sucks to your ass-mar

my great big filing cabinet of posts

[melismasthmattack]

this is @melismasthmatic ‘s reblogs hole <3

[memeuplift]

[catsofyore]

Before the internet kittens had to call everyone individually to explain how small and cute they were. Ca. 1920 - 1935. Source.

[fluentisonus]

Stephen Maturin + Animals

[bernard-jackson]

[violentoffender]

this would fix me

[publicdomainreview]

Following Baudelaire through 19th-century Paris, Matthew Beaumont discovers a parallel archetype to the flaneur — the convalescent hero of modernity — who emerges from the sickbed into city streets with a feverish curiosity: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/charles-baudelaire-and-the-convalescent-flaneur

[headspace-hotel]

I was trying to understand the Nazis' idea of "Degenerate art," so I have been reading through Max Nordau's book "Degeneration" which is freely available on Project Gutenberg. It was published in 1892. Nordau himself was Jewish but also racist, in conformity with what passed for "science" in those days.

It is a really interesting insight into how fascism and eugenics developed, and how entwined both of those things are with the history of psychiatry.

Nordau believes in a Lamarckian idea of evolution where if an organism's body is damaged or altered by the environment, those acquired traits can be passed onto offspring. This is very important for understanding the arguments of the book.

Nordau thinks that modernity is damaging the bodies and minds of humans, making them perpetually exhausted and weak, which makes them susceptible to "degeneracy," the decline of health, morality, and reason through regression to an animal-like state. His explanations for how this works, which I assume from his citations are basically what experts thought at the time, are fascinating to read. He gives theories for how the brain and the senses work that are a little bit right but dreadfully limited and mostly wrong.

Many of Nordau's main points, though, are basically identical to today's arguments about art, morality, sexuality, and censorship.

Furthermore, the social and human phenomena he describes, including psychiatric phenomena, are much more familiar and easily mapped onto modern concepts than I thought.

I wish I could find it again, but there was a book from...1904? maybe 1914?...describing the treatment of mentally disabled kids in an asylum, that I found online.

It was STRIKING to me how the descriptions of the kids matched perfectly to modern descriptions of ADHD and autism. This book also contained numerous descriptions that seemed unmistakably, obviously like ADHD or autism.

But the labels they used were: "mental defectives," "imbeciles," "idiots," and other things even more offensive.

What is so interesting is that Nordau describes, and singles out, what are popularly considered harmlessly quirky or even positive traits of neurodivergence, and identifies them as part of "degeneracy," categorized along with more noticeable or stigmatized forms of mental disability. He especially emphasizes sensory hyper- and hypo-reactivity as a trait of "degeneracy" in many places.

Here's an example of his descriptions:

“Imbeciles (weak minds) present, in graduated intensity, the phenomenon of fugitive thought (Gedankenflucht), i.e., the incapacity to retain, or to unite in a concept or judgment, the representations automatically and reciprocally called into consciousness in conformity with the laws of association, and also that of reverie, which is another form of fugitive thought, but which differs from it in that the particular representations of which it is composed are feebly elaborated, and are therefore shadowy and undefined, sometimes so much so that an imbecile, who in the midst of his reveries is asked of what he is thinking, is not able to state exactly what happens to be present in his consciousness. All observers maintain that the ‘higher degenerate’ is frequently ‘original, brilliant, witty,’ and that whereas he is incapable of activity which demands attention and self-control, he has strong artistic inclinations. All these peculiarities are to be explained by the uncontrolled working of association.”

This book made me consider the possibility that what we now call ADHD was actually significantly more disabling and stigmatized in the early 20th century, because criminality and mental illness are so closely linked in here, and it is highly visible how traits like impulsivity and emotional dysregulation were extremely costly to have.

At one point he gives a really detailed description of synesthesia, including grapheme-color synesthesia:

Sounds are said to awaken sensations of colour in many persons. According to some, this was a gift of specially finely organized nervous natures; according to others, it was due to an accidental abnormal connection between the optic and acoustic brain-centres by means of nerve filaments[...]That it is a question of purely individual associations brought about by the accident of associated ideas, and not of organic co-ordinations depending upon definite abnormal nervous connections, is made very probable by the fact that every colour-hearer ascribes a different colour to the same vowel or instrument. We have seen that to Ghil the flute is yellow, to L. Hoffmann (whom Goethe cites in his Farbenlehre) this instrument is scarlet. Rimbaud calls the letter ‘a’ black. Persons whom Suarez mentions heard this vowel as blue, and so on.

