I guess this is a political blog now @alex51324 - Tumblr Blog

mom said it was my turn on the deer carcass :(

the secret sneefer

someone asked it if it had a second to talk about timeshares

I JUST FLEW IN FROM SEATTLE, AND BOY ARE MY ARMS TIRED

Don't talk to me or my son ever again

*muffled* no, I haven't seen the succulent blueberry pie that you left on your windowsill. never speak to me again

murrica

oh ye of little face

boy is all torso?

Hop in, we're going to the natural history museum!

littleguysdaily

#glassblowing #arts and crafts #my adventures

Hi Gary! You're a very special Little Guy! Not very many Little Guys have three stars in Media Literacy!

Glassblowing Adventure!

Today I finally made it to a glassblowing workshop, which I think I mentioned on here that I wanted to do about a year and a half ago.

The studio's most affordable, beginner-friendly option is a group class where everyone makes the same basic piece, with some shape variations that you get to choose, along with the colors. Our project today was a cup!

Here are a few examples of other projects that can be done:

If you do a private class, you get to pick your own projects, so they have a bunch of samples sitting out.

Here's the studio! The person who was our main instructor today is standing over by the furnace; in the foreground slightly left of center is the workbench where you do the shaping. The rolling cart is where you add your colors, and behind it, to the right of the fan, is the workbench where you take your finished piece off the pipe.

Color bench!

I did the blues & white mixture on the lower right of the second picture, and some sprinkles of the solid bright green on the right of the top row of the first picture.

To start, the instructor demonstrated the project, then we took turns making our pieces. For your own piece, you do the shaping and coloring, and you do the actual blowing bit for someone else's.

The belly of the furnace full of molten glass, so your first step is rolling some up onto the pipe.

Then you take it over to the color cart and roll it around in your selected colors. You have to keep rotating the pipe the whole time, so the glob of glass stays vaguely round.

Then you put it back in the furnace and dip it back into the molten glass, and then rotate it around in there for a while so the colored glass chips melt into the clear base.

The instructor blows the initial bubble into the piece, because that part's kind of hard. You keep going back into the furnace with it a variable number of times, based on factors that the instructors presumably understand, and then when it's ready for blowing & shaping you take it over to the bench.

On the shaping bench, you use these things like big tongs to get it into a lightbulb shape.

While the instructor & assistant (the two ladies) make sure that you keep rotating the pipe and also keep the tongs in the right spot. One of your classmates gets to kneel down at the other end of the pipe and blow. When you're doing the shaping, you really feel how hot the glass and the business end of the pipe are; the blowing part is actually very easy. (It's probably harder if you are shaping & blowing, and if you don't have an expert telling you when to start and stop blowing.)

The assistant holds up these wooden cutting boards to help protect you from the heat & nudge your tongs into the correct position. Sometimes you have to go back to the furnace a time or two during this bit, if the glass starts to cool down.

Once your piece is shaped, you get to pop the bubble! This involves heating the top of the glass with a little blowtorch, while your classmate blows into the pipe. It's a very weird & interesting sensation when you're blowing and the glass pops.

Back into the furnace for a bit...

Then you use the tongs to shape and enlarge the opening.

It takes a while.

And the piece has to go back in the furnace a few times.

You have to keep rotating the pipe the whole time you're shaping, because the glass is goop, and if you stop spinning it, it'll start to slide off onto the floor.

Getting pretty nice now....

After you've done most of the shaping, the instructor puts it in the furnace one more time and does some finishing touches to fix wherever it came out uneven because you're a beginner.

She cuts it off the pipe with these big scissors--at this point, the glass has cooled enough that you can see the colors you picked, but it's still about a thousand degrees. It's solid enough that the scissors are just scoring it, rather than cutting the whole way through, so then you get to tap the pipe with the tongs to separate it.

Now your cup has a hole in the bottom! That is okay, because we have a big vat of molten glass handy.

The instructor gets some glass and blobs it on there.

Forbidden taffy

Then you get to flatten it with the spatula!

Then it goes into this special box (I don't know if it has a name) to cool slowly. On Monday, they'll mail our pieces to us! Mine is the one in the front, to the left of the red-and-white one. The one to the right of the red-and-white one is the one being made in most of the pictures. One person in the group chose to stick with plain clear glass, but do a little more complicated shaping to get a squared-off shape.

