Fahdoo

i also am

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

Tom Bombadil is the most mysterious character in The Lord of the Rings.

He's the oldest being in Middle-earth and completely immune to the Ring's power — but why?

Bombadil is the key to the underlying ethics of the entire story, and to resisting evil yourself...

Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic, merry hermit of the countryside, known as "oldest and fatherless" by the Elves. He is truly ancient, and claims he was "here before the river and the trees." He's so confounding that Peter Jackson left him out of the films entirely.

This is understandable, since he's unimportant to the development of the plot. Tolkien, however, saw fit to include him anyway, because Tom reveals a lot about the underlying ethics of Middle-earth, and how to shield yourself from evil.

The hobbits meet Bombadil early on in their quest, before they reach Bree and the Prancing Pony Inn. He rescues Merry and Pippin from Old Man Willow, and invites the hobbits to stay at his house in the Old Forest.

There, the hobbits realize something strange about him: the Ring has no power over Bombadil whatsoever.

When he wears it, he remains visible. He treats it as a plaything, making it disappear with a magic trick. Indeed, at the Council of Elrond, Gandalf rejects the idea of giving the Ring to Tom, for he would likely misplace it or forget about it entirely.

So just who is he, exactly?

When Frodo asks this very question to Tom's wife Goldberry, she simply responds "He is." It's a cryptic answer that echoes God's famous answer to Moses in the Book of Exodus: "I am who I am."

Thus, many theorize that Bombadil is God, some kind of angelic being, or even the spirit of the Music of the Ainur (due to the fact that he is constantly singing). But Tolkien's letters reveal something considerably more interesting…

In April 1954, Tolkien wrote:

"The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship… but both sides in some degree, conservative or destructive, want a measure of control.But if you have, as it were, taken a 'vow of poverty', renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself… then the questions of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless…"

So, Bombadil is a representation of what it means to take pure delight in the world around you — to experience people and things simply as they are, without any thought for what they could be or how you could use them. And this is why the Ring has no power over him.

To Bombadil, the One Ring is simply a ring, and the possibilities of what can be achieved through its power are of no importance. He is able to resist its evil precisely because he is entirely content with the world around him.

At the end of the story, having accomplished what he set out to do in Middle-earth, Gandalf pays Tom a visit before returning to the Undying Lands:

"I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil: such a talk as I have not had in all my time."

If Bombadil is the epitome of simply enjoying life and being, Gandalf is the epitome of doing. He guides the hobbits, fights the Balrog, and runs up and down Middle-earth to help destroy the One Ring.

But now that he's finally liberated from doing, he immediately heads to Bombadil's. He does so with a sense of relief, as if he's at last able to access a purer and higher mode of being — a sort of innocence that cannot be fully experienced by those consumed by doing.

Of course, by this Tolkien doesn't disparage the value of action. The entirety of LOTR displays the importance of rising up against evil, even in the face of all odds. But with the inclusion of Bombadil, he does remind readers that fighting isn't all there is.

Bombadil reminds us that while it's important to strive and *do*, it is just as important to occasionally step back and *be*. Indeed, your ability to do so plays a crucial role in helping you resist the allure of evil…

Read the full piece here:

https://t.co/aqK2daehIL

The unsung hero of The Lord of the Rings...

[Replit ⠕ @Replit]

AI agents are powerful, but they don’t remember your preferences.

So you end up repeating instructions- How you structure projects. Your brand guidelines.

You can now teach Replit Agent your conventions with Custom Instructions and Skills.

It'll take them into account for every project automatically.

[Pablo Prompt @pabloprompt]

Almost 10M views on Instagram in less than 24 hours 😱

New Asian theater trend featuring fictional characters. The key? Combining the realism of live theater with the fantasy of the characters' powers 🔥

And as always, here’s the TUTORIAL 🧵📚 (Warning: it’s ridiculously easy)

[hrdk @hrdktwt]

Someone on Reddit built a game where you ride a dirt bike on top of any company's stock chart.

[Forbes @Forbes]

Jordan-born AI billionaire Amjad Masad moved to the U.S. in 2012 at age 24 and founded vibe coding outfit Replit with his wife, Haya Odeh, in California four years later. In March, it was valued at $9 billion.
Read more about American immigrants leading in their industries: https://t.co/rYEyYYPwjV
#Forbes250
Photo: Robert Severi for Forbes

[Amjad Masad @amasad]

Make games for Tesla on your Tesla

[Fahdoo @fahdoo]

@Gena_I_Gorlin Have you tried Harbor? Feature wise I haven’t had any complaints - good display, WiFi, can share with family, mobile app. There were some connection issues at the start and I got my initial monitor replaced and it’s been smooth sailing since.

https://t.co/jPxmujKaTS

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called.

