This isn't particularly relevant to anything specific. I just wanted to remind everyone this is something the US government did.

oh, i clicked on the article to see if this book was mentioned, and hey its DEBORAH BLUME!! aka the author of the book I was just about to reccomend about this Exact Thing:

if this article is interesting to you, i highly reccomend this book. It doesn't just discuss prohibition of course, but it goes even more in depth on this stuff.

I would also reccomend her newer book...

this one is about the history of food safety in the united states, and I cannot emphasize enough how disgusting some of this is. wanna find out what embalmed milk is? wanna learn about how much random bullshit from sawdust to coconut shells to dust was put into spices? wanna learn about all the ways food was left to rot and be sold before the FDA? wanna learn how HARD food manufacturers fought regulation, for their right to not be inspected and put borax and formaldehyde and unlabeled ingredients in their products? read this book!

this book takes its name from the IRL poison squad, which was a bunch of healthy young men who were purposefully fed common food additives like borax to see if they were as safe as manufacturers claimed.

This, of course, is also not at all relevant to current events or to claims that deregulation is unneeded because companies will self regulate. nope. not at all.

Republicans: we can just have Elon Musk go to Wisconsin and give everyone money. He'll give them a million dollars. It's all legal as long as we hold power forever and can stop anyone from doing anything to stop us. All of Wisconsin is bribed, nothing can go wrong now

The invincible Susan Crawford:

NBC news: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/wisconsin-supreme-court-election-results-rcna198353

Fucking wild to be teaching about Rosa Parks at the same time as a trans woman in Florida does an act of civil disobedience to use a women's restroom in the state capitol

As far as I know, she is the first woman arrested bc of this law. The law requires that the trans person be warned to leave the bathroom by a state official, and then if they stay they are guilty of trespassing after a warning.

So like, me, my gf, others just piss and nobody asks or tells, but this young woman sent a statement about the law to over 100 FL lawmakers so they would know she was coming, the cops were ready for her, she brought a reporter and went in anyway and spent the night in a men's jail. She is out on bail, and is hoping this will inspire change of the law. But if found guilty, and the law is upheld as constitutional, then she could spend up to 60 days in a mens county jail.

lately my kids have been playing Baby Knife, which consists of somebody acting as a baby with knife hands chasing people while going "baby knife baby knife" over and over. is this a thing or are they just insane

we have a new teacher this year who has never had kindergarten before & she rounded em all up & told em No Baby Knife and No Zombies and idk how to tell her that 1. all kindergarten recess games boil down to Give Birth And Kill Each Other and 2. the absurd vaguely inappropriate games they make up are usually better than when they try to play an Actual game like soccer

Baby Knife is straightforward. theres a baby knife. baby knife chases you. thats about it. when they try to play Real Sports every single child is playing by a different set of rules unbeknownst to the others and none of them are playing by the Actual rules. everybody is mad at everybody else and running up to tell on their colleagues for cheating every 3 minutes. this doesnt happen when they play Baby Knife

if no one's said it, it's normal. It's just Tag with flavor. Tag is boring so you gotta add imagination.

Our baby knife as kids was Raptor Tag. Raptors hunt in packs so the person who was "it" had to run around pretending to be a velociraptor and to tag people they had to actually tackle them and "eat" them for 5 full seconds (others could come to the rescue and save them in that time, but risked getting eaten too or instead if the raptor switched targets). Eaten players then became raptors, until the whole pack was teamwork-hunting the last wily or lucky kid. There were no winning survivors- the game was won as a group once everyone was a raptor.

An Alternative to a Roast

So I watched Netflix's live-action Avatar and, frankly, I didn't like it. I was considering writing an in-depth review tearing it apart. However, after taking in reactions that ranged from one-line Twitter hot takes to in-depth video essays to paid industry reviews from big name media brands, I realized there wasn't much I could add to the discourse that someone else couldn't articulate better.

All that really needs to be said is that it was inferior to its source material in every aspect and incapable of standing on its own merits.

