a commonplace @songthecloudsings - Tumblr Blog

"Here Comes the Sun" by Carla Torres

This mural is in my neighborhood, on the side of a Dominican bakery. I love it so much.

#Washington Heights #upper Manhattan #NYC #other people's art #my photography

Modern research shows the public work together selflessly in an emergency, motivated by a strong impulse to help

“The notion that people panic and run screaming for the exits is a Hollywood fiction,” said Prof Stephen Reicher, an expert in group behaviour at the University of St Andrews.

“Characteristically, people stay and help each other,” he said. “We found this during the 7/7 attacks on the underground and the 1999 attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in London, where people looked after each other even though they feared other bombs.

“In our own research on the Leytonstone tube attack in 2015, there was an amazing level of spontaneous coordination by bystanders: some directed others away from danger. Some distracted the attacker. Some confronted the attacker. Each was able to act because of the others. Heroism was a feature of the group, not just the individual,” he added.

Prof Clifford Stott, a specialist in the psychology of crowds and group identity at Keele University, agreed. Modern research, he said, showed “bystander apathy” was a myth. Instead, strangers often work together in emergency situations with highly sophisticated unity.”

cephalopodvictorious

Bystander apathy is a myth invented by the New York Times to cover up that the police were called by several residents of the building, but the cops refused to act. The cops then told the Times that 38 people just watched her die (a seemingly arbitrary number and a physical impossibility based on where the attacks occurred), and the Times ran with it. In fact, Kitty was alive when the cops got there, and was being held and comforted by one of her friends who lived in the building because one of the people who saw her get attacked from across the street called her friend to go get her. Because people care.

You have just been attacked. How likely is it that someone will come to your help? If you remember the infamous case of Kitty Genovese in 19

moosepower

I will always re-blog this. The story of Kitty Genovese’s murder has gone down in history as a story about everyone watching it happen and doing nothing and none of the story is true.

#people are good actually

tiktoksthataregood-ish

#everybody shut up RIGHT NOW and listen to this #I promise you won't regret it

str-ngeloop

your strengths are harder to see than your weaknesses because the problems you're good at solving don't appear as problems, because you're so good at handling them before they become problems... unlike the relatively rare problem that becomes a crisis, which demands undue attention. it's sort of like a reverse survivorship bias. the problems that become noticed as problems, the moments where you notice your capacity has a gap, are only the ones that aren't cut off at the pass by your strength and capability, before they become problems. so if all you focus on is problems then all you'll see is your weaknesses. which isn't accurate

toasthaste

thoodleoo

been looking at a lot of orpheus surrounded by animals mosaics and i love them all for various reasons but i have to give a special shoutout to this floor mosaic in palermo entirely for this silly little lizard and turtle combo

jareckiworld

Carlos Estévez — Spider Cosmic Domestic (oil and watercolor pencil, on canvas, 2024)

tomandjerrysdivorcelawyer

Fighting in the Olive Garden parking lot with an Italian drag king named Shrimp Alfredo

tomandjerrysdivorcelawyer

Making out now

tomandjerrysdivorcelawyer

Fighting again

tomhardysurinal

I have never wanted to open a spam email so badly

potatochangbin

i saw this posted on pinterest and i NEED to add the funniest comment ever

#I think we should hear them out

pmamtraveller

Mammal in a Sunday Dress, by Georgina M. Cox, 2026

originalaccountname

Mammal in a Sunday Dress explores the uneasy relationship between femininity, civilisation, and the animal body. At first glance, the figure appears modest and withdrawn. Her posture is composed, her gaze seemingly lowered towards her bare feet, recalling the conventions of nineteenth-century portraiture where women were often depicted as passive objects of observation. Yet as the viewer moves closer, the illusion collapses. Her eyes are not lowered at all. She is looking directly back. The delayed eye contact transforms the encounter. The viewer approaches believing they are safely observing a woman; instead, they realise they have been observed themselves. The work refuses the traditional power dynamic of portraiture, denying the comfort of anonymous spectatorship. Looking becomes a reciprocal act. For Cox, the painting considers humanity's persistent desire to separate itself from the rest of the animal kingdom. The title quietly undermines this distinction. A "mammal" is not another creature—it is us. The Sunday dress, rich with cultural associations of femininity, morality, and respectability, becomes an attempt to distinguish ourselves from nature. Yet clothing cannot alter biology. Beneath lace and ritual remains the same vulnerable animal body. The work also reflects on the historical relationship between women and nature. Across art, religion, and philosophy, women have repeatedly been positioned as closer to instinct, emotion, reproduction, and the body itself, while men have been aligned with reason, culture, and civilisation. Mammal in a Sunday Dress does not reject this comparison. Instead, it questions why proximity to nature has so often been treated as something lesser. Chiaroscuro isolates the figure within darkness, allowing the luminous dress to symbolise the performance of civilisation while the bare feet quietly return the body to the earth. Neither is presented as more truthful than the other. The painting exists in the tension between performance and instinct, refinement and biology. Mammal in a Sunday Dress ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: if every layer of culture were stripped away, what would remain? Not a king. Not a saint. Not a gentleman or a lady. Only another mammal, looking back.

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#you and me baby