sunday morning in a still hot september
everything is better when its public. libraries! public art! public history! public health! public education! public television!! public DOMAIN
"Take Naps, Destroy Capitalism"
Poster seen in Sydney
it's time for me to share this cake I decorated for valentine's day
obsessed with this tag
i know that a lot of what pliny the elder says is kind of bullshit but i've never wanted to believe him more in my life than when he says that hedgehogs collect apples for the winter by rolling onto them so the apples stick on their spines and they can carry them off
oh my god...
You can't resist this cutie
Book of Hours of Charlotte of Savoy, Paris, France, 15th century.
people love to complain about sex scenes in tv shows and violence in movies when the real danger is scenes that make you feel second hand embarrassment.
The Least Intimidating bakery in the village has closed for good so now I’ve got to go to the Intimidating Bakery, it’s awful. If you don’t have a PhD in being French I don’t recommend going to that bakery, here’s the humiliating account of the 3 times I’ve visited it so far:
- the first time I went in there I pointed at one of those extra-skinny baguettes and said “a flute, please” feeling pretty sure of myself, and the baker said “… that’s a ficelle” (you idiot) (was implied) “a flute is twice as large as a baguette.”
- That’s insane, first of all, a flute is a skinny instrument. Call your fat baguette a bassoon, lady—I made some timid remark about how it would make more sense for a flute to be a skinny bread and the baker said, “In Paris it is. I thought you were from the South?”
- oh, that hurt
- I guess I’m from the part of the South that’s so close to Italy the bread’s waist size matters less than whether it’s got olives in it, but I left the bakery having an existential crisis over whether living in Paris had made me forget my roots
- the Least Intimidating Bakery just had normal baguettes vs. seedy baguettes vs. horny baguettes (easy mode, some have seeds, some have horns), while the new bakery has breads that are only different on a molecular level—there’s a good old loaf and then another, identical loaf called a bastard? google told me a bastard is “halfway between a baguette and a bread” but denouncing them like “those are not regulation-sized bastards” would get me banned from the bakery for life
- on my 2nd visit (while I stood in line discreetly googling baguette terminology) there was an English tourist who asked for a baguette while pointing at what was either a rustique or a sesame and I felt a bit worried for them, but the baker just clarified “this one?” to waive any responsibility if they found out later it wasn’t a classic baguette, then handed them the bread without educating them in a judgmental tone and I felt envious
- I know it’s because she thinks the English are beyond saving but still it made me want to come back with a fake moustache and an English accent so I wouldn’t be expected to play bakery on expert mode just because I’m French. I asked for a pastry this time and the baker asked “no bread with that?” which felt cruel, like she wanted me to sprinkle myself with ashes and admit out loud that my level of bread proficiency isn’t as advanced as I once believed it was
- The third time I went, I had lost all self-confidence and I hesitantly pointed at a bread and said “I’d like this, uh—what is it called?” and the baker looked at me in disbelief and said “That’s a baguette.”
- God.
- for the record, if that stupid bread had been flanked by a skinny bread (ficelle) and a fat one (flute) then yeah of course I would have known to call it a baguette, but in the absence of reference points I now felt lost and scared of being called a Parisian again
- it’s hard to express the depth of my suffering so I’ll just let the facts speak for themselves: this morning a French person (me) stood in a French bakery in France surrounded by French people and pointed at a baguette and said “what is this called”
i will never stop thinking about tommy “i can do one mile in 9 minutes 2 miles in 35 minutes 3 miles in 16 minutes” shriggly
"It's Spring In Polyarny" by Vasily Yezdakov (1961)
I love you tailors, I love you recycling center employees, I love you jewelry repair people, I love you tech repair people. I love you plumbers, I love you electricians. I love you all maintenance workers, who make it so things don't have to be fully replaced when they break.
There are so many ways to contribute to the climate movement.
Got to see Hadestown for the first time ever today (and it was amazing oh my god I had no idea what I was missing) and I'd just like to give a shout out to the poor soul in the audience who had clearly never heard the myth of Orpheus before, because when Orpheus turned around at the end the audience was dead silent except for this one very audible gasp of "no!" from somewhere in the crowd. And after Euridyce was gone and Orpheus dropped to his knees in grief, all anybody --cast, audience, the uncaring gods, etc -- could hear was muffled weeping from the same person