Nothing warms my heart more than to see like a fanbase that’s otherwise dead except for 1 or 2 autistics having the time of their lives digging into every crevice of whatever unpopular thing they’re into for information to enrich their brains. They are literally the backbone of the internet they do more work than god where else would we get people that care about like web graphics for a lost promotional item from a dead videogame released in 2008. Key to media preservation
It is really important to me that all of you learn about Al Bean, astronaut on Apollo 12 and the fourth man to walk on the moon, who after 20 years in the US Navy and 18 years with NASA during which he spent 69 days in space and more than 10 hours doing EVAs on the moon , retired to become a painter.
He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.
Like, look at this stuff????
It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that's just really fucking cool to me!
Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.
And then there's this one:
The Fantasy
For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.
The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.
But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn't afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.
Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.
This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.
"The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.
"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn't fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.
"We often fantasized about Dick's joining us on the moon but we never found a way. In my paintings, though, I can have it my way. Now, at last, our best friend has come the last sixty miles." - Al Bean, about The Fantasy.
There’s also Alexei Leonov, writer and artist and first person to conduct a spacewalk!
You can't forget this, the first art made in space.
March 1965, Alexei Leonov made this drawing only moments after narrowly surviving the very first space walk.
I was thinking of this post the other day when Is Somebody Singing, the first song to premiere via a ground-and-orbit duet, co-written by Ed Robertson and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, came up on my playlist.
As long as there have been humans in space, there have been artists in space.
Celebrate Pride With These 10 Incredible LGBTQ+ Characters
every time i see slur discourse i think about this post
blending all my pills into a creamy pasta sauce and calling it medicinne alfredo
GET YOUR BODY OUT OF SURVIVAL MODE SO YOU CAN CREATE FROM YOUR HEART
A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory.
“We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.”
Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.
Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory.
Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school. As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules:
“Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely. One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way.”
In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifth.
“I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs.”
In the higher grades the pressure is really on. After all, the students must be prepared for the standardized tests and college admissions exams. Students must take courses in Scales and Modes, Meter, Harmony, and Counterpoint.
“It’s a lot for them to learn, but later in college when they finally get to hear all this stuff, they’ll really appreciate all the work they did in high school.”
Of course, not many students actually go on to concentrate in music, so only a few will ever get to hear the sounds that the black dots represent. Nevertheless, it is important that every member of society be able to recognize a modulation or a fugal passage, regardless of the fact that they will never hear one.
“To tell you the truth, most students just aren’t very good at music. They are bored in class, their skills are terrible, and their homework is barely legible. Most of them couldn’t care less about how important music is in today’s world; they just want to take the minimum number of music courses and be done with it. I guess there are just music people and non-music people. I had this one kid, though, man was she sensational! Her sheets were impeccable— every note in the right place, perfect calligraphy, sharps, flats, just beautiful. She’s going to make one hell of a musician someday.”
Waking up in a cold sweat, the musician realizes, gratefully, that it was all just a crazy dream. “Of course!” he reassures himself, “No society would ever reduce such a beautiful and meaningful art form to something so mindless and trivial; no culture could be so cruel to its children as to deprive them of such a natural, satisfying means of human expression. How absurd!”
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a painter has just awakened from a similar nightmare...
I was surprised to find myself in a regular school classroom— no easels, no tubes of paint.
“Oh we don’t actually apply paint until high school,” I was told by the students. “In seventh grade we mostly study colors and applicators.” They showed me a worksheet. On one side were swatches of color with blank spaces next to them. They were told to write in the names. “I like painting,” one of them remarked, “they tell me what to do and I do it. It’s easy!”
After class I spoke with the teacher. “So your students don’t actually do any painting?” I asked.
“Well, next year they take Pre-Paint-by-Numbers. That prepares them for the main Paint-by-Numbers sequence in high school. So they’ll get to use what they’ve learned here and apply it to real-life painting situations— dipping the brush into paint, wiping it off, stuff like that. Of course we track our students by ability. The really excellent painters— the ones who know their colors and brushes backwards and forwards— they get to the actual painting a little sooner, and some of them even take the Advanced Placement classes for college credit. But mostly we’re just trying to give these kids a good foundation in what painting is all about, so when they get out there in the real world and paint their kitchen they don’t make a total mess of it.”
“Um, these high school classes you mentioned...”
“You mean Paint-by-Numbers? We’re seeing much higher enrollments lately. I think it’s mostly coming from parents wanting to make sure their kid gets into a good college. Nothing looks better than Advanced Paint-by-Numbers on a high school transcript.”
“Why do colleges care if you can fill in numbered regions with the corresponding color?”
“Oh, well, you know, it shows clear-headed logical thinking. And of course if a student is planning to major in one of the visual sciences, like fashion or interior decorating, then it’s really a good idea to get your painting requirements out of the way in high school.”
“I see. And when do students get to paint freely, on a blank canvas?”
“You sound like one of my professors! They were always going on about expressing yourself and your feelings and things like that—really way-out-there abstract stuff. I’ve got a degree in Painting myself, but I’ve never really worked much with blank canvasses. I just use the Paint-by-Numbers kits supplied by the school board.”
Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.
Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.” The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong.
The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right.
—Introduction to "A Mathematician's Lament" by mathematics educator Paul Lockhart. Full essay here:
"Look at me", the human said. "Megafauna on every continent we spread on. Two other threads of the homo genus. Perhaps more. We lost count. Forgot that they ever existed, only put together from the fragments of bones. We were there when they disappeared. Their bones stop appearing when the first traces of us showed up. One by one, continent by continent. I haven't just lived through every single extinction event on my planet. I caused them."
reblog to give a strawberry to the person you reblogged this from
I love those winter hats with the ear flaps, they're so expressive and they've got so many options for how to wear it. Such as:
Historical Badasses: Yang Miaozhen, the Pear Blossom Spear
I wanted to write a nomination for @rejectedprincesses , but the research for this particular figure in history was so awesome, that I just had to write a few things about her. So here’s the story of Yang Miaozhen, the Pear Blossom Spear.
Some women are invincible martial artists (Khutulun). Some women have invented martial arts styles and named them after themselves (Yim Wing-chun), Some women are rebel leaders (Constance Markievicz, Trung Sisters). Some women are generals (Joan of Arc, Matilda of Tuscany), Some women are negotiators (Gertrude Bell). Some women are pirates (Ching Shih, Grainne Ni Mhaille, Laskarina Bouboulina). Some women are governors (Keumalahayati).
To my knowledge, only one woman in Chinese history has done all of the above, and had a flamethrower named after her.
Her name? Yang Miaozhen. The style she invented? The Pear Blossom Spear.
Yang Miaozhen was born around 1193, into a peasant family of Shandong, China. She and her brother Yang An-er were martial artists. They lived toward the end of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty, a turbulent time. In the wake of Mongol invasions, the Jin Emperor had abandoned his capital, and everywhere rebellions and bandits ran rampant. Yang An-er led a such a rebel band called the Red Coat Army. Yang Miaozhen was his lieutenant. The Red Coat Army gained many victories against the Jin and almost succeeded in capturing a top aristocrat. When Yang An-er died, Yang Miaozhen inherited the leadership of their forces, and then consolidated her rule by marrying a leader of another rebel band called Li Quan. Both of them were experts at the spear. Li Quan was called “The Iron Spear” for his great strength and heavy weapon. For her overwhelming agility, Yang Miaozhen received a more graceful moniker: The Pear Blossom Spear. Every time she went against an opponent, she would unleash a fury of stabs which made her spear point appear to be a hail of pear petals falling in the rain. Granted, though, it was a rain of blood. Everyone respected her and called her “Auntie Yang” or “Fourth Girl”, referring to her order among her siblings.
Stuck between the three competing sides of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty, and the invading Mongols, Li Quan, possibly on his wife’s advice, took his forces south and submitted to the Song Dynasty. Their two home bases were the cities of Chuzhou (modern day Huaian in Jiangsu) and Qingzhou (modern day Qingzhou in Shandong). However, Li Quan was also open to dealings with the Mongols, nor was he averse to having deadly squabbles with other regional military leaders. He generally conducted himself like a warlord, expanding his territory of influence at the expense of all others. Throughout all this, Yang Miaozhen was her husband’s loyal bodyguard and adviser. She served as a negotiator between Li Quan and the government envoys, as well as between Li Quan and his generals, who, like other rebel generals, were liable to flip on their leaders if they thought they weren’t being treated right. Several times, she intervened just in time to avert disaster. One time the government envoy went out of the city to inspect the surrounding farm fields. When he returned at night, Yang Miaozhen’s forces had locked him out of the city. Only when she showed up to scold the guards was he allowed passage. But somehow, she had managed to scare him half to death, and he adamantly resigned his job as envoy, returning to the Capital and dying soon after.
Yang Miaozhen and her husband spent much time apart. He stationed himself at Qingzhou and left her to guard Chuzhou. Then one day, Qingzhou was besieged by the Mongols. The Song Dynasty, notorious for military mismanagement, failed to send aid. Li Quan was captured, thought dead, and the government decided to send a braggart of a general called Liu Zhuo (also written as Liu Wangzhuo) to take over Li Quan’s remaining forces at Chuzhou, which were currently led by Yang Miaozhen. Realizing he had gotten in over his head, Liu Zhuo took on another former rebel leader called Xia Quan as his lieutenant. They, being huge jerks, proceeded to refuse to acknowledge Yang Miaozhen’s authority and lay siege to the city. Yang Miaozhen, having fewer than three-thousand followers, at the time, proceeded to send money to Xia Quan and sued for peace. Once there was a ceasefire, she sent a messenger saying “My dear general, you too were recruited over in Shandong. As the saying goes, when the hunter runs out of game, he cooks his hounds. Now that Li Quan has fallen, would the government allow you to remain? Therefor, I hope you will have pity and take care of me.”
Xia Quan agreed, and she invited him over for dinner. She then seduced him, saying “People say my Third Brother (Li Quan) is dead. I am a mere woman, how can I support myself? I am willing to submit to you and make you my husband. My maids, my soldiers, my money, my weapons, and my grain shall all belong to you. I hope you will quickly agree to my humble request. I have nothing else to say.”
It was an offer too good to pass up, so Xia Quan turned on his superior and ran him out of town. Yang Miaozhen proceeded to lock all the city gates behind him, and refused to let him in. After realizing he had been tricked, Xia Qian returned to his original station, but the troops there, knowing of his betrayal, also locked him out, so he went North and, greatly humiliated, surrendered to the Jurchens. He wasn’t the only one humiliated, as Liu Zhuo took full responsibly for the debacle, turned in his resignation, and went home and died of sheer shame.
Failing to learn a lesson, the Song government sent another guy called Yao Gu to take over. He was generally inoffensive, allowing the local leaders to run day to day affairs, and was even happy when Yang Miaozhen and her husband’s older brother, Li Fu, dealt with two of their generals who were planning on betraying the city. But he was sadly incompetent. The city ran out of food, partly because of the previous siege. Yao Gu failed to petition the government for aid, so Yang Miaozhen and Li Fu decided he had to go. They quickly set up a plan. Li Fu invited Yao Gu over for dinner. After Yao Gu left his house, Yang Miaozhen commanded her men to surround the house and capture Yao Gu’s family, which at the time only consisted of his concubines, everyone else being back in the Capital. The concubines were herded into Li Fu’s house alongside Yang Gu, and they would all have been killed if one of the lieutenants named Zheng Yande didn’t beg his leaders for mercy. Yang Miaozhen agreed and spared the Yao family, instead having all their hair and beard shaved off and sending them back to the Capital on foot. Shortly after arrival, Yao Gu also died of shame.
The Song Dynasty finally stopped sending envoys, and instead just declared Yang Miaozhen and her forces the Huai-an army, directly subordinate to the Military Governor of the region. Unfortunately, the city still had no food, and other rebel forces extorted neighboring farmers for their crop, thus cutting off the city’s food supply.
Meanwhile, Li Quan was actually alive. While he was on the fence about surrender, the Mongols did appoint him Governor of Shandong. Some of Li Quan’s generals Chuzhou decided to pin the blame on their captured leader, so they murdered Li Quan’s family and took their heads back to the Capital, accusing Li Quan of willingly aiding and abetting the Mongols. The Song Emperor believed the accusations and seized all of Li Quan’s assets. But Yang Miaozhen had escaped the slaughter alongside one of Li Quan’s concubine-born sons. She regrouped her forces and joined her husband. In revenge, Li Quan officially joined the Mongols, even breaking his own pinky to show his determination. He re-captured Chuzhou, and seized the traitors who had killed his family and executed. He then expanded his forces on land and at sea, building up his own pirate fleet. He took over large patches of territory, but was finally ambushed and killed, being literally hacked to pieces by the government soldiers who all wanted to kill him for a reward. The tide of battled turned, and the Song government quickly overran much of Li Quan’s territory.
When Yang Miaozhen saw this, she sighed and said to her most trusted lieutenant, Zheng Yande: “For twenty years, I and my pear blossom spear have been invincible. Now my era is past, and we can no longer hold out. Those of you who have not surrendered have only remained because I still live. I know none of have the heart to kill me and surrender. And yet, if you do not kill me, who would ever grant you refuge? I wish to retire and live out my old age in my old home of Lianshui. Go and tell the government that you had an epiphany and decided to kill me so you might give yourselves up, but I discovered your plan and escaped across the river. Could you do this for me, and then lay down your arms and beg to surrender?”
Her subordinates agreed, and so Yang Miaozhen and her adopted son retreated peacefully to Lianshui. Unfortunately, neither the Jurchens nor the Song agreed to give her remaining forces refuge. They were defeated and scattered and called on Yang Miaozhen to lead them again. She decided to join the Mongols, and after some negotiating, was appointed her husband’s old office of Governor of Yidu. She helped on campaigns against the Jurchens, especially against another subordinate that betrayed her, Guo Yongan. She captured and killed Guo, and then campaigned once more to recover her old territory of Huaian. Then she hung up her spear and lived out her life as a governor, keeping order and promoting learned men to her staff. She received the highest honors and was even congratulated by the Prime Minister, Yelu Chucai, who wrote her a letter denying her request to retire from her office. After she died, her son inherited the governorship.
Centuries after her exploits, the famed Ming Dynasty general and pirate fighter Qi Jiguang paid homage to her by calling her “Lady Yang, progenitor of spear fighting.” Another famous strategist, He Liangchen praised her with, “The Ma Family Spear, the Sha Family Staff, the Li Family Short Spear, all mighty in their own way….yet the only invincible style is the Pear Blossom Spear of the Yang family.” Folk legends connect her with the Yang Family Generals, a famous military family of the early Song Dynasty. Legends say that after all the men fell in battle, the remaining widows formed a woman’s army of Fourteen Amazons. Amusingly ironic, considering the Amazons fought to defend the Song Dynasty and Yang Miaozhen fought to end it.
Also by the time of the Ming, warriors had long since decided that a “pear blossom spear” was too awesome to simply be a fast spear. Instead, it had to be a special spear. Thus the name was appropriated for the fire lance, a lance that literally had a flaming rocket tied to it in place of the usual red tuft. It was an instrument of sharp fiery death, a primitive flamethrower. It was named after Yang Miaozhen, the matriarch of every spear style currently used in Chinese martial arts.
In conclusion, Yang Miaozhen, the undefeated warrior, the brave general, the cunning negotiator, the pirate, the governor, and the caring neighborhood aunt, has an incredible resume. She deserves to have her story told over and over again.
(This blog has no affiliation whatsover with @rejectedprincesses beyond being a fan)
did you know?
you love chubby springtails.
you love them. you have to.
(likely Sensillanura sp., Vitronura giselae and Neanura muscorum)