And he is REALLY pissed off about it.

In any case, it is an evidence of diseased and debilitated brain-activity, if consciousness relinquishes the advantages of the differentiated perceptions of phenomena, and carelessly confounds the reports conveyed by the particular senses. It is a retrogression to the very beginning of organic development. It is a descent from the height of human perfection to the low level of the mollusc. To raise the combination, transposition and confusion of the perceptions of sound and sight to the rank of a principle of art, to see futurity in this principle, is to designate as progress the return from the consciousness of man to that of the oyster.

Like, he is absolutely seething.

[headspace-hotel]

I don't know how to feel about this book. It's disgusting, but also FASCINATING. Like, okay, here's another excerpt

The effect of war on the nerves of the participants has never been systematically investigated; and yet how highly important and necessary a work this would be! Science knows what disorders are produced in man by a single strong moral shock, e.g., a sudden mortal danger; it has recorded hundreds and thousands of cases in which persons saved from drowning, or present at a fire on shipboard, or in a railway accident, or who have been threatened with assassination, etc., have either lost their reason, or been attacked by grave and protracted, often incurable, nervous illnesses.

Everything, EVERYTHING I have ever read about the history of our understanding of PTSD and trauma, says or implies that post-traumatic symptoms were first recognized in soldiers, and later were realized to manifest in other people who experienced trauma.

But THIS is saying "You know how people can develop long term mental illness from a traumatic event? Shouldn't we look into whether that happens to soldiers who have experienced war?" And then he goes on to theorize about how a nation having recently experienced a war could affect everyone because of the "moral shock" the soldiers bring home with them.

Something in the history of psychiatry isn't adding up here.

Here's one of the paragraphs addressing sensory differences.

Maudsley describes some cases of degeneration among children whose skin was insensible, and remarks: ‘They cannot feel impressions as they naturally should feel them, nor adjust themselves to their surroundings, with which they are in discord; and the motor outcomes of the perverted affections of self are accordingly of a meaningless and destructive character

This sounds an awful lot like autism

Here's what he says about psychiatric diagnoses like phobias

the principal phenomenon which lies at the base of all the ‘phobias" and ‘manias,’ namely, the great emotionalism of the degenerate. If to emotionalism, or an excessive excitability, he had added the cerebral debility, which implies feebleness of perception, will, memory, judgment, as well as inattention and instability, he would have exhaustively characterized the nature of degeneration, and perhaps prevented psychiatry from being stuffed with a crowd of useless and disturbing designations.

Okay, so this is closely related to the synesthesia thing. Nordau focuses heavily on "abnormal" sensory perceptions because he thinks that the brain's inability to properly process sensory stimuli is the cause of a lot of mental disability or "degeneration."

And, bizarrely, he actually got pretty close to being sort of right. Studies (like within the last 5 years) that ask questions of autistic adults commonly indicate that sensory differences are one of the most if not THE most disabling aspect of autism, and I (autistic) suspect that a lot of traits of autism are just downstream effects of the sensory differences.

The other thing Nordau focuses heavily upon is the ability to regulate one's own attention and action, and other traits that would be considered to fall under "executive function."

Again, bizarrely close to being correct about something that hardly anybody would be correct about for the next century. He's just being super hateful and stigmatizing about it.

[headspace-hotel]

I was not able to follow along with this guy's criticisms of art in a casual skim-read, because a large proportion of the examples of poetry and writing are in untranslated French.

What I was able to gather, is that he is extremely panicked and upset about all kinds of art that don't fit an EXTREMELY narrow aesthetic and moral standard. He is upset by Impressionistic paintings, because they don't represent reality "realistically," and it sounds like he might actually think that exposing people to Impressionistic paintings might cause them to lose their ability to accurately perceive visual stimuli?

So it all builds up to this central thesis, which is that "degenerate art" is a vector that spreads degeneracy.

Since he thinks "degeneracy" arises from incorrect perception or processing of sensory stimuli, it makes sense that he would identify art that doesn't literally visually represent things as "degenerate."

But the idea of "degeneracy" also extends into morality, and therefore into depictions of human behavior in art: "degenerates" can be disgusted by good things and feel positively towards evil things, which is once again, something physiological that's wrong within the brain.

