june

he they 🏳️‍⚧️ classics, art, interactive fiction, disco, etc. mishmash collection of things i like

[kaylmao]

10000 YEAR OLD ROCK ART OF GIRAFFES FOUND IN LIBYA LET'S GO

[kaylmao]

YES!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lilacchao]

of note: 95% of libya is desert, and giraffes are not found there! but this predates not just the libyan desert, but the entire sahara desert it's a part of! giraffes aren't found there any more and this is a memory of a time when things were giraffier

also apparently this rock art dates across multiple periods spanning thousands of years? but i couldn't find much detail on that so i can't give specifics

but yeah, this isn't just a memory of giraffes, but of giraffes now absent encountered by people just 2000 years (the difference between the late roman republic and today) out of the ice age, in a climate unfamiliar to any of the hundred billion people born since the desertification of the sahara drove the ancient egyptians to the nile, near the start of the agricultural revolution

the time between this and the birth of the sahara was nearly as long as the time between the birth of the sahara and now, in which all recorded history is contained, and all languages we can recognise at all - the language and culture of these people would be totally alien to current libyans, twice the difference between the oldest european language and english, predating all but libya's mountains!

and we have pictures of giraffes of the time! what a beautiful gift from such a distant past

[stabbydragon]

"Love/sex is what makes us human" Wrong. It's the obsession with rectangles. look around you and count the number of rectangles you see.

[caecilius-est-pater]

I was searching the Latin/Greek section of a used bookstore for some ~aesthetic~ antique Latin books, and I came across this beautiful 1889 tome: 

This is going to look great on my “look at me I’m a pretentious twat” bookshelf.

But then… the first few sentences read:

“In 1875 delegates of the Oxford University Press proposed to me that I should undertake the compilation of a new Latin-English Lexicon, of something the same compass as the Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott. I acceded to the proposal in the expectation, for which I had at the time what appeared to be good grounds, that I should obtain adequate assistance in the work. My hopes were, however, disappointed.”

Ouch.

He goes on to detail how he spent 12 years working on A all by himself. Then the university asked him to publish what he had, so he threw together the rest of the book, clearly caring less and less the further he got in the alphabet - the entire Q section has four entries - and published… this.

Obviously this is going straight onto my pretentious twat shelf as a goofy conversation starter, but it is interesting and potentially useful if obscure Latin words are your thing. (Did you know “ramen” is a hapax legomenon meaning “a small chip or shaving”?)

So if you ever come across a really obscure Latin word or name that you can’t find anywhere, hmu… but only if it starts with A.

[jstor]

Happy Monday! Here are three Aztec stone snakes for you. The greenish one (13th-16th century) is from the Cleveland Museum of Art and the other two (15th-early 16th century) are from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, two open access collections on JSTOR.

[cottoncandylesbo]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Even Darwin had his bad days.

[withdreamsofhereafter]

Hexagonal growth in a black olive tree

[andmaybegayer]

measure once cut also once, no prablem

[andmaybegayer]

#i know i already reblogged this but i need to like. cross stitch it or carve it into wood or quilt it or something

concept for a vcarving project

[holespoles]

Toshi Yoshida, "Neko to Kotori"

[radawaycunt]

What if we were two horrid little beasts in a medieval illuminated manuscript

[radawaycunt]

AND we kissed, also

[slaughtersafe]

Satellite

[flamingkorybante]

My friend worked with the People With AIDS Coalition in 1990 and found this while cleaning out some old folders. I can't stop thinking about it.

[finnlongman]

You know, I've seen manuscript abbreviations that looked like text-speak, but hand-drawing emojis to stand in for the word ceann (head) in a passage about Cú Chulainn being beheaded is taking that all to a new level

(The line from another manuscript: "Is ann sin d'éirgedar datha aille iongantacha do cheann Choingculoinn")

Manuscript is RIA 23 H 10, Oidheadh Con Culainn, written in 1808.

[finnlongman]

BREAKING NEWS HE DID IT AGAIN

"a cheann do bheith ar an ngad" but obviously when talking about heads on sticks we should just draw a ☹️ instead

[finnlongman]

He just keeps doing it. Every time somebody gets beheaded in this text, the word "ceann" gets replaced with 😐 And a lot of people get beheaded in this text (thanks Conall), so this happens a lot.

"Do bhain an 😐 de" He struck the head from him

[psikonauti]

Impalas on a salt flat in the Kalahari Desert, Namibia

Photographed by Solly Levi

[ciceronian]

This Day in History:

VII IDVS SEP<TEM>BRES Q POSTVMIVS ROGAVIT A ATTIVM PEDICARIM

On September 7th Quintus Postumius asked Aulus Attius if I could fuck him (in the ass).

CIL IV.8805

[muzzlesbian]

in a perfect world "bootlicker" would be a word for perverts instead of people who suck up to cops & the state

[bofransson]

Still Life, Vase with Carnations

Vincent van Gogh - 1890