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Aethelflaed, Lady of Mercia

@aethelflaedladyofmercia / aethelflaedladyofmercia.tumblr.com

History nerd who likes geeky fandoms and random posts. Currently all about Good Omens. Read my Good Omens fanfiction on AO3 | Buy me a Coffee
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animentality

This info needs to be out there, it turned the tide against cryptocurrency in the public eye it might fit so too

Ahhhhh shoot. I googled this and got articles from Forbes, Financial Times, Rolling Stone, and a whole bunch of others. It’s a big problem and it’s serious.

Estimates vary but Chat GPT could consume as much as 500mL of water (almost 17 ounces) per 5 queries. (GPT-3 consumed that much in 10-50 queries and we don’t know what the current model does except that it’s almost certainly more).

I have to generate a LOT of social media content for my job and the last few weeks I started using AI to suggest ideas to keep me from getting burnt out. I’ve almost certainly been consuming more water through that than what I’ve been drinking. As if I didn’t feel bad enough about this job.

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dalliancekay

An Ode to Aziraphale

Aziraphale, Yes, I adore you because you are an angel. A literal angel from Heaven and yet you are not perfect.

I love that you try and do the right thing even when you know your superiors will not like it, even when your plans go awry.

I adore your sassy ass.

I think you are odd and brave and entirely too wrapped in your own head sometimes.

I love the joy you find in Earthly, human things you don't need.

You are adorable when you get annoyed.

It's very, ahh, affecting.

Your silliness makes me giggle and persuades me to be more open and free and unashamed in my own rl.

Your huge heart and openness to learn and to consider others' experience and point of view are themselves a miracle.

Angel or not, you care for the humans you don't entirely understand.

I adore that you fell in love with a demon not because he's handsome, but because he's kind and considerate, and because he cares.

I adore how much you rankle each other and yet you are each others' worlds.

I love that you pay attention. To things that may seem as ephemeral as an actor's enjoyment in playing a role, or the playwright's success with it.

I adore you for trying to cheer up a friend who you knew was very likely doing things you should be wanting to punish him for.

I love that after 6000 years with humans, watching them murder each other in increasingly innovative ways you still melt at signs of love between them.

I adore that you are happy to do things imperfectly even though you could miracle everything to be impeccable every time.

This goes for your worn, loved clothes as well.

I adore that you implicitly trust a demon.

And that you taught him to trust more as well.

I adore that you pay attention to what others do and not what they say.

I adore you for not giving up.

I adore you for making the hardest decision to have a shot at the best possible future.

You deserve to be happy angel. And adored.

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daneecastle

;_;

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Been working on this for a while and if I don't post it now I never will so here you go <3 enjoy the most self-indulgent thing I've ever spent time on - I just really needed them to hug...

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neil-gaiman

hi neil!

i haven’t been a good omens junkie nearly as long as my peers; however, over the past year and a half, not a day has gone by in which i do not think about them and/or look at them. it has become my entire existence, and i’m too attached to actually do anything about it.

that’s not the point. the reason why i am actually here is because i have a question (with backstory):

i came across a theory the other day in which someone quoted your iconic “it all started, as it will end, in a garden”…or something along the lines of that…and their interpretation almost gave me nightmares. the post stated that the idea of everything ending in a garden might not be what we assume it to be…hence, a garden in the south downs (something everyone is absolutely begging for). what was absolutely terrifying about this thought was the point that said garden might be a cemetery…a cemetery that shows up quite often in the beautiful intros. i’m afraid that there is fear that you might kill off aziraphale and/or crowley….and both seeing and seeing that in words does not sound right…BUT STILL anything is possible in the Gaiman-verse. we’ve been traumatized enough during season 2, and there might be casualties if there is more angst…

i’m genuinely curious about your opinion on this theory

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I believe that being the author excuses me from theories.

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For general meta context:

In the book, the “garden” the story ended on was Adam’s—he and Dog “escape” through the hedge to steal apples and have fun, and the future is a pair of trainers slouching through a field forever (very much paraphrased).

Season 1, with its shifted emphasis on Aziraphale and Crowley, instead ends with them leaving Berkeley Square and going for their dinner on the Ritz (returning again for a shot of the nightingale).

Mixed in with this (in both versions, but just with the order and pacing changed for the show) we see Shadwell and Tracy making plans to leave their current jobs, and Anathema burning Agnes’s second book. Each of these is our POV characters leaving their garden—choosing to leave behind the safety offered by structure and familiarity for something new and unknown but ultimately better. (Having Aziraphale and Crowley retire oh-so-dramatically in episode 6 really seals this parallel.)

I cannot predict season 3, obviously, and I certainly love the idea of their final “garden” being the one at the South Downs cottage. But I think regardless of what direction it goes in, if that parallel set up in season 1 is followed through, I don’t *think* a cemetery is the likely conclusion. Just from the perspective of that imagery, it seems a step in the wrong direction.

This isn’t to say no one will die or that there won’t be any cemeteries (heck we got a prominent appearance of a cemetery in both season 1 and 2 so why not 3?) but I don’t think this is what “it all started, as it will end, in a garden” is meant to foreshadow.

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“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.

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gemsofgreece

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.

I visited the Acropolis more than 10 years ago but the museum was closed that day and I’ve always wondered if it was as passive-aggressive as everyone said.

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jesterbots

genuinely one of the saddest parts of this new era of the internet is how hard it is to rick roll someone now. with people's attention spans shortening so much, they wouldn't even get through the first few bait seconds before clicking off the video. like i saw a comment that ended with "btw i made all of this up" and the replies kept treating it so seriously because none of them finished the entire 4 sentence comment. and We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I (do I) A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

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