smiley-maile reblogged
smiley-maile reblogged
New Crow Time 🐦⬛🦊🌟
smiley-maile reblogged
there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral
STUMPY MY BELOVED!!!!
For added context on what rehabilitating the area means: there are structural issues with the Tidal Basin seawall that cause flooding like this independent of rainfall. Big portions of the sidewalk in Stumpy’s section are regularly submerged, which is bad for the land and the trees themselves, not to mention an accessibility issue for visitors.
It’s sad that Stumpy and many other trees in the area will need to be cut down, but it will ensure the continued survival of the other trees in the area, and Stumpy himself will live on in his cuttings!
I believe Stumpy will be taken to the national arboretum and his clones will return to the tidal basin after the rebuilding.
Someone left him a bottle of bourbon as an offering.
The Japanese Embassy came to pay him honor this week.
Stumpy and his cohort are part of the original gift from Japan more than 100 years ago, and many have lived this long bc the National Parks takes care of them. Normally the trees live about 40-50 years.
Being mildly addicted to procedural shows, it's pretty common to see a lot of the same actors/actors you know show up in bit parts but I cannot tell you how unexpected and delightful it was to see Dropout's own Lily Du show up on FBI
smiley-maile reblogged
Question for the audience
Also leave in the tags what people usually compliment you on!!
I am so demoralized by trying to find a new dish drying rack that actually drains... I don't know what this says about me
smiley-maile reblogged
REBECCA FERGUSON Esquire México (April 2024)
smiley-maile reblogged
this is what i mean when i type 👀 btw
Please is there a way to turn off the "someone you follow just posted for the first time in a while" notifications? They are driving me batty and I can't find a quick fix.
smiley-maile reblogged
“The entire British museum is an active crime scene” - John Oliver
[image description: two pictures, one above the other. The first image shows a statue originally from the Acropolis in Athens, now in the British Museum. The statue is a column shaped like a woman. It is labelled London. The bottom image is from the Acropolis Museum in Athens, showing the other five matching column/statues, with a space for the missing statue pointedly left open. This picture is shot from above and is labelled Athens.
image in savvysergeant’s reblog: screencap of tags from two people. Feeblekazoo’s tags read: the degree to which the Acropolis museum is designed to shame the British Museum is spectactular. butherlipsarenotmoving’s tags read: the acropolis museum is the most passive aggressive museum i’ve ever been to and i love it
/end id]
For those of you who don’t know museum drama, one of the largest and most famous parts of the British Museum’s collection is the so-called Elgin Marbles, which were looted from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin in the 18th Century. (The Acropolis is the hill in Athens, Greece which has some of the most amazing Greek ruins anywhere, the most famous of which is the Parthenon.) Elgin had (or at least claims to have had) permission from the Ottoman Empire to take stuff home with him, but a) this is one empire asking another empire if they can loot stuff from the other empire’s subjugated people, so, not exactly any moral high ground there Elgin, and b) he took a lot more stuff than the Ottomans said he could have.
Greece has been asking for those statues and sculptures to be returned since they won independence in 1832. That’s right, 1832, 190 years ago. The British Museum has had a number of excuses over the years, one of the biggies of the late 20th Century being “we couldn’t possibly give them back because Athens doesn’t have a nice enough museum to display them” and ignoring Greece’s response of “we will BUILD a museum just for them if you will just give us our damn stuff back!“
Finally, Greece said “fuck you” and built a museum at the bottom of the Acropolis called the Acropolis museum. It is huge, it is gorgeous, the collection of objects is amazing and the educational bits (“this is what it is and why it matters”) are really well done. It’s probably one of the best archaeological museums in the world; it definitely is the best collection of ancient Greek artifacts in the world, both for the size of the collection and the way it’s displayed.
Oh. And it is amazingly passive-aggressive. Every single piece of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum has an empty spot on display waiting for the piece to be returned to Greece. For example, there are a lot of pieces where Elgin took, say, the nicest (or easiest to remove) one of a set. The column/statue in the OP’s image is one of these. Friezes from the roof of the Parthenon are another example. The Acropolis Museum displays each one of these sets with space for the stolen pieces, along with a picture of what the stolen piece looks like and where it is. It is a giant middle finger at the British Museum, disguised as helpful information.
