The Matunuck Lunatic Reblogs!

Likes to maintain the delusion of privacy.

[tar0]

(Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergere (Getty Center Exhibitions)から)

[nyantara]

[…] the conversation that many have assumed was transpiring between the barmaid and gentleman is revealed to be an optical trick—the man stands outside the painter’s field of vision, to the left, and looks away from the barmaid, rather than standing right in front of her. The barmaid’s frontality is also deceptive. Rather than standing parallel to the bar and looking straight ahead, she stands slightly askance, facing the offset viewpoint.

Most ironically, the reflected edge of the bar, which in an offset view would tilt more acutely to the right, is revealed to be a visual decoy, leading us to believe that the vanishing point lies directly behind the barmaid. Thus, the paintings most obvious perspectival clue turns out to be its most subversive perspectival violation.

From Getty Center article

[jabberding0]

it's just a little bit of wind

[maxknightley]

"it would be so good if it was good" will haunt you but "it's extremely good, except for the one or two parts which are so bad it's genuinely kind of insulting" will straight up drive you insane

[maxknightley]

one has you making posts like "okay but if the author UNDERSTOOD the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of the story they were telling, and leaned into it, it would actually be a really interesting exploration of..."

the other has you pacing your bedroom at one in the morning going "why. why would you ever in a million years do it like that. genuinely what possible thought process was involved. was the writer possessed by a fucking ghost or something."

[hotcrossedfangs]

[shounenchild]

my favorite part of this whole thing tbh

[growingsucculents]

Legs

[sweetchimera-art]

escape

[sacrificethemtothesquid]

[magicpiano]

People who haven't seen Madoka Magica might not know this, but both the characters Mami and Homura are magical girls who use guns as weapons. But while Mami's gun are magical, Homura's are literally just normal guns she stole from the government.

[open-sketchbook]

i really really love the magical muskets for a really specific reason, which is that blackpowder guns are way older than people think and should 100% be treated with similar mythological weight to swords and spears and stuff at this point, and they should have equal prominence in generic fantasy fiction stuff.

lemme put it this way; european longswords and european cannons are siblings. they emerged at basically the same time in the early 1300s, and when the longsword was at its peak use in the mid-1400s, the musket was beginning to proliferate.

likewise, the 'modern' style of katana only started being made in the century leading up to the introduction of muskets to Japan; in fact, the reason the katana became The Samurai Sword was because it was a small practical blade you could wear while you carried a gun.

if you can picture your setting having a sword you can use with two hands, then you should have hand cannons. if your knights have full plate, then there should be matchlocks. if you have a magical girl with a sabre, then you should have magical girls with flintlocks.

[gloamglozerglam-deactivated2022]

only the true king could remove the sword from the stone…. no one else could…… they didn’t have…. arthurization

[crowboy-bebop]

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

source: hellgate osprey cam

[curlicuecal]

[aetherograph]

More context:

the first osprey is the father, the one that comes later is the mother.

ospreys are not eagles, they're ospreys

ospreys only eat fish, that's why they don't register this starling as possible food

the starling got home safely

the starling was not trying to eat the eggs, it was mostly curious and you can see it trying to hop under the osprey every time the osprey tries to sit down again--this is because the starling is still a baby and has the instinct to get under an adult for warmth, even though it mostly has its feathers. this scares the osprey because that is a Foreign Creature near its eggs.

at the end of the video you can see the ospreys starting to turn the eggs. birds do this so the yolk and/or embryo don't stick to the shell of the egg, which is bad for the egg's health.

ospreys have eyes adapted to seeing beneath the surface of the water!

[wordfather]

idk if this is an usamerican thing or not but it always blows my mind as a small european country resident that yall have many names and types of apples???? what do you mean its not just red yellow or green??? why is it so complicated??? who is granny smith????

[wordfather]

'whats your favorite apple' 'red' 'no i mean like what type' '??????' actual conversatiom i've had with a mutual from usa

[wordfather]

THIRTY TWO??????

[phillyphillyphilly]

Listen that doesn’t even account for all the weird shit local farmers are getting up to.

May I present the best apple:

[wordfather]

the world is so big and beautiful

[what-even-is-thiss]

I don’t like raw apples but I like them cooked so I’ve experimented a bit. I learned that in medieval Europe people used to put apples in like pottage and soup and whatnot so I tried putting them in soup and they’re pretty good. They make the soup slightly sweet. I basically chop them up in little pieces and sweat them like an onion. Pretty good in chicken soup.

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Things that will never make me think less of someone: Enjoying media, entertainment, or aesthetics with ideologically reactionary elements

Things that will IMMEDIATELY make me think less of someone: Insisting that the ideologically reactionary media, entertainment, or aesthetics they enjoy are actually Le Hecking Epic Wholesome Leftist Praxis

[imsobadatnicknames2]

To draw upon a semi-recent Discourse topic, if you encounter a claim along the lines that, idk, for example, the imagery and cultural idea of Knights as it exists in pop culture is entrenched with a long history of islamophonia (due to how much of this cultural imaginary comes directly from the narrative of the Crusades) and your response is "I still think knight imagery is cool, I don't enjoy things based on how ideologically correct they are" I'll respect you infinitely more than if your response was "Actually liking knights is leftist because there's nothing more leftist than protecting those weaker than you"

[imsobadatnicknames2]

"I don't engage with this thing to have my politics parroted back at me" will always be 1000x more graceful and productive than trying to argue that everything you like is Fundamentally Leftist, Actually.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Extremely correct tags via @mc-cookies

[sgtwinfield]

I like to think I approach opera like this: the gender politics are fucked and there's a lot more islamaphobia than you might naively suppose, but ultimately it's about Italians Singing About Big Feelings amidst Stupid Situation set to the Most Beautiful Music You've Ever Heard

[crowboy-bebop]

unauthorized fucking thing!!!!!!

(warning: loud chirping throughout)

source: hellgate osprey cam

[curlicuecal]

[standandwatchshitburn]

why so silent good messieurs

[nsfwitchy2]

I’m SEVERELY disappointed this post didn’t include the eye witness statement of the mirror crash incident in question

[moveslikekeithrichards]

you know when you get Autism Mad. like something happens in a non-ideal way and in your brain you know it literally doesnt matter but in your other more autistic brain youre like screaming & scrying & shitting the bed etc. i think you should be able to go into settings and opt out of that. i have better things to get upset about than failing to put up a decoration on the optimal day or being too stubborn to solve a problem via simple communication

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[drtrinitysantos]

sdxfcgvzdxfcgvhzdxfcgvhbjnkmlcgvhbjnk science

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

#the reason that lab safety regulations are the way they are is because literally all chemists are like this #as in 100% of them #no exceptions (via @prokopetz)

[copperbadge]

My grandfather got the GI bill after the war and decided to become a chemist. He was a year into his degree when he spilled something on himself in the lab. The way he told it, he watched whatever it was start to dissolve the leather apron he was wearing, thought about what it might be doing to his lungs, and after calmly removing the apron, became an architect instead. I think chemists are Like That because the sane ones all self-selected out of the pool.

[desertangels70s]

"Snoopy in Fashion" photo book from 1984.