So he argues, in the late chapters of the book, that artists who create art showing immoral, disgusting things are no different than people who actually do immoral, disgusting things, and that such art should not get made:

It is easily conceivable that the emotion expressed by the artist in his work may proceed from a morbid aberration, may be directed, in an unnatural, sensual, cruel manner, to what is ugly or loathsome. Ought we not in this case to condemn the work and, if possible, to suppress it? How can its right to exist be justified?... The artist who complacently represents what is reprehensible, vicious, criminal, approves of it, perhaps glorifies it, differs not in kind, but only in degree, from the criminal who actually commits it. It is a question of the intensity of the impulsion and the resisting power of the judgment, perhaps also of courage and cowardice; nothing else.

Furthermore, people who read or enjoy these works are themselves disgusting and immoral, and usually criminals:

Who would experience feelings of pleasure from the perusal of the writings of the Marquis de Sade, Andrea de Nercia or Liseux? Only one species of human beings—that of the degenerate with perverted instincts. Portrayals of crime and vice in art and literature have their public; that we well know. It is the public of the gaols. Besides dismally sentimental books, criminals read nothing so willingly as stories of lust and violence.

He proposes that there should be some sort of council to determine whether art is moral or not, and if the council says

of a man, ‘He is a criminal!’ and of a work, ‘It is a disgrace to our nation!’ work and man would be annihilated. No respectable bookseller would keep the condemned book; no respectable paper would mention it, or give the author access to its columns; no respectable family would permit the branded work to be in their house

"Annihilated" can only mean one thing, right? D:

One of the things that was extremely interesting about this book was reading about the contents of the supposed evil, bad, immoral books, and how upset Nordau gets about them.

For instance:

His figures of women and their destinies are the poetical expression of that sexual perversion of degenerates called by Krafft-Ebing ‘masochism.’ Masochism is a sub-species of ‘contrary sexual sensation.’ The man affected by this perversion feels himself, as regards woman, to be the weaker party; as the one standing in need of protection; as the slave who rolls on the ground, compelled to obey the behests of his mistress, and finding his happiness in obedience. It is the inversion of the healthy and natural relation between the sexes.

This is continuing the trend of surprisingly accurate descriptions of things, utterly ruined by the author being a hateful little asshole about them.

Another example I thought was funny:

Let us remember Count Muffat in Zola’s Nana (p. 491): ‘At other times he was a dog. She threw her scented handkerchief to the end of the room for him, and he had to run on all fours to pick it up with his teeth. “Fetch it, Cæsar!... Look out; I’ll give it to you if you’re lazy!... Very good, Cæsar! mind! nicely!... Sit up!” And as for him, he loved his abasement, revelled in the joy of being a brute. He wanted to sink still lower; he cried: “Hit harder.... Bow wow! I am mad; hit me then!”’ That is the liberty of one who is ‘emancipated’ in the sense of the degenerates! He may be a dog, if his crazed instinct commands him to be a dog!

I was very surprised to learn just how little kinks have changed in the past 130ish years.

The author goes on a bracingly vitriolic anti-pornography rant:

And still more determined must the resistance be to the filth-loving herd of swine, the professional pornographists.[...]The systematic incitation to lasciviousness causes the gravest injury to the bodily and mental health of individuals, and a society composed of individuals sexually over-stimulated, knowing no longer any self-control, any discipline, any shame, marches to its certain ruin, because it is too worn out and flaccid to perform great tasks. The pornographist poisons the springs whence flows the life of future generations.

I wonder what precisely he means by pornography. This was written in 1892, so he could be referring to photographs, but every time he gives specific examples of immoral art in this section, they are written works, so it seems more likely that he's referring to books.

These are the exact qualities that conservatives and quite a few "left-leaning" folks attribute to internet pornography, often with the assumption that this degenerating influence upon human sexuality is new.

But apparently, for people of similar political ideology back in 1892, the "pornography" they had seemed equally likely to destroy healthy human sexuality.

Smut has clearly been an ongoing moral panic for quite a while.

[headspace-hotel]

This book is not well written or well organized. I'm going through it again and trying to look deeper into what Nordau actually thinks about art.

The ebook is displaying page numbers today. It wasn't doing that yesterday. Therefore I can give page numbers. On Page 80 Nordau says this about paintings:

the pleasurable feelings which are produced by the contemplation of a picture are not aroused by its intellectual import, but by it as a sensuous phenomenon.

I don't think that is true, Max.