There’s no chance that the British Museum will return any of this in the next generation. It’s not up to the curators at the British Museum; they don’t get any say in this. The board of governors of the British Museum is made up of old posh English people who genuinely believe that the Empire was awesome and England has a perfect right to everything in the British Museum. They have set policies about what can and can’t be removed from the collection, and according to those policies nothing of any historical or monetary value can be given away or sold. And they actively promote the idea that their predecessors had a perfect right to loot the cultural heritage of the world, and that the museum has a perfect right to keep it forever. The only way to get anything out of the British Museum and back to its rightful place would be to completely replace the entire board of the museum with new people who think completely differently. And that’s not happening any time soon, alas.
By the way, the British argument that Greeks wouldn’t know how to care for the antiquities……. Greece has 206 archaeological museums. It’s not only incredibly demeaning as an argument, it’s also straight out false and misleading.
One thing (and with the massive caveat of I don’t disagree with the above in the slightest): the Board of Trustees isn’t like that. They’re not all white, they’re not all rich, and they’re not all English. By and large they’re academics. I was speaking to them the other week with regards to repatriation when I visited and they’re actually very much all for it (bar one or two exceptions…looking at you George) and are working on things. A group of 5 of them I can confirm actively loathe Elgin and the marbles room. The problem lies with the British Museum Act of 1968 (hereafter referred to as BMA68) which was a law created by the government to prevent anything within the BM, which the government owns but wants very little do to with unless you’re trying to repatriate fyi, being removed in the “national interest”. Repatriation is, annoyingly, illegal in the case of the contents of the BM. So the Board have been trying to change this by putting pressure in various areas to get the laws changed, and the government screws them by enforcing term limits for serving on the board and then trying to stack the board in their favour to prevent further action. It’s a game of politics and the government do not want to give up BMA68 at all.
I know we like to categorise everyone we’re up against in the fight for repatriation as “old, white, rich guys” but it’s not helpful when it is decidedly not the case. We need to be mad at the right people and focusing on efforts to change this ridiculous law. At this time, supporting projects like the International Training Partnership, which is the BM’s way of building a network of curators and training them so organisations like the British Government can’t say “hurr durr they can’t look after their artefacts” because actually they can, we trained them ourselves. The network of curators also allows them to build mounting international pressure. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the pressure is building now, I promise you.
“We need to be mad at the right people” is the crux of SO MANY THINGS
Thank you Lottie, as always.
So the problem isn’t even the people who run the museum, who are after all museum people and want museum things to be done well and respectfully, but the government, who want the museum to remind everyone of the time before they made their entire country a laughingstock.
smiley-maile reblogged
Re-watching Desperate Housewives for the first time in about 10 years and, although it shouldn't have been a surprise, learning the Marc Cherry is a conservative/republican makes soooooo many things that happen in the show make sense.
I didn't know that!
And I am doing a rewatch to after more or less 10 years 🤣❤️
Keep an eye on all the unwanted pregnancy storylines, especially Lynette's with the twins. Pretty sure the word Abortion is never actually said in the entire show.
Put more detailed thoughts below the spoiler line cause this has been swirling in my head since re-watching.
---Spoilers---
When Carlos messes with Gaby's birth control pills she dismisses the vague idea with a mention that she and Carlos are good Catholics (which at least tracks with their characters).
Low key same with when Danielle gets pregnant with Austin's baby. I think Austin alludes to "going to a clinic" but Danielle shuts him down hard. Bree would obviously never allow for her to have an abortion, but I think it's interesting that they didn't even try to use it as a point of tension between the two of them, given that Danielle is painted as incredibly self serving and not really holding the same religious ideals that Bree does.
This might just be me reading into things but I def feel like Lynette was supposed to be the most Liberal of the housewives (obviously Bree mentions multiple times that she's a Republican but I don't think any of the other housewives ever come out and say their political party affiliations). Her entire character is a reluctant mother who absolutely loves her kids, but categorically did not want so many and is always happier when she is working outside the home with enough support at home that her kids are adequately taken care of. Despite the really compelling storyline that she becomes utterly depressed when pregnant with the twins and even admits that she doesn't feel the love and connection to them that she did when she was pregnant with the other kids, terminating the pregnancy is never talked about. Which just does not square with who I believe her character is.
