Silly stuff

hi I'm Sara. I draw sometimes and do silly stuff

[unbfacts]

Long before the introduction of color film, a Russian chemist and photographer named Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky used an innovative technique. He took three individual black and white photos, each through a colored filter (red, green, and blue), to create fully colored, high-quality pictures. The photo of this woman, taken by him, is around 107 years old!

[redladydeath]

No wait I looked this guy up and this shit’s amazing

It’s so incredibly humanizing to see people from the very distant past in such authentic color

And like. look at these landscape shots!! They’re so vivid!! Even aside from the historical value, these are just legitimately beautiful photographs

[thefloatingstone]

Still watching this youtube channel about what I can only describe as "Dark Classical art" and this one absolutely floored me because I was unaware of it and I want to share it because it changes my perspective on this artist completely.

You might be aware of Louis Wain. If not by name then by his art. He's the artist behind that series of cat drawings that slowly became more and more abstract and bizarre.

This series of paintings of cats are often labelled as a visual representation of Wain's deteriorating mental illness and schizophrenia. Even more so often labelled as "a tragic display of a painter's failing battle with schizophrenia."

The paintings look like this and were painted around the very early 1900s.

Ok got all that?

So here's the thing.

Although Wain did suffer from a mental illness that was strong enough for him to be institutionalized, his mental illness was never diagnosed with clear certainty. Although "Schizophrenia" is so heavily applied to him based purely on how his series of paintings LOOK, despite actual specialists widely disputing this. On top of this, although he did paint the kaleidoscope cat portraits during this time, it was not the only things he painted, and he was quite capable of painting "normal" pictures of cats.

The Kaleidoscope Cat portraits are more images of him experimenting with colour and shapes, something the Smithsonian themselves state on their website.

Wain had actually made his entire living painting whimsical images of cats, often for product adverts, before he was incarcerated and was actually a very beloved artist at the time. When his friends learned of his incarceration, they started a collection of donation money to help transfer Wain to the Bethlam Royal Hospital instead, one of the best mental health facilities of the time. Even the Prime Minster of the time donated, and they raised a large amount of money across England to help him.

4 years later, Wain drew this as his final image which he released publicly

I knew all about "the Schizophrenic cat Guy" but he had always been presented to me as some tragic case of an artist going mad and his skills and work unraveling as he went insane.

Which is why I wanted to share this information which was new to me. And because I think it's important.

[donuts-multifandom-hellhole]

Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with "In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights."

This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find

Some people get existential dread from this

Me? I think it's fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating

[sleepymccoy]

@makaeru peer review cos this made me check when the Sumerians happened and I forget how recent history is for every other continent. 7000 - 8000 years ago just isn't that long when you're in Australia, and the amount of detailed history we have access to here is wonderful and should be recognised more internationally

Source (non Aboriginal)

And a quote I picked out from a longer interview with an Aboriginal local elder about the area where he touched on the history

Source (the rest of the interview is really interesting and all transcribed, have a look if you're curious)

[chaotic-archaeologist]

This is part of my Ancient Civilizations class that I teach, which does a whole week about Australia and the Torres Strait Islands because I was sick of never seeing them represented in USAmerican history contexts. With the help of @micewithknives and @acearchaeologist I've learned so many incredible things about Australia's past and it's been incredibly rewarding to share them with students.

[aggressivelybicaptainamerica]

My favorite fact about Aboriginal oral history is the fact that we pretty recently discovered that the Aboriginal myth of the 7 Sisters, an origin story for the Pleiades star cluster, accurately reflects a point TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO when two stars in the constellation got close enough together to no longer be distinguishable by the naked eye.

The story? 6 sisters running from something that took their 7th sister.

[jinkohhh]

as a gilgar gunditj woman, i was not expecting to see my culture on my dash.

thank you for spreading our words and treating our culture with respect.

[likeniobe]

A man's cap with turned up cuff, of off-white linen embroidered in a pattern of rainbows arching over clouds with rain falling, with snails and caterpillars interspersed. In blue, green, yellow, red and pink silks and silver metallic yarns.

english, late 16th century, at the cooper hewitt

[siena-sevenwits]

@lurking-latinist, don’t hide this in the tags!

[2022dirt]

Snow shadows can happen when objects block sunlight, keeping certain areas cooler while the rest begins to melt. It leaves behind a clear outline where the snow lingers longer.

[amorphousbl0b]

The tribes of Tumblr appeared to worship Apollo as their primary patron deity, most often under the epithet Apollo Spairahemon ("Apollo the Ball-Thrower") as a god of prophecy and sport. His name was typically invoked to celebrate a user blessed with uncommon prescience. Moments of prophecy were considered highly sacred and were often recorded, and such texts are sometimes accompanied by an artistic depiction of the god — either his traditional masculine image or, unusually, in the form of a young woman, which appears to have been an earlier style before a conservative shift toward more conventional iconography — preparing to cast a round rubber ball that our scholars believe was used in the sport known as "dodge ball". Much as other cults regarded his arrows as bringers of disease and health, this community believed that being struck by this ball would bestow prophetic visions.