The art of painting awakens through its media of colour and drawing (i.e., the exact grasp and reproduction of differences in the intensity of light), firstly, a purely sensuously agreeable impression of beautiful single colours and happily combined harmonies of colour; secondly, it produces an illusion of reality and, together with this, the higher, more intellectual pleasures arising from a recognition of the phenomena depicted, and from a comprehension of the artist’s intention; thirdly, it shows these phenomena as seen with the eye of the artist, and brings out details or collective traits, which until then the inartistic beholder had not been by himself able to perceive.

What is he arguing against here? These things: the idea that visual art can contain symbolism, tell a story, or evoke emotion through anything other than the viewer's pre-existing feelings toward a subject and how well the painter captured the subject.

Page 83:

Now, the subject-matter of painting is the visible, not the conjectural; the real, not the possible or probable; the concrete, not the abstract.

I keep doubting myself on whether I understand what Nordau is saying, because he contradicts himself a lot. He condemns the "degenerates" for being too emotional about art, but then says the purpose of art is to evoke emotion, not intellectual thought.

But then he gives the example of this painting, Holman Hunt's The Shadow of Death:

and gives this HILARIOUS rant about how stupid it is (Page 85-86)

Holman Hunt imagines Christ in prayer. Through the association of ideas there awakes in him simultaneously the mental image of Christ’s subsequent death on the cross. He wants, by the instrumentality of painting, to make the association of these ideas visible. And hence he lets the living Christ throw a shadow which assumes the form of a cross, thus foretelling the fate of the Saviour, as if some mysterious, incomprehensible power had so posed his body with respect to the rays of the sun that a wondrous annunciation of his destiny must needs write itself on the floor. The invention is completely absurd. It would have been childish trifling if Christ had drawn his sublime death of sacrifice, whether in jest or in vanity, in anticipation, by his shadow on the ground. Neither would the shadow-picture have had any object, for no contemporary of Christ’s would have understood the significance of the shadowed cross before he had suffered death by crucifixion. In Holman Hunt’s consciousness, however, emotion simultaneously awakened the form of the praying Christ and of the cross, and he unites both presentations anyhow, without regard to their reasonable connection. If an Old Master had had to paint the same idea, namely, the praying Christ filled with the presentiment of his impending death, he would have shown us in the picture a realistic Christ in prayer, and in a corner an equally realistic crucifixion; but he would never have sought to blend both these different scenes into a single one by a shadowy connection. This is the difference between the religious painting of the strong healthy believer and of the emotional degenerate mind.

Our buddy Max is furious over how unrealistic it is that Jesus's shadow would evoke the shape of a cross. First of all, it's not like the sun would magically position itself to make sure Jesus's shadow looked like a cross, and if it did, nobody would notice that in REAL LIFE, because Jesus hadn't died yet! That's why this painting is STUPID!!!11!!!!!

...

Nordau goes on to discuss the parallel phenomenon in poetry.

All poetry no doubt has this peculiarity, that it makes use of words intended not only to arouse the definite ideas which they connote, but also to awaken emotions that shall vibrate in consciousness. But the procedure of a healthy-minded poet is altogether different from that of a weak-minded mystic. The suggestive word employed by the former has in itself an intelligible meaning, but besides this it is adapted to excite emotions in every healthy-minded man; and finally the emotions excited have all of them reference to the subject of the poem.

He gives an example of this. It's presented in German, and I ran it through Google Translate, so it's not a very good representation of what the poem is supposed to be.

'Green shoots, violet scent, Lark's trill, blackbird's song, Sunlit rain, gentle breeze: When I sing such words, Do I still need grander things To praise you, spring day?'

This is the first specific example I've been able to find of a piece of art that Max thinks is good. Here's what he says about it:

Each word of the first three lines contains a positive idea. Each of them awakens glad feelings in a man of natural sentiment. These feelings, taken together, produce the mood with which the awakening of spring fills the soul, to induce which was precisely the intention of the poet.

He contrasts it with a line from one of the poems he hates, Dante Gabriel Rosetti's The Blessed Damozel. The poem discusses a girl who has died and gone to Heaven, and from her perspective, only a day has passed, but for her lover left on Earth, it feels like "ten years of years."

To the maiden in bliss it appears that she has been a singer in God’s choir for only one day; to him who is left behind this one day has been actually a matter of ten years. ‘To one it is ten years of years.’ This computation is thoroughly mystical. It means, that is, absolutely nothing. Perhaps Rossetti imagined that there may exist a higher unity to which the single year may stand as one day does to a year; that therefore 365 years would constitute a sort of higher order of year. The words ‘year of years’ therefore signified 365 years. But as Rossetti portrays this thought vaguely and imperfectly, he is far from expressing it as intelligibly as this.

