Edmond Dantes

books, art, studyblr - @rawrxeo-o

[lordrawrxe]

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[weepingwidar]

Roksana Bajda (Polish, d.o.b. unknown) - Herd (2026)

[dailysnoopy]

[letterful]

In Orwell’s essay “A Hanging,” the writer watches the condemned man, walking toward the gallows, swerve to avoid a puddle. For Orwell, this represents precisely what he calls the “mystery” of the life that is about to be taken: when there is no good reason for it, the condemned man is still thinking about keeping his shoes clean. It is an “irrelevant” act (and a marvelous bit of noticing on Orwell’s part). Now suppose this were not an essay but a piece of fiction. And indeed there has been a fair amount of speculation about the proportion of fact to fiction in such essays of Orwell’s. 

The avoidance of the puddle would be precisely the kind of superb detail that, say, Tolstoy might flourish; War and Peace has an execution scene very close in spirit to Orwell’s essay, and it may well be that Orwell basically cribbed the detail from Tolstoy. In War and Peace, Pierre witnesses a man being executed by the French, and notices that, just before death, the man adjusts the blindfold at the back of his head, because it is uncomfortably tight. The avoidance of the puddle, the fiddling with the blindfold—these are what might be called irrelevant or superfluous details. They are not explicable; in fiction, they exist to denote precisely the inexplicable. This is one of the “effects” of realism, of “realistic” style. 

But Orwell’s essay, assuming it records an actual occurrence, shows us that such fictional effects are not merely conventionally irrelevant, or formally arbitrary, but have something to tell us about the irrelevance of reality itself (…) There was no logical reason for the condemned man to avoid the puddle. It was pure remembered habit. Life, then, will always contain an inevitable surplus, a margin of the gratuitous, a realm in which there is always more than we need: more things, more impressions, more memories, more habits, more words, more happiness, more unhappiness. 

— JAMES WOOD, from How Fiction Works.

[letterful]

What exactly do these irrational standards mean? They mean the supremacy of the detail over the general, of the part that is more alive than the whole, of the little thing which a man observes and greets with a friendly nod of the spirit while the crowd around him is being driven by some common impulse to some common goal. I take my hat off to the hero who dashes into a burning house and saves his neighbor’s child; but I shake his hand if he has risked squandering a precious five seconds to find and save, together with the child, its favorite toy. I remember a cartoon depicting a chimney sweep falling from the roof of a tall building and noticing on the way that a sign-board had one word spelled wrong, and wondering in his headlong flight why nobody had thought of correcting it. In a sense, we all are crashing to our death from the top story of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles — no matter the imminent peril — these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from commonsense and its logic, that we know the world to be good.

— VLADIMIR NABOKOV, from Lectures on Literature.

[tinyreviews]

remember to be alive in the face of death

[midnightssea]

it’s amazing how women are able to navigate crowded rooms without ever touching a palm to a man’s lower back

[rhoshilio]

Designed a t-shirt for my new job and felt very good about it.

[1five1two]

'The Anatomy of Melancholy'. Laura Makabresku.

[kosmogrl]

[kosmogrl]

[probuccalfat]

every time a young gay person quits smoking or makes the decision that they want to quit, the sun shines on us all with the promise of happiness and beauty.

[probuccalfat]

i appreciate everybody that’s sharing the sentiment that it’s good for anyone to quit smoking (it is) but i very specifically wanted to highlight and encourage LGBTQ youth because lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are about 1.5 to 2.5 times more likely to smoke cigarettes than heterosexual people, and the statistics for transgender people are even higher than cisgender people. this is due to tobacco companies marketing heavily and aggressively to LGBTQ communities and exploiting the higher rates of mental health struggles prevalent in our communities.

i want and hope to see all my LGTBQ people live long, healthy, fulfilled lives despite how predatory and punishing this world can be. you should stay around as long as you can to make it a little better in your own way.

[berrycobbler]

Introduction: Cigarette smoking is disproportionately high among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults. Yet, collapsing these identities i

source ^ this study found particularly high disparities between the percentage of heterosexual women that are lifetime/current smokers and the percentage of lesbian/bisexual women who are lifetime/current smokers

[ceeejus]

miss sheeb

[avengerphobic]

I wish misandry were real

[bobbole]

[kropotkindersurprise]

You can report suspected or confirmed IDF war criminals to the Hind Rajab Foundation, and they will try to get the war criminal's country of residence to follow international law by prosecuting them

[kropotkindersurprise]

Some of their recent cases against international IDF volunteers and vacationing IDF war criminals:

you can support their work [here]

[nico-n-daya]

@/nikki_makeup: A vision. Zendaya for the Spider-Man premiere in Shanghai

[389]

by Jane Dashley

[imanbenerrabeh]

iced matcha with oat in bonne maman jar :v)

[kittyit]

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Nature Documentary: these deep sea creatures can withstand crushing pressures of thousands of pounds per square inch!

Me: they’re not withstanding a goddamn thing. The pressure is a part of them. Their interiors and exteriors are equalized. Just because your respiratory system is built around a pair of fragile poppable bubbles-

[asteroidtroglodyte]

You don’t know me