Taken Aurally

i understand the cicada noises but out of respect for their privacy i will not be translating

Plato

I got the chance to road trip out to the path of totality! My phone camera didn’t do it justice, so I painted what I saw instead 🌞🌚

circling back around to the issue of writers being expected to do all their own goddamn marketing via social media these days, because it completely nixes the possibility of writers being weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, or misanthropes. 80% of the literary canon was written by weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, and misanthropes. if you weed out everyone who’s the wrong kind of insane to maintain a twitter presence, who on earth is left

i heard a talk about this by a terrific mystery novelist, John Straley, titled “In Defense of Misanthropes in the Arts.”

I’ll never forget him sharing his candid fear that authors like him, authors who did not want to post on Facebook or Twitter, authors who wanted to be curmudgeonly and left alone, were being steadily squeezed out of the writing world as publishers foisted more and more promotional work directly onto authors. Not everyone is cut out for the spotlight. Not everyone wants to be their own hype man. Not everyone presents well in 280 characters, especially in a space they don’t even want to be present. The time suck, the scrutiny, the punishment for making a “mistake” -- all this extracurricular work is so different from actual writing.

Make room for weird reclusive shut-in eccentric misanthropic artists and writers. Don’t forget those voices are worth your attention, too.

nightmare blunt rotation my id, ego, and superego

Shinjuku 2024

Shooting date: Early April 2024

©Abeja Mariposa

Great street scene with beautiful light flare and so many matching umbrellas it looks like a movie scene b

PWS - Margaret

[transcription of a reddit comment]

ew72 • 19 hr. ago

I'm a type 1 diabetic. I require insulin to live, multiple times a day.

When I was in middle school, many years ago, we didn't have insulin pumps and had to use syringes and vials like everyone else.

The school refused to let me carry it with me, meaning I had to go to the nurses office several times a day to inject. It's not just before lunch but could be any number of times depending on the current blood sugar levels.

The district then cut nurse staff to just spending half a day at two schools, and the nurse left before I had lunch.

I asked the office staff to unlock the office so I could take my insulin and eat lunch. They refused.

By middle school, I'd been dealing with t1 for about 5 years, and didn't take shit on the topic. I went to the school lobby, picked up the payphone (I just dated myself) and called 911, telling them, "Hi, I'm at (school), am type 1 diabetic and the office won't unlock a door and let me take insulin."

They sent a fire truck, and a bunch of firemen met me outside and walked me to the office and asked, while ignoring the staff, which room was the nurses office. I pointed to the door and he was like, "Okay boys, chop it down, this kid need his insulin!"

Suddenly, the office secretary could unlock the door and I didn't need to put it in the nurses office everyday anymore.

End id.]

Burroughs Wellcome Company, Durham, North Carolina, Paul Rudolph

I'm Diné (Navajo) and in high school I was put in some kind of group for native kids. It was run by a white woman who told us that if we were ever in class and feeling overwhelmed, we had permission to just up and leave class to go wander around outside and reconnect with nature. We all took advantage of this regularly

the implication she thought you were like, forest fairies that had to periodically connect with nature to regain your strength is the most racist but also kinda funny thing I ever heard

Why would you leave this absolute gem in the tags

to be fair, physics is a lot simpler: physics doesn't have to explain why we spend millions on luxury watches when we can ALREADY tell time, for FREE, simply by staring DIRECTLY AT SKY ORB

New Bridge in Ronda, Andalusia, Spain

Found my 53yo very-much-not-online father in the kitchen today meticulously arranging cutlery on the countertop and i was like 'what are you doing' and he looked up at me with the world's most shit-eating grin and said "Your mother told me this is how you rick-roll the Youth" and i looked over and it was fucking. Loss.jpg.

i must stress that he's never seen the original comic. My mother simply showed him the shorthand symbol and he memorized it. As far as he is aware this is just a fucking hieroglyph that deals instant psychic damage to everyone under the age of 30

This diadem was owned by one of the wives of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. IV century BC Found in the royal tombs of Aigai, Macedonia, Greece.Located in the Archaeological Museum of Vergina, Greece.

Faro 2 shopping center.

Maspalomas - Gran Canaria, Canary Islands - Spain.

© Roberto Conte (2023)