Oh my god, Max. Max. Max. It's figurative language, Max. It's not supposed to literally represent the amount of time, Max. How can you be writing about poetry when you think that all figurative language is bad.

This is a much weirder viewpoint than I thought. Max thinks that human brains are not supposed to engage in abstract thought.

[random-brushstrokes]

Charles Vetter - Munich, The Promenadeplatz at night in winter (1905)

[fleysh]

[bluesardine]

Some great additions from the comments.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

How to Make a Complete Set of Miao Silver Headdress by 山白

[chic-a-gigot]

Le Petit écho de la mode, no. 27, vol. 10, 8 juillet 1888, Paris. 1. 1. Riche costume en batiste unie et rayée. 2. Élégante toilette voile mousse et surah mousse tendre. Modèles du Comptoir Parisien, 84, rue du Bac. Ville de Paris / Bibliothèque Forney

Riche costume en batiste unie et rayée. — Jupe unie rayée. Draperie plissée en cascade gracieusement relevée à gauche, formant pouf droit derrière, large ceinture surah, croisée devant, terminée en pans et coque à droite. Corsage court ouvert sur un plastron rayé, garni d’une double rangée boutons fantaisie. Manche courte bouffante. Prix: 78 francs.

Elégante toilette voile mousse et surah mousse tendre. — Jupe surah coulissée à mi-hauteur. Draperie ronde bien relevée à droite, formant pouf droit légèrement soutenu derrière. Corsage-veste ouvert sur un bouffant (gilet) froncé un peu coude boutonnée au bas. Prix: 110 francs.

—

Rich suit in plain and striped cambric. — Plain striped skirt. Cascading pleated drapery gracefully raised on the left, forming a right pouf behind, wide surah belt, crossed in front, finished in sides and shell on the right. Short bodice open on a striped plastron, trimmed with a double row of fancy buttons. Short puff sleeve. Price: 78 francs.

Elegant foam voile toilet and soft foam surah. — Mid-length surah skirt. Round drapery well raised on the right, forming a straight pouf slightly supported behind. Bodice-jacket open on a bouffant (vest) gathered a little, elbow buttoned at the bottom. Price: 110 francs.

[pmamtraveller]

George F. Kerr (1870-1953), “Harper’s Bazaar”, 1902

[edithsweetithh]

some of my favorite tidbits from american history in honor of the 250th!!

clara barton, a battlefield nurse for the union army and eventual founder of the american red cross, was dubbed the "angel of the battlefield" for her vital and timely assistance to soldiers and doctors alike. during the 1862 battle of antietam, barton discovered that one of the soldiers she was tending to happened to be a young woman -- mary galloway, who had disguised herself as a man, joined the war effort following her lover lieutenant harry barnard, and would later name her daughter clara after barton eventually reunited the couple

stetson kennedy helped take down the kkk by exposing their code words and secret rituals on a 1947 superman radio show

in 1777, sixteen-year-old sybil ludington rode forty miles to warn the local militia of an upcoming british attack. traveling twice the length of paul revere's journey, she roused around 400 men by banging on their doors with a large stick, and it's even said that she gained recognition from george washington himself

robert smalls, an enslaved man in south carolina, emancipated himself as well as fifteen others in 1861 by disguising himself as a confederate ship captain and sailing the css planter into the union territory (simultaneously providing another warship to the union). not only that, but in 1864, smalls purchased the former mansion of henry mckee -- the man who had once enslaved him

during the 1969 chicago seven conspiracy trial, abbie hoffman reportedly once came in wearing judicial robes with a chicago police uniform underneath, called judge julius hoffman "julie" several times, and raised his middle finger when being sworn in as a witness

after american troops arrived in france In 1917, they made a (mostly symbolic) march through paris, stopping at the grave of the marquis de lafayette to honor his immense contributions during the american revolutionary war. with the tomb at his feet, colonel c. e. stanton declared, "lafayette, we are here!" (over a century too late after the us decided not to aid the french during the revolution, but a cool statement nonetheless)

in 1930s america, a pro-nazi organization called the german american bund was active across america. however, another group was also gaining traction at around the same time: the minutemen. while those in new york were mostly made up of jewish mobsters and those in new jersey mainly consisted of jewish boxers, both had a common goal of breaking up bund meetings by beating the shit out of their members