With that out of the way, I'd like to bring attention to a show that more people should watch: Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, known as The Apothecary Diaries in English. To be honest, aside from being strongly inspired by Chinese culture, it's not very similar to ATLA. It's about a commoner girl named Maomao who solves mysteries within the emperor's palace with her knowledge of poisons and medicines. It's a beautifully animated and deeply empathetic series that explores the struggles of living within a rigidly hierarchical society, with special attention paid to the social complexities of being a woman. If you like traditional Chinese fashion, murder mysteries, holistic medicine, well-developed characters, or class consciousness in your stories, give this series a shot!

Season 2 is shaping up to be even better than Season 1! ^_^

Source: ukeesamba IG

epic prank: boyfriend TRICKED into getting a forehead kiss no clickbait (again)

"the magnus archives sounds cool! what are the content warnings?"

kidnapping stalking insanity sleepwalking cannibalism and teeth, gaslighting gun violence pipe murder and silence and medical trauma and meat. bugs in your body and poisoned black coffee and self-mutilation and lies, police brutality breaks from reality suicide spiders and eyes. paaaaaranoia degloving the uncanny valley and running like prey to survive, agonies torture and drowning and falling and then being buried alive.

I cannot tell you how delighted I am by the fact that this perfectly scans

Accidentally wore matching outfits to The Horrors today

for april fools we’re deleting this entire site sayonara you weeaboo shits

it's so funny how tumblr rolls out updates because i keep seeing a slowly growing number of posts about how terrible it is but your tumblr is the same. it's like a slow going zombie apocalypse. there is no escape but for now you're alive

For no reason here is a library story

There will be millions of actions like this over the coming years. An important thing to remember is that for them to work (anywhere, not just libraries) is people absolutely can’t announce that this is what they are doing.

Not seeing constant acts of resistance doesn’t mean it isn’t happening all around you all the time. Some very effective methods require silence and secrecy.

Something to keep in mind.

the greatest earthbender of all time has a message for you

(Image Description: An animation of Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender, earthbending to make the words ‘Trans Rights’ form out of the earth.)

The fact that Fountain is pissing off trads over a 100 years later is so fucking funny

As an art major, while I know Fountain is a valid piece of art that accomplished exactly what it set out to do, I also think it’s one of the stupidest things. We have a urinal in a museum display. I have yet to see a work I think is dumber.

The thing I love most about Duchamps urinal piece is that it was so “low cost” in terms of creative labour (compared to say, a large scale oil painting or sculpture for example), but it’s absolutely FULL of rage against the traditionalists and the world at that time and it’s SUCH a statement, it’s like, “oh just a mass manufactured item with a signature” but the reality of it is so many layers of meaning and without understanding the history at the time you don’t get it.

It’s an incredibly clever “fuck you” and I love it

An old professor of mine, an expert in Duchamp who has written several books, has a theory. In part, “Fountain” was a prank, a personal “fuck you” to the organization looking for artworks. It’s importance cannot be overstated, and this importance stems from the fact that “Fountain” is /ridiculous/. It is enraging, it is hilarious, and it is very fascinating.

Aside from Duchamp’s readymades, I love “Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even”. Pictured below, the work invokes a complex machine, one my professor spent a great deal of time studying. Eventually, he reached his conclusion. My professor had been pranked. He believes “Bride Stripped Bare” is a joke about masturbation, hidden to all except those study it excessively.

At first blush, Duchamp’s works are stupid. Upon further study, they’re very complex. And, upon true understanding, Duchamp is laughing at you. To me, it seems the closer you come to truly understanding Duchamp, the more he slaps you in the face with a large fish.

Let me rage about “traditionalism revival” here. This is a dogwhistle.

As a lover of art, there are many complex and technically impressive works being created today, which both embrace different artistic traditions and break from them. To ignore those is to ignore contemporary art.

Here, OP is raging against conceptual art, which stimulates thought and challenges tradition. He wants his followers to believe that art has “degenerated”, because the West has “degenerated”. OP is intentionally engaging with fascist ideas of “degenerate art”.