Basically it makes sense to me that no one on this show would ever actually have an abortion (it's still a show that was aired on ABC from 2004-2012), but the totally lack of discussion feels more indicative of the show runner's politics.
I am pretty sure that the word Abortion was said by gaby once and also by lynette (I am currently doing a rewatch, too), I should recheck but I get your point
Btw I read a recent statement by Cherry saying that he is no longer a republican since Trump was representing that coalition
(I am not defending Cherry, just sharing a recent info)
At least the show wasn't that much into political stuff except as you said Bree saying she is a Republican and running for some State position during the end of show...very funny to me because at the end of the day she made a lot of not so republican choices in her life 😅
Edit: found this right now :)
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/08/01/desperate-housewives-creator-marc-cherry-abc-wouldnt-allow-abortion-storyline/1895605001/
OOOOOoooo thanks for all that updated information! I should have been clear that I didn't mean to attack/defend Cherry for his, at the time, Republican views. Merely wanted to point out that it was interesting to know that about him personally, given the storylines on show. I finished my re-watch about a month ago, so super interested if you catch things I missed.
Also, very much unsurprised that ABC had a huge part in barring them from doing abortion storylines. Is good to know that he did try to do that. But I think it's still worth looking at that he unequivocally said that none of the main cast was meant to have that kind of storyline and that only a "new" character was meant to possible have an "abortion narrative".
This just nags at me still because what does it even mean to "have an abortion narrative." What does "abortion narrative" even refer to. Does that mean a character actually having an abortion? Or does that include a character really wrestling with the possibility of having one, even if they ultimately don't terminate the pregnancy? Or does that include bringing up the idea in a more concrete way than throw away one liners? I know I keep coming back to it, but it just stuck out to me that they didn't really have Lynette talk about choosing to not have the twins. I respect the hell out of them for even having a storyline about a pregnant woman not feeling connected to her fetuses/unborn children. I guess what I wrestle with is that not thinking about it/talking about it seemed to not mesh with who I saw her to be as a character. But also, I didn't write her so...
@ladyorlandodream lol I should probably apologize for spinning out your one comment about also re-watching Desperate Housewives into me thinking about how we talked about abortion in media 10-20 years ago. I just think this kinda stuff is really interesting to look back on/think about.
smiley-maile reblogged
Re-watching Desperate Housewives for the first time in about 10 years and, although it shouldn't have been a surprise, learning the Marc Cherry is a conservative/republican makes soooooo many things that happen in the show make sense.
I didn't know that!
And I am doing a rewatch to after more or less 10 years 🤣❤️
Keep an eye on all the unwanted pregnancy storylines, especially Lynette's with the twins. Pretty sure the word Abortion is never actually said in the entire show.
Put more detailed thoughts below the spoiler line cause this has been swirling in my head since re-watching.
---Spoilers---
When Carlos messes with Gaby's birth control pills she dismisses the vague idea with a mention that she and Carlos are good Catholics (which at least tracks with their characters).
Low key same with when Danielle gets pregnant with Austin's baby. I think Austin alludes to "going to a clinic" but Danielle shuts him down hard. Bree would obviously never allow for her to have an abortion, but I think it's interesting that they didn't even try to use it as a point of tension between the two of them, given that Danielle is painted as incredibly self serving and not really holding the same religious ideals that Bree does.
This might just be me reading into things but I def feel like Lynette was supposed to be the most Liberal of the housewives (obviously Bree mentions multiple times that she's a Republican but I don't think any of the other housewives ever come out and say their political party affiliations). Her entire character is a reluctant mother who absolutely loves her kids, but categorically did not want so many and is always happier when she is working outside the home with enough support at home that her kids are adequately taken care of. Despite the really compelling storyline that she becomes utterly depressed when pregnant with the twins and even admits that she doesn't feel the love and connection to them that she did when she was pregnant with the other kids, terminating the pregnancy is never talked about. Which just does not square with who I believe her character is.
Basically it makes sense to me that no one on this show would ever actually have an abortion (it's still a show that was aired on ABC from 2004-2012), but the totally lack of discussion feels more indicative of the show runner's politics.
smiley-maile reblogged
horse: OH WE'RE GOING NOW? IT'S TIME TO GO? OKAY LET'S GO LET'S GO
I love Emet bc the first thing she asked when I shared this in the triad chat was, "Happy horses are very often very stupid. Do we know if the horse was okay? Was it shod? It could have hurt its feet very badly."