between 1913 and 1915, there were at least seven instances of people mailing their children through the postal system, since it was cheaper to buy a stamp for your child and have them transported by a trusted mail carrier than purchasing a train ticket for them

the first minnesota volunteer infantry regiment captured a confederate flag from the twenty-eighth virginia infantry regiment in the 1863 battle of gettysburg, and the minnesota historical society still has it today, despite virginia requesting for its return in 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2013. governor jesse ventura famously responded to the 2000 request with "why? i mean, we won"

although many members of various native american nations served as code talkers during the world wars, the most famous of which are probably the navajo code talkers. between 1942 and 1945, over four hundred navajo worked as code talkers for the marines, providing a system that even the most skilled code breakers couldn't crack -- largely due to the fact that navajo has no written alphabet and highly complex tonal qualities. for decades the contributions of these men went unrecognized, but in 1992 they were finally honored at the pentagon for their vital involvement in the allied war effort

founding fathers thomas jefferson and john adams both died on july forth, 1826, with adams allegedly declaring "jefferson still survives" on his deathbed, unaware that his former colleague was already dead

after woodrow wilson had a stroke in 1912, his wife edith wilson took over many of his presidential duties, making her the first female president in practice. she and physician cary grayson decided to keep her husband's condition hidden from the public, even staging several pictures of him to make it seem like he was hard at work in the white house

the youth international party (yippies) held a rally for their presidential nominee, a hundred and forty-five pound pig named pigasus, outside the democratic national convention in 1968. his acceptance speech was being read by jerry rubin when he and six other yippies were arrested along with pigasus and a sow apparently called "mrs pigasus"

after hitler banned bold makeup from public functions in 1933 because he deemed it improper for a good german woman, wearing red lipstick became a symbol of solidarity against fascism. allied militaries were quick to implement it as a part of their female uniforms and issue propaganda encouraging women to wear it. in 1941 elizabeth arden created a shade of lipstick called victory red for civilian women, and in 1942 the us women's marines corp adopted her shade montezuma red as a standard part of the uniform

harriet tubman was not only the most famous conductor of the underground railroad, but also a nurse, soldier, and spy for the union during the civil war. the first woman in american history to lead an armed military raid, in 1863 she commanded the combahee river raid, which included the liberation of over seven hundred and fifty enslaved people

in 1782, deborah sampson disguised herself a man, adopted the alias robert shurtleff, and joined the fourth masschusettes regiment. she managed to protect her true identity for over two years -- however, after she lost consciousness due to illness, her sex was discovered and was given an honorable discharge. after her death, her husband petitioned congress for pension as the spouse of a soldier, and surprisingly he was awarded the money

adolf hitler had a nephew who fought for the united states navy during world war ii. born william patrick hitler, in 1933, he declined his uncle's request to denounce his british citizenship, earning himself the nickname "my loathsome nephew." after his 1939 lecture tour of the united states where he warned americans about the nazi threat, he enlisted in the us military because he wasn't allowed in the british forces. he eventually became a us citizen in 1946 and legally changed his name to william patrick stuart-houston

in 1970, richard nixon signed the poison prevention packaging act, which required all prescription and over-the-counter drugs to have childproof packaging. stephen bull, a former presidential aide, recalled that he was once asked by the president to open his allergy medicine, and the childproof cap had numerous teeth marks on it from nixon's apparent attempts to gnaw it open

the elephant became the mascot of the republican party to demonstrate union war strength (as "seeing the elephant" was slang for experiencing combat). the donkey became the democratic mascot because people frequently called andrew jackson a jackass

alice roosevelt, daughter of president theodore roosevelt, was infamous for various antics she pulled, which include but are not limited to: smoking on the roof of the white house after her father told her to stop smoking inside of it, sneaking whiskey into parties, jumping into a pool fully clothed and convincing a congressman to join her, carring her pet snake named emily spinach in her purse, burying a voodoo doll of first lady nellie taft in the white house lawn and consequently getting herself banned from the taft white house, cutting her wedding cake with a sword she borrowed from a military aide, racing cars through the streets of washington, and putting a tack on the chair of a congressman

[cynicaloptimism2]

The Robert Smalls story is fucking amazing.