Overall, the class was very interesting! You are definitely getting a lot of help the whole time, and would need many more lessons before you're anywhere close to being able to work with glass on your own, but they do a good job of keeping you meaningfully involved with each step in the process.

The place is called Burning Branch Studio; if anyone reading this happens to be in central Pennsylvania, I definitely recommend it!

I'm thinking of Symphony of the Sixth Blast Furnace by Evgeny Sedukhin again...

hmm okay i'm trying to dig up a source on this painting, to see if i could find it in any higher quality

but i can't find any evidence of its existence from before 2018 lmao

and searching the artist's name only gets me like 6 pages of results on google

and a little artist showcase page on arthive for this guy with exactly 1 painting listed

and a biography that spells this guy's name like 5 different ways

which i'm pretty sure is because it's machine translated from something

very mysterious

oh doing his name in russian gives me some actually useful results, why didn't i think to do that

Солнечный город "Sunny City" - No date given.

Мир "World" - No date given.

Чусовские просторы. "Chusovskie expanses." Canvas, oil, 1997. Exhibited at the Nizhny Tagil Museum of Nature.

Осень "Autumn"

ooooh this one is really nice

Огни трудового Тагила, "The Lights of Labor Tagil" acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery in 1986.

октябрь "October" 2009 cardboard, oil, 29.5x39.5 cm

Осень на Чусовой, "Autumn on Chusovaya" 1999, canvas, oil, 79x100 cm

Чугун идет "Cast Iron is Coming" 1976

okay that's all the art this article had, i'm really glad i could find some this artist's other works!!!!

#art #labor history #USSR

every now and then, socialist realism produced an absolute banger.

gutsygills

mold pisses me off so much

oh you have to eat your produce the moment it leaves the store or the fuckin Hungering Dust will get it. and. poison your food

tobiasdrake

I ran into this post years ago and to be honest, it has completely reoriented the way I engage with food.

Like. I’ve always sorta understood that things grow moldy or stale or sour or such if left out, but I never really internalized it in a meaningful way.

But now I’m just like.

Yeah. The hungering dust. There exists omnivorous dust in the air that will eat my food if I don’t.

Those bagels have been sitting there for a week. Are we going to eat them soon or are we leaving them for the hungering dust?

Pizza’s been sitting out on the counter for an hour. Everyone’s enjoying the pizza, but if we don’t want “everyone” to include the hungering dust then we should probably put it away soon.

That’s just. That’s how food works to me now. There exists an invisible predator in the air that hungers for your yummies, and it will not hesitate to eat your food if you don’t make the effort to protect and preserve it. And eat what can’t be preserved before the dust can.

Life-changing.

the-missing-number

food doesn’t actually “go bad”, it just gets eaten by something else first

the-haiku-bot

food doesn’t actually

“go bad”, it just gets eaten

by something else first

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Mold asks, "You gonna eat that?" and waits an extremely variable amount of time for an answer.

(Raspberries are its favorite; it has no self-control when it comes to those.)

mangled-by-disuse

in happier pride news i actually found this deeply heartwarming

that's solidarity baybeeee

lgbtlaughs

Further context: Durham city council (Reform UK) cut funding and support for Pride. The Durham Miner's Association and other trade unions raised enough money for Durham Pride 2026 to go ahead - a direct call back to when Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) raised money for mining communities when Margaret Thatcher seized union funding during the miner strikes of 1984-85.

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Miners’ Association, said that when it became apparent Durham Pride was under threat, he took it upon himself to “encourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community […] They not only raised funds for us, but came to our communities, uplifted our spirits when they were down, and showed their solidarity.”

#pride #unions #solidarity

Solidarity forever!

ambiguousdog

This is the money butt.

It only appears every 124078932423 posts. Reblog in 12 minutes, and money will make its way to you in the next 48 hours.

corncobjelly

money butt god bless

justchisa

I have never seen a money butt before

erflump

All hail Butt Money

mortalsfool

*le gasp* The money Butt?!?!

