Mars Black aka Steve Smith (British, b. 1975, Macclesfield, England) - It was all getting a bit much so we decided to just ignore it, 2023, Paintings: Acrylic on Canvas

~ Ring.

Date: 1550-1575

Place of origin: Europe

Fabiola by Francis Alÿs

Fabiola is an installation of over 300 painted copies and reproductions of fourth century Saint-Fabiola, collected by Francis Alÿs from flea markets and antique shops throughout Europe and America in the last 20 years. They are all based on a now lost original painting by french artist Jean-Jacques Henner made in the nineteenth century.

If you're in the U.S. and want to support local plants and pollinators, I hope you've heard of the Xerces Society. Weird name, but super cool resource for gardening for insect pollinators (and they work for other invertebrate species, too)

They've got regional native plant lists:

They've also got super helpful things in their resources section, including Washington's plan for helping bumble bees:

Another really cool resource is the National Wildlife Federation's list of key stone plant species by ecoregion:

Ah, just found out the reason behind the name: "Our name (which is pronounced Zer-sees, or /ˈzɚˌsiz/) comes from the now-extinct Xerces blue butterfly (Glaucopsyche xerces), the first butterfly known to go extinct in North America as a result of human activities. The Xerces blue's habitat was destroyed by development in the sand dunes of San Francisco, and the species was declared extinct by the 1940s."

Not so much weird as poignant.

I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.

My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813

And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like

Every piece of new info that comes out about this movie is more and more unhinged

haunted with shrimp

i can’t believe people call ishmael a boring narrator. ISHMAEL?? the snarkiest little fop ever born? the man who tells you to go to hell if you don’t scream and cheer when you see a dolphin? ISHMAEL?? the guy who made his (drunk) listeners bring him a priest and bible so he could swear on it he was telling the truth? and lied?

"A second reason for the greater size of the rewritten [Moby Dick] is that its thesis cannot be simply, or even clearly stated. It has to be "rendered", to use Henry James's famous word, and the rendering involves indirections and ambiguities that carry the reader more and more deeply into the maze of Truth. At the same time, what Melville had to say was in some aspects so blasphemous, so utterly shocking to the religious sensibilities of his contemporaries that he dared not come out with it directly. On top of his proliferating symbols, he imposed a style of jocular evasion, of double and triple talk, of sly hints and impudent ironies, which made it difficult to hold him directly responsible for his most audacious statements and the impieties they express. Not only was he uneasy about speaking out directly; he was also oppressed by the realization that no artistic communication is more than a fraction of what the artist intends. His book is difficult and complex because Melville does not reduce the dilemmas of the world and of life to childish simplicities. In Moby Dick he is dealing with matters of profound mystery. Melville himself was concerned because he was unable to express all he meant, or even to bare all of his deepest thoughts. Moby Dick is a story contrived to explore and exemplify an idea. The journey in quest of Moby Dick is an intellectual journey in quest of a truth."

Charles Child Walcutt, from an Introduction to Moby Dick

how to signal to goths in public that i am an ally friend and lover despite dressing like a camp counselor

Penguins walking at 5x speed.

Squash in Yellow Vase  -  Jane Peterson , ca.  1925.

American, 1876–1965

Watercolour on board , 29 x 22 in.