I bought an enameling kit and a bunch of sheet copper today. I’ve wanted to experiment with enameling for a really long time.
Last year I found a way to make money and cut down on the time i spent on my pieces. Business-wise it was good. Creatively I’ve been unfulfilled.
So while I’ll still be doing what I was doing before, I’m going to be doing this as a side project, a special line. Im excited for my stuff to get here so I can start experimenting.
let me tell you guys something that ACTUALLY happened in my screenwriting class last week
one of the female writers in our class is writing a feature about this gang of teenage girls who sort of become vigilantes and murder men who harass women (that’s a shitty logline of it but it’s actually fucking awesome and highly stylized and over-exaggerated like tarantino in a good way bc i fucking hate tarantino). ANYWAY their first kill is this guy named taylor. taylor is one of the girl’s boyfriends. it is heavily implied and the writer confirmed that he abuses and rapes her. not explicitly seen, but she has bruises, there are scenes implying it etc.
so. she wrote the part where they kill taylor. and one of my professor’s comments was about how he felt like he didn’t hate taylor enough.
to which me and my female friend were like um what?? we hate him. he fucking raped and abused her. wE HATE HIM. HE IS A HORRIBLE PERSON.
and my prof was like well yeah i hate him but i don’t HATE hate him. and we argued about it. so he took a poll of who hated taylor. ALL of the girls in the class raised their hands. none of the boys did. when he asked who didn’t hate taylor all of the men raised their hands. and me and my friend started laughing because of COURSE they did.
and my prof was like why are you laughing and the writer was like “i think they’re laughing at the gender difference in that answer” and my prof was like “well, from my male perspective, i don’t think i’m being sexist”
WHAT.
first of all did you hear that sentence at ALL do you understand how paradoxical it is?????
second of all, no. just no.
and then my prof went on to say “i feel like we need to see taylor be horrible. like bad solution, he kicks a dog”
evidently a man can abuse and rape a girl and not be hated, but if he kicks a dog then he’s PURE EVIL
and THAT is exactly what’s wrong with our society
The way folk still treat Michael Vick as a persona non grata proves this, plus the bonus racism.
By copyrighting his property as an artwork, he has prevented oil companies from drilling on it.
Peter Von Tiesenhausen has developed artworks all over his property in northern Alberta. There’s a boat woven from sticks that is gradually being reclaimed by the land; there is a fence that he adds to each year of his life, and there are many “watching” trees, with eyes scored into their bark.
Oil interests pester him continually about drilling on his land. His repeated rebuffing of their advances lead them to move toward arbitration. They made it very clear that he only owned the top 6 inches of soil, and they had rights to anything underneath. He then, off the top of his head, threatened them that he would sue damages if they disturbed his 6 inches, for the entire property is an artwork. Any disturbance would compromise the work, and he would sue.
Immediately after that meeting, he called a lawyer (who is also an art collector) and asked if his intuitive threat would actually hold legally. The lawyer visited, saw the scope of the work on the property, and wrote a document protecting the artwork.
The oil companies have kept their distance ever since.
This is but one example of Peter’s ability to negotiate quickly on his feet, and to find solutions that defy expectations.
I feel like this is really important.
“You only own the top six inches.” I own every inch from dust to Hell’s breath. Fight me.
I’m in this weird space where I feel super creative, but I cannot get off my ass and actually make anything. I haven’t been in the studio since I got back.
The only remedy for that is what I always do: just march myself in there and start something. I’m usually really great at getting myself going but this week it’s been impossible. I think my brain has not come back yet from vacation.
It’s not helping that we’re still not completely unpacked and everything put away. I am a person who needs order. And both my studio and the living room are in chaos. I guess that’s where I have to start huh?
I love tags it’s like muttering under your breath on the internet
If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.
Did you guys ever hear about Prince Rupert’s Drop? The British Royal Society was really interested in these things back in the 1600s.
It’s basically a long, thin, practically snaky bit of glass that you get when you drop some molten glass into water. It solidifies into a shape like this:
The interesting and weird thing is, you can’t really break the bulb part. You can take a hammer to it but it won’t break. But the long tail is fragile and easily broken. And if you break any part of this thing, it explodes. Really, it just blows up into a million tiny little shards.
With modern high-speed cameras, they’ve managed to measure the speed of the fracture at slightly faster than one mile per second.
The reason why it breaks like this is because, when the molten glass rapidly cools, the surface hardens right up, but the inside still stays hot for a while. As the inside cools, it pulls in on itself really hard in all directions, leaving the entire drop in a constant state of high tension. When it’s entirely cooled, it only takes a tiny fracture to release that chain reaction of released tension that breaks all of it almost at once.