So here I am googling "horse runs with peloton" and yes, the horse was okay. This was the 1997 Critérium International. The horse was okay. :)
Being critical of Desperate Housewives cause I'm in the 8th season... It feels low key telling about the biases of the writers room that the only SA storylines in the show are perpetrated by men of color against women of color.
1.) The Applewhite storyline being centered around young black men being predators with the victim (Danielle doesn't count, she contrived the whole fake SA situation) being portrayed by a Filipina actress.
2.) Gabby being the only POC housewife for the majority of the show and a SA survivor, with her stepfather (portrayed by a Cuban-American actor) being the perpetrator.
Although I do think it's worth mentioning that SA, or the possibility of it, is not a highly utilized plot device in the show in general. Given the soapyness of the show itself and how more contemporary shows rely heavily on SA for drama, I am curious if leaving it out of most storylines was a conscious choice or more a sign of the times.
smiley-maile reblogged
how to make your effects extra special
It can be somewhat disheartening when you the artisans and craftsman of yesteryear who created miracles out of limited technology go forgotten. Always nice to see someone somewhere making tributes to them.
There is something so magical about practical effects and I wish more modern movies would use them. The best movies are the ones where CGI is used to *enhance* the special effects, not replace them.
smiley-maile reblogged
My partner, reading over my shoulder: "Working on #2."
Me: "What are you working on... turning into a vampire?"
Partner: "No.... But I can't really help you with #1 or #3."
smiley-maile reblogged
A strange alien doctor stands near the unconscious body of Padme Amidala. “It appears she has lost the will to live.” A older man with a limp hobbles closer with the aid of a cane. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” says Dr. Gregory House.
-Keeps Padme on life support despite DNR, somehow this ends in him getting punched by Obi-Wan
-Immediately starts putting her on every treatment known to man
-Walks over to Wilson’s office, which is the only part of the entire ship that just looks the same as it does in the show
-Homoerotically complains about how stupid Jedi are, then makes a bet with Wilson on whether Obi Wan is gay or the father of Padme’s twins (Wilson wants House to believe people can be faithful)
-Padme almost dies again. Turns out the treatment’s not working
-“if the dark side nearly killed her, maybe it can save her”
-House uses force lightning to restart Padme’s heart
-Gets brought into Cuddy’s office and told off for using an experimental treatment, and the power of the dark side, in her hospital
-House is taken off the case and foreman is put in charge of the case
-Padme is unexpectedly doing better, but Cuddy refuses to tell House or else he’ll be using the dark side to save all his patients
-House watches on as Wilson tries seducing a relieved Obi Wan while he paces in the lobby. Doesn’t seem to work
-House interrogates Obi Wan about his relationship with Padme, insinuates it’s Obi Wans Fault. Gets in a struggle and once theyre seperated it’s revealed he ripped out some beard hair
-Padme is getting released from the hospital but crashes again with obvious signs of infection. Everyone blames the dark side of the force
-is put in intensive care again, everyone thinks she’s going to die, House is brooding.
-House meets Bail Organa and talks to him, Bail mentions how he was so worried about her the last time she was in a hospital, and this seems much more hopeless
-“what time she was in the hospital?”
-House marches in as they’re about to pull the plug, rolling Padme’s unconcious body over to point at dark spot on the back of her neck
-Foreman looks disapointed, “it’s a bruise house, her husband nearly snapped her neck.”
-“Our princess’ boyfriend here failed to mentioned she was scratched by a Nexu on Genosis years ago. Nexu claws are known as a vicious poison.”
-“it would have killed her years ago”
-“unless a small chunk of claw stuck in her back, working into the muscles near the nape of her neck for years. The little prince of Darkness chokes her, pressure and muscles spasming lets it work into a blood vessel. It’s why the force lightning only was a bandaid, it vaporized what was in her bloodstream but broke up the rest of the claw and let it enter in her bloodstream. Start her on dialysis, she’ll be fine by tomorrow afternoon.”
-Next day Padme’s wheeled out of the hospital with her two children, bittersweetness. House watches from balcony before going back to his office
-Wilson enters with his shirt unbuttoned and a few bruises on his neck, declaring, “the Jedi is gay. I win.”
-House holds up a paternity test, “he’s bisexual, it’s a draw”