RedStamp

I like both of these ideas, but I think the lowercase sigma idea is probably closest to what Tolkien envisioned. Although it would be pretty funny seeing Tolkien get confused about video game logic when presented with the concept of flat world screen wrap. Try explaining integer over/underflow to a man who fought in WW1 and almost definitely never used a computer in his entire life

Pretty unrelated, but I do wonder what the mathematics are behind the elves taking the “straight road” from Middle Earth to Aman. I think it would start to ruin the mystique and magic of the Tolkien Legendarium, but it’s still fun to think about.

The idea is that after Sauron convinced Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenor, to attack the Valar, Ilúvatar drowned their ships, killed their soldiers, and then reshaped Arda to be a sphere rather than flat. The elves who remained Middle Earth still had the right to return to Aman once they became weary of the world, and so Cirdan would build ships able to sail the old straight road directly from the grey havens to Aman. I’m wondering what that mechanism would be that would allow the ships to go through “space” rather than simply wrap around the sphere of Arda. Maybe a portal? Or just like straight up they lift off the ocean and float through space with minimal thrust before reaching Aman? Given that the Arda is supposed to be Earth far far in the past, how would the Valar hide themselves from a space travel capable humanity?

GROND

Fun fact: the siege engine Grond was named for Morgoth’s mace which he used in the first age to smite Fingolfin, the younger half brother of Fëanor (the crafter of the Silmarils), during 1 on 1 combat. In that battle, Fingolfin’s final act of defiance to the first Dark Lord was to stab his foot, leaving Morgoth with a limp for the rest of his time on Arda. Interestingly, Morgoth never recovered from this injury, whereas he is stated to have recovered from other injuries to his physical form such as the attack of Thorondor the eagle as Fingolfin laid dying, and the betrayal of Ungoliant after the ruining of the two trees of Valinor. This is also the only time mentioned in Tolkien’s writings when a Vala was injured by a child of Ilúvatar.

I have a similar use case with my PC and TV. My PC is across the house from the TV and is connected via an HDMI over Ethernet KVM for when I want to use my PC as a gaming console.

What I ended up doing was creating an automation in Home Assistant to turn on my KVM via a smart plug, then wake-on-lan my PC, and intiate a Steam Big Picture mode gamescope session. This was pretty tedious to get working all together, and startup time is pretty abysmal (around 1 minute to get fully into Steam), but it does actually work consistently.

In case anyone is interested in replicating my setup: I’m running NixOS 25.11 with the Jovian flake installed, and launching my session via the systemd service run_gamescope. If you’re not on NixOS, you should still be able to build your own solution by emulating the Steam Deck startup services (honestly, it’s not that complicated), or looking into projects like ChimeraOS.

One clarification: Sauron also commanded legions of Uruk-hai. It’s undoubtedly true that Saruman did breed his Isengarder Uruks himself, but it’s unclear whether or not these Isengarder Uruk’s were the first man/orc hybrids, and furthermore it is unknown who developed the crossbreeding idea.

Uruk-hai is simply the black speech word, and Uruks is the English translation, so the existence (or lack thereof) of the -hai suffix is no indicator of origin for any individual Uruk, therefore I will omit it as I continue.

Uruks were first documented as the elite force of Sauron present in the siege and sacking of Osgiliath and Ithilien, which predates Saruman’s use of them by approximately 1000 years. The strongest and stoutest orcs in the Mines of Moria are called Uruks, as are the orcs scene marching from Cirith Ungol as Sam and Frodo enter Mordor.

In true Tolkien fashion, it’s left unclear whether or not the Uruks are man/orc hybrids or just very strong orcs. Treebeard speculates that they’re hybrids (due to half the reasons present in the meme), but there’s no definite answer. I’d like to believe that they are hybrids of some kind since it furthers the themes established earlier in the chronology of evil corrupting creation in new ways, but the grain of salt must still be acknowledged.

I’m of the opinion that Sauron, or possibly Morgoth (who famously had a knack for biology), developed the Uruks as an elite breed of soldiers. He then taught Saruman how to breed the Uruks to sow discord further west. The additional magics and technology is all Saruman though, since Sauron typically leaned on raw power after his fair form was destroyed.

TL;DR: Saruman ain’t original, he just copied Sauron’s homework

Another interesting note about flying evil creatures: the earliest forms of dragons in Tolkien’s works (and until after the primary writing of The Children of Húrin), were wingless. They were closer to dinosaurs rather than flying dragons. In fact, the father of dragons, Glaurung, was wingless and was similar to Fafnir in Norse mythology, with elements of Basilisk thrown in for good measure.

Tom Bombadil is (probably) the avatar of Arda itself, which makes him far stronger than a Balrog, but not omnipotent. Theoretically if Tom Bombadil had to solo the entirety of Morgoth’s forces in Dagor Dagorath, then he’d probably die, but who knows what would happen to the planet after that ¯_(ツ)_//¯

One correction: Morgoth didn’t “create” any Balrogs. He merely corrupted Maia to his will

If your kids are only going to be using big picture mode in steam, then one system account will work. The steam deck only has one system user with the ability to have multiple steam accounts and that works great for multiple users, from my experience.

For anyone interested in a great dual use system for regular desktop use and a console-like experience, I recommend checking out nixos and jovian-nix: https://jovian-experiments.github.io/Jovian-NixOS/

I’m using it on my main PC and it works incredibly well to mimic the steam deck experience using a full desktop on nixos 25.11

Missed opportunity to make Saruman symphonic metal considering he was in a symphonic metal band

I would say Boromir is closer to glam or hair metal. Dude was gorgeous apparently.

It looks like the QT 6 version isn’t available in nixpkgs yet, but the QT 5 version is. You’d need to explicitly install plasma 5 though, since nixos uses plasma 6 by default.

It honestly went down a bit more like one of those scam calls where you answer and it seems like no one is on the other line. Saruman decided to ponder his orb one day while Sauron was idly port sniffing, and BAM Sauron finds out a power hungry istari picked up the line and is ready to get asked about Orthanc’s extended warranty

Plus, Andy Serkis narrates one version!

This is in the hobbit. Gandalf and crew find Glamdring, Orcrist, and Sting in the troll hoard, and Elrond tells them the names of the blades. Sting was named by Bilbo since the knife didn’t have an elvish name

Completely unrelated to OP, but I just discovered this and I feel a need to broadcast it from the rooftops:

If you play any jam music or find yourself needing chord or lead charts constantly, then you should absolutely get iReal Pro. It’s pricey for an app, and I have no idea if the creators are ethical people or not, but the product is incredible: https://www.irealpro.com/

This has been such a game changer for playing with new people or jamming on tunes

Nope, she’s Power Girl. While still Superman’s cousin, in this specific continuity (injustice), she’s from an alternate timeline. So it’s like half incest

You dropped this -> /s

That’s a very good point. Sam’s achievement shouldn’t be understated, as he is the first and last mention of any harm coming to Shelob. Beren did pass through Shelob’s birthplace in the first age as he traveled through Ered Gorgoroth (he was the only one of the children of Ilúvatar to do so), and I wonder if he crossed paths with her, as she was the final and mightiest of Ungoliant’s spawn and therefore must have had a place of dominance amongst the other great spiders there.

Imagine being a creature born of an ever yawning abyss, living for eons; and possibly the second mortal to evade your maw is not Beren, greatest of men, but rather Samwise, the humblest of the children of Ilúvatar, and not only did he evade her grasp, he wounded her and stole her finest meal in what was probably hundreds of years. Sam was truly one of the most valiant souls to ever walk Arda