WELCOME THRILLHO

Milk, 30 something, They/them

[kingcatnine]

[tiktoks-for-dead-pope]

[punishedsaints]

Macrocilix maia.

[pangur-and-grim]

accidentally stayed up until 2. they got so tired waiting for me to go to sleep

[pangur-and-grim]

[cyclesofmystery]

Clare Victor Dwiggins, 1908

I was amused by this rather “freaky” bit of Edwardiana, especially since I always got the feeling that Charles Dana Gibson, when drawing the Gibson Girl, was at least partially fantasizing about being stepped on or something.

[ingridverse]

[westiec]

me: man I sure hope somebody has shown op Charles Dana Gibson's "The weaker sex" where the four Gibson girls are studying the tiny little man like a bug

tumblr user ingridverse: way ahead of you

[roguebombshell]

I also notice she's going to poke him with a hat pin. Hat pins were used by women as improvised weaponry against offensive men.

Gibson is casting him as a pleading, worthless little man who is going to be punished. I see you, Charles.

[ingridverse]

You're right about hatpins in general, but I think in this instance it's a reference to butterfly/insect collecting in which specimens are pinned to a display board. He's not going to be punished; he's going to be collected.

[hardwrench]

We make fun of steampunk and mock it but imagine if there really were marvelous devices

[libertineangel]

Zoot suits look kinda stupid but I gotta respect the cultural context & symbolism of the things

"Fuck the military and fuck the war, look at all this good uniform-worthy fabric I'm wasting on a fuckoff giant suit" is a very solid basis for a subculture

[knxfesck]

I actually really love to talk about zoot suits and their associated subcultures. The amount that the silhouettes of the zoot suit have shaped american fashion and trends of oversized clothes is so understated. And, yk, I'm biased as hell, but it is kinda crazy how influential zoot suit culture was

I always love the og zoot suits made by black americans in Harlem, I really like looking at the changes from these clothes from the 30s to some of the more exaggerated renditions from the 40s. It's also so interesting to look at how fast the subculture spread, and especially in the american west integrated with mexican diaspora and pachuco culture to the point that that's what a lot of usamericans associate them with.

⬆️ long wallet chains and pork pie hats were classic accessories for mexican diaspora zoot suiters. Zoot suits/their components were also really popular with women and were a way to symbolize independence and a choice to move away from strict gender roles on top of the existing countercultural message ⬇️

Anyways it's kind of impossible to talk about zoot suits without mentioning the racism and violence that followed them. On top of a zoot suit making someone a target for individual racial violence, the national reaction of white america to zoot suit culture was part of the beginning of clothing and presentation being read explicitly as signals by police and justice systems, and the broad association of youth of color with gang violence through this specific excuse. Gang culture and how it's percieved in the western US and especially California is very influenced by this era. The most famous events from the zoot suit era are the collective zoot suit riots and the media characterization of all mexican american, filipino american, and black american youth as violent anti-american baby gangsters. Which, even if that was broadly true I mean. I'll take the opportunity to be flippant hell yeah??

As a side note, while making more new zoot suits during war rationing was pretty sick, most people weren't buying from the black market tailor shops and just wore what they already owned because the style had been popular for years already. People bought clothes less often to begin with back then. I think that misconception comes from the reasoning white americans gave to go beat up people of color with baseball bats in the street; i.e. it was racial and xenophobic violence to begin with and the nature of the suits themselves has been mushed around a lot to serve different narratives.

More zoot suits! ⬇️

They can definitely look kinda goofy- mostly the exaggerated cuts and badly tailored modern recreations- but like you said you gotta respect them.

[blackfilmmakers]

"The ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit" - Cab Calloway

[paper-mario-wiki]

"make a duck"

'I'm not gonna make a-... ...'

*makes a duck and becomes obsessed with it*

[so-much-for-subtlety]

[mgmt2]

happens

[whysosirris]

[beardedmrbean]

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

I am against Leo XIV because I think a USAmerican Pope makes the chances of an antipope in my lifetime less likely

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

I am big enough to admit that I was completely wrong about this. Just utterly off base

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

Okay to clarify, the US hasn’t actually installed an antipope. I just can admit that I was wrong about how Leo winning the papacy affected the probability of an antipope arising before/without an actual antipope

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

#I appreciate that op is also hoping for a us antipope

Additional clarification, while I very much want a proper antipope to emerge the US is low on the list of places I’d like them to be from but the US seems a likely place for an antipope to arise and I’ll take what I can get

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

Final (hopefully) clarification, you guys really don't have to hand it to the Catholic Church.

