neretrix

Margot, she/her, quietly reblogging into my digital commonplace book

[witchstone]

Celestial Mapping and Celestial Proportions by Tallmadge Doyle

[witchstone]

this was posted in 2016

[valtsv]

fantasy really did cook with dragons as an allegory for weapons of mass destruction, more specifically as a symbolic manifestation of the insatiable greed that drives men to seek to claim ownership and control over such weapons

[valtsv]

like oh man i sure hope your dismissal and objectification of highly independent and intelligent beings as "savage beasts" and the fiercely possessive pride you take in their subjugation doesn't reflect your broader ideological values haha. can you even imagine.

[beggars-opera]

The tailors at Colonial Williamsburg made a suit for their cat

[vinceaddams]

The best part is that they were inspired by a diary entry from 1775, written by a 12 year old tailor’s apprentice who had been left unsupervised all day and decided to make a suit for a cat. Here’s a link to the blog post about it, but I’ll just paste the whole diary entry here:

“I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends…while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit. 

“Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day’s work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in.”

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

“I was hoping they’d beat me and forget about it but to my horror they stuck my work up on the fridge”

[zackbuildit]

Not just any fridge-

The public fridge

[strawberrypopstation]

falconnier glass bricks. "falconnier. architecture of light" exhibition. museum of architecture.

[diamondeyes-deluxe]

I work with kids and sometimes we have to do safety lessons with them about like, not telling strangers on the internet your home address or something. And sometimes the kids wont understand why, so you have to impart upon them that, well, some adults want to hurt children. And thats kind of difficult to do, because you have to beat around the bush, both because you dont want to scare them (while still making them understand how serious it is) and because you might lose your job if you explain it too straight forward.

Luckily, for some reason, the villain of one of the most popular franchises with children for the last 10 years happens to be a serial child murderer. So when a kid asks why they shouldnt trust strangers, instead of hand wringing and humhawing my answer out, I can just say "we dont always know when a strange adult has good intentions with children, or when they are William Afton."

[x-i-l-verify]

unironically this is the major reason why little red riding hood (and similar fairy tales) were written 'sometimes strange adults are heroic like the huntsman. other times they are the wolf. its not easy to tell the difference with humans. if you cut the monsters out of children's stories you cant protect them from the monsters in real life. if you cut the heroes out of children's stories then they wont know that they can defeat monsters in real life. if they become scared? good. better frightened and prepared than bold and naive. u just need to help them channel that fear constructively so they dont walk into the wolf's mouth

[pmamtraveller]

Hilma Af Klint, The Swan, 1915

[iphigeniacomplex]

“our age of bronze is collapsing” is this beautiful random burst of monty python dialogue amidst the drudgery of nolan’s vision and i think it should win the first-ever oscar for best solitary line

[iphigeniacomplex]

[wringing my hands as i look out my window directly overlooking wall street, watching the sun rise on october 29, 1929] aw fuck it’s the great depression

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

[unusual-suspects]

x

[findafight]

Beneath the Golden Willow by Ed Perkins

[furryprovocateur]

i started reading this book and kept tilting my head at the comparisons the author was using so i started a running list of them

[furryprovocateur]

this author's use of imagery is so questionable

[furryprovocateur]

i actually went "what the fuck" and had to stop for like 5 minutes after this one

[furryprovocateur]

[prudencepaccard]

hate most of these but I have to say that last one kind of slaps

[lipstickchainsaw]

I think even 'Janitor's ring of keys to their success' has some charm, to be honest.

[adorablegorilla]

These are all great actually yall just being haters

[zechery-deactivated20220114]

Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

No guys you don’t understand.

The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.

So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.

This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

That’s not sad, that’s awesome.

*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing

[shadows-ember]

This is humanity

[siawrites]

Happy Birthday, Curiousity.

[labelleizzy]

Happy birthday, Curiosity.

[the-cimmerians]

Happy birthday, Curiosity.

[icarus-suraki]

Happy birthday, Curiosity!

[lesnby23]

Happy birthday, Curiosity!💕

[emmathefanficgal]

Happy Birthday, Curiosity

[pmamtraveller]

these plaster bandages

[homunculus-argument]

I like that the only reason we can't domesticate hyenas is because they are simply too powerful. You could take one with you to a city on another continent, leave for work in the morning and then by lunch the beastie shows up at your job like "hi bud I think you accidentally forgot me at home :3 but it's ok I'm here now!" because once alone it chewed trough a brick wall, bent out a cast iron gate, and tracked the faintest scent on asphalt through a completely unfamiliar environment to find you.

Also caught and ate a few pigeons, two outdoor cats, and a small dog on the way. A quick snack.

[dabblingindissent]

[depsidase]

[depsidase]

[havingapoemwithyou]

The More Modest the Definition of Heaven, the Oftener We're There by Albert Goldbarth

[crplpunkklavier]

we bought a shirt at a thrift store that says "best mom in louisiana" for some reason (as a reminder we are in midwest germany) and now my spouse keeps walking around the house wearing it and saying shit like "WHO STANDS BEFORE THE GREATEST MOM OF LOUISIANA?"

[deathstars]

HELLO ! have you thought about Van Gogh’s First Steps today ?

[deathstars]

Here you go. This world is beautiful. Humans are beautiful. I love you