Always On My Nerd Shit

💫Basil💫 Visual artist • They/them • 22 • multi-fandom

[doctorwhogifs]

[moonfallplays-deactivated202501]

#how long have we been holding on to this one?

[adulthoodisokay]

i’ve had this queued for 365 days

[ferretastical-spectacle]

Genuinely feel like I’m going crazy. Am I the only one who doesn’t think this movie is a masterpiece??

So I just watched The General (1926), bc I’ve been wanting to get into Buster Keaton silent films and I read that this is considered his “magnum opus”, so I figured I’d bite.

I barely made it through bc I was incredibly bored, and keep in mind I’m usually pretty entertained by silent films. I’ll say the stunts were quite impressive and nail biting. Obviously the train scenes are quite perilous and thus impressive in their execution. But the rest of the movie is just….. not good.

First of all, let me address the elephant in the room— this movie is pro-confederate. It tells a story of a confederate underdog fighting back the union and has obvious pro confederate visuals like the constant waving of the confederate flag. This unsavory fact alone is enough for me to write it off as a bad movie. I didn’t want to root for the main characters and didn’t even care much for them bc of the fact that they’re confederate AND the story doesn’t do much to endear me to them. Keaton’s character is fairly sympathetic in his own right, but his girlfriend who spends much of the movie fighting beside him is absolutely unbearable. The fact that she rejected him for such a stupid reason as him not being able to enlist in the army made me dislike her for the rest of the movie. I wasn’t rooting for him, her, or their romance.

And the stunts…. While impressive, seem to go on and on. I suppose if I was obsessed with trains I’d find it riveting, but the movie to me felt like one big blur of train related shenanigans, during which half of the time I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. There were a few scenes that got a chuckle out of me, which gives me hope that I’ll enjoy other works from Keaton, but as a whole, I was bored and irritated.

I recently watched another classic from the era, Safety Last! (1923) and can safely (or not so safely haha) add it to my favorite films of all time list. The General simply pales in comparison to the humor, heart and peril that oozes out of that movie.

I went into this movie eager to experience the supposed magnificence of this film, but was only left bored and confused as to how this is “one of the best films of all time.”

Here’s a funny observation: Buster Keatons character in this film looks a lot like the creature in Lisa Frankenstein! I’d bet he’s inspired by him— it’s obvious from the costuming to the hair to the deadpan. The creature is like if Sweeney Todd and Buster Keaton had a baby I SWEAR.

Anyways, I shall watch more Keaton in the near future but this was…. A bit of a bumpy start let’s say.

[tardigradesonthemoon]

1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

[tardigradesonthemoon]

1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s

[megan-the-artoonist]

“Safety Last!”

10x10” clock, acrylic on MDF

My previous handmade clock was practice for this one! I haven’t seen many Harold Lloyd films, but I feel a connection to him since we share a birthday.

It was difficult to engineer this. I drilled a hole in the hand and he is hanging down from a short piece of string. He sometimes sticks out to the side instead of dangling down when the hand moves slowly vs winding it here. Open to suggestions.

For sale!

[sinewthirtythree]

[historicalbookimages]

🦦 The handy natural history Boston, R.G. Badger, The Gorham press, 1910. Original source Image description: Illustration from a 1910 natural history book showing eight small mammal species: an otter holding a fish near water; a sable lying down; a stoat standing on a rock; a polecat in a stalking pose; a marten climbing a rock; a weasel standing upright; a ferret walking on a branch; and a mink sniffing near water. Each animal is labeled with its name and depicted in naturalistic poses emphasizing fur textures and body shapes.

[ferretastical-spectacle]

Just watched the new minions movie with my coworkers…. First of all, FANTASTIC movie. We were all cracking up the whole time and that’s completely sober.

The part where talkies came around and suddenly the minions weren’t stars in Hollywood anymore bc their minion speak didn’t translate well to sound is literally what happened to a lot of silent film actors when sound was implemented to films. Setting it in the 1920s/30s was pretty smart tbh— minions have always been about slapstick and humor of that era really shines with slapstick. Loooove seeing all the classic film references 🤓

Also why is the robot alien guy kinda?….. anyways that’s my thoughts 😋

[supreme-leader-stoat]

I have a very rough idea in my head that I don't think I can clearly articulate beyond "And that concludes tonight's reports on German air forc—WHAT'S THIS? IT'S KING ARTHUR WITH A STEEL CHAIR"

[the-writers-wrench]

IDK what this is about, but I want to know more.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

This isn't exactly the same idea but it could be but there is more rattling around in here so:

The Blitz here manages to qualify as Britain's Darkest Hour, thus triggering the return of Arthur from the Realm Avalon.