If OP wanted to be accurate, he would seek to restore the Salon System, the Beaux Arts Academy, and classical training in the arts. The collapse of this specific system allowed for Modernism to evolve. Of course, that’s not what OP is talking about. He’s evoking beauty as a moral standard, telling his followers to “restore Western tradition”, to fight against aesthetic “degeneracy” in culture.

(By the way, Duchamp is commenting ON MODERNISM with “Fountain”. Duchamp submitted the work to the Society of Independent Artists’ salon in New York, who would accept any work by any artist, for a small fee. In part, Duchamp is saying, “Is this what you Modernists want? A urinal? Look me in the eyes and prove this is not art.”

If OP dared to use his brain, perhaps he would agree with Duchamp here.)

The thing is that it isn’t even a urinal! It doesn’t match any model manufactured at the time. Also Duchamp was an accomplished ceramicist. It’s likely that he made the sculpture and absolutely everyone is like “I know what a urinal looks like. This is sufficiently urinal-shaped for me to assume it is one without looking at it closely!”

Duchamp had other readymades, like his snow shovel, where if you actually look at the photos, the handle is square and the bowl is way too flimsy. Why would manufacturers make a snow shovel with a squared-off handle? It’s impossible to hold! Duchamp slapped the “readymades” label on all these items and the hoity-toity art people who were so good at looking at things didn’t see it (probably because they’d never had to do labor like shovel snow imo, amongst other things).

Marcel Duchamp. In Advance of the Broken Arm. Museum of Modern Art. (4th Version [Ed.!!!] after lost original of November 1915)

wait what. there… what?!?! IT ISN’T AN ACTUAL URINAL?!? or might not be anyway. what the fuck.

if the dude seriously did that, his troll game is out of everyone’s league except Leader Kibo.

My favorite thing about Fountain (besides the fact it has been pissing off fascists for over a century, natch) is that the original was lost and he made a bunch of official editions to sell to various museums (after the original was lost, possibly on purpose).

And they’re different! If it was a real “readymade” he could have just bought some more at his local hardware store, but no. He changed them in OBVIOUS WAYS.

See the triangle of holes?

Here’s the one from the Tate Modern:

Oh hello, cross-holes. Fancy seeing you here.

SFMOMA’s edition has the triangle holes, but it also has a line of holes at the top that are completely different from either other version.

Here’s one from Moderna Museet. Line and a circular set of holes!

Duchamp definitely intentionally made these different on purpose. It’s a “readymade” but it’s not, really, each of these is a specific custom creation.

It’s not even clear if he made it! He wrote a letter to his sister claiming that a female friend sent it to him, and he just enrolled it in the art exhibit under his own name. There’s also a possibility that that female friend was himself, since he later had a female pseudonym of Rrose Sélav.

This whole piece of art is a fractal troll, and it’s a beautiful one.

art is a creative statement.

sometimes that statement is ‘go fuck yourself’

Reminder:

they found a small herd of unicorns in a hard-to-reach part of the Alps. the area was immediately blocked from human access and there’s a team of scientists observing the herd and documenting what they can. from analysis of collected unicorn poops, it looks like the unicorns are actually converting microplastics in their environment into usable magical energy. now the scientists throw them a plastic grocery bag full of styrofoam every week or so to help the younger ones grow up stronger.

a stray momma cat in Switzerland brought a 14 year old kid that had been feeding her to her home in an alley, where it was discovered she was raising a very young wild dragon with her kittens as one of her own. the dragon was carefully collected by animal control, and after a world-wide interest in the case, a very small population of dragons was discovered in a forest nearby. the group is big enough to breed, and more and more dragon sightings pop up in different countries all the time. one of the original animal shelter workers adopted the dragon and his whole cat family. they’re very happy in their new home and the cat momma grooms her dragon every day

they found a new species of sea serpent off the channel islands. it’s the color of beautiful kelp