happy birthday, gilbert baker. (june 2, 1951 — march 31, 2017)
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@maeveynot
happy birthday, gilbert baker. (june 2, 1951 — march 31, 2017)
Moonbows
A moonbow, also known as a lunar rainbow or white rainbow, is a rainbow created by moonlight rather than sunlight. It's formed when light from the moon refracts and reflects off water droplets, like those in rain or mist, creating a visible arc of light in the sky. Moonbows are generally fainter and less colorful than regular rainbows, and they are much rarer due to the need for specific conditions like a full or near-full moon, clear skies, and dark skies.
“What does Baudelaire say: the lovers come face to face, eye to eye, and in an instant one blinks, and in that instant it is decided: who shall be love’s victim, and who love’s executioner.”
—
I’m Very Into You, Correspondence 1995-1996 between Kathy Acker & McKenzie Wark
This quote showed up in my Facebook memories the other day, and I still find it very striking. In my experience, it holds true that in relationships, one person is always going to love (or even just like) the other more. I’ve been on both sides of this equation multiple times, and I have extreme anxiety every time I feel like I’m in the love’s victim position. There’s a sense of helplessness when you think you love or care about someone more than they care about you, especially if it feels like it could be by a wide gap. But human nature makes it pretty much impossible for those feelings even when they are mutual to be completely equal. There’s no dial that you can set to a certain love number or percentage and then set your partner/object of your affection’s dial to the same number. We’d probably all be bored if there was such a thing; there’s excitement in the push and pull of courtship, in being pursued and pursuing someone, and falling in love and having someone fall in love with you. There’s so much power in being love’s executioner too. I only wish people in those positions were more aware of that power and wielded their swords gently.
thinking about this again, unfortunately
I think a lot about how destructive observation can be. There's this idea of being 'truly seen' that forgets that all light comes from an angle. Necessarily all observation includes a perspective, complete with its own biases, assumptions, flaws, and blindspots. Nothing can "truly see" you, not even you. Especially not you, actually, you've seen yourself so much that you'll end up making countless little assumptions. I like the argument of parallax, that we can see a more complete image by taking multiple perspectives at once and comparing how they differ. But, for a truly destructive perspective, the goal is to take apart your own. In what ways can you be observed that will most highlight your blindspots, your weaknesses, your little things you ignore? It's an interesting question. How best can you be taken apart? Which threads to pull will leave you falling to pieces? What can be seen of you that is most destructive to your self conception?
Times Square (Allan Moyle, 1980)
my fellow trans people: all of the answers are in the river. you just need to go to the river and everything will make sense. a lake or ocean are fine substitutions. find the water and go to it. bring your friends. go alone. have a beer.
this really spoke to me, as a trans hippie shut-in.
find the water and go to it. 👍
The Long, Hot Summer (Martin Ritt, 1958)
how do you pronounce the honourific "Ms." in english
"miss"
"miz"
other
unsure/see results
really good "shocking number of people are confidently objectively demonstrably completely wrong" poll
i am losing my fucking mind
#we dont use honorifics in my first language so whenever i have to select options (usually for flights) im always so confused#like what is actually the difference between miss and ms#i like miss bc it sounds more historical and im a historian so
"Miss" means an unmarried woman. "Mrs." means a married woman. (both of these have origins in the word "mistress" as in "mistress of the house".)
"Ms." - prounounced MIZ, btw - is a third option popularized by gloria steinem in the 70s - mainly through her feminist magazine Ms. - which is meant to be a neutral term, usable for any and all women regardless of marital status (hence the soul destroying irony of the tags above). it gained wider general acceptance when geraldine ferraro, the first woman to be nominated as VP on a national major party ticket, started using it widely to avoid confusion, since she was married but used her maiden name professionally. eventually over the years it came into common use though i do think the brits are a little more critical of it than americans (as far as i'm aware lol)
"obscure facts only a tumblr user would know" and it's one of the most influential institutions of second wave american feminism. PLEASE open the schools
Hi. I'm an unmarried woman in her forties. I use Ms. and pronounce it "miz", though I don't correct people who accidentally use a soft S. I use Ms. because it's no one's business but my own whether I'm married, to a man or anyone else, and that's what Ms. means. It means fuck off, my marital status is irrelevant, just as it is for every man who uses Mr.
I've had people (usually children) ask me at work if I'm a missus or a miss. I have replied that I am a miz, full stop. And when they pressed for which one I was REALLY, I have replied, "Why? Are you going to treat me differently depending on whether there's a ring somewhere?"
