Imagination Without Taste

I'm no one of consequence. This tumbler is the sister to my blog spot. I'm a bit spotty on updates. I usually post things that catch my attention. It will hopefully be interesting.

[memeuplift]

[aristoteliancomplacency]

Beans.

My partner and I have a running joke with a friend. Every time he goes on holiday we increase the quantity of beans in his flat.

The first time we bought ~30 cans of kidney beans and hid them around the house like some Easter egg hunt thing but with beans.

The Second time we bought ~6kg dried white beans and hid those in various places. Nearly every receptacle that could safely hold beans became the home of beans. My personal favourite was emptying an oat milk carton, very carefully washing and drying it, filling it with beans and then just putting it back among several other cartons.

He went on holiday again a couple of weeks ago. Obviously there is an expectation of bean-based shenanigans. And obviously we have to beat our previous efforts.

Our friend has (had) a mosaic on his wall of the famous Marilyn Monroe Pop-Art by Andy Warhol. He made the mosaic himself. Over the last couple of weeks we have spent hours and hours assembling a frame, drawing up a pattern and gridding out a 70 x 70 frame and gluing an untold amount of beans to it. I have spent over 21 hours gluing beans to a frames.

For the last couple of days I ended up going to bed at 5:00 am because I lost track of time whilst experimenting with which types of glue works best with different beans (I now have *opinions* on this, y’all). The day of our friend’s return we spent the morning and afternoon grouting the piece and wiping it down and wiping it down again and wiping it down again because grout is just like that. In the evening we went to install the mosaic, just a few hours before his return. Here’s a comparison between the original and our clearly superior replication, and the new piece installed in its rightful place.

[aristoteliancomplacency]

It took him over a day to notice. So for over a day he was wandering round his house knowing there were beans somewhere, but not knowing where.

[mistysblueboxstuff]

fyi the development of these AI image generators was funded by billionaires for the sole purpose of removing artists out of the equation and putting them out of work

if you think for one second this technology was made to "help artists" you're sadly mistaken

it's money

it's ALWAYS money

[athingofvikings]

Billionaires are ideologically opposed to paying anyone for their labor (which is how they got to be billionaires in the first place). The AI image generators are just another example of it, but to give another one...

remember back in 2019, when Notre Dame burned? All of these millionaires and billionaires pledged eye-popping sums for the rebuilding... but when it came time to actually give funds, they all dug in their heels and refused. Why? Because they wanted control over how the rebuilding would be done. They wanted their names on the most ostentatious and important pieces, that they personally were responsible for rebuilding...

And most damning of all, they didn't want any of their funds to go towards paying for labor. They were, every single one of them, adamant that if they donated, the money would go to things--showy, impressive things--and not the people who made them or built them.

That's the mindset behind these AI image generators--a device that will cut out the labor and produce a Thing on demand.

[healing-is-cool]

Reading all those books you've always wanted to read. Watching a movie that changes the way you view life. Finding something new about yourself. Starting a new hobby. There are so many amazing things you have yet to experience, so much worth living for.

[eternalroo76]

[memeuplift]

[tilthat]

TIL that the reason lead levels in children’s blood have dropped 85% in the past thirty years is because of an unknown scientist who fought car companies to end leaded gasoline. He also removed it from paint, suggested its removal from pipes, and campaigned for the removal of lead solder from cans.

via ift.tt

[squeeful]

Yep.  It also correlates extremely strongly with an increasing decrease of violent crime.  One of the symptoms of low level constant lead exposure is increased aggression and volatility. 

[kurowrites]

“Unknown scientist”? That was Clair Cameron Patterson.

[solarpunkcast]

Gas companies are still so mad at him he’s “unknown scientist”, know his name

[bogleech]

Daily reminder that health and safety standards like these are what politicians mean when they talk about “deregulation.”

[prismatic-bell]

Patterson died 5 December 1995.

Petition to make his date of death a Tumblr holiday celebrated by talking about cool shit the gas and petroleum industries don’t want us to know about, and fighting to continue his work.

[prismatic-bell]

Happy Clair Cameron Patterson Day!!!