I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years.

"Nobunaga."

He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly.

"Perfect. Banana, party of one."

Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now.

Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands.

I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready.

It woke.

It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master.

He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room.

"BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!"

A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me.

All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!"

So tell me honestly.

For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came.

When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana?

Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.

[Nir Zicherman @NirZicherman]

Today, we're rolling out on-demand songs and diagrams in @oboelabs.

You remember the alphabet from when you were 4, but you've already forgotten something you read this morning.

That's because walls of text are the worst way to retain what you want to learn. Songs lodge in your brain for decades, and a good diagram can help a complicated concept click in seconds.

Two new ways to learn, live today.

[Space Explained @SpacedExplained]

🚨: You’re closer in size to the entire observable universe than to the smallest possible scale of reality—the Planck length—by roughly 400 million times.

Let that sink in.

[Kun Chen @kunchenguid]

ok tinkerers, i've got a fun toy for you

introducing baby-menu - a mac menu bar icon, and it's just a baby

it can't do anything, but you can feed it prompts and help it grow. it's what i think hyper-personalized, self-evolving software can look like

details in thread 👇

[Usama Syed, MD @usamasyedMD]

My wife (non-technical) built a fully functional iOS/Android app in 6 weeks... and it's made $1.5k on the app store since launch in the first month!

She's a stay at home mom with our 2 young children (3 and 1), and she wanted a way to write letters to our children to keep memories of their childhood (we kept using notes app and was all a mess).

Thank you @amasad and @Replit for making this possible!

Link if you want to try it: https://t.co/6llUqhyG3Z

[old toons @oldtoons_]

Story time?

Back in the winter of 1955, an Uzbek politician and writer named Sharaf Rashidov went on a diplomatic trip to Jammu and Kashmir.

While he was there, he saw a live performance of "Bombur ta Yambarzal" (The Bumblebee and the Narcissus), a famous 1953 opera by the local poet Dina Nath Nadim.

On stage, characters played literal forces of nature: the spring narcissus, (Yambarzal) and the king of bees (Bombur) represented life and freedom, while winter blizzards symbolised oppression.

Rashidov was so moved by the performance that he went home and turned the story into a 1956 book called "The Kashmir Song", translating the flower's name to its more common regional equivalent, "Nargis".

By 1965, this local Kashmiri tale traveled all the way to Moscow's Soyuzmultfilm studio, that turned it into a gorgeous animated short film called *Nargis*. The animation team crafted the film in the ornate, miniature-painting style characteristic of traditional Russian Palekh lacquer art known for its folkloric elegance. At the same time, the characters’ flowing draped garments, vibrant attire, and decorative jewelry clearly draw inspiration from Indian cultural aesthetics, giving the film an exotic, fairy-tale quality that blends Soviet artistic traditions with the story’s Indian roots.

The film arrived at the perfect time. During the 1950s and 1960s, India and the Soviet Union shared a massive cultural exchange. Hindi cinema was wildly popular across the USSR with films starring actors such as Raj Kapoor drawing large audiences and becoming cultural touchstones. Amid this mutual fascination, Nargis served as a vivid example of how a great story can easily cross borders and connect completely different worlds.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Small objects can show that gravity is real.

The Cavendish experiment proved that even tiny masses pull on each other, showing gravity works everywhere, not just between planets.

[shirish @shiri_shh]

chinese startup built an AI collar that translates barks and meows into full sentences.

95% accuracy. cost $118.

10k people have already pre-ordered it.

It uses mics, motion sensors, and AI to read body language and vocalizations.

[Brotzky @brotzky]

Introducing https://t.co/ycxJEf1z7w!

A new space where I explore how the best apps in the world are built.

First piece:
How's Linear is so fast? a technical breakdown.

https://t.co/9Vu1syrn1i

[Amadeo Pellicce @amapel]

I'm putting together the most cracked team I've ever assembled: The @Replit Product Foundry Team

Foundry is Replit's internal innovation engine and rapid-prototyping team. We build things that 10x the TAM of our already huge business.

In the last 90 days we've had 2 CTO's join us and launch products that now encompass over 20% of Replit's usage.

We operate as a collective of in-house technical founders. We're looking for 3 more as well as a PM and a product marketer.

Reply "LFG" and drop DMs if you know someone.

[Addy Osmani @addyosmani]

https://t.co/jKCIAEzai7

[Jacob L @JacobL1994_]

India and Pakistan have the world’s silliest nuclear standoff.

It’s just Dr. Strangelove in real life