That's what Ms. is for. That is its linguistic function. It says, "This is an adult woman," and nothing else. Nothing else is necessary, and in my case, nothing else is desired.
I also use miz for other women unless and until they express a preference for something else because I don't magically know everyone else's marital status when I meet them. That's a courtesy—I'm declining to assume marital status and allowing them to decide whether they wish to declare it.
Also, I've taught English and worked as an editor for twenty years. I am quite literally the grammar police. This use of Ms. is a standard construction. If you didn't learn it in school, someone failed you.
repping the "schoolteachers and lesbians" crowd, even when i do feel it's somehow relevant that i am married i still never want to use "Mrs." because there is no Mr. in my marriage what is his 'r' doing here
Growing up in the 80s and 90s this was such a big mainstream cultural deal. Like, as a "sign of progress angrily resisted by reactionaries" it felt at least as big as the idea of asking for pronouns / using pronouns people ask for feels now. Except maybe more mainstream? But those years' equivalent of today's pronoun-mockers would absolutely deride anyone who asked for "ms." and either refuse to use it or use it derisively.
Also, at the time, "Miss" strongly conveyed "single and available to be pursued (if not a Tragic Old Spinster)" and "Mrs." even more strongly conveyed "married to a man and this is his last name". That they don't have that baggage now, at least as strongly, is the result of these struggles.
Tanya Avchinnikova (Belarusian, b. 1988, Minsk, Belarus, based England) - 1: Atlantis. Oblivion 3, 2: Atlantis. Oblivion 4, Paintings: Soft Pastel
New City, New York, Photo by Lee Friedlander, 1976
Stevie Wonder, Griffith Park in Los Angeles, 1972, by Jeffrey Mayer.
She played bass on 10,000 songs, including the most-played track of the twentieth century. She was paid $55 per session. Her name never appeared on the albums.
Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, 1964. A woman in a cardigan walks past the receptionist, a Fender Precision bass in her hand like a briefcase. She doesn’t sign autographs. She signs a timesheet.
Her name is Carol Kaye. In three hours, she will record what will become the most-played track of the twentieth century. She’ll pocket fifty-five dollars and head to another studio, on the other side of town, for the next session.
The record label will never put her name on the album.
Between 1957 and 1973, Carol Kaye took part in roughly 10,000 recording sessions. Not as the featured artist, not as a guest, but as a hired hand. She was part of an anonymous collective nicknamed The Wrecking Crew—elite studio musicians who actually played the instruments on your favorite records while the famous bands posed for promotional photos.
The work was relentless. Three albums before the day was over. Stale coffee in paper cups. No rehearsal. The charts arrived minutes before the tape rolled. If you couldn’t read a chart and nail the take in two tries, you didn’t get called for the next session.
Carol could do it on the first try.
She started playing guitar in grimy bars at fourteen because her family couldn’t pay the electric bill. Music wasn’t a romantic dream for her. It was survival. It was a job—factory work with better acoustics and lower pay.
But she was faster and sharper than almost everyone else. She corrected charts in pencil while the producer was still explaining what he wanted. In one session in 1968, she told a famous producer his arrangement sounded like a dying dog. She chose her own line. They kept her version.
That descending bass line that drives the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”? Carol Kaye. The propulsive groove of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”? Carol Kaye. The acoustic-guitar intro to “La Bamba”? Carol Kaye. The iconic theme from Mission: Impossible? Carol Kaye.
She invented techniques on the spot, out of sheer necessity. When the bass sound was too muddy for AM radio, she stuck felt under the strings and used a hard pick instead of her fingers. The tone cut through the static like a blade. It became the sonic signature that defined 1960s pop.
Bassists spent years—decades—trying to crack the secret of the Beach Boys’ gear to get that sound. They were studying the wrong people. They should have been studying Carol.
She received no royalties. No residuals. No gold-record ceremony. No credit on the album sleeves. When “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” hit number one, Carol was already back in a studio cutting a soap jingle.
The biggest bands mimed her bass lines on TV variety shows. New York marketing departments decided a mom in classic clothes didn’t fit the rebellious-youth image they were selling. So they simply left her name off the album credits.
For thirty years, almost no one cared. The truth only began to surface in the late 1990s, when music researchers found the same union contract numbers on thousands of hit records. The very documents meant to preserve studio musicians’ anonymity betrayed them.