Episode 303: Robert Smalls (2.7.2025)

On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls took command of a Confederate ship and liberated himself and his family from slavery. His great-great-grandso

[thefaiao]

Dissolution Commission for anonymous

[whirligig-girl]

I had noticed these strange little occurrences all my life. A bird would fly past my window and it'd sorta look like it was half there, half not. I'd glance up at a clock and for a moment, the second hand would be in two places at once. Never really thought much about it. I thought it was just normal. Someone told me once about the clock hand illusion where you flick your eyes and it looks like time stops for a half second or so, I figured it was something weird like that.

But one day, I think it was August 2021, I flipped a coin. Thinking back, I think it might have been the first time in my life I'd ever flipped a coin. But we were deciding where to eat, me and my friends.

And then it happened. The coin landed on the table, heads... and also on the floor, tails. I tracked the coin with my eyes, but suddenly realized I was looking at two things at the same time. It was like crossing your eyes, and seeing things kinda overlaid on top of eachother, kinda mixing and fading in and out, but with four eyes instead of two.

It was such a weird experience. At first I just stood there kinda motionless, trying to figure out what was going on. Then my friend bent down and picked up the coin off the floor, and said "Hah! Tails! Pizza!" and also she just stood there and said "Damnit. Heads. Guess we're gonna get burgers after all."

And I looked down at her and up at her at the same time.

That's really when the desynch started. I reached for the coin on the table and held a fuzzy, half-there, transparent coin in my hand.

I began to feel kinda sick. We got in the car and things got more and more confusing. Thank goodness I wasn't driving that day. My friends were having two increasingly different conversations and I just sat there kinda dissociating. By the time we got to the two different restaurants I was nauseated and I had a bad headache. I stayed in the car in the parking lot at the pizza place for a few minutes until the other car going to the burger place parked. One of my friends was worried and stayed with me, so that was nice. But when I tried getting out of the car, everything went wrong.

One of my bodies walked right into another car and fell down on the ground, while the other stopped and froze in place. The completely different sense of proprioception completely broke me.

I was basically bedridden for a week. Slowly I relearned how to move, and walk, and talk. I had two bodies, in two timelines, connected by a single consciousness. My brain(s?) had to learn how to control two bodies at the same time.

It's like, pretty weird, but I'm used to it these days. My two sets of eyes no longer overlay on top of one another, they're kinda separate. It's hard to describe. I think my brain got better at multitasking too, I can walk in one timeline and draw in the other, for example.

Things kept getting more and more different, as much as I tried to enforce keeping things the same. Finally I started seeing my therapist again.

I had to convince her that what I was experiencing was real. So I asked her to think of her favorite food and her favorite color. Then in the "Burger" timeline I asked her to tell me her favorite food, and in the "Pizza" timelines I asked her to tell me her favorite color. And I told her her favorite color in the burger timeline and her favorite food in the pizza timeline (Spaghetti and Red, btw.)

She quizzed me on a few other things and sometimes her answers differed between the two timelines which was pretty frustrating, and I don't think she really believed me at first, but she was nice enough to play along at least. And like, not have me committed.

I ended up scheduling my therapy so that I have meetings on pizza tuesday and burger friday, so they're kinda spaced out more evenly. It also just makes the meetings a little less confusing. Ironically doing the same thing in both timelines is actually more distracting than doing different things.

In late 2022 I transitioned. I decided to come out in the burger timeline and stay in the closet in the pizza timeline, so if everything fell apart I'd still have one normal timeline. And like, my parents did not support me. Most of my friends did, but some of them drifted away. And I found that just made me resentful of my parents and those friends in the pizza timeline. And the dysphoria of being a guy in the pizza timeline while living as a woman in the burger timeline was killing me. So when I got on HRT in early 2023 I decided I couldn't take it anymore, I had to transition in both timelines. So I did. Ironically things went a little smoother in the pizza timeline, probably because I was already more confident about presenting female.

I ended up making some transfem friends in the burger timeline, and I sought them out in the pizza timeline too.

It's kind of a mixed bag, this phenomenon. You know like, pain is a lot worse. One week I had a bad tummy ache in the pizza timeline and a bad toothache in the burger timeline. Or like, if I have back pain in one timeline, not having back pain in the other timeline doesn't relieve the feeling at all.

It's such a cool thing, like. When I first started out I had all these conflicting signals in my limbs and body and stuff. But now it's just like. Yeah I have a pizza arm and a burger arm, just like I have a left arm and a right arm. They're the same, but different.

