A Blog About Things

She/They born in 1990. Art historian and nerd. I pretty much reblog things that I find cool, interesting, funny, or important. ALSO, I HAVE SINCE MADE CORRECTIONS TO THE GENTILESCHI POST THAT'S GOING AROUND. When I made this post I made a mistake. All of the info about Gentileschi is correct, but the images at the top of the post of Susanna and the Elders and the X-Ray are a PASTICHE of Gentileschi's original work by KATHLEEN GILJE. CHECK OUT KATHLEENGILJE.COM FOR MORE INFO.  Also, some people have asked for a bit more information so I've made a few more posts about Gentileschi:- Further background on Artemisia Gentileschi- Brief reading suggestion list for more info about Gentileschi- A post about her depiction of female nudes vs. those made by male artists

[kineticpenguin]

At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields

[kineticpenguin]

At the risk of sounding like an effete intellectual, I do actually think you should be allowed to just take college courses indefinitely

[yourunderwaterskies]

technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.

Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses." Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.

[aloeverawrites]

@yourunderwaterskies I wanted to say thank you so much for adding these links, seriously, they've been life-changingly helpful to me-

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

Humanity in War

Learn more about the Red Cross International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Program to train policy professionals, government officials, academics,

Kaya

Kaya is a free humanitarian learning platform which offers hundreds of training opportunities across a range of key topics, including the hu

[depsidase]

[raindropcascade]

@isuggesteatingtherich

[isuggesteatingtherich]

i have a suggestion

[transheadcrab]

why do they always show cranberries in thos big pits n its implied its wet and possibly swimmable. do cranberries really grow like that. wh

[khamingbird-blog]

You’ve never heard of The Bog?

[transheadcrab]

th

the what

[transheadcrab]

EACH ADDITION TO THIS POST MAKES MY BLOOD RUN COLD

[punkrorschach]

This is a cranberry bog (unflooded) it’s how cranberries grow. Once they’re ripe, the blog is flooded and the cranberries harvested.

Basically by using big floaty things to round them all up and then scooping them out of the water.

[transheadcrab]

thank u. i hate it a little less but the horrible little man in my head is still screaming “BOG BODY BOG BODY BOG BODY”, but i appreciate the education,

[bomberqueen17]

oh here is a fun lil perspective on cranberry harvesting i never heard about anywhere else. the guy who owns the restaurant right down the road from the farm, who fries our chickens sometimes, is from Boston, with the strongest Boston accent ever, and in a former life before he started slinging reasonably priced barbeque and occasional organic chicken, he was a cranberry farmer.

His farm was on the leading edge of kinda using organic/sustainable pest control methods, and one of the things that they did to keep insect damage down was that they encouraged wolf spiders to live in the cranberry field, to eat the bugs. 

This was all fine and good until they flooded the bog. Now, you don’t just like flood the bog and then go around it in a boat or whatever. No, you use hip waders to get in there and put the big floaty things where they go and get all the berries and such.

Well when you’re in the bog in hip waders, that makes you the tallest thing. Wolf spiders can swim a bit, but they don’t like it, so they’re, quite understandably, looking to climb out of the water onto a tall thing.

So yeah the first interview question he always asked potential cranberry bog harvester hires was “are you cool with spiders?”

“You’d be amazed,” he said to us, shaking his head a little, “how many guys would just straight lie. Like, you think I’m asking you that question to be cute? Nah man you’re gonna have like a hundred wolf spiders trying to climb your eyebrows, you gotta be chill, those wolf spiders are fellow employees. You really gotta be chill with spiders if you’re gonna work a cranberry harvest.”

[antiocheanism]

happy international workers day to the cranberry bog spiders

[massachusetts-official]

Official Post of Massachusetts

[spankerella]

@ perfectunion

[massachusetts-official]

Official Post of Massachusetts

[my-dailydreams]

[willgrahamscock]

reading problematic fanfiction but shaking my head so random tumblr user who thinks thought crimes are real knows I don't condone it in real life

[breeyn]

My reverse mermaid

[patchespaints]

I am obsessed with how my cats look in webcam night vision. 24x36", white muslin, whole cloth free motion quilting with pieced border, black jaquard textile paint thinned with aloe vera gel.

[moghedien]

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

[moghedien]

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

[byjove]

When the average heterosexual family man complains about his family not respecting him, it is almost always because there is absolutely nothing about him to respect and he has made no effort to connect with any of them and he considers the slightest pushback or lack of affection a sign of ‘disrespect’. When the average heterosexual family woman complains about her family not respecting her, it’s usually because her 14 year old son keeps calling her a bitch and throwing things at her while her husband laughs. The difference is so fucking stark.

[hugintheraven]

It’s because respect has multiple meanings.

[todaysbird]

the flightless cormorant, sometimes known as the galápagos cormorant, is a unique cormorant species endemic to the galapágos - they are found along the rocky coastlines of the isabela and fernandina islands. they are the only example of a cormorant that has lost the ability to fly through evolution. this evolution initially occurred due to the birds being found on an island free of predators - however, human introduction of cats, dogs, and pigs has made survival more challenging without flight. they are classified in genus nannopterum, alongside the neotropic cormorant & double crested cormorant. they are the largest living member of their family at 2.5–5.0 kg (5.5–11.0 lb), though their wings are approximately one-third of the size that would be necessary for a bird of this weight to take off. the sexes are similar in appearance, with blackish upperparts and a brown underside; however, males are larger and heavier than females. the flightless cormorant’s keel (an extension of the breastbone, where muscles needed for flight attach) is also significantly reduced compared to other cormorants. however, flightless cormorants are still adept hunters whose webbed feet and powerful legs help propel them underwater in pursuit of their prey. these birds feed near the sea floor, with their diet consisting of fish, octopi, and other small marine mammals. surprisingly, despite being birds who feed by diving underwater, the flightless cormorant shares a trait found across cormorants - their feathers are not waterproof. they spend time after each dive drying off in the sunlight in preparation for their next hunt. their hair-like, dense body feathers trap air, which prevents the birds from becoming waterlogged. the flightless cormorant is currently listed as ‘vulnerable’ by the IUCN due to their limited range and population size.

photos sourced from the Macaulay Library

[velvetmasonry]

Scolopax minor, American woodcock

via

[bowelfly]

i will not be taking any questions at this time

[photogdenography]

A Good Stretch

Brown Pelican - Point La Jolla, CA

[anthonyhurd]

What’s your number 1 take away from 2025? Mine is clearly this: We’re not going anywhere.

[fuer-diesen-sommer]

Information

[finnglas]

when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)

anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.

i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”

and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.

“What?” i say.

“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.

[finnglas]

I love how every June this one gets dug up and passed around again, lmao.

[finnglas]

oh no is this what we’re doing now

[finnglas]

…relic…

*crumbles and blows away on the wind*