Some icons are reproduced below:

An earlier depiction (c. 2020) of Apollo as a girl clad in a simple tunic and playing with other children. Figures are smiling and the image is brightly colored, indicating a celebratory outlook toward knowledge of the future.

A later piece (c. 2022) that resembles the traditional appearance of Apollo. References to childhood and play are omitted, and the god carries a more frightening aspect; perhaps this icon represented grim omens rather than good tidings.

[meangirlnurse]

i have yet to see tumblr's mature content filter actually flag any mature content on my dash. it's basically always shit like this

[meangirlnurse]

i have to admit, it does make me contemplate the latent eroticism of art pieces that i would not have considered erotic without the label

[escuerzoresucitado]

[cruzfucker]

[dozydawn]

nimble, a border collie-papillon mix, wins the 12” class in the 2024 masters agility championship. the first time a mixed breed has won at westminster ever.

[ch40s0w1]

context explaining why the announcer is screaming, this is supposed to take a high level competitive agility dog 40 seconds

[sandersstudies]

This video makes me cry every time it’s on my dash and I can’t even iterate why.

Like the dog doesn’t even know it’s a competition and she’s made history. She(?) just is happy and knows she made her owner happy too.

[solely-ashes]

The face of a being with only a wind storm between their ears, moments before unleashing it unto the world

[lmaonade]

there is always some fucking laundry and dust and some other shit

[mwagneto]

losing my MIND

[dragelton]

[mwagneto]

[silver-tongues-blog]

[bob-artist]

Not only are the Comedy Wildlife Photo Award winners all excellent, the banner announcements are glorious when taken out of context.

[meganooooooooooooooo]

EVERY single one of these is memeable

[bob-artist]

YES!!

[prof-grace-aspen]

Every single one of these penguins has a totally different personality and more personality than any of the lions in the 2019 3D animated Lion King

[ina-gartens-weave]

why haven’t I seen anyone posting about that giant fucking baby penguin in Melbourne that’s bigger than some of the adults already

[ina-gartens-weave]

his name is Pesto <3

[ina-gartens-weave]

this bastard weighs 46 lbs at 9 months old. he’s 22 lbs heavier than his PARENTS

[aichu-dechu]

[somewhatstacey]

OMG I SAW THIS LAD IN PERSON AND LOST EVERY OUNCE OF SHIT I’VE EVER POSSESSED

Look at him!

Also he was separated with one of his parents when I saw him but obviously wanted to Be Where The People Penguins Are so they’d set him up with a little rock stool so he could gaze upon his brethren:

Which enabled me to capture the single funniest video I’ve ever taken of anything in my life:

All hail Pesto! The king of chonk!

[disneyflopera]

He's adventurous, cheeky, sings to the caretakers who clean his enclosure and has been seen CANOODLING with a penguin named Pudding.

[blignick]

[aunti-christ-ine]

😸 CATS + BOXES 📦

Happy Caturday!

[donesparce]

There are three breeds of cat:

Chonk

Goblin

Yeah that looks like a cat

[donesparce]

Subcategories of breeds:

Floof

Naked

Normal

[argentinelakeduck]

[formerprincewille]

This is my favorite post

[joy-and-whimsy-official]

Joy and whimsy detected! This post is joyful and whimsical!

(Submitted by @witless-winion1!)

[itmeansalot]

I have responsibilities

[s-lycopersicum]

All you need in life is a color picker willing to expose you to the unbounded madness we call color vision.

me, absolutely clueless: "I want a color just like this one, but in red" color picker: Fuck you think you are, a Mantis Shrimp? Don't talk to me again until you can afford a wide gamut monitor.

[rnadvillain]

what is even happening here 😨 wheres the circle with the triangle inside we all know and love..

[s-lycopersicum]

The circle and triangle are a lie we tell ourselves to cope with the ugly reality... Now this-- this is the real deal!

In seriousness, this is oklch.com, a color picker for the OKLCH color model.

There are whole several hour lectures one could take in color science and theory, but to keep it short: the set of colors we can see, the set of colors monitors can display, and the set of colors computers can model are three circles that only somewhat overlap.

In this case, if I wanted this color

but in red, I could just go of Photoshop and move over the hue slider, getting this as a result:

Which is.. acceptable, but not as "bright" and "vibrant" as the green I had. Looking at the graphs in the OKLCH color picker, we can figure out why:

It tells us that a red with the same luminosity and chroma as this green is out of gamut—that is, it cannot be displayed by this monitor.

In this case, you can use the edges of the graph to find the color that is closest to what you want. You can, for example, keep the chroma but sacrifice lightness,

keep the lightness but drop the chroma,

or a bit of both, which is what the common HSV triangles already do.

But I like to know when it happens, y'know?

[xkcd-for-that]

What if what *I* see as blue, *you* see as a slightly different blue because you're using Chrome instead of Firefox and despite a decade of messing with profiles we STILL can't get this right somehow.

Color Models