot-first order out on bucky, it’s not that blind emotional panic that drives so many heroes. it’s as cold and unstoppable as a glacier.
an emotionally driven hero has, inherently, a sense of entitlement about the outcome of their choices. if you believe in your friends, if you tell the truth when you ought to lie, if you refuse to take the kill shot because heroes don’t kill, things will definitely turn out okay in the end somehow. and of course the narrative always supports this, because that’s the genre, that’s the trope set. there’s no room for a counterpoint in their universe.
and then there’s captain fucking america.
look, i’m sleep-deprived and haven’t planned this post out at all so it’s probably kind of a mess, but what i’m getting at here is that the ‘golden boy’ of superheroes, the star spangled man with a plan, this corny, schmaltzy, old-timey character, isn’t light because the darkness hasn’t touched him. he’s light because he set his jaw and marched into the darkness and he set it the fuck on fire.
tl;dr i love steve rogers a lot the end.
Louder for the people in the back: he’s light because he set his jaw and marched into the darkness and he set it the fuck on fire.