That is so cool!
Oh wow!!
I gotta try this out. I have a torch for melting glass. And glass.
When we were on the whale watching boat they were playing Maná.
For those of you unfamiliar with them, they’re a Mexican pop/rock/reggae/ska group that are probably the most successful Latin American group of all time.
They were massive when I lived in Venezuela and are part of the soundtrack of my youth in South America.
There’s something about Latin music, no matter the genre, that awakens emotions in me like no other type of music. I feel alive in a different way. Perhaps it simply reminds me of a time in my life where I was young and carefree. But connecting to that feeling really lifted my spirit to a place I rarely go anymore.
As the day progressed and the music changed to many of the old familiar merengue songs we would have heard years ago, I glanced at my mother and saw that she too, was also experiencing the same elevation of emotions. We both danced with big grins on our faces, recalling another life, another time
I wasn’t in the room when the independent panel decided to halt the recent male birth control trial. I don’t know what their decision-making process was like. Certainly, depression and mood changes aren’t things to be taken lightly, and of course it’s in everyone’s best interest to have new drugs be as safe as possible.
However. In the male birth control trial, 4.7 percent of men experienced mood swings, and 2.8 percent experienced depression. These were two of the side effects cited as reasons for ending the trial. On the other hand, let’s take Liletta, an IUD approved by the FDA in 2015—5.2 percent of its users experienced mood swings, and 5.4 percent experienced depression. A woman using Liletta has a higher chance of experiencing the same side effects than a man using the injectable birth control that was deemed too risky. The standards are different.
In 2007, the pharmaceutical company Bayer gave up on a male contraceptive “that involved an annual implant and a quarterly injection,” as my colleague Olga Khazan reported in 2015. The company, she wrote, “concluded that men would consider the regimen—in the words of a spokesperson—‘not as convenient as a woman taking a pill once a day.’”
Well, yes. That is far more convenient—for the men. Women will put up with it, of course, as they have for years, because the stakes are that high. And as research into male birth control accelerates, we are starting to see this hypocrisy more clearly—that the burdens women bear in exchange for their reproductive freedom are considered too much to expect men to deal with.
Colorado-based Etsy user TheCharmingFrog hand-makes these intricate, nature- and fantasy-inspired bath products using natural ingredients such as honey, chamomile, apricot, coconut oil, and lavender.
I made a bess curry chicken tonight. I steamed some pumpkin to go with it and Chris who does not like pumpkin asked me for more. Score!
It’s got laundry and groceries done and I feel so accomplished today. I’m not back in the studio yet and if I am it will likely be to paint, I have new watercolors, excitements!
I’m reading a book by Alan Cumming (the actor) and it’s really good. If y’all like memoirs give it a go it’s called Not My Father’s Son.
The sexiest thing in the world is being able to tell someone “it hurts and upsets me when you do this” and instead of them becoming angry and defensive and violent they say “I am sorry I do not want to hurt you let’s figure out a way to resolve this” 😩😩😩😩😩😩 When they meet the bare minimum requirements of emotional maturity 😍💦💦I’m so wet
I was listening to BBC News on the radio while I was in my car today and they were discussing the incident where those Black people tortured the special needs guy who was White. And how a lot of people are linking the incident to the BLM movement.
And so one of the Black commentators says that it’s ridiculous. And that in that case we should link Dylan Roof’s actions with the actions of every White person who has every engaged in anti-Black thoughts, words, actions etc. And lump them all together.
So the White moderator’s response is to immediately say that Dylan Roof was a mentally disturbed young man, at which point the Black guy immediately interjected and said, “Well so are these people!”
Why is it Black people never get to be sick? Or mentally ill when they do something fucked up? And why do ALL Black people have to pay for the sins of every other Black person? Why do White people get to be exempted from their hate crimes by being sick but Black people are just violent animals?
I thought some of you might like these… there are some really lovely options and all are free!
I loled at this innapropirately loudly. I’m sure this has to be the same gf who got with your male friend… Reality show? Just suggesting lol.
It was her. I mean she fucked it up spectacularly. Went down in flames with explosions and fireworks. Think Hindenberg. And is now giving me passive aggressive sarcastic attitude when I gently suggested she *might* want to examine her thought patterns. Seriously I am so done.
Wooden hand painted bookmarks from #xochimilco. I thought I would give them away to friends but then i asked myself who was I kidding cause let’s face it I’m keeping them all!