When I make a drawing in one timeline, I don't have access to it in the other timeline, which is really annoying because I keep wanting to show people art I made in the other timeline. One day I'll figure out some kind of interdimensional data transfer protocol. I mean I guess I could like, convert the file into hexadecimal text, and then manually type it out and hope I don't make any mistakes. I'd have to compress the hell out of the file though. Maybe I'll try that one of these days when I don't have anything to do in either timeline.

But I get to spend more time with my friends, because I can schedule hanging out on different days of the same week. Does get kinda confusing when I confuse things that happened in one timeline for another.

Because like, ever since that coin flip, the timelines have been steadily moving further apart. You'd be surprised how little the weather has changed. Like, sometimes there's a little rain shower in one timeline a few minutes earlier than in the other, but all the big storms and hurricanes and stuff are basically the same. I guess it's harder to influence these continent-scale systems than the butterfly effect predicts.

I get to see almost twice as much meteors during meteor showers because I can look in two directions at once. Meteors hit the atmosphere in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.

But it does affect a lot of other little things. Even when you don't realize it, you affect the lives of everyone you come into contact with in little ways, and that spreads. I know people with different jobs in each timeline, people who have different relationships. Even people I don't know that well.

I wasn't quick enough in the pizza timeline to keep my friend from. Well. To save my friend's life. But I rushed over to her house in the burger timeline and talked her down. It's so weird, grieving a person you still talk to every week. Because it ended up being this kind of abstract pain. Everyone else is missing her and you're standing there like. Yeah. I have plans to see a movie with her on burger tuesday. I went to her funeral just to make sure that I saw the dead body so I could really internalize that she was gone. And I still didn't cry. It made me feel like a terrible person.

My friends never really take me all that seriously when I talk about being split like this. They kinda play along but I can tell they think it's a joke. It's whatever. But my friend's girlfriend came into my DMs one night sobbing and cry-typing and begging me to let her talk to her gf one last time. I wasn't sure it was a good idea. But I relented, and made plans to have a sort of interdimensional seance.

I could tell my friend--we'll call her Elsie, and we'll call her girlfriend Robin. I could tell Elsie was pretty awkward about it. I think she felt guilty on behalf of her other, dead self. Robin kept saying stuff like "how could you kill yourself, how could you do this to me," and I would have to say that, and Elsie was just like "I'm sorry." And it was really hard to get Robin to understand that we weren't talking to Elsie's dead spirit, we were talking to her in another timeline. I told her she didn't have to apologize, and I told Robin that guilt tripping the dead was kind of rude.

After that things went a little more smoothly, Robin asked about how Elsie's life had gone, how their relationship had progressed you know like if they were still together, things like that. Elsie said some stuff that I wouldn't have known, and Robin was like. Wow you really are talking to Elsie aren't you?

And I was just like :| yep.

Ever since then my friends keep trying to get my help with stuff. Like they'll ask me what their other self is doing, like, ok, for instance, my friend, we'll call her Jane, she wanted to ask out her crush, and she was like ok. Can you ask the burger version of my crush if she likes me back. Which kinda throws the burger version of her under the bus doesn't it!

And another of my friends wanted to know if she'd regret quitting her job, so she told me to ask the other her to quit her job, and then if it went well she'd do the same. I did ask, and she said no, obviously.

The kinda scary thing is, every once in a while I'll see some of those artifacts that I used to see, like, little tiny desynchs within each timeline. I only recently got used to being in two timelines at the same time, I don't think I can handle being in three or four. My brain's already better at handling the desynch, like, one time I managed to move my finger in two directions at once all in the pizza timeline. But I'm really scared of the desynch multiplying over time. Maybe it's inevitable, but my main strategy is just to not flip any coins for the rest of my life.

[charnel-grounds]

Gothic 19th-century daguerreotype metal plate photograph of a young lady dubbed “Mona Lisa of the Deep”.

This portrait was found in the wreck of the ship that sank 1857.

source

[starberry-cupcake]

here's a photo of the daguerreotype in the shipwreck remains themselves, which I think is wonderful to see

[nessa007]

INDE NAVARRETTE "The fake answer that I love to give [for my childhood crush] is Channing Tatum in Step Up. But the real answer is Optimus Prime in Transformers. Specifically, obviously, the first one. There's a monologue that he has at the end of the movie that leads right into [a Linkin Park song]. I think that was my awakening."

[tartrazeen]

Correct reaction.

Wtf. 🤨