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Silver Spider Art

@silver-spider-art / silver-spider-art.tumblr.com

Sam or Spider 30+ yr old, tran nb (he, ey, they) Queer Autistic and Proud. This blog is an artful mess. ❤ current S.I. is D&D, writing, and mythology ❤

you know how people say that cats and dogs don’t feel love the way humans do but it’s like. “oh they don’t love you they just associate you with warmth and safety and seek out your company and being near you and spending time with you makes them feel comfortable and secure” bro if that’s not love then what the FUCK do you think love is???

love is real because my kitty cat seeks me out for warmth and safety and also so do my friends on account of the fact that i love them

It’s also just bullshit in general. The Human - Animal bond has been studied extensively and results in similar biological responses across animal groups and humans.

Not only do your dogs and cats love you, but your parrots love you. Your mice love you. Your lizards love you. Your ants love you. Your spider loves you.

Turns out bonding is just something we animals (humans included, bc we’re not fundamentally different from other animals as such statements op is referring to imply) like to do when we can afford to do it.

Fucking THANK you

This is the #1 thing that people ask or say when they learn I have a tortoise- "oh, but does he actually love you?"

Look buddy. Maybe you have some specific definition of love that'll exclude anything other than human, or mammalian love.

But he recognizes me specifically, and when he sees me, he scoots his shelled butt out of his hut and cranes his neck up for little head scratches and maybe a dandelion leaf as a treat, and when he's out on the floor or on the field with me he likes the huddle on my shoes or under my legs and circle around them before going on his next adventure to nom a lil clover sprig

He associates me with warmth and safety and food and that good feeling on his skin he gets when I touch him gently. And whatever that manifests as in his little reptilian brain is some form of love.

what a legend

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cascadianstuntman

Nothing can match this energy

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readabooknotablog

fun fact: these are actual vocal warm ups he would do, and used this as a way to interact with the audience while being able to stretch while performing .

also he was a witch and he used it as a spell like look at that power

This performance at Live Aid literally was unlike anything anyone had seen. No one, and I mean, NO ONE has ever owned a crowd like this.

Other performers have literally said since, “Freddy basically changed live performance forever and left us NOTHING.” (affectionate)

I am convinced he was blessed by the gods. He was a fucking herald for said gods or something. Hell, there’s that vid of the Green Day fans waiting for the concert to begin and fucking singing in perfect fucking harmony to Bohemian Rhapsody! Freddy isn’t even alive and he still fucking commands a crowd!

Full performance:

You always hear about a good concert rattling your teeth out, and this is definitely one of them

40 years later we’re still heaping praise on a 20 min set from Queen, and for good reason.

Art forgery is the best crime tbh. It requires absolutely incredible artistic talent, technical skill, and attention to detail to make convincing fakes. Does anyone get hurt from it? No! The only people who suffer for it are the extremely wealthy who want the prestige of having original paintings in their own homes. It’s full of international intrigue and mystery. Perfect.

Also… art forgers like van Meegeren sometimes become a kind of folk hero. A swindler, sure, but a gentleman’s swindler.

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cipherface

I liked this guy’s story, Mark Landis, who conned several dozen museums into displaying his forgeries, but when the FBI came after him they couldn’t do anything because he had always given them away as donations. They said if they could have found that he’d ever taken anything in exchange they would have prosecuted him, but all he wanted was get to out of the house and meet people.

“The first painting Landis “donated” was a copy of a work by Maynard Dixon, an artist well-known for his paintings of cowboys and Indians. It started as impulse, Landis says, but then “everybody was just so nice and treated me with respect and deference and friendship, things I was very unused to — I mean, actually not used to at all. And I got addicted to it.”” And it looks like all his forgeries are done with cheap materials, like markers and Hobby Lobby frames.

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adios-toreadork

Ok, but Wolfgang Beltracchi is probably one of the best Fraud Artists in the world.

His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny. 

Bob Simon: What do you think this Max Ernst would be worth? Wolfgang Beltracchi: This one? Simon: Yeah. Beltracchi: $5 million, I think. Simon: $5 million.  And you can do it in three days? Beltracchi: Yeah, oh yes, yes, sure, or quicker” -From a 60 minutes interview with Bob Simon

In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.

“Beltracchi estimates he has done 25 Max Ernsts. He is not copying an existing work. He’s painting something he thinks Ernst might have done if he’d had the time or felt like it.”  -  The Con Artist: A multi-million dollar art scam

His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.

At the end of the interview with Wolfgang Beltracchi he was asked if he felt he had done anything wrong, his answer was “ Yeah, I used the wrong kind of paint”

Just … the levels of con there, the fake photos and … wow. That’s incredible. 

That’s just rapscallionry.

I miss when everyone on my dash listened to Welcome to Night Vale so there’s be a good chance that on any ole day someone would reblog a quote that would grab me by the throat and forcibly ascend me to a higher plane where I understood myself and the universe better and with more kindness but also a little spook

“The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present” are you kidding me this quote has propelled me through at least three emotional crises

“The desert seems vast, even endless. And yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow.” That quote literally got me through grieving my brother like WTNV goes HARD

A List of Some of My Favorite Quotes From This Insane Podcast:

  • "You are beautiful when you do beautiful things."
  • "The present tense of regret is indecision."
  • "We understand so much, but the sky behind those lights-- mostly void, partially stars-- that sky reminds us we don't understand even more."
  • "Be proud of your place in the Cosmos. It is small and yet it is."
  • "Believe in yourself. You are an ancient, absent god, discussed only rarely by literary scholars. So if you don't believe, no one will."
  • "Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you."
  • “Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. That’s what love is.”
  • "Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?"
  • "When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive. But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing. Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves."
  • "We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?"
  • "Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error."
  • "We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people."
  • "A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A basilisk."
  • "There's nothing under your bed. There's nothing in your closet. Nothing waits in every darkness. Nothing is the most terrifying thing of all."
  • "The night sky is ten miles wide, eight miles deep, and floats three miles up. Its favourite food is grape jelly. It wants to be a drummer."
  • "Look to the sky. You will not find answers there, but you will certainly see what everyone is screaming about."
  • "Ignorance might not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work."
  • "And now, a special report. Crocodiles: Can they eat your children? *YES.*"
  • "Lie down and look up at the ceiling and breathe with those curiously fragile lungs of yours and remind yourself: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry."
  • "As long as I’m reminding myself things, I’m a good person, worthy of love – both from myself and others."
  • "Guns don't kill people! It's impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it's a miracle!"
  • "Everything is exciting! Particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all."
  • "There is a monster under your bed. A monster at your window. A monster any place you imagine one. You project your monsters on the world."
  • "You miss 100% of the bank robberies you don't commit."
  • "I like my coffee like I like my nights. Dark, endless, and impossible to sleep through. "
  • "A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale."
  • "And now, the weather."

I discovered this podcast at the beginning of high school, and let me tell you, it rewired my synapses.

Not only was it my first experience with positive LGBT representation, it was the show I clung to when everything else went to shit. Whatever was going on in my life, I knew I had this show in my corner, making me laugh, making me cry, making me feel okay about my place in the universe.

I owe the creators of this podcast more than I could express.

"the lights over the Arby's" is such an intrinsically queer piece of writing that it hits me *hard* every time.

"We will never be the same again. But here's a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren't that person anymore, and everything changes once again." (from Episode 75)

"The universe is vast. You are also vast. So is an ant. There are different sizes of infinity."

i have been slowly working my way through the podcast. (i’m still on episode 68 or something.)

and mentions like this remind me why i love it so much, and make me wonder why, in the absemce of listening to it, i forget how much i love it.

idk where all of this weed-smoke discourse erupted from, but “weed is fine and you shouldn’t be a snitch about it” and “don’t burn plant matter in public spaces where someone you don’t know might have, like, a lung condition” are two sentiments that can and do coexist. i have asthma and i hang out with stoners pretty much constantly. i’ve never felt the urge to snitch and no one has ever blatantly disrespected my avoidance of smoke. they’re always eager to help keep it away from me when needed, which isn’t difficult to do. i hate to say this, but my only takeaway from a hypothetical scenario in which a stoner is blasting weed smoke in public like a dragon and an asthmatic feels the need to involve the cops is that both individuals are unpleasant and i don’t want to be around either of them lmao

tangled gave us so much, but mostly it gave us the beautiful and intense love of a horse and the man he is chasing in order to imprison

i personally believe that maximus was the former captain of the guard who was cursed into horse form pretty recently, and everyone’s having trouble adjusting to it.

like, he’s entitled to sick leave, he really ought to take a couple months to break the curse and come to terms with whatever the fuck just happened to him, but instead of embarking on a journey of self-discovery and healing he just keeps showing up to work. no one can get captain maximus to go on his fucking voyage of self actualization and fix the curse because he’s obsessed with catching flinn ryder. everyone really fucking hopes that when he finally catches this guy the curse might be broken anyway, but it isn’t.

he just keeps showing up to work. he glares at the stablehands until they saddle him up. everyone’s gone over the regulations a dozen times but there’s nothing there saying you’re not allowed to saddle and ride the captain of the guard if he makes you do it. his former second in command rides him around like ‘sir i really don’t know about this’ and he’s just like ‘are we going to catch some criminals or what.’

you can see in the movie that everyone in the royal guard defers to this horse. it’s absolutely because that’s their boss. and secondarily because now he’s two thousand pounds of percheron.

there is no evidence against this theory and you cannot prove me wrong.

Here’s dril’s candles on a graph for reference.

For a different reference, here is the graph of Paris’s investment budget.

The big blue is infrastructure and living spaces.

Red is general administrations and European funds.

Green is culture, youth, sports and leisure.

Purple is transports (the budget transports in in a weird place as the département (larger administrative entity for the geographical zone Paris is in) also pitches in, but that part is not shown.

Light blue is environment (ecology).

Orange is education, professional training and apprenticeships.

Dark blue is healthcare, disability benefits and RSA (a 300 to 600€ benefit you can get if you are not working and are not receiving unemployment benefits, yes it is universal)

Dark red is economic action.

Green is security. Police are 40% of security, the rest being firefighters, sanitation and natural disaster response.

Now that’s quite the difference, surely it’s because the existing budget for police is already very high, right?

Here are the running costs in 2024 (second column) and 2025 (third column), all in millions.

Red is security (again, police, firefighting and everything else).

Green is healthcare and social care.

Second to last are public transports.

Police is around 1.5 percent of our budget.

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