an unmitigated disaster

tiny local hag demands sustenance

[cupofmeat]

"Green Plums", Joseph Decker, ca. 1885. Oil on canvas.

[pmamtraveller]

Karin Hosono - Wind

[byjove]

[croaksac]

HUGE developments in the big silly baby wearing fluffy pajamas fandom:

Oregon Zoo 05/30/26: This flouf is one of 15 healthy California condor chicks to hatch at our conservation center this season. A new record! #Condorable #KeepCalmAndCarrion

[hollisbrownthornton]

VHS — permanent marker on paper, 23 × 30 inches, 2010

Website — Instagram

[ilookattextile]

Horace Pippin domestic interiors

[themysteriousmurasamecastle]

[farewell-to-lorien]

Illustrations for Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves | Shiosai | 潮騒, by Lâm Tùng Nguyễn.

[fontseeker]

Ooh this just popped into my head and thought it might be a fun ask if you have a random moment to kill! What's a font/typography fact that you found recently that made you go "oh that's dope/cool how they did that/super pretty/wild history"? Just one of those little things you weren't aware of before but made you happy to learn, as general or esoterically niche as you want. I figure you've probably stumbled across some interesting things in your studies and my dragon hoard is collecting people's fun little tidbits from the things they study for fun!

Futura (1927) [Daylight Fonts · Fonts In Use · Identifont] is one of my favorites out of the well-established sans serifs, but one thing that annoys me about it is how C and c have vertical terminals, while G and e have angled terminals.

Besides being internally inconsistent, I find the vertical terminals ugly. (I dislike Antique Olive (1962) [Daylight Fonts · Fonts In Use · Identifont] for the same reason, but at least it uses its vertical terminals consistently.)

I recently learned the reason for this (from the book Paul Renner: The Art of Typography): Futura was designed first and foremost for writing German. In German the letter c only occurs before h and k, and in traditional German blackletter typography, ch and ck are obligatory, inseparable ligatures.

Futura doesn't have joined ch/ck ligatures, but ch and ck were still cast on a single piece of metal, with a smaller gap between the c and h/k than between other letters. The vertical terminal on the c was necessary to allow these letters to be placed so close together.

If Futura had been designed in a non-German-speaking country, the C would probably look different. Yet the German design was used and continues to be used all over the world (though usually with a normal-sized gap between the c and the h/k).

[keplercryptids]

I spent the afternoon arranging our books by size and color (and it’s so satisfying and looks amazing) and my partner came home and stared in shock at the bookcase and then said “i’m a librarian, you can’t do this.”

[keplercryptids]

him: you split up all the song of ice and fire books

me: yeah i know, they’re all primary colors, it’s perfect

him: [self-destructs]

[operativesurprise]

You’re a monster

[thetumblrofrassilon]

As a former bookstore employee, this hurts my soul. I mean, sure it looks nice, but how do you find anything?

[keplercryptids]

it has occurred me during this process that apparently not everyone thinks about books by what color they are? like, literally when i’m looking for a book, i picture it in my mind. i have a very…tactile experience with the books i read and idk! i thought everyone did that lol.

my partner was like “how will i find [this book] for instance” and i replied “easy, it’s purple” and he looked at me like i was a witch.

[holdmecloseandfast]

OP your brain is neat and I love you for it you funky little color-coded cupcake. But you’re still a monster.

[krsonmar]

This actually is interesting in terms of information-seeking behavior, which is a thing librarians think about a lot and often actually study (some library jobs require you to publish, and academic librarians, for instance, will often use the students at the college they work at to study how they search for information in order to figure out how to best provide them services).

When you go for an MLS (Master’s of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for “professional-level” library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I won’t go into here]), one of the things you study is the organization of information. This deals with how to determine what a book or other material is “about"—a concept we tongue-in-cheek call “aboutness"—and how to convey that to a potential user of the item and make it easy for them to find. Things like keywords and subject headings, do I put this book about how often wild birds attack aerial drones in with books about birds or with books about technology, if its a fictional novel do I put fantasy in it’s own section or mix it in with all of the other fiction, so on and so on.

OP is organizing books by how they would look for them. OP’s partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because it’s their personal library: they know basically what books they own and they only own books that are relevant to them, and if they know what the book looks like, that can be a quick way to find it.

In a library that assumes the public (or people who do not own that particular collection of books) are using the collection, that doesn’t work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesn’t know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, they’re lost. That’s why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what it’s “about”, and then put books about the same or similar topics together, marked with labels and signage so a person unfamiliar with the book or collection can find their way to it.

Basically, OP’s system works for their own personal library, because it’s best suited to how the primary user—OP themselves—looks for books. OP’s librarian partner is coming from a background of thinking in terms of a public-facing collection, where aboutness is the key criteria and communicating it to a user unfamiliar with the collection is the priority.

And also, OP is a monster.

[meatsound]

bigs my me at you

[apollomission8]

I love Carl so much. He wasn't in the book–He's a narrative device so that Grace has a reason to explain his thoughts outloud. He's a stand in. A student for Grace. A person to bounce ideas off of. He's the part of the narration that is filled by the reader in the book. He's us. Carl is there so Grace can take us shopping. So he can show us his theories. So he can work through his hypothesis. Carl is the audience. Carl is you. Carl is me.

[cains-soggy-rock]

Had to add this from the comments

[urgetocreate]

Elena Wuest (Kazakhstan/German b.1977), Lost in a Dream, 2026, Oil on canvas

[shadeslayer]

art by Tima Lotah Link (Chumash) for the Native Voices 16th Annual Short Play Festival

"merciless indian savages" is a direct quote from the US declaration of independence, and this is referencing the art of "manifest destiny" as a white woman standing over the us countryside

[queenrhaenyras]

Sinners (2025) dir. Ryan Coogler

[oldpaintings]

The Pool by Jessie Arms Botke (American, 1883--1971)

[shrrimps]

A God I Can Handle, 2025

Cotton fabric [30x34inches] -by me