[thatsbelievable]

[viktor-sbor]

A 50-kilogram anvil floats perfectly on the surface of mercury, because the density of the steel from which it is made is almost half the density of mercury.

[e-102]

damn that shit is light lmfao

[telltaletypist]

[vienna1954]

Fun fact! Many lighthouses with especially large fresnel lenses would have huge fucking tubs of liquid mercury in the lantern room because it’s a super easy way to make these giant lenses rotate quickly!

Shockingly, however, spending most of your time in close proximity to 500 pounds of liquid mercury is Not Great For One’s Health and tons of lighthouse keepers started to go crazy from the whole. Mercury poisoning thing. Hence why there are a lot of “haunted” lighthouses or wickies that lose it and maybe do a bit of manslaughter.

Anyway, people saw a bunch of lighthouse keepers go crazy and get sick and got empirical evidence that it was in fact related to the 500 pound mercury bath they have to visit every day and then they decided nah it’s fine actually. So we’ve kept the liquid mercury thing and I think that’s beautiful

[ben-the-hyena]

I love how it is so dense it does not "wet" the anvil, the drops all run and leave with nothing behind them unlike water, oil, sauce... it's super satisfying it's like in cartoons

[macleod]

In a letter written on April 19, 1825, Augustin Fresnel proposed the use of mercury to reduce the friction in revolving lenses. His statement follows: “I propose to float our rotating devices, of the first order, in a bath of mercury, instead of placing them on rollers. This project won't present many difficulties; nevertheless, as I have not put it into execution, I won't require you to adopt it for your first lighthouse.”

Fresnel’s plan for mercury flotation was not put into practice until 1890 when Monsieur Leon Bourdelles, Chief Engineer of the French Lighthouse Service, designed and built a workable mercury flotation system. The mercury bath allowed the lens to operate in an almost frictionless environment and, additionally, allowed the speed of rotation to be dramatically increased.

Lens Rotation by Thomas Tag | United States Lighthouse Society

[sashaforthewin]

Ah to be a sailor in 1890 who has to turn to his fellow men and ask "is it just me or are the lighthouses flashing faster?"

[asteroidtroglodyte]

They had been slowly getting faster for decades.

It mattered for optics reasons.

Under less-than-ideal conditions, you can only see the beam when it’s pointed more or less directly at you. In-between beams you would not be able to see anything. One solution to this was to create multiple beams, and the lenses Mr Fresnel designed usually created 8 beams. But, even still, duration between flashes could be as long as one minute in the old mechanical roller systems.

The nearly frictionless operation of the Mercury suspension system allowed the lenses (large pieces of precisely ground glass weighing several hundred pounds in some cases) to rotate fast enough that they could be redesigned to create fewer (usually 3) beams. Fewer beams from a similar light source will be proportionally brighter, and the gains in speed were sufficient that duration between flashes could still be reduced to as little as 10 seconds.

This was a big upgrade. It didn’t just make the lighthouse signal faster, it allowed them to completely overhaul the lens and derive more visibility from a light source.

What’s a little Madness, in the face of Progress?

[myth-myth-yeth]

mods are asleep, post the fresnel lens

[relevant-wikipedia-articles]

History of lighthouses - Wikipedia

[trochaic-mutant-ninja-tetrameter]

🎶Maybe it was worth it! Fast rotation!🎵

[chibisquirt]

I'm normally a pretty big opponent of furthering madness in the face of "progress," but this particular progress did save hundreds of lives (if not more). Like, that is what was progressing, was the safety of people who sailed. So in this particular case, maybe we don't need to be quite so dismissive.

[vangoggles]

OOOhhhhhh they ARE wedgwood and they’re gorgeous… i couldn’t tell they were pearlware from the other picture…

ohhh mannnn

[pseudomantis]

Im soooo good at sorting things give me a pile of anything I'll sort it

[followmenot]