I’m planting lettuce today and I’m using terracotta pots because they’re better for my salad and my environment than plastic ones!

I’m also planting some butterfly attractors and I’m using plastic pots because they were given to me and using them is better than throwing them out or hoping the recycling people are keeping their word!

[memeuplift]

Hey! Chin up! You are doing Great!

[evansabove1981]

For anyone who needs to hear it

[memeuplift]

Louder for the people in the back

[osmirlysic]

CHIN UP! YOU CAN DO IT! YOU’RE DOING GREAT!

:)

[technologyvoid]

Hey @themagical1sa look, this is about you :D

[themagical1sa]

[classycookiexo]

[thundergrace]

Flautist Melissa Jefferson plays slaver James Madison's 200-year-old crystal flute in the Library of Congress.

[33v0]

[zagzie]

this is the best tag I’ve ever gotten in my notifs actually

[retrogamingblog2]

Johto Pokemon Travel Posters made by PoriPori

[neil-gaiman]

Getting my wisdom teeth out today. Any wise words of advice?

Yes. Do not, repeat not, do what I did, after having had a wisdom tooth out, and decide upon getting home in a very stoned-on-anesthetics kind of way that it would make an immense amount of sense for you to take an enormous knife and try to cut open a green coconut with it, with one mighty swipe.

It was about 12 years ago. I pretty much have sensation back in that finger now, and it only hurts when it rains.

[neil-gaiman]

Hey, Neil! On the off-chance of you answering asks before September, I am getting married and wanted to use "Everything I have to tell you about love" as a ceremony reading. Is this okay? Also, I can't see it published anywhere, so would it be okay to translate it into Slovak so my half of the family understands as well? :) Thanks a lot!

Hope life is treating you well, say hi to Terry when you next talk to him, since we all know you have powers and I miss his words.

Of course!

[neil-gaiman]

For the curious, you can read it at

Wedding thoughts: All I know about love

My friends Sxip Shirey and Coco Karol were married yesterday.  I wrote and read something for them at the wedding party. Afterwards a

[artsyaxolotl]

Giraffe has some positivity for ya! 🦒

[perceabeth]

i love girls with no ‘maternal warmth’. girls who are affectionate in awkward ways. girls who are not ‘caregivers’ so much as care needers. girls who mean well but come across as assholes. girls who don’t mean well. girls who cry a lot but it isn’t ‘cute’ it’s just annoying. girls who aren’t always the most beautiful one in the room. girls who are obnoxious. girls who kind of suck but u can’t help but love them bc they really are just trying,

[woolfpuppy]

It’s 2008. I’m in O'Hare (Chicago airport) around Christmas time, absolutely tired from a 36+ hours of travel from Lithuania. My flight to North Dakota has just been cancelled by a region-wide snowstorm. My cell phone and credit cards aren’t working because I haven’t called to have them turned back on/authorized for the US. I’m so tired and a little delirious, and coming down with a cold. I just want to get home and see my family. I shuffle into the line for the airline to see what can be done about my flight, but the line is long and I am already defeated. Tears leak from my eyes intermittently from tiredness, helplessness, and self pity.

A business woman in the line turns around. She introduces herself, frowning a little because this is so against whatever code she lives her life by. She explains she’s a pharmaceutical exec from New Jersey and that she is visiting some distant relative in North Dakota, and was on the same (now cancelled) flight as me. She hands me an apple and protein bar and says something like ‘I have no maternal instinct. I do not have children and I do not want them. But you are so clearly out of your depth here I feel compelled to help you in some way.’ She helps me book a room in the airport hotel and trusts I will pay her back when I get home (which I do). She pays for a meal we have together, in which she mostly talks about how she climbed the ladder at her corporate job.

The whole incident now seems like a fever dream because I truly was sleep deprived and loony. This woman emphasized many times how she was not a caretaker, she was not a warm person. Indeed she was not gregarious or solicitous. But she also very very much was deeply kind to me, much to her own surprise I think. 0 percent maternal, but my extreme patheticness really drew out something she didn’t know was in her.

I hope she has continued to have a great child-free life.

[everythingfox]

“The black purral”

(via)