#somehow I've never seen this one before

I'm not even attracted to women, but dang that is a voluptuous butt.

chime-mime

I just love when birds get spherical

#who else heard it?#I am old #birbs

Let's get spher-i-cal, spher-i-cal!

ahaseviiul

A very interesting question is which name Agnes/Hannah would go by after gilead? The name she was given at birth or the name she grew up with? After all, Agnes is all she remembers, but it's also a tie to the regime that groomed her from the very early age.

As a person who grew up in a free world, if I were told that my name was something else at birth I would just say "okay, so?" However, I imagine it must be different for people in gilead once they start to see through the regime.

#the testaments #testaments hulu #testaments series

I'd kind of like to see her find her way back to being Hannah, but what I really hope we see is June telling her that it's entirely her choice what she wants to be called, because she knows what it's like to have your name taken away from you, and she is not going to let that happen to her daughter again.

zyzscribbles

Important question

awkwardbirdsdreaming

Okay but I think these two are onto something

verbrannt74

Test subject

(no bird was harmed)

#history #travel #nature #hopewell furnace

The test subject doesn't look like s/he's enjoying the test. :(

Please provide us with your feedback, Mr/Ms/Mx bird! How can we make your snazzy outfit more comfortable?

Trip Report! French Creek State Park, June 2026

This was a quick(ish) weekend trip! The park is about an hour away from my house, so I've been there before, and will again, but I'm trying to make each stamp in my State Parks passport book represent a substantial adventure in said park, so I decided to stay the weekend in a cottage in the campground.

The cottages are all pretty much the same, so I didn't take a whole batch of photos of this one, since I already did that for the one at Pinchot.

It was a very hot weekend, so that put some limits on our activities. We ended up spending a lot of time at the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, which is surrounded by the state park. It operated from just before the American Revolution through the mid-1800's, processing the region's iron ore into both iron bars and finished products.

I didn't take any picture of the whole furnace, for some reason, but here's a stock one:

The brown shedlike thing on the right is where they loaded ore, charcoal, and limestone into the top of the furnace, which is essentially a big chimney; there are tons of such structures in the area, used for processing various mineral resources in the late 18th through 19th centuries, but this one is enclosed in a wooden structure, which is where they cast the metal.

This is another photo from a tourism site, showing the business end of the furnace, where the molten iron came out.

Now we're back to my own photos.

There in the casting house, they do a program where you get to learn about the sand casting technique that they used to make stoves back in the day, and make a little plaster model of a stove panel.

Here are the tools you get to use. The wooden frame is open on both sides, and there are two flat squares of wood that fit snugly against the open side. You start by putting the metal casting piece on the bottom square, the put the frame over it and pack sand in around it, then put on the other square.

Then there is the tricky part, which is Hold it Gently Like Burger and flip it over. (In the actual industrial process, they would clamp it, since they were setting up a bunch of these to be ready for the pour, and moving them around.) Then you very gently and carefully take the casting piece out, and you're ready to pour!

Here is the metal casting piece; they do occasionally do programs you can watch where they cast actual metal, so I think they may have made these on site? In the actual industrial process, they would get each stove piece carved in wood--which, of course, would start to wear out pretty quickly, being repeatedly covered in sand, but once they had a few clean copies in iron, they could use those as the casting pieces, and put the wooden master away for safekeeping.

And here is my little souvenir stove-plate replica!

Teddy was very patient while we did arts and crafts.

And they gave him his own Junior Ranger badge.

They also have a replica of a charcoal burner's hut. In the 1930's, they got the furnace's last charcoal burner, who at that time was 86 years of age, to come and walk them through the process. They now do a charcoal burn twice a year:

In this spot. The next one is in August, and I've put it on my calendar. I've seen it done on TV, and it might be interesting to see in person; they basically stack wood into a big dome shape, with a chimney going down the middle, cover it all with dirt, set it on fire, and let it smolder for a week.

Here's a selection of stoves that they made in the 1800's. There were several sizes, and different designs you could get. The stove is assembled out of 6 to 12 plates, or basically flat pieces like the model we made, and then assembled.

This one is a little bit special, though, because it is an Illegal Stove. It was made in 1772--before the Revolutionary war. The British government did not allow the colonies to make finished products out of iron; they were supposed to just make iron bars. Those were shipped to Britain to be made into stoves and kettles and whatnot, some of which would be shipped back to the North American colonies for sale.

