full of hope and electricity

Untitled Acrylic and sprinkles on canvas 14” x 18” 2014

[two photographs of a canvas with thickly-applied white acrylic paint. The paint is applied in swirls and has neon coloured flecks in it.]

I can’t remember if I’ve said this before but I think that if you make a Batman 1920s AU then you have to take into account that Bertie Wooster often spent time living in New York and Gotham City is just New York Noir and Bruce Wayne would probably cultivate the acquaintance of Bertie Wooster because Bertie is exactly the sort of person Bruce wants people to think he is, so it’s both birds of a feather camouflage and because he wants to observe Bertie for behavioural ideas.

Bertie, ray of sunshine that he is, thinks Bruce is jolly good fun and really quite barmy, but he already has a friend called Barmy and he can’t manage two Barmies so he affectionately dubs him Batty.

Consequently Bruce exists in a state of nagging uncertainty as to whether Bertie is the golden-hearted silly ass he so transparently appears to be, or is in fact one of his villains, knowing who he is and taunting him.

Jeeves absolutely knows that Bruce is Batman, but he isn't saying anything.

who is the most famous person you’ve interacted with either online or in person?

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

Anyway if you see this you have to reblog and tag with a delight from ur day -- even the littlest thing counts

i'm curious, so put in the tags where you grew up and how you learned the four cardinal directions. i grew up in the south in the usa, and we learned "never eat slimy watermelon."

I should use Dutch phrases in my English more often, why am I localizing when there’s a perfectly good untranslatable word I could confuse you all with instead

Word of the daaaay. Mierenneuker. “Me-ren-nuh-kur”.

Literally: person who has sex with ants.

Meaning: one who makes a big deal out of small differences or mistakes that are not a big deal, specifically in a way that annoys others.

we need this to get localized

antfucker is a perfect way to call someone like that

English-speaking world: He’s making a mountain out of a molehill

The Dutch: He’s having sex with ants.

sounds to me like

a ped-ant

:D

I genuinely have to stop myself saying "ah, on that bike!" sometimes...

I was working on a history paper today and found a book from 1826 that seemed promising (though dull) for my topic, on an English Catholic family’s experience moving to France.

And it ended up not really being suitable for my purposes, as it goes. But part of the book is actually devoted to Kenelm, the author’s oldest son…and man, his dad loved him.

Kenelm seems to have had a fairly typical upbringing for a young English gentleman, although he is a bit slow to read. At twelve he’s sent to board at Stoneyhurst College—often the big step towards independence in a boy’s life, as he’ll most likely only see his parents sporadically from now on, and then leave for university.

When he’s sixteen, however, his father moves the whole family to France, so Kenelm gets pulled out of school to be with them again. Shortly after the move, his dad notices that he seems depressed. Kenelm confides in him that he’s been suffering from “scruples” for the last eighteen months—most likely what we’d now call an anxiety disorder.

And his dad is pissed—at the school, because apparently Kenelm had been seeking help there and received none, despite obviously struggling with mental health issues. So his dad takes it seriously. He sets him up to be counseled by a priest—there were no therapists back then—and doesn’t send him away to be boarded again, instead teaching him at home himself.

And his mental health does improve. His dad describes him as well-liked, gentle, pious, kind and eager to please others; at twenty he’s thinking about a career in diplomacy or going into the military—which his dad thinks he is not particularly suited for, considering his favorite pastimes are drawing and reading. He’s excited about his family’s upcoming move to Italy, and he’s been busy learning Italian and teaching it to his siblings.

Henry Kenelm Beste dies of typhus at twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. That’s how his dad records it. That’s why his dad is telling this story. It’s not an extraordinary story—Kenelm’s story struck me because he sounds so…ordinary, like so many kids today. And he was so, so loved. His dad tried hard to help him compassionately with his mental health at a time where our current knowledge and support systems didn’t exist. You can feel how badly he wanted his son to be remembered and loved, to impress how dearly beloved he was to the people who knew him in life.

I hope he’d be glad to know someone is still thinking of Kenelm over 200 years later.

Anyway, that’s why I’m crying today.

[image: an Instagram post by @ nationalparkservice, with the location 'Yellowstone National Park'. It's been liked 162,029 times. It shows a bison lying curled up on the bank of a body of water. The bison and the ground are covered in snow. The caption reads "Do you wanna build a bison... (...more)". @ onlycherrryy has commented "That's appa from avatar", and @ nationalparkservice has responded "Just remember, jumping on a regular bison and yelling "yip yip" will not make it fly. But you will."]

[images: two screenshots from the Jeeves and Wooster TV series with Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster. Jeeves (black suit & tie, bowler hat) and Wooster (grey suit, red tie, soft felt hat) are driving in an open-topped car with a biscuit-coloured Irish Wolfhound sat behind them. Wooster is saying "Am I wrong in thinking all little girls are hard-bitten thugs of the worst description?"]

Esztergom kolenterminal in Hongarije. De foto uit de late jaren 1920 die laat zien hoe het werkte - steenkool uit de nabijgelegen Dorog mijn werd vervoerd door een zes kilometer lange kabelbaan naar de laadtoren en daaronder op schepen geladen. Inmiddels is de terminal buitengebruik.

Translation of caption: "Esztergom coal terminal in Hungary. The photo from the late 1920s shows how this worked - coal from the nearby Dorog mine was transported to the loading tower via a six-kilometre-long cable car and loaded from there onto ships. The terminal is no longer in use."

The photographs show the coal terminal, which looks like a shed on stilts, mounted in a river on two tall oval concrete foundations. The first photo is in black-and-white and shows the terminal in operation: a small cable car brings buckets of coal to the shed, the bundled coal is then lowered to ships from cables underneath the shed. There are two barges waiting to be filled.

11/07/21 • iliad 18.50-77 translated using text from a national geographic piece on whales and whale song

[image: a collage on a dark blue background. the collaged text reads:

underwater it was gunmetal gray, the whales wailed their rhythmic symphonies, but Thetis led the lament: "hear me, sister Nereids, hear the dark sea rumble within me, O unraveling me, the mother who gave birth to the living carcass of her newborn. I cared for him, a young pine on a mountain, taking root, raising branches, and I sent him to Troy in a U-boat's jaw. But never again will I see his homecoming, his return to me. even while he survives in the light of the sun, beneath the sea's surface it is inky dark, and he is mourned. I can go to him, but there is no way to protect him. I will see my child and hear the grief that engulfs him, waiting out the war." She abandoned her song and the echoing waters, and the deep-sea creatures went with her, stringing sadness together in their dialect of clicks, and around them the shapes of the waves exploded into foam.]

[video: (what looks like a liver & liver and white ticked German Shorthaired Pointer) puppy sat on the sand. It has sand on its little snoot and is facing into the wind, its velvety floppy ears flapping in the wind.]

Good doggo patiently waiting for their human! 

(Source)

[video: footage of a brown husky type dog tied up outside a building with steps leading up to the entrance. It's lying on the top step with its front paws dangling over the edge of the step, kicking its legs. Mr Blue Sky by the Electric Light Orchestra plays over the footage.]