Roman Bathhouse, Chesters Roman Fort, Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland

kitty car 🐱

soundonsoundonsoundon!!!!!!!

@allthefoolmine

@buriedbybooks

@parrishsrubberplant the reblog will continue until morale improves

If anyones interested in learning about the first black vampire short story, published in 1819, heres a link to the wiki, its called The Black Vampyre, and its about a former slave turned vampire who seeks revenge on his slave master. Its actually a first in many categories!

you can read the story itself here

Not only is it the first Black vampire story, it's the first comedic vampire story, the first story to include a mixed race vampire, the first vampire story by an American author, and probably the first anti-slavery short story. Some scholars believe that the text was written in response to John William Polidori's The Vampyre.

Here is the actual pdf from the site since you have to click around from the above link to actually get to it

@lxgentlefolkcomic

I have read it, in fact! I even doodled the titular character just for fun:

@allthefoolmine

@allthefoolmine

[image description: a single camera shot from Black Sails, split down the middle into two gifs. Flint sits on a bench in the crew mess aboard the warship, fiddling with a knotted rope in his hands, and Silver sits down on the floor in front of him, settling in to listen to him speak. end id]

A display of Katharine Hepburn’s pants as part of “Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen” at the Performing Arts Library in NYC. 

@parrishsrubberplant

kitty car 🐱

soundonsoundonsoundon!!!!!!!

can’t risk it

THIS PIECE OF PICTURE WORKS. 

Gotta take all the chances…..

Never risk it

Too close to final’s week

I could use it.

Why not, spread the luck

Could use some of that. Why not? :)

Don’t just pray for answers. Be the answer.

Get up off of your knees. Come out of your churches, your mosques, your temples. God can hear your prayers for peace, justice, and hope in this broken world just fine while you’re out creating peace, working for justice, and giving hope to this broken world. When are we finally going to realize that humanity is the solution to inhumanity? When will we finally understand that we are all drops of the same ocean, hurting together, healing together, hoping together? Don’t just pray for hands to heal the hurting. Pray with hands that are healing the hurting. Don’t just pray for arms to help the helpless. Pray with arms that are helping the helpless. Don’t just pray for feet to respond to need. Pray on feet that are responding to need. Don’t just pray for someone to do something. Be someone who does something.

Don’t just pray for answers. Be the answer.

— L.R. Knost, The Gentle Parent: Positive, Practical, Effective Discipline (Little Pearl Books, 2015)

Roman Gold Ring with Greek Openwork Inscription ('The Love Token Of Polemius'), Corbridge Roman Town Museum, Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland

Old World Sparrow. 56° F. 5:15 pm. March 16, 2025. Darien, CT (@dkct25)

Francis Spufford remembers the aftermath of a night spent reading a Dorothy Dunnett book:

Francis Spufford, "Half in Praise," True Stories & Other Essays

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdQuxw52/

I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful

if you're not from the us american south, there's some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can't really describe all of them, because i've lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.

but y'all. the way he said "brutus is an honourable man" - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end...it wasn't a threat, it was a promise.

christ, he's good.

the eliding of “you all” to “y’all” while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. “bear with me” said exactly like i’ve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.

Get this man a starring role as Marc Antony in a southern adaptation of this show PLEASE.

This man is fantastic. 💕

The thing that just destroys me about this, though -- we think of Shakespearean language as being high-cultured, and intellectual, and somewhat inaccessible. And I know people think of Southerners as being ill-educated (which...let's be fair, most are, but not the way it's said). But that whole speech, unaltered, is so authentically Southern. And the thing is: Leaning into that language really amps the mood, in metalanguage. I'm not really sure how to explain it except... like... "Thrice" is not a word you hear in common speech...unless you're in the South and someone is trying to Make A Fucking Point.

Anyway. This was amazing and I want a revival of Shakespeare As Southern Gothic.

One of the lovely things about this, and one of the reasons it works so well, is that from what we can piece together of how Shakespeare was originally pronounced, it leans more towards an American southern accent than it does towards a modern British RP.

In addition, in the evolution of the English language in america, the south has retained many of the words, expressions, and cadences from the Renaissance/Elizabethan English spoken by the original British colonists.

One of the biggest examples of this is that the south still uses “O!”/“Oh!” In sentences, especially in multi-tone and multi-syllable varieties. We’ve lost that in other parts of the country (except in some specific pocket communities). But in the south on the whole? Still there. People in California or Chicago don’t generally say things like “why, oh why?” Or “oh bless your heart” or “Oh! Now why you gotta do a thing like that?!” But people from the south still do.

I teach, direct, and dramaturg Shakespeare for a living. When people are struggling with the “heightened” language, especially in “O” heavy plays like R&J and Hamlet, a frequent exercise I have them do is to run the scene once in a southern accent. You wouldn’t believe the way it opens them up and gives their contemporary brains an insight into ways to use that language without it being stiff and fake. Do the Balcony scene in a southern accent- you’ll never see it the same way again.

This guy is also doing two things that are absolutely spot-on for this speech:

First, he’s using the rhetorical figures Shakespeare gave him! The repetition of “ambition” and “Brutus is an honorable man”, the logos with which he presents his argument, the use of juxtaposition and antitheses (“poor have cried/caesar hath wept”, etc). You would not believe how many RADA/Carnegie/LAMDA/Yale trained actors blow past those, and how much of my career I spend pointing it out and making them put it back in.

Second, he’s playing the situation of the speech and character exactly right. This speech is hard not just because it’s famous, but because linguistically and rhetorically it’s a better speech than Brutus’ speech and in the context of the play, Brutus is the one who is considered a great orator. Brutus’ speech is fiery passion and grandstanding, working the crowd, etc. Anthony is not a man of speeches (“I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man”) His toastmaster skills are not what Brutus’ are, but he speaks from his heart (his turn into verse in this scene from Brutus’ prose is brilliant) and lays out such a reasonable, logical argument that the people are moved anyway. I completely believe that in this guy’s performance. A plain, blunt, honest speaker. Exactly what Anthony should be.

TLDR: Shakespeare is my job and this is 100% a good take on this speech.

definitely one of the challenges I have with reading Shakespeare is that it sounds so weird to me. “The good is oft interr’d with their bones”?? Who talks like that?

Well,,, rednecks. Despite being Elizabethan English, none of this is really out of character for a man with that accent; southern american English has retained not only (I am told) the accent of Shakespeare, and the “Oh!” speech patterns, but also so many of the little linguistic patterns: parenthetic repetition (“so are they all - all honorable men”), speaking formally when deeply emotional, getting more and more sarcastic and passive-aggressive as time goes on, etc.

Someone sent this to me a while ago and I dropped it in my drafts because I wanted to comment on how RIGHT this sounded but I couldn't express why it sounded right, so I'm glad other people have picked it up

There's a theory that Appalachian English in particular retains a lot of the qualities present in Shakespearean english that are now gone elsewhere. Thinking of my Mamaw, who says "twice't" instead of twice and other things like that...

really enjoying all the videos Muslims have been posting of their cats looking like this

when the humans are up at 4 am for suhoor

After Love

by Maxine Kumin

Afterward, the compromise. Bodies resume their boundaries

These legs, for instance, mine. Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane singsongs coming down.

Nothing is changed, except there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

Sasha Archibald explores the love and longing contained in the pressed and illustrated pages of 19th-century seaweed albums, including “the most ambitious album of all” by Charles F. Durant: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/love-and-longing-in-the-seaweed-album #seaweed

Florida Zoo otters chasing a butterfly.