We bought these beautiful hand painted dinner plates in Puerto Vallarta. They all have unique designs but use the same color scheme. They’re so beautiful and festive I can’t wait to use them! #mexico #puertovallarta #crafts #artisan
This was my birthday present from Chris, this beautiful handmade leather saddle bag. I saw it on Etsy, so I added it to my Amazon wishlist. Given that it’s all leather and handmade the price was super reasonable. It’s a nice, neat size, I’m not one for large bags as I usually carry just my wallet, keys and phone. I’m really happy with it.
I gotta show y’all all the shit I bought in Mexico too… when I recover from this jet lag.
Maybe cause I was drunk. Well I was drunk when I got home but we made something to eat and watched some tv and by the time I was done I wasn’t feeling drunk anymore.
But yeah… had a cancer dream. I wish they would stop.
We got back home late last night, got home a little past midnight. I am SO jetlagged it’s not even funny.
The leg in Mexico City was brutal. Our flight from Puerto Vallarta was delayed by several hours and it turned out to be a blessing. Mexico City airport was freezing (it was 9 degree C, 40F) and just an utterly miserable experience. I tried to sleep, had on a heavy jacket but with hunger and tiredness I was so cold I was shivering. It was also oddly stark and empty… just unpleasant. We had something like a seven hour layover. When we finally got on the plane we were so grateful to get out of there.
Blessedly the Panama City airport warm, carpeted, bustling with shops and eating places. The time went relatively fast and the flight home was pleasant.
Chris just left for work. I don’t know how he was able to even get up to go I am feeling so mash up. But he works on contract so he doesn’t get paid vacation so… gotta make some money.
Most likely birthday celebrations will be drinks with a few friends at our local watering hole but little else. We will both be too tired.
My mom was just holding my nephew and he’s literally half her height. She’s 5’4" and he’s nine months old. Like what kind of giant baby did my sister make?
Best crappy picture of a mama whale, baby whale, I think another companion and two dolphins that were frolicking near our boat. #humpbacks #whalewatching #puertovallartamexico
Going on a whale watching trip this morning. Or else there’s no way I’d have gotten up at 6:30. I’m sleepy and hungry. Those humpbacks better be worth it.
I have no concept of the pain scale, like…I just realized that last week I said I was in especially awful hip pain and when my pt asked to rate it I said “3”. And then this week I said I felt a lot better than last week and when she asked me to rate it I said “3”. I really don’t know what the numbers are supposed to be. I know it’s supposed to be out of ten but like. I think I rate the pain by what time of the day it is. Like “i will rate the pain I’m in at a 5 at the end of the day, so compared to what my pain level will be later, what I’m feeling right now is a 3.” I also think i rate in overall pain rather than specific pain? Like, systemically I’m at a five. Some parts will be worse or better but i just rate it all at five because that’s the average
Chiune Sugihara. This man saved 6000 Jews. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sugihara risked his life to start issuing unlawful travel visas to Jews. He hand-wrote them 18 hrs a day. The day his consulate closed and he had to evacuate, witnesses claim he was STILL writing visas and throwing from the train as he pulled away. He saved 6000 lives. The world didn’t know what he’d done until Israel honored him in 1985, the year before he died.
Why can’t we have a movie about him?
He was often called “Sempo”, an alternative reading of the characters of his first name, as that was easier for Westerners to pronounce.
His wife, Yukiko, was also a part of this; she is often credited with suggesting the plan. The Sugihara family was held in a Soviet POW camp for 18 months until the end of the war; within a year of returning home, Sugihara was asked to resign – officially due to downsizing, but most likely because the government disagreed with his actions.
He didn’t simply grant visas – he granted visas against direct orders, after attempting three times to receive permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry and being turned down each time. He did not “misread” orders; he was in direct violation of them, with the encouragement and support of his wife.
He was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985, a year before he died in Kamakura; he and his descendants have also been granted permanent Israeli citizenship. He was also posthumously awarded the Life Saving Cross of Lithuania (1993); Commander’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1996); and the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2007). Though not canonized, some Eastern Orthodox Christians recognize him as a saint.
Sugihara was born in Gifu on the first day of 1900, January 1. He achieved top marks in his schooling; his father wanted him to become a physician, but Sugihara wished to pursue learning English. He deliberately failed the exam by writing only his name and then entered Waseda, where he majored in English. He joined the Foreign Ministry after graduation and worked in the Manchurian Foreign Office in Harbin (where he learned Russian and German; he also converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church during this time). He resigned his post in protest over how the Japanese government treated the local Chinese citizens. He eventually married Yukiko Kikuchi, who would suggest and encourage his acts in Lithuania; they had four sons together. Chiune Sugihara passed away July 31, 1986, at the age of 86. Until her own passing in 2008, Yukiko continued as an ambassador of his legacy.
