easy mode I don't see honest discussion of transmisogyny as "driving a wedge" into the nonbinary "community" because I'm not committed to idealist notions of some abstracted community of individuals bound together by shared "identity", and I am *especially* not committed to "nonbinary" as a monolithic identity with greater community-making force than myriad other shared material experiences.

some Michael Ayrton minotaurs

yeah boss....yeah we hired a new goon.... he's all ethereal and pretty like a baby fawn sleeping in a morning dew sprinkled clearing with a ray of sunshine spilling right on him through the branches of the trees. just how you like them boss

Dogs Playing Poker

The paintings are popular because they are funny and therefore amusing, an inherently pleasure-causing quality. Exactly why they are funny is not fully determinable, but a likely reason is that they are ridiculous, a quality closely associated with humor according to various theories of humor (incongruity theory, computational-neural theory, ontic-epistemic theory, and benign violation theory, for instance).

There is a subtle humorous quality and emotional depth to the paintings based on the following:

Link

one thing antiquity had going for it was every now and then someone would unveil a new fruit. doesn't happen anymore

I DISCOVERED A NEW FRUIT. Fulltext on Substack. "Please like and subscribe"

mom was describing a tattoo a girl once took her to a back bedroom to show her, which was a fishing pole low on her pelvis with a line and hook that descended into her bush where a small clownfish hid amongst the hair. and that’s just. that’s a goal. and the ultimate freedom from obligation, like “gah I would shave but it would ruin my very good joke, what are you gonna do, I gotta make sure there’s foliage for my little clownfish to hide in”

then mom finished telling me this and looked off for a moment. “my god,” she said. “she was flirting with me. fuck. goddamn it.” 

I fucking hate James Tissot’s paintings because in ALL OF THEM there is ALWAYS someone staring right at you, but it’s not always immediately visible. You just feel watched by this mf. Sometimes the little shit is right there at the centre, but others the bastard is just gazing from the distance, it is CREEPY, my guys

STOP STARING AT ME, THIS IS DISCONCERTING AS FUCK

I think this is hilarious. We’ve been caught.

In James Tissot paintings, art observes you.

march moodboard

and i know when i go all my particles disband and disperse and i'll be back in the pulse and i know none of this will matter in the long run but i know a sound is still a sound around no one and while im in this body i want somebody to want and i want what i want and i want youuuuu to love me

Tanuki Fortuneteller by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1843-44)

Sometimes I think about my best friend in my 20's response to when I told her I was envious of how talented and skilled she was cause she was always the friend that was doing a million new hobbies and just really had it together in my eyes and she seemed so disappointed in me and said how she's always been perceived as "talented" for things she was not a natural at and had actually worked tirelessly hard to learn to do and how it's never a compliment to assume someone has something you don't simply because they got lucky because more often than not they were just as capable as you and just chose to take risks, dedicate time, push through discomforts or doubts that maybe you succumb to, and really earned things that are often nonchalantly disregarded by peers as having walking in with already in hand

And I feel like that conversation really changed me cause I've always been bad at school and been a slow learner so I just sort of decided I wasn't smart and it wasn't my fault I wasn't born with the same advantages of people around me and I think that's something we all do as self protection from the truth that the only thing truly keeping us from what we want is usually ourselves and our decisions about our own narratives that aren't actually in stone even if we see them that way

I realized my friend was actually just not a quitter, and that she also felt not good enough often but decided to keep going in times where I know I would have stopped in her place

And I feel like taking ownership of my life a lot in the last few years has made me understand her better, even with stuff like chronic illness that practically begs us to victimize ourselves and then that way of thinking makes us sicker and more dependent on others when we could be accepting help without considering ourselves so helpless

It's really weird interacting with anyone once I've realized so much of that because I see my old self in people when they talk to me like I have something they don't because I am finally making different choices than I used to and honestly it is very irritating regardless of intention

If you want something someone else has that doesn't give you permission to assume how they got it or what it is even like having it - and I think more and more people have decided it's not their fault how they are choosing to live and that's why they are so stuck

Ouggg gman and gordon,,, I cant stop thinking about them ouhhh,,,

Fifteenth century tarot cards, possibly the oldest known deck. Look how beautiful they are! These are from way back before they were used for cartomancy.

OP is being humble. This is the Cary-Yale collection of a Visconti-Sforza deck. These are almost definitely the oldest tarot cards in existence. The trump cards are illuminated in gold. The pip cards are illuminated in silver.

human: IM SO STUPID AND UGLY ANDD IM A VIRGIN AND IM GOING TO KILL MYSELF

the cells in their body:

sorry to say this but not every act of protest is meant to be palatable. actually scratch that, to protest is to disrupt, it's to inconvenience, it's to make you unable to ignore the protesters message, it's priority should never be its palability.

actually im going to elaborate on this. self-immolation is meant to disturb people. its meant to scandalize and to mark you. it is a radical act of protest at an incredible high cost and it should be treated as such. Aaron Bushnell's death should be mourned because it was preventable. it was as preventable as the 30,000 Palestinian deaths. but his choice should be honored and respected.

in his own words : “my name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the united states air force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

the whole point of his protest is to highlight the violence and pain that the usa and more specifically the usa army is complicit in. in a way that could not be ignored.

to blur his final moments to make them more 'comfortable' to watch, to consume, is extremely disrespectful.

mind you i am not saying that you should go out of your way to expose yourself to such footage, especially if you are not in a place mentally that allows you to do so.

but his final wish was to force us into a conversation around the pain and violence we are complicit with. so much so that it has now become 'normal' rather than outraging.

it is important that we do not let the media sweep up or minimize his actions (something that the blurring facilitates). just in the last not even four months we have had 3 separate self-immolations in protest against at least two ongoing genocides. this is what the fucking wikipedia page for political self-immolation looks like as of today.

here's some links to check out:

https://www.focuscongo.com/en/

https://www.unrwa.org/