[anais-mirliaz]

frolicking with mama :)

[night-dark-woods]

ID. a looping gif drawn to look like an ink illustration of a foal prancing in circles around its grazing mother. End ID.

[joy-and-whimsy-official]

Joy and whimsy detected! This post is joyful and whimsical!

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

today I learned that in 2008, the city council of florence overturned dante’s sentence of execution if he returned from exile. yes, dante’s inferno dante, who died in 1321.

but the funniest part of this is not that they were debating the exile of a man who has been dead for over 500 years.

the funniest part is that the vote was 19-5. five people voted to uphold dante’s exile.

[stabethadeathwhisper]

The objectively funniest part of this is actually that the city that holds his remains, Ravenna, refused to give his remains back. This was a ploy from florence to have his remains moved back for the tourist money and its been ongoing for a long time. Florence had a fake tomb built in the city to trick people into visiting, and have tried to force the return of the remains.

His actual caretakers have been very steadfast in keeping them hidden, moved, or generally out of reach to respect his choice in life to never, ever, ever return to florence, even when he was first offered the chance to return. This is at this point an almost millenium long feud that florence is really, really mad about losing

[mysteryteacup]

so basically the five people who wanted to uphold his exile were in the right

[odin-seeker-of-knowledge]

You're completely skipping over how funny this actually was. So Florence was actually using Catholic law to try and get Dante back, cause technically you're supposed to be buried at the church you were baptised in. So when a Medici, the ruling family of Florence, became pope Leo X he ordered Dante's bones to be returned. He slso ordered Michelangelo to build a mausoleum.

Anyway Ravenna couldn't refuse the pope and handed Dante's casket over to Florence. Another part of Catholic law is that opening someone's casket is desecration and a one way ticket straight to hell. So Florence was skeptical that Ravenna send them Dante and decided to do the unthinkable and opened his casket. It was empty, but Florence couldn't say so because if they called out Ravenna they'd have to admit to desecrating the corpse of their so called beloved poet. So they just pretended it didn't happen till Dante's bones were found behind a wall a couple hundred years later and again interned in a crypt in Ravenna.

Also a friend of Dante had his original grave in Ravenna inscribed with the text:

parvi Florentia mater amoris

Translation:

Florence, mother of little love

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Emily Wilson has inadvertently created a fascinating new way to categorize basically any visual media ever made

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

everyone in the notes who has mentioned Tampopo is going to be reincarnated as a beautiful lotus flower

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[guessillalwaysbethisway]

The discovery of the statue of Antinous in Delphi, Greece in 1894

[lauralot89]

The Department of Fisheries in Hyderabad, India, is shaped like a fish.

[anik]

i love this guy

[sirnoblesquid]

Some quick merthur

Concussed Arthur is truthful Arthur

[wizardarchetypes]

I'm leaving my current bank i'm being 100% serious i'm losing it. they changed card providers in february so they notified me they'd be sending me a new debit card. cool. i called them to ask them to ship it to me in ireland, bc i can't have a non-u.s. address on my banking profile so i had to request it directly.

they said it was no problem. after three weeks with no new card, i called them. turns out they still somehow shipped it to my u.s. address (my mom's house).

they apologized and sent me a second new card. they spelled my irish address wrong so it was returned to sender.

i called them. they apologized and sent me a third new card. spelled my irish address wrong again so it was returned to sender.

i called them. they apologized and sent me a fourth new card. sent it to my u.s. address.

two months now with no physical debit card, using an electronic number in my phone's virtual wallet. doesn't always work.

i called them. they apologized and sent me a fifth new card to my irish address.

just got the confirmation email that it's been shipped. spelled the address wrong.

[wizardarchetypes]

I called again and I got sent to a supervisor for the third time who promised this time it would be correct for real, and I said like, 'obviously this isn't the fault of anyone i've talked to on the phone the last three times, because we've gone over my address and the spelling ad nauseam using the phonetic alphabet to be certain it's exactly correct, with the eircode included. so it seems like, after we hang up, at some point between you correctly inputting my address and someone printing the shipping label, something gets lost. so is there a way for you to investigate and prevent that?' and she was like, 'honestly, no.' LOL which i appreciated. i'm outta there.

[wizardarchetypes]

a few years ago my friend was giving me boating lessons and then we got a call that one of our favorite killer whales (we'd never seen in-person) was nearby and then 2 minutes later we got a call from another friend that they were camping on an island nearby and one of my fav singers was randomly there having beers and we should boat over there and be really nonchalant and normal and have some beers. so my friends looked at me and was like, 'well, it's your call. the singer or the whale.' and for me it was a nothing-choice because obviously i was gonna choose the whale over beers with a stranger. like yes i'm deeply obsessed with their music but i don't know them at all as a person. i'm not missing this whale.

i guess everyone thought it was a risky choice bc we might not find the whale but i was still like, okay, once again, a beautiful evening at sea with my friends, or beers with a stranger?

anyway we did find the whale but i've stopped telling this story IRL mostly because every single person i've told gets absolutely outraged that i didn't choose beers with the singer bc they're also obsessed with them and i'm like. okay? you're not happy for me and the whale? you don't care about my beautiful whale evening???

[wizardarchetypes]

oh let me clarify: i was actually working with orcas as a marine biologist LOL but i'd never seen THIS whale before and i really wanted to see him : )

[eclecticbibliophile]

May I ask why this one was your favorite?

[wizardarchetypes]

The whale is T087—Harbeson! He was born in (approx.) 1962, making him likely the oldest male killer whale of his subspecies, Bigg's Killer Whales (mammal eaters, also sometimes still called Transient Orcas)!

Female orcas live far longer than males (J2 'Granny' of the Resident subspecies is thought to have lived to be over 100!); it's exciting to actually see such an old man still kicking around, hunting in the Salish Sea. We were lucky enough to observe him actively hunting.

I was also just plain having a blast learning to drive at-sea, and I didn't really feel like making land—no matter who was there :^)

[wizardarchetypes]

it's killing me how many people have simply decided the singer was hozier.

[wizardarchetypes]

me when someone calls to tell me they let hozier into my apartment without permission

[titsay]

guardian of the forest

[plumslices]

Hand-painted Hilma of Klimt nails by @nailedbytav

[depsidase]

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

[ampervadasz]

Unmute !

[brightlotusmoon]

[socialistexan]

Same exact playbook, down to the "but it was based on a lie."

[socialistexan]

It's kind of amazing how much this is the identical strategy. Focusing on the distress and harm of parents over the trans or autistic person themselves. Pathologizing the condition treating it as an epidemic, including calling it a social contagion causing a worrying "explosion" of diagnosis because it is "trendy."

Ignoring the experts on the subject while also appealing to "common sense" and dismissing all research that contradicts them while also appealing to "basic science."

Plus it's all the same quacks and actors behind previous medical and social moral panics saying them same things in the same ways and no one seems to acknowledge that.

[deathandmysticism]

Female soldiers from the Mexican revolution, ca. 1910-20