Think about it. Every time you heard “Good Vibrations,” “River Deep – Mountain High,” the Righteous Brothers, Nancy Sinatra, or Sonny and Cher, you were hearing Carol Kaye. She composed the soundtrack of an entire generation’s youth.
And yet the records still say nothing. She’s now over eighty. She wrote instructional books. She trained countless bassists. She is finally starting to be recognized by music historians who uncovered the truth about The Wrecking Crew.
But she never got what she deserved: her name on those albums. Credit for the music that defined an era. Recognition that those bass lines everyone associates with the “Beach Boys” were, in fact, Carol Kaye’s.
Fifty-five dollars a session. Ten thousand sessions. The most-played track of the twentieth century.
And the world didn’t know her name.
How come you have sm confidence
why wouldn’t i? genuinely—why wouldn’t i? what’s the alternative? be insecure and miserable?
it’s necessary that you understand and internalize that confidence is not a mystical and elusive trait. it is a relationship with yourself built on trust in yourself, your judgement, your abilities. it’s knowing that you are not lacking in anything and that you have everything you need to move through anything that happens to you. it is being comfortable with failure or getting hurt because you know you have all that you need to take care of yourself and even if you don’t, you have the chance and the tenacity to find it. so, why would you want to have any other relationship with yourself?
Elina Löwensohn in Amateur (Hal Hartley, 1994)
The Slow Unfurling of Sadism
I don’t consider myself a masochist, but pain is an important part of my submission. Sometimes that feels weird to say—that I like pain and need pain, but I’m not a masochist. For me, the difference is that pain is an expression of my submission, not an end in itself. I enjoy the opportunity to give myself to my Dominant in ways that are hard for me. I enjoy knowing that I am a girl who doesn’t get choices, even if my Dominant chooses for me to suffer. And I need these “proof of ownership” moments, even when I don’t always enjoy them.
But as someone who needs pain, I have dated sadists. Actually, I kind of adore them. Sadists are deeply emotionally aware. When you are a person who feels aroused and emotionally connected through inflicting pain, you learn to read every quiver, every trembling lip, the inflection of every scream. You become hyperfocused on your partner’s emotional and physical state because that’s what feeds you— and because you know what can go wrong.
Sadists know that they enjoy hurting people. For most, it takes time to come to terms with that. And even when you’ve accepted your desire to inflict pain, building trust with a new person is always hard. To show the person you care about that you love their agony… It takes time. No one in kink exercises more self-restraint than the sadist.
So this means people with deep emotional awareness are required to take serious emotional risks with their partners. This leads to an endearing pattern that I call the slow unfurling of sadism (alternate title: How Sadists are Like Shy Baby Groundhogs). Sadists tend to start slower than other D-types. They don’t cause a lot of pain right away. They test something out, then they back off a little. A flicker of pain, then back to soft and sweet. Then they push a little further, and then back off a little. Gradually, they create a safe space for their submissive to suffer—to let pain flow freely. They earn a submissive’s trust by showing they are in control and respect boundaries.
At the same time, they are also creating opportunities for their submissive to earn their trust—trust that they won’t be rejected and trust that what they are doing is consensual. Sadists need reassurance. Did you endure the pain out of submissive obligation, or did you want it? Did it mean something to you? They need to know if you felt a connection through the pain. They need to know if it turned you on. They need to know if you want more. As a submissive, I love these moments. I get to tell my partner that I love the glimmer in their eyes before they hurt me, or that I smile every time I run my fingers over the welts on my ass. I am honest about my limits, but I also show my sadist the joy I feel in serving through pain.
The most rewarding moment is when a sadist looks deep into your eyes and tells you they want to lick the tears off your face while they make you scream. And then they do it. Because that’s when you know they’ve let you in. They’ve trusted you with a part of themselves that few people get to see, let alone love. That is a beautiful feeling, and well worth the time it takes to get there.
i used to have someone else’s screenshots of this post, but i’m realizing now i need to save it for myself.
everyone's heard of this, right? per ap article of apr 8, 2026:
Jacobs went on to record more than 10,000 concerts, with increasingly sophisticated equipment, over four decades in Chicago and other cities. Now a group of devoted volunteers in the U.S. and Europe is methodically cataloging, digitizing and uploading them one by one. The growing Aadam Jacobs Collection [link to internet archive] is an internet treasure trove for music lovers, especially for fans of indie and punk rock during the 1980s through the early 2000s, when the scene blossomed and became mainstream. The collection features early-in-their-career performances from alternative and experimental artists like R.E.M., The Cure, The Pixies, The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Stereolab, Sonic Youth and Björk.