He does not speak a lick of modern English. He speaks an unholy mishmash of Brittonic and Late Classical Latin.

(Honestly I can see the latter becoming a plot point if they manage to get their hands on a Roman Catholic priest to act as a translator. It wouldn't be a perfect arrangement, but probably better than anything else.)

Truthfully he probably gets mistaken for a madman.

Somehow manages to steal a Spitfire out from under the RAF's nose, proceeds to use it to bring down like half an enemy squadron on his own, then lands in a field in the middle of nowhere.

Police and RAF converge on his location on account of the whole "stealing a plane" thing. They eventually overwhelm him with sheer numbers, but he manages to knock out an impressive number of them in the process. I mean, come on. It's Arthur.

[leseigneurdelorage]

"a catholic priest" i mean yeah sure why not but JRRTOLKIEN himself was alive and a teacher at the time so go big or go home.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

You know what sure why not let's just make literal real-life JRRT himself a character in this Arthurian return story, he deserves it.

[chainsawsdreamer]

@seajr DUDE

[aquilacalvitium]

This is the best thing I've seen in days

[ferretastical-spectacle]

CASSIOPEIA!!!!!!! (nicknamed Cass)

A (usually) cool-headed bard-barbarian teen who wields a gigantic bass guitar made of bone to both entrance and bludgeon her foes with

Design based on my character I made while playing Monster hunter stories 2 a while back

Character from a one shot I did more than a year ago

[chitterchitter]

[i-am-fert]

ferts should not dink alcol normaly but this guy is cool. heis partying.

[nchntd]

In the club

[vacuously-true]

I think I’m literally never gonna be sick of this masterpiece. I think watching it on a loop for eight hours could fix me. Dancing’s what clears my soul. Dancing’s what makes me whole.

[dimmadoome]

I just love that this very video is an accumulation of thousands of years worth of art made by people who have never met each other. The concept of this video was so completely unfathomable to every single artist who made the sculptures and yet they’ve all put something toward the creation of it.

[i-restuff]

ITS BACK ON MY TIMELINE

[sister-lucifer]

i would trust weird al with my drink at a party. granted he may put one of those capsules that expands into a sponge animal in it,

[rhyme-plus-zombie]

sorry i had a vision and i just had to draw it

[roswellsoup]

graduated and was blessed by ladybug freaks 💛🐞🎓

[crabussy]

let's form structures with mamas

[crabussy]

these are hyraxes! they're not rodents or canines or anything like that. they belong to their very own order known as hyracoidea. their closest relatives are elephants and manatees, and these mamas and babies have FREAKY teeth

also important to note that the

and:

[super-lazer-piss]

Vincent Price Tomodachi Life masterpost

[jstor]

100 open access books on JSTOR

African American Studies

An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, Revised and Updated Edition

Disrupting Colonial Pedagogies: Theories and Transgressions

J. A. Rogers: Selected Writings

The Race for America: Black Internationalism in the Age of Manifest Destiny

African Studies

Ethnicity, Identity, and Conceptualizing Community in Indian Ocean East Africa

Lagos Never Spoils: Nollywood and Nigerian City Life

American Indian Studies

Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History

The Urgency of Indigenous Values

Anthropology

Graceful Resistance: How Capoeiristas Use Their Art for Activism and Community Engagement

Lacandón Maya in the Twenty-First Century: Indigenous Knowledge and Conservation in Mexico's Tropical Rainforest

Maya-British Conflict at the Edge of the Yucatecan Caste War

Neobugarrón: Heteroflexibility, Neoliberalism, and Latin/o American Sexual Practice

Our Hidden Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America

Power and Place: Preservation, Progress, and the Culture War over Land

Voices of Indigenuity

Archaeology

Living Ceramics, Storied Ground: A History of African American Archaeology

New Deal Archaeology in the West

The Cretan Collection in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, volume III: Metal Objects from Gournia

Violence and Inequality: An Archaeological History

Architecture

Waterhouses: Landscapes, Housing, and the Making of Modern Lagos

Asian Studies

Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Geopolitics and Informality, 1963–1985

Communication Studies

Covid and…: How to Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic

Hillary Clinton's Career in Speeches: The Promises and Perils of Women's Rhetorical Adaptivity

Influential Machines: The Rhetoric of Computational Performance

Migrant World Making

Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting

Serial Mexico: Storytelling across Media, from Nationhood to Now

Stories of Our Living Ephemera: Storytelling Methodologies in the Archives of the Cherokee National Seminaries, 1846-1907

Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives

Cultural Studies

Cultural History of British Alternative Cabaret (1979-1991)

Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect: Online Reading Communities of the New Nigerian Novel

Reconstructive Memory Work: Trauma, Witnessing and the Imagination in Writing by Female Descendants of Harkis

Toward a Gameic World

Development Studies

Hottest of the Hotspots: The Rise of Eco-precarious Conservation Labor in Madagascar

Urban Indigeneities: Being Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century

Education

Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland

The Vulnerability of Public Higher Education

Environmental Studies

Ecologies of Imperialism

Unsettling Agribusiness: Indigenous Protests and Land Conflict in Brazil

Feminist & Women's Studies

Reclaiming Time: The Transformative Politics of Feminist Temporalities

Recovering Women’s Past: New Epistemologies, New Ventures

Film Studies

Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema

Monsters on Maple Street: The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream

The Rise of Central American Film in the Twenty-First Century

Mapping the Stars: Celebrity, Metonymy, and the Networked Politics of Identity

Food Studies

The Visible Hands That Feed: Responsibility and Growth in the Food Sector

Gender Studies

Masculine Pregnancies: Modernist Conceptions of Creativity and Legitimacy, 1918-1939

Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770–1940

Women, Nationalism, and Social Networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918

History

Captivity's Collections: Natural History and the British Transatlantic Slave Trade

Our People Are Warlike: Civil War Pittsburgh and Home-Front Mobilization

Reimagining the Educated Citizen: Creole Pedagogies in the Transatlantic World: 1685-1896

Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi

Language & Literature

Abraham Lincoln and the Bible: A Complete Compendium

Blood and Ink: The Barbary Archive in Early American Literary History

Ethical Crossroads in Literary Modernism

Faking It: Victorian Documentary Novels

Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China

The Lost Texts of Confucius’ Grandson: Guodian, Zisi, and Beyond

Understanding Agatha Christie

Latin American Studies

Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution

Law

Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America

Linguistics

Cantonese Since the Nineteenth Century

Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry: Transnational Exchange in the Italian Publishing Field

Middle East Studies

Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces

Music

Fantasies of Music in Nostalgic Medievalism

Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson

Lieder in America: On Stages and In Parlors

On Music Theory and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone

Peace & Conflict Studies

Remaking the World: Decolonization and the Cold War

The Coup and the Palm Trees: Agrarian Conflict and Political Power in Honduras

The End of the Future: Trauma, Memory, and Reconciliation in Peruvian Amazonia

Uniting Against the Reich: The American Air War in Europe

Unwilling to Quit: The Long Unwinding of American Involvement in Vietnam

Performing Arts

Sonic Strategies: Performing Mexico's War on Drugs, Mourning, and Feminicide

Staging Existence: Chekhov's Tetralogy

Philosophy

Phenomenology in an African Context: Contributions and Challenges

Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious: Vol. 2 The Affective Hypothesis

Violence and the Oedipal Unconscious: vol. 1, The Catharsis Hypothesis

Political Science

Beyond Othering: A Gandhian Approach to Conflict Resolution in India and Pakistan

Local government and democracy in the United Kingdom

Paradoxes of Emancipation: Radical Imagination and Space in Neoliberal Greece

The Cost of Voting in the American States

The New Star Chamber and Other Essays: Annotated Edition

Population Studies

Central American Migrations in the Twenty-First Century

Psychology

Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe

Public Health

Irish Fever: An Archaeology of Illness, Injury, and Healing in New York City, 1845–1870

Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011

Religion

Christan Colleges and Universities: An Empirical Guide

From Jesus to J-Setting: Religious and Sexual Fluidity among Young Black People

The Hispanic Faculty Experience: Opportunities for Growth and Retention in Christian Colleges and Universities

Science & Technology Studies

Composting Utopia: Experimental Infrastructures for Organics Recycling in New York City

Sociology

Apartheid’s Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence

As Legend Has It: History, Heritage, and the Construction of Swedish American Identity

Continuous Pasts: Frictions of Memory in Postcolonial Africa

Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana

Research as More Than Extraction: Knowledge Production and Gender-Based Violence in African Societies

The Souls of Jewish Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois, Anti-Semitism, and the Color Line

Technology

Transnational Families in Africa: Migrants and the role of Information Communication Technologies

Urban Studies

Living Politics in the City: Architecture as Catalyst for Public Space

[jstor]

FYI, all of these books were made open access as part of our Path to Open program, where included books are set to become open access three years after their publication date.

Many of the above books can be downloaded as PDFs in full!