It is estimated that the Sugiharas saved between 6,000-10,000 Lithuanian and Polish Jewish people.
It’s a tragedy that the Sugiharas aren’t household names. They are among the greatest heroes of WWII. Is it because they were from an Axis Power? Is it because they aren’t European? I don’t know. But I’ve decided to always reblog them when they come across my dash. If I had the money, I would finance a movie about them.
He told an interviewer:
You want to know about my motivation, don’t you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He just cannot help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.
People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives….The spirit of humanity, philanthropy…neighborly friendship…with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation—and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.
He died in nearly complete obscurity in Japan. His neighbors were shocked when people from all over, including Israeli diplomatic personnel, showed up at quiet little Mr. Sugihara’s funeral.
I will forever reblog this, I wish more people would know about them!
I liked this before when it had way less information. Thank you, history-sharers.
Tucked away in a corner in L.A.’s Little Tokyo is a life-sized statue of Chiune, seated on a bench and smiling gently as he holds out a visa.
The stone next to him bears a quote from the Talmud; “He who saves one life, saves the entire world.”
I had no idea it existed until a few weeks ago, but it’s since become one of my favorite pieces of public art.
Chiune Sugihara. Original antifa.
always reblog Chiune Sugihara. I have his picture over my desk at work to remind me what’s important.
Vera Rubin, the astrophysicist responsible for confirming the first existence of dark matter, died on Sunday night at the age of 88.
Carnegie Institution president Matthew Scott called Rubin “a national treasure as an accomplished astronomer and a wonderful role model for young scientist.”
Rubin and her colleagues observed galaxies in the 1970s, they learned the motion of stars is a result of a “material that does not emit light and extends beyond the optical galaxy” — also known as dark matter.
Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky proposed the idea of dark matter in 1933, but Rubin’s groundbreaking work subsequently led to the confirmation of the material.
This finding is what led to the discovery that 90% of the universe is made up of dark matter, a finding some colleagues felt was overlooked and deserving of a Nobel Prize. Read more
My sister changing her newborn son’s diaper in front of my five year old niece for the first time…
Niece: *babbling on, sees him naked, grows very quiet*
Niece: Mom?
Sister: Yes?
Niece: I have to tell you something.
Sister: What?
Niece: I think something’s wrong with Nolan’s vagina.
Michael was found dead in his home on Christmas Day, and it was later confirmed that he suffered heart failure.
But many have now opened up about donations the star secretly made to countless good causes while insisting that he remained anonymous.
Dame Esther Rantzen said Michael “gave millions” to Childline, of which she is the founder a president, but that he donated the money on the condition of anonymity while he was alive.
“For years now he has been the most extraordinarily generous philanthropist, giving money to Childline, but he was determined not to make his generosity public so no-one outside the charity knew how much he gave to the nation’s most vulnerable children,” sad Dame Esther.
Richard Osman, who co-hosts Pointless, also opened up saying he had given £15,000 to a contestant on Deal or No Deal who needed the money for IVF.
Others included the Terrence Higgins Trust, which said Michael had given “experiences and gifts” to the charity over the years.
““His donations contributed to a vision of a world where people living with HIV live healthy lives free from prejudice and discrimination,” said Jane Barron of THT.
“Thanks to George’s legacy, we are a step closer to that world and we are so grateful for his support and friendship over the years.”
Other stories included that Michael had given a £25,000 cheque to a woman who he heard crying over debt in a cafe, asking the waitress to hand it over once he had left.
Another came from radio DJ Mick Brown, who opened up about an annual £100,000 donation made by Michael to Capital FM’s Christmas charity drive.
Journalist Sali Hughes took to Twitter to say she had written a story about a celebrity who had given £5,000 to a barmaid who was a student nurse in debt, revealing that it was Michael.
Many more stories including offering a free concert to NHS nurses who cared for his late mother, and volunteering at a homeless shelter, poured out as thousands mourned the death of the Wham! star.
This is in addition to his performances on charity singles like ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, donating royalties from his Elton John duet ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me’ to an AIDS hospice, and much other public charity work.
It would be great, and undoubtedly helpful for artists, if y’all only reblog art with the credit attached. Maybe even start blocking the people who removed the credit in the first place? You don’t have to work hard to do it. Just check to see if the person you reblogged it from removed the information. If they did, block them.
There is absolutely no good reason at all to remove an artist’s credit from their work.
Got to Pto. Vallarta without issue. Showered family with presents, drank ponche creme, gave everybody their rum cake, played with my niece and adorable nephew. All is well with the world. Am so happy.
soulsistrin 