But this site, which is today about an hour's drive from Philadelphia, in 1772 was sufficiently remote from that center of imperial power that they decided to take the risk of breaking that law, and got away with it.

The owner of the furnace, Mark Bird, would go on to be a Colonel in the Revolutionary war, and the furnace would produce cannons for the war effort--although documents from the period indicate that Bird seriously overpromised on what he'd be able to supply.

This is another shot of the bootleg stove; it's interesting because you can see it's noticeably cruder than the 1800's ones, but still has a lot of ornamentation on it.

Here's a closeup of one of the later ones:

In person the difference is even more obvious; the 1772 one has a noticeably rough surface, while the later ones are smooth, but you can get a pretty good idea from the pictures. The 1800's stoves have the clean lines we associate with mass-produced objects, while the 1772 stove has a rougher, homespun look. But both were made using the same iron from the same furnace, and the same sand-casting process.

trentreznorspussy

i’m interested in becoming the worlds first unmarried divorced woman

whorta

#everything is star trek #spock #t'pring

She is from another planet, so OP's goal is still achievable, with a pretty mainstream definition of the word "world."

Edit: World's first unmarried divorced man is a little trickier, though. That one might be taken. Depending on how you define "'s."

storm-of-feathers

yeah yeah rainbow capitalism is bad and whatever but like. when I was a child, being pro gay was not the popular or lucrative choice. I'm happy that times have changed.

storm-of-feathers

I miss rainbow capitalism. I do. I miss when it felt like public opinion was still pro gay. I understand it was always an empty gesture, but it mattered in a sense of knowing how socially acceptable being queer is. If that makes sense.

my town's tiny little one-block, single-afternoon pride festival, that they first had in 2021, is not happening this year.

There are a couple of smaller events happening, but you have to register for them, because they aren't advertising the times & locations. For safety reasons.

Not only that, but the grocery store chain doesn't have the 3' x 5' cardboard display of cheap rainbow crap, that for the past three years they'd had shoved in the "seasonal" aisle with all the red-white-and-blue crap.

The first time I saw it, I took a picture because growing up, I would never in a million years have fucking imagined that we'd have Pride shit in the supermarket.

And now we don't.

It fucking sucks.

#pride #homophobia

I was just wondering if you could tag that spider post? I have pretty severe arachnophobia. If not, I understand but thought I would ask because of the pictures

No prob. (Luckily you asked, and I saw this, quickly enough that it was easy to find.)

walking to the corner trash can through suffocating heat with a dead bird wrapped up in a HAVE A NICE DAY :) takeout bag while the siren down the block wails the coming end of the world at 100+ decibels right at my head. is this hell

sure sounds like it

hey don't cry. 7,401 species of frog in the world, ok?

IMPORTANT UPDATE: 7,532 species of frog in the world, ok?!

great news! 7,556 species of frog in the world, ok?!

hey don't cry, now there are 7,576 species of frog in the world, ok?!

excellent news! 7,591 species of frog in the world, peace and love on planet earth

guess what! 7,624 species of frog on planet earth, ok?

hey don't cry, 7,645 species of frog on planet earth, ok? peace and love on planet autism

great news! 7,653 species of frog on planet earth, ok?

hey don't cry. 7,670 species of frog on planet earth, ok?

new year new frogs! 7,678 species of frog on planet earth, ok?

hey don't cry. 7,683 species of frog in the world, ok? ❤️

hey don't cry. 7,698 species of frog in the world, peace and love on planet earth

hey don’t cry. 7,701 species of frog in the world, ok?

wandering-aloneo-o

@markscherz how many of these do we get to thank you for again?

markscherz

95 at present, more on the way :)

hey don't cry. 95 species of frog discovered by tumblr's own frog scientist dr. mark scherz, ok?

hey don't cry. 7,758 species of frog in the world, yippee!

hey don't cry. 7,806 species of frog in the world, ok?

hey don’t cry. 7,817 species of frog in the world, peace and love on planet autism 💖

hey don't cry. 7,836 species of frog in the world, ok?

hey don't cry. 7,864 species of frog in the world, yay!

hey don't cry. 7,935 species of frog in the world, yippeeeeee

HEY DON'T CRY. 8,008 SPECIES OF FROG IN THE WORLD PER AMPHIBIAWEB AND THE 8,000TH FROG WAS DESCRIBED BY TUMBLR'S OWN FROG SCIENTIST DR. Scherz, ET AL., PEACE AND LOVE ON PLANET EARTH ‼️‼️‼️

Good news, we've cracked 8,000 frog species! Who's bringing what to the party?

That poor pest control guy did not know what he was getting into, but given the state of my yard i feel like he should have known what he was getting into.

He was going door to door offering to spray the base of the house for pests for a discount rate because one of our neighbors signed up for pest control and he walked down my driveway (covered in spiderwebs), up onto my front porch (covered in spiderwebs), and knocked on my door (covered in spiderwebs) and said "hi, I'm John from the bug company, would you be interested in a discount service because it seems like you may have a spider problem."

And I said, "oh, no, I'm sorry, I won't be spraying for spiders, I like them. I want to encourage them."

And he gave me kind of a weird look and was like "why?" And I was honest and said that they were my pest control, they take care of my mosquitoes and and and flies, and then I kind of laughed and said that I should stop because I know way too much about spiders and if he let me go I'd talk his ear off.

And then he made his fatal mistake and asked what I knew about spiders, and if I knew what kinds of webs he'd walked past to get on the porch and what spiders were in my yard.

So then he got to hear my thoughts on brown vs black widows and why I wished there were as many black widows as there used to be but I had a big beautiful one under my patio table right now and even if I prefer black widows because they aren't invasive the same way that brown widows are i still like the brown widows and i had a lovely one who lived in my patio chair from August until the firestorm in January and she was so good and kept eating cockroaches and had made five big egg sacks and how I was so proud of her and I used to have a lot more orb weavers but their numbers never recovered after the tropical storm last year but I had a cute one on the shed that I took a picture of yesterday and of course there are tons of wolf spiders and jumping spiders and cellar spiders if you wanted to count them too and some false widows but I hadn't seen any of them this year and, well, yeah, anyway they're not actually dangerous mostly and widows want nothing to do with you but a bite wasn't pleasant but much better than a recluse bite but I almost never see recluses around here but i wouldn't, would I, because they're not called brown gregarious spiders, oh and there are black footed yellow sack spiders around and you don't want those to bite you but their little toes are so cute and I'm sorry, sorry, sorry like I said I can go off about spiders, but also I don't want to spray because I've got so many pollinators, I've got a whole wisteria vine full of carpenter bees, actually i saw a male valley carpenter bee last week, did you know they're golden and fuzzy? He was so cool! But, yes, sorry, I won't be spraying but thank you for asking, and I'm sorry I was the crazy spider lady at you!

Extremely adorable fuzzy little creature:

A large friend:

Look, this is basically a kitten:

A goth icon.

Strong, independent women that I don't want to fuck with.

They are delightful and they eat actual pests, I love them.

gallusrostromegalus

I had almost this exact conversation with the door-to-door pest control guy last summer, but about the wasps. He was outright confused when I told him that not only was he not welcome in my yard, I'd just put out some fried chicken crumbs for my paper wasps to make sure they built their hives on my property because nothing in his truck made better crop pest control than a hungry nest of Red Paper Wasps, except maybe Ichneumons but have to get rid of the lawn before those will move in-

"Red Paper wasps? Those are very dangerous! They're very aggressive!" he sputters.

"Really? They seem to be quite placid." I indicated the Fine-backed Red Paper Wasp nest about 16 inches above his head under the eaves.

He stared.

I picked up a crumb of KFC from the porch shelf with my finger and held it up. One of the ladies investigated, then landed and sat on my finger and munched happily for a few seconds before returning to the nest.

"Would you like to see the common paper wasps? They've got a great nest going on the side of the garage."

"I'm. I'm good." He said, and left.

Update:

Another pest control guy showed up and knocked on the door and mentioned that he does bug spraying and I just straight up said "oh i'm the crazy spider lady, I like the bugs, that's why I don't mow."

And he said "Well, do you have any rats or other rodents you need handled?"

And I said "No, we have a barn owl living out back. You should see my collection of rat skulls. Do you want an owl pellet?"

He did not want an owl pellet :(