it’s been a while since the last wordlist, today’s lang is hungarian hungarians came to europe from the ural mountains region, their language’s core vocab consists of about a half of what they have brought with them and about a half of borrowings from various neighbours these words here, though, are thought not to have any reliable etymology
Detail of plants/trees/leaves from various Indian miniatures.
Caddisfly larvae build protective cases using materials found in their environment. Artist Hubert Duprat supplied them with gold leaf and precious stones. This is what they created.
via IFLS
Absolutely gorgeous and amazing.
The lacquered birdcage, about 140 years old, is crafted of resilient bamboo, split as fine as wire. It accents the guest room of June Laben, whose Connecticut gallery, The Kura, specializes in fine antiques.
At Home with Japanese Design, 1990
Ellsworth Kelly, St. Martin- Baie Rouge, (postcard collage), 2005 [Collection of Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear. © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, Spencertown, NY]. From: Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards, Curated by Ian Berry in collaboration with the Ellsworth Kelly Studio, and with Jessica Eisenthal, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, July 10 – November 28, 2021
Source: tang.skidmore.edu
Herman Melville, Moby Dick:
“But who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes’ western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone by zone.”
My brain:
Decorative artist Alan Dodd's London home. The World of Interiors, December 2022. Photo - James McDonald
A Roman gold and green chalcedony finger ring with a parrot
Roman 1st century BC to 1st century AD
From the G. Sangiorgi Collection / Christie’s
had a jetlag dream where i accidentally melded the plots of “The House Of Mirth” and “Moby Dick”. both of them involve the main character Not Enjoying New York! but we all respond to adversity differently
anyway I’m still alive, someone used blaze to stick the 95 theses to my dash, couldn’t be happier to be back on this hellsite
Saw the first episode of Our Flag Means Death, have chosen to fixate on an inconsequential detail: sewing was not considered women’s work by sailors in the 18th century. All sailors sewed! For one thing, sailmaking was an essential skill; for another, nobody else was going to mend their clothes. It was also just an extremely common hobby. I’m at this very moment working on a recreation of a (19thc) woolie – an embroidered woolen portrait of a ship sewn by a sailor in his free time. A captain asking his crew to do basic sewing tasks: totally necessary, happened on every ship, would not have occasioned comment.
But it’s intentionally anachronistic – yeah yeah I know. But I don’t think this bit was meant that way? I got the sense that the writers intended the anachronism to be that Stede wants his men to sew, just like he uses therapy-speak or has a library at sea. (Incidentally: also not that weird!! Captains brought all kinds of absurd shit to sea). And I’m genuinely not sure if the dude slaughtering the chicken is meant to be a random servant bullying his master’s kid for some reason or if he’s Stede’s father, but either way I’m confused by the implication that a landed aristocrat in like 1710 would feel less masculine because he doesn’t work for a living.
The whole show assumes that we’re reading the protagonist as a modern, enlightened outcast in a more gender essentialist time – but it’s not! That’s not what that world was! More sexist, yes, participating in the soul-destroying horror of the Atlantic slave trade, absolutely, subject to particularly modern largely American hang-ups about masculinity, not even close. Come on. Have you seen how men back then dressed. The central dynamic it seems to want to critique would make more sense in the 1920s than the 1720s. If you’re going to do a show about the golden age of piracy, make it about the golden age of piracy, that’s my two cents.
have I told you the bonkers story of my great great grandparents
It was an arranged marriage, in a shtetl in Belarus. She was the oldest of three sisters, age 19, and she was famously ugly, and her father really wanted to get her married off (I know this sounds like something out of the brothers grimm but I swear it’s true). My great great grandfather, age 16, is betrothed to her, totally sight unseen. He’s taken to her village, takes one look at her, and tries to run away. But her father and his father catch him and make him go through with it.
50 years later, when she dies, he’s so devastated he collapses into her grave
- story @suspected-spinozist told me on Discord that won’t leave my head
orsirosian-deactivated20220711
Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, Weddell Sea, March 2022.
pagewoman
Noss National Nature Reserve, Isle of Noss, Bressay, Shetland, Scotland
My fav whaling logbook phenomenon is when their keeper opts NOT to use whale stamps and instead hand-draws very ornate whales to indicate when he sees them, but then as time goes on the whales get progressively shittier looking because that’s too much work. I know how it feels to get locked into an artistic bit later regretted, man.
E.g.
[ID: Detailed drawing of a sperm whale with shading, eyes, and a spout]
[ID: Wobblier drawing of a whale with no shading and no detailed features]
[ID: The